The Global Cyber Academy, a UK cyber academy for business, was formally opened at a launch in the Houses of Parliament. Pictured left to right are Dame Louise Ellman MP, GCA founder Richard Bingley, and Neil Sinclair of LDSC.
The Academy offers courses online, in class or mixed (blended) with flying faculty. The subject areas of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence will be available from January 2019. The courses are described as business-environment centric, with case studies, videos and reflective assessments.
Richard Bingley, Academy Chief Executive Officer said: “For many years there have been industrial-scale cyber-attacks against business communities around the world, including London. Every community in the world is a victim. The only way to reduce the threat and increase business resilience is to introduce mass-scale, business cyber-education programmes.
“The parallel, for me, is more than 130 years ago when Karl Benz built the first motor car. It took around 40 years for driving lessons and the driving tests to be introduced following burgeoning, massive public safety issues. The internet is on a similar time-curve. It’s been around a long time. It’s a great enabling technology. But so many people and businesses are now becoming harmed on a mass-scale. When it comes to security, organisations are only as strong as their weakest links. Therefore, we’re going to tackle this from the grassroots up and make this huge topic accessible and fun.
“A group of us – frustrated university tutors, police officers, public officials, business leaders, parents, grandparents, you name it – all meet regularly. We were all jaded with the topic popularly known as ‘cyber security’. Endless conferences, endless endpoint security White Papers, endless – seemingly self-perpetuating – jargon. We all just said, ‘this has to lead to pretty much everybody in the workplace being educated in way that they enjoy and understand’.”
An Advisory Council including university academics and tech sector specialists, and a teaching team were formed during 2017 and 2018. Classroom teaching began in April. Classroom training has already occurred in Malaysia, Oman and Bahrain; all key UK export markets, the Academy points out.
Monthly and bimonthly live training events for executives have been launched in London, Prague, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
Richard Bingley spent several years in IT training in the City of London, before various communications and security management roles, and then running the Business School at Buckinghamshire University until 2017. His PhD study covers business community cyber resilience.
Bingley added: “We’re proud to come from the UK and we feel that the UK-teaching approach – of impartiality, reflection, and rigour – has a really promising nuance that will be our USP. In our view, existing IT security training programmes a far too technical, too belaboured with rote-learning and lack the emphasis on human behaviour and realistic physical security management approaches. Whilst existing physical security training programmes are far too rushed and non-technical. We feel that our approach closes the blind-spots on both sides of the subject vehicle – ‘cyber’ and ‘security’.
“For example, it is no longer viable for security or any other manager to say that they ‘don’t do technical’. Through fun and easy-to-understand exercises, our courses will enable employees to climb up the scaffolding of digital literacy and become much more employable. At the same time their respective organisations will become more cyber resilient. It’s about the mass digital upskilling of employees – so that staff have a structured approach and a baseline competency. These days, the issue isn’t so much about a lack of awareness, it’s more about poor personal cyber hygiene and unstructured, inconsistent, business information security practices.
“This is not a local British problem. It is a major structural flaw that will begin to significantly damage parts or all of our global economy.”
June’s event in Parliament was hosted and chaired by Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside. Speakers were Chris Phillips, former Head of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NACTSO) on terrorism; Richard Bingley on ‘Cyber Resilience’; Graeme McGowan, former UK government intelligence agency worker and Senior Tutor at the Global Cyber Academy, on human behaviour and cyber; Carolyn Harrison – Global Cyber Academy EU GDPR Ambassador, on business preparation for the EU General Data Protection Regulation; and Neil Sinclair, Chief Operating Officer at the London Digital Security Centre. Launched by the Mayor of London, LDSC is a joint venture between the Metropolitan and City of London Police.
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