Cyber security partnerships

Our relationships with external organisations – public and private sector – are critical to the success of our work in cyber security education and research.

We work closely with the Cyber Security Advisory board which includes representatives from SMEs as well as large global businesses. It advises the academics on the skills required in industry and expectations of graduates moving into the sector.

Our partners

Jisc

We have a long-standing engagement with Jisc - a not-for-profit organisation providing digital services and solutions for higher, further education and skills sectors in the UK. Dr Phil Smart, a Trust and Identity Technical Expert at Jisc has been involved in the design and delivery of the Cyber Security module at the National Software Academy (NSA). The involvement of an industry expert in the development and delivery of the module contributes to the practice-informed learning enjoyed by NSA students. We also offers a professional development course on Web-Application Security which is co-designed and co-delivered with Jisc. Jisc experts also contribute to annual cyber security awareness activities at Cardiff University.

CyberSmart

CyberSmart is a UK start-up offering affordable, accessible cyber security services for SMEs. CyberSmart experts contribute guest sessions for postgraduate students on cyber psychology and offer and supervise master’s projects jointly with academic members of staff. CyberSmart also offers industry applicable and relevant research questions as MSc projects. Recently, we co-supervised a project investigating time and effort-based incentives and their impact on behaviours applied to best-practice security. This is now being extended as a funded research project beyond MSc.

Another project, co-supervised with CyberSmart, focused on the design of Cyber Security Awareness programmes for SMEs to drive efficient and positive behaviour change. The project analysed existing related research, identified positive methods for changing behaviours in the cyber security sphere and built a framework by linking to the behaviour change taxonomies of the behaviour change wheel. The project resulted in a usable framework that SMEs could adopt to change user behaviour in this arena and increase users’ personal digital hygiene while supporting a stronger digital culture and so safer business operations. The framework was presented and evaluated by industry experts. CyberSmart's supervision not only includes advice in making the research industry applicable, but often involves providing exposure to relevant expert participants from organisations.

Other partners in the cyber security space include: