School of Informatics

Cyber Security Christmas Lectures come back to Edinburgh

The School of Informatics will be hosting the annual Cyber Security Christmas Lecture once again on Thursday 14th December. Registration is still open.

Informatics Cyber Security Christmas Lectures logo

This is the 6th year a series of lectures is organised around Scotland covering six cities in six days. This year 3000 high school students are expected to attend the events that have an interactive format and are designed to showcase the breadth of career opportunities available in cyber security, including six 20-minute presentations by speakers from across industry. The lectures encourage the future generation of workforce to develop a career in an industry where there is a growing skills-gap and demand is set to continue to grow.

Speakers presenting in Edinburgh

  • Brian Higgins 

Business Development Manager EMEA for (ISC) 2, a global membership organisation and accreditation body for cyber security professionals; member of the Boards of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) UK Chapter and the Women’s Security, a member of the Parliamentary Advisory Committee for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Young People and Social Technology and advisor to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Digital Crime.

  • Bill Buchanan

Professor in the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University, and a Fellow of the BCS and the IET, appointed an OBE in 2017 for services to Cyber Security. Named one of the Top 100 people for Technology in Scotland for every year since 2012, and included in the FutureScot 'Top 50 Scottish Tech People Who Are Changing The World'. Currently he leads the Centre for Distributed Computing, Networks, and Security and The Cyber Academy.

  • Gary Ennis

Founder and Managing Director of NSDesign, an award winning digital consultancy. Former 'CEO Of The Year' at the Digital Technology Awards, a runner up 2017 Scottish Cyber Awards, associate consultant for Napier University, member of the Scottish Business Resilience Centre, and a Business Mentor for Scottish Chambers of Commerce.

  • Rory Aslop

To date he has led local and global hacking teams, broken into banks, and taught 5-year-olds to pick locks. Nowadays he oversees the security risk for a bank. Co-founder of the B-Sides Scotland security conferences, a Director of the ISF, Deputy Chair of the IISP.

  • Katy Caie

After 20-year career in the British Army, she works now as a Development Manager for Cyber Security Challenge UK in Scotland.

Sponsors

The Scottish Government, SDS, Education Scotland, SQA, Young Scot, Scottish Enterprise and Police Scotland amongst others are engaged in supporting the lecture series. This year the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) sponsor the Cyber Fortunes Gameshow and Fanduel sponsor the cyber competition across all venues.

Useful links

Registration page