by Alan Settery, SICSA Cyber Security Network Integrator
9 October 2017
As always Freshers week was full of enthusiasm and energy as students were welcomed across Scotland’s universities and now settle down to start their new computing science and cyber security courses.
It’s an exciting time to be involved and set out on this journey; technology is evolving at a fast pace and there are a lot of interesting areas to be involved in – from bit coins and block chain to artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous cars; from a raspberry pi and hackathons to the cloud, supercomputers and big data analytics. Of course cyber security needs to be considered in all of these areas and many more. We know the importance being digitally safe and secure plays in our day to day lives and the role industry has in dealing with cyber threats to our services and infrastructure.
Recently, some students may have attended the CyberFirst events held across universities – Edinburgh Napier University and University of Glasgow. These courses are organised by the National Cyber Security Centre and aimed at encouraging 11 – 17 year olds to the world of cyber security. It is worth noting that CyberFirst is a Student Bursary scheme which is available to first year students at university too – details are available and applications are usually open in April each year. https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/articles/cyber-first-bursary-scheme.
Interestingly Lockheed Martin have sponsored CyberFirst too. http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/uk/news/press-releases/2017-press-releases/lockheed-martin-backs-governments-cyberfirst-initiative-to-find-tomorrows-online-security-experts.html
For those of you with an interest in, but not already on a cyber security course, if would like to know more about the topic there is a free on-line Open University introduction through Future Learn. https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/introduction-to-cyber-security/12 This covers, Threat landscape, Authentication, Malware, Networking & Comms, Cryptography, Network Security, Defences and Risks and could be a flexible way to understand more.
Did you know?
– October is the raising Cyber Security awareness month in Europe https://cybersecuritymonth.eu and in the USA https://www.dhs.gov/national-cyber-security-awareness-month