We’re looking forward to meeting you at the best Bett ever

At the end of the month thousands of people will gather at ExCel London for what’s billed as the ‘best Bett ever’. The UK’s flagship education event, Bett UK began life almost four decades ago in 1985, attracts educators, innovators, decision makers and buyers. This year’s inspirational keynote speakers hail from the worlds of media and academia, sports psychology and fitness, business and children’s storytelling.

At Quorum Cyber, we’re getting excited about making our debut at Ahead by Bett, a dedicated offering for the Higher Education community which is run alongside Bett UK.

The time is right to start more open discussions about cyber security in the education sector and what better place to do this than at Bett? We’ll be welcoming attendees at the Ahead Stand HE34 during 29-31 March when we’ll promote our comprehensive range of cyber security services. We’re passionate about helping to defend all industry sectors and we love learning, so we feel very strongly about supporting the education sector, which, unfortunately, experiences a significant number of attempted cyber-attacks every year – especially in the UK and the US.

According to the UK government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022, 62% of higher education institutions reported experiencing a breach or cyber-attack at least once a week. And 71% of them “experienced a negative outcome, such as a loss of money or data from a breach”. Furthermore, even if they didn’t lose money or data, 88% were negatively impacted by a cyber incident.

Connecting with people at Bett

In addition to talking about all-things cyber security on our booth, we’re looking forward to meeting as many people as we can via the new Connect @ Bett sessions. The event is organising these for the first time to transform the way the community connects and collaborates. Described as a “completely new, tech-enabled meetings programme that will drive more meaningful conversations than ever before” Connect @ Bett promises to help attendees have valuable 15-minute discussions by scheduling them in advance rather than hoping for positive chance encounters.

For years, threat actors have seen the education sector as a whole as a relatively easy target, believing it to lack adequate cyber security skills and tools to protect its assets, students and data from harm. But, after suffering from a series of damaging incidents up and down the UK in recent years, the education sector is now taking the matter very seriously.

Safeguarding and collaborating with universities

During the past few years, we’ve partnered with several higher education institutions to keep them safe, including the University of Central Lancashire, and universities in London, Aberdeen, Cumbria and Portsmouth.

Our involvement with the education sector goes far deeper than just a service provider-customer relationship. By collaborating with local universities near our headquarters in Edinburgh, we inspire and support graduates and undergraduates to help them start their careers. There are countless opportunities in a diversity of roles in cyber security, many technical, but plenty of others in the non-technical positions that you would expect to find in any dynamic industry.

Last year we launched our Graduate Programme and Graduate Apprenticeship Programme, which have proven very popular. We also attend key events across Scotland such as Securi-Tay in Aberdeen, the largest annual student-led information security event in Europe. So, directly or indirectly, we’re helping talented, curious and enthusiastic people to begin challenging, rewarding careers and playing our part in filling the huge skills gap we see in the UK and around the world today.

See you in London

If you’ll be at Bett and want to discuss any aspects of cyber security, or just want to ask a burning question or two, no matter how small or trivial they might seem, then please come and meet us at the Ahead Stand HE12 or via Connect @ Bett during 29-31 March. We look forward to meeting you at ExCeL London for the best Bett ever!

In the meantime, why not get to know how we help the sector on the dedicated Higher Education page on our website?