| CyberFocus and the University of Manchester are supporting CRANE as regional delivery partners for a new North West cybersecurity hybrid seminar series open to all with an interest in cybersecurity. Our first seminar on 16 June at 11am-12 noon in Manchester will be given by Professor Dimitrios Pezaros, Director of the Cyberdefence and networked systems research (netlab) laboratories in the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. The seminar is titled “A Whole Systems Approach to Securing Industrial CNI Systems” – abstract below. Join us in person (includes lunch and networking after the seminar) or online – anyone with an interest in cyber is welcome. Please register here so we know venue size/catering for those joining us in person and so we can get the link to those of you joining us online: https://lnkd.in/dp3jgid7 Abstract: The increased convergence between Operational Technology (OT) and generic ICT capability, and the ‘sudden connectivity’ to environments that control physical process automation drives much of the modernisation of industrial systems that underpin Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). While such developments bring obvious benefits to -among others- sustainability and economic prosperity, they also mean CNI is increasingly exposed to cyberattacks and adversarial events with potentially catastrophic consequences to society, national defence, and the functioning of the state. In this talk, I will discuss how a whole systems approach – including digital technology development, Machine Learning and AI, and organisational integration – is needed to secure and safeguard CNI. Also, how buy-in from a wide range of stakeholders is required, from CNI operators and equipment vendors to C&I personnel and government, is required in order to assure CNI is resilient in a landscape of growing complexity and cyberthreats, and adversaries that can vary from teenage hacktivists all the way to state actors. |