Coming together to combat online crime
David Lee learns about collaborative efforts to boost internet security at The Scotsman’s State of the Cyber Nation web event, part of Cyber Scotland Week
Scotland’s approach to cyber security must be proactive and positive – and not “built on pain”, The Scotsman’s first State of the Cyber Nation conference heard yesterday in a special online event.
Jude Mccorry, chief executive of the Scottish Business Resilience Centre, told virtual attendees that awareness of the threats from cyber criminals had increased significantly since the high-profile ransomware attack on the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa). The attack in December was described as an attempt by serious, organised crime to extort public funds.
“When an attack happens, it’s not all about cyber heroics,” said Mccorry. “It’s about how you bring systems back online to do what you need to be doing. That’s what we’ll be critiqued on.
“What if we had seen three attacks similar to Sepa? What if it had been an attack on critical infrastructure – on the NHS – and lives had been at stake? We do not want a cyber-resilience model built on pain.”
Ivan Mckee, Scottish Government Minister for Innovation, Trade and Public Finance, told the conference that the new Strategic Framework for a Cyber Resilient Scotland, launched this week, offered a clear focus about what had to be done.
He added: “Threats and opportunities are clearly articulated and the partnership is there for organisations to take that work forward.”
Mckee announced the new Cyberscotland Partnership of ten organisations this week, as well as a one-stop web portal, which aims to offer the widest range of information and resources possible on cyber issues – from general cyber resilience, through reacting to an attack, to building a career.
Cyber risk has to be seen as a business risk for all organisations across the public, private and third sectors, insisted Mckee, who argued there had been “good progress in raising cyber resilience in the public sector”. More than three-quarters of public bodies in Scotland had cyber security on their risk register, but there was “still a long way to go”, he said.
Jude Mccorry added that the 76 per cent figure was certainly much higher since the Sepa attack.
David Ferbrache, chair of the National Cyber Resilience Advisory Board, said that Scotland had excelled in some areas of cyber over the last five years – including learning and skills, where new qualifications and a vibrant academic sector had “created a buzz around cyber security as a career”.
Dr Natalie Coull, pictured inset, head of cyber security at Abertay University, said that an effective talent pipeline is needed to ensure enough people were available to create the next generation of cyber security tools and solutions.
“Scotland is punching above our weight in terms of options and pathways for people wanting to get into cyber security,” she added.
The cyberquarter being developed in Dundee as part of the Tay Cities Growth Deal was an opportunity for students, academics and organisations to collaborate to tackle real-life cyber challenges, Coull enthused. The £18 million cyberquarter will include physical space for experimentation and collaboration, a secure cloud computing infrastructure, and a pump-priming fund to develop new cyber products, services and education programmes.
Ferbrache said that it is vital to “demystify” cyber and to view security and resilience as an essential part of our digital economy – however, he highlighted the need to be able to respond to attacks more swiftly. He told delegates: “The pandemic has seen cyber criminals up their game but the response has been quite impressive.”
He also said that Scotland is “an immensely close cyber community”, which was doing well, but nevertheless had challenges ahead. Ferbrache believes the biggest challenge is to build capacity to be better prepared in the event of large-scale incidents.
Ciara Mitchell, head of cyber at tech trade body Scotlandis, agreed that the sector was progressing and collaborating well, but she still sees a fundamental challenge. “We still have an identity problem,” she said. “The cyber sector in Scotland is not seen as having hi-tech innovative companies, but we do – and we must strengthen that identity and show our cutting-edge technology.”
Jude Mccorry agreed it was about getting the innovation out there: “There is a huge gap between awareness of cyber security in Scotland and the wider UK. If we can get the innovation right, in five years’ time we will have those companies who can help us to get ten steps ahead, and stop cyber crime.”
Scotland is punching above our weight in terms of options and pathways for people wanting to get into cyber security
John Clemmens was a youngster growing up in north London during the Second World War when his interest in railways was first sparked by train trips to the Kent coast.
Escapingaworldcolouredby the Blitz and tales of Dunkirk, he used to visit an aunt in Margate where preparations were being made for D-day. For a schoolboy, the excitement of the times – plus the drama of being on steam trains stuck in tunnels sheltering from air raids – was unforgettable.
And he was just 11 or 12 when, using a Kodak Box Brownie, he began photographing railways, later recalling how the London terminal stations and their locomotive depots “were an absolute paradise for young spotters”.
It was around the same time that his mother Doris died of breast cancer and his much older sister, June, helped their father, also John, to raise the boy, a self-confessed tearaway.
He was in his late teens when wanderlust first took him to India, spurred by his twin passions of photography and steam trains. Accompanied by one of his Hasselblad cameras, he would become a regular visitor and a world-renowned railway photographer with a portfolio of the country’s famous Toy Train railway spanning half a century.
He fitted this in around a working life which began in 1951 with an apprenticeship with the de Havilland Engine Company, where he became involved with the latest gas turbine engines: the Goblin, which powered Vampire jets, and the Ghost, which powered the Venom and early Comets.
The de Havilland apprenticeship proved an excellent foundation for a long career in engineering but he went on to take up other opportunities with the Exxon Corporation and was posted to Libya and other parts of the Middle East.
He also worked in the early years of the North Sea oil industry and finished his career at the Exxon petrochemical plant at Mossmorran.
Having lived for a time in Wokingham, Berkshire – where he bought a house adjacent
to a rail line so he could observe passing steam trains – he later settled in North Queensferry and every year, from 1972, travelled to the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), also known as the Toy Railway, a line he had first visited a decade earlier as part of a three-month tour of India.
Although steam trains were a lifelong passion it was the narrow-gauge DHR line that really captured his imagination and he always spent Christmas and New Year at Darjeeling’s Windamere Hotel, one of India’s oldest colonial hotels, where his quirky personality and sense of humour was much appreciated by other regulars.
On each visit he engaged the same taxi driver, who knew to stop all traffic on the adjacent road to give his camera an unobstructed view of the approaching train.
Every room in the hotel is said to feature at least one of his photographs and his presence there was such that, after news of his death broke, prayers were chanted for him in the property’s DHR Club.
John joined the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society in 2000, soon after its formation, his photographs featuring frequently in the Society’s journal, the Darjeeling Mail.
And in 2013 he self-published a book chronicling his 50 years of photographing the DHR.
Meanwhile, in retirement in Scotland, he was heavily involved in the North Queensferry Heritage Trust, as a trustee and founding member. There he shared his enthusiasm and engineering skills in the restoration of model yachts, fine woodwork and metal work.
His expertise was particularly appreciated during the restoration of the world’s smallest working light tower, built by Robert Stevenson on North Queensferry’s Town Pier.
Brought back into full working order, it reopened to the public in 2010 when the Princess Royal relit the lamp, 120 years after it was last used.
In 2015 the Forth Rail Bridge was declared a Unesco World Heritage site, a status shared with the DHR, and that September North Queensferry station was transformed into Darjeeling for the weekend to reflect the success. With the permission of Transport Scotland, the joint event by the DHR Society and the North Queensferry Heritage Trust saw the station rebranded with Indian flags and signage in Hindi.
Everything was in order until, the night before the event was to open, a Scotrail driver, barely able to believe his eyes, reported that he feared the station may have fallen into the hands of Isis. A team of managers was dispatched to investigate and the event went ahead – no doubt much to the amusement of the effervescent Clemmens, who attended both days giving photography tutorials and discussing his love of the DHR.
In a life of boundless energy and enthusiasm, particularly for his beloved dogs, he was instantlyrecognisablewithhis trademark long white tresses, larger-than-life personality and vice-like handshake.
An inveterate whistler and people-watcher who could not resist teasing or playing tricks on people – even those he didn’t know – he collected friends from all over the world and all walks of life who were inevitably drawn in by his gusto and humour.
As he said himself: “Having a childish and light-hearted spirit without compromise has really allowed me to enjoy life to the full.”
Predeceased by his wife Frances in 2010, he is survived by stepdaughters Ruth and Jane, his niece Christine, nephew Peter and extended family.
The safety of lone workers was ranked as one of the biggest benefits of a new system being trialled on a number of farms across Scotland, which has the potential to revolutionise the way in which many daily farm tasks are conducted and monitored.
The poor connectivity in many farms and rural areas, with dial-up broadband speeds and mobile signal not-spots,hashamperedthe uptake of many of the benefits offered by on-farm connectivity.
However, a new system based on radio signals, the LORAWAN (low-power long-range wide-area network)protocol-whichrelies onneithermobilephonesignal nor broadband connectivity - has the capability to connect almost every area of the farm through a central base unit and digital gateway.
And when combined with developing sensor technology,ahostofwarning,monitoring and data collection capabilities could be harnessed to improve decision making while saving labour on many daily monitoring tasks.
At a webinar on a project which is trialling the system, the farm co-operative organisation, SAOS, highlikely
lightedsomeofthemajorbenefitssuchasystemsprovide,with three test-bed farms revealing how the system had benefited their businesses.
Digital lead with SAOS, George Noble, said that when linkedwithnewsensortechnology the system could monitor a wide range of variables over a 15kmrange–providingtheabilitytorecord,monitorandwarn on a whole host of issues.
Low-powered sensors feeding into the system have battery lives of up to ten years – and the aim of the project is to highlighttheuseofsuchdevices could offer, with an emphasis on business benefits.
“We’relookingatthesolutions whichlinkingthesesensorscan offer, with the focus on making sure that they’re straightforward to use, farm-proof and don’t offer the user hassle.”
While sensors could send alarms to the farmer when water troughs were leaking or river levels were rising, others offered the capability to monitor environmental conditions within cattle sheds and could forewarn of the conditions to cause outbreaks of pneumonia.
Sensors recording soil temperature and moisture could advise when the T-sum 200 had been reached for first top-dressing applications and also to ensure better nitrogen use efficiency with further applications. The sensors could also be used to share information with agronomistsandadvisorstoadvise on spray timings.
Low-cost temperature probes could monitor bulk temperatures in grain stores, leading to less spoilage and also provide records of measurements for assurance and traceability schemes, while sensors attached to vehicles could provide information ontheirlocation,work-rates and fuel usage.
Blairgowrie farmers, Neil and Debbie Mcgowan highlighted that a simple temperature probe in their vaccine fridge had warned them of poor temperature control which had threatened to render over £2,000 of vaccine useless.
Andwithonlypoormobile coverage the system also offered peace of mind for lone workers, with a simple personnel beacon allowing alarms to be raised even where there was no cellphone signal.