Cyber security leaders form partnership to arm higher and further education sector against cyber attacks amidst increase in breaches
Acumen Cyber, a people-powered CREST accredited cyber security service provider, today announced a new partnership with HEFESTIS, a not-for-profit shared service organisation jointly owned by UK colleges and universities.
The partnership has been established to better equip universities and further education colleges with the expertise and market-leading security solutions needed to protect their complex environments and valuable data from cyber attacks.
Higher and further education institutions have become prime targets for threat actors. In its most recent Cyber Security Breaches study, the UK government revealed that 86% of further education colleges and 97% of universities have reported breaches or attacks. These attacks, often orchestrated by financially motivated cyber criminals or nation-state threat actors, have led to major disruptions, causing network shutdowns, impacting students and compromising the personal data of millions of individuals.
Exacerbating the issue is the fact that many institutions lack the skills and funding required to secure their complex environments. Their infrastructure often compromises of SaaS applications, cloud hosted data plus smaller independent technical eco-systems which are unique to different departments. Everything must be covered by the security program, but the bespoke demands of different applications and local stakeholders makes this increasingly complex. Furthermore, with thousands of staff and students accessing their networks, the sector is particularly vulnerable to phishing attacks. The massive recent attack on a large research intensive university was executed via phishing, with a single email compromising the data of millions of students and NHS patients.
The new partnership between Acumen and HEFESTIS is designed to tackle these issues. As a trusted partner of UK universities and colleges, HEFESTIS already provides shared information services to many institutions across the UK, including CISO-services, Data Protection Officers, support with data management and also an Enterprise Service Management solution. This new partnership with Acumen is the first of a number of such advancements and will allow HEFESTIS to bolster these offerings with Acumen’s cutting-edge, next generation Security Operations Centre (SOC) solution.
Through the partnership driven shared service, universities and further education colleges will gain cost-effective, sector priced access to Acumen’s world-class security engineers, who will constantly monitor and manage cyber security on their behalf from utilising Acumen’s SOC. The cutting-edge facility integrates expert security engineers, proactive threat intelligence and market-leading security solutions to help detect, respond to, mitigate and prevent attacks.
By incorporating SOC services, HEFESTIS can now offer a comprehensive cyber security solution, covering expert CISO support, data protection and continuous security monitoring. With Acumen’s expertise, institutions will benefit from 24/7 coverage, ensuring their digital assets always remain secure and resilient against even the most sophisticated attacks.
“We are excited to launch our new partnership with Acumen, which we believe will provide universities and further education colleges with the technical tools and expertise needed to monitor, detect and remediate threats. HEFESTIS is a trusted voice in the UK education sector and we work with universities and colleges across the country to help improve their security and drive cyber resilience. We believe the most relevant next step is to offer SOC services through Acumen, which will augment and support the task of running security inhouse and will significantly bolster security across the sector, with it being managed 24/7 under the expert guidance of our partner Acumen,” said Brian Henderson, CEO of HEFESTIS.
Headquartered in Glasgow, Acumen offers clients an engineer-powered, CREST-accredited SOC underpinned by market-leading technology partners. With proven experience in securing the complex environments of higher and further education, Acumen can offer the sector unparallelled expertise to safeguard their digital assets, ensuring that even when digital transformation projects unfold, security is never compromised.
“In the last few years, the UK’s education sector has faced an unprecedented number of cyber attacks that have shattered the safety of systems, compromised the sensitive data of staff and students and placed many institutions in limbo. Our new partnership with HEFESTIS will help support universities and further education colleges to better defend against cyber attacks. Blending our expertise and cutting-edge security tools with HEFESTIS’s industry knowledge, we will work together to improve defences across the sector, making it harder for attackers to access systems and launch devastating attacks,” said Mark Robertson, CEO of Acumen Cyber.