UK University Gets Nearly £4M To Fight Cyber Crime – Is It a Coincidence?

A recent article on getsurrey.co.uk revealed that Royal Holloway University has received nearly £4 million to help help fight the increasing threat of cyber crime by launching a doctoral training program.

True, with the increasing complexity in social engineering of malware, and the ever-growing freedom of information and BYODs, it’s easier than ever before to get hacked, or for a student laptop to be used as a ‘drive-by’ or other type of intrusion into the University network.

However, frankly, I find it incredible that this amount of money has been awarded for “research” (air quotes intended), and think that there could be another reason behind this investment.

In a recent Seculert study looking at the UK, Germany and North America, we discovered that the UK Education and Council accounted for an alarming 8% of malware.

UK Malware – Universities and Councils

Clearly, education and local government has and will continue to be a major target for nation states, cyber criminals, hactivists and adversaries, and so perhaps this is the reason for the large grant.

One of our customers is one of the largest universities in the US. With Seculert, they finally have a solution that identifies compromised remote users. Through our botnet interception module, they also immediately see immediate results, and integrate them via the Seculert API into their SIEM.

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