Tech giant to host talk at RGU on cyber security legislation

Richard Holmes, head of cybersecurity services for CGI in the UK, will lead the seminar entitled ‘NIS Directive – Protecting Essential Services in a World of Increasing Cyber Threats’ and will be joined by a panel of experts including Keith McDevitt from Scottish Government Cyber Resilience.

The free event takes place on 13 February in N242 lecture theatre, of the Sir Ian Wood Building at RGU’s Garthdee Campus, from 15.00 to 17.00 and is open to all.

Brought into force in May 2018 to make essential services better protected and resilient to cyber-attack, NIS Directive applies to enterprises in sectors relying heavily on information and communications technology, such as electricity, water, healthcare, energy, transport, telecommunication and their supply chains.

The legislation was brought in at same time as GDPR, resulting in it flying under the radar of the general public, the media and many Scottish businesses.

Similar to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the financial penalties for non-compliance are significant. With maximum fines of £17 million, the new legislation has the potential to really shake things up. UK organisations could be fined twice for the same breach under GDPR and NIS Directive.

The event will examine what it means, who is impacted and approaches to achieve compliance with NIS Directive and response procedures to use in the event of a significant attack.

In addition to the exponential growth of cyber-attacks over recent years, the sophistication of cyber-attacks has increased as techniques and tools, once the reserve of well-funded nations states, have become available on the internet and at low cost.

Richard Holmes commented: “The NIS Directive enforces big changes to protect the security of networks and information systems. The changes are hugely significant to businesses, especially those in the oil and gas industry.  Attending this event will help them to protect their business and avoid large fines.”

Dr Hatem Ahriz, Course Leader for MSc Cyber Security at RGU's School of Computing, added: “This is a very timely event as the EU NIS directive became UK law in May 2018 and relevant companies are trying to ensure compliance.

“Unfortunately, the directive has somewhat slipped under the radar because it was released about the same time as GDPR, which attracted most of the publicity given that it deals with the security of personal data, and therefore affects almost all organisations.

“This, however, does not make NIS less important, because the threat of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure is very real and can severely disrupt the economy and society in general.”

Places can be confirmed online here.