The cyberthreats facing electric-power and gas companies include the typical threats that plague other industries: data theft, billing fraud, and ransomware. However, several characteristics of the energy sector heighten the risk and impact of cyberthreats against utilities. In this episode, we are joined with Sherifah Lahan, a Government Policy Adviser with a background in national security policy to discuss the regulatory perspective of this space. 

About Speaker: 

Sherifah Lahan is a Government Policy Adviser with a background in national security policy. She is currently a cyber security policy Adviser with a focus on ensuring the cyber resilience of the UK energy supply. She focuses on ensuring that risks to critical infrastructure are scoped and appropriate mitigations are established by the supply sector and Government. 

You connect with Sherifah via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayowa-sherifah-lahan-2613571b8 

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About Seidea: 

Seidea is a career development platform with a social mission to diversify the cybersecurity industry. Our goal is to break down barriers for Black and Minority Ethnic women and help them start their cybersecurity careers through industry events and coaching. We also work with employers to provide work experience programs. 

Company Website: https://www.seidea.org/ 

Follow Seidea on socials: 

https://twitter.com/Seideasi 

https://www.instagram.com/seideasi/

A resilient enterprise is able to recover its key business services from a significant unplanned disruption, protecting its customers, shareholders and ultimately the integrity of the financial system. Avoiding disruption to a particular system that supports a business service contributes to operational resilience. 

Speaker Profile: 

Pranathi is an experienced technology risk and cyber consultant with demonstrated experience serving global financial services organizations. She works to support her clients navigate technology and operational risks, while helping clients create long-term value and achieve resilience. She is also heavily involved in the corporate sustainability and Diversity and Inclusion agendas. 

Within the industry, Pranathi has been recognized as a TechWomen100 Winner (2019) by WeAreTechWomen and internally, as the EY Race & Ethnicity Network Rising Star (2020). Pranathi earned a BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Science from King’s College London. She is a Certified ISO 27001 Lead Implementor and holds the Certificate of Business Accounting from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA).

Globally, women are 27 times more likely to be harassed online. The online world is an extension or, in some ways, a mirror of offline realities and therefore violations of human rights and threats to our democracy also happen online. Over a third (34%) of Black, Asian or minority ethnic people (BAME) witnessed or experienced racial abuse in the seven months following the Brexit vote in June 2016, a TUC poll has found (1). Online abuse not only violates an individual’s right to live free from violence and to participate online but also undermines democratic exercises and good governance and, as such, creates a democratic deficit. In this episode we explore where the responsibility lies with online harms and where the future of research lies within this topic. 

Speaker Profile: 

Seyi Akiwowo (Shay-ee Aki-wo-wo)is the Founder and Executive Director of Glitch, a young not-for-profit organisation determined to end online abuse through education, campaigns and advocacy. Using her lived experienced and expertise Seyi travels the globe developing practical solutions with Governments, NGOs and companies to protect our online public spaces from hate and abuse. Seyi was named UK's Digital Leader of the Year and in 2018, she was name Stylist Magazine’s Woman of the Week. Her many achievements have been captured in books such as Slay in Your Lane and Misogynation. Seyi is Amnesty International’s Human Rights Defender and is part of the #ToxicTwitter campaign to end online abuse against women. 

Seyi was elected as the youngest black female Councillor in East London at age 23 and has had nine successful years working in politics and the charity and policy sectors both in the UK and Europe. She is also an expert facilitator in skills, political leadership and inclusion and delivers workshops around the world including London, Montenegro Kuwait and UAE. Seyi is also an inspirational speaker and writer and has written several critical pieces including for the Guardian and gives talks on widening the participation and representation of diverse groups in public life. She is a graduate from the London School of Economics, a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts and recently became a Fellow of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship.

Technology can be very helpful to survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, and stalking, but is also often misused by abusers to harass, threaten, coerce, monitor, exploit, and violate their victims. The resources below explore the extent and nature of technology-facilitated abuse. In this podcast we discuss with Julia Slupska to discuss how smart home devices can be a tool for domestic violence and ways we can improve the security around it.

Speaker Profile:

Julia Slupska is a doctoral student at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity and the Oxford Internet Institute. Her research focuses on how cybersecurity concepts and practices can address the technologically-mediated abuse. She is also exploring how feminist theories and methodology—such as participatory action research and the ethics of care—can improve cybersecurity. Previously, she completed the MSc in Social Science of the Internet on the role of metaphors in international cybersecurity policy.  Before joining the OII, Julia worked on an LSE Law project on comparative regional integration and coordinated a course on Economics in Foreign Policy for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  She also works as a freelance photographer.

Useful Links:

DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity: https://hackblossom.org/cybersecurity/ (An easily accessible guide with free tools for improving digital security)

Gender and IoT Lab: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/steapp/research/digital-technologies-policy-laboratory/gender-and-iot (Research team looking at smart home devices and domestic abuse)

IPV Tech Research Lab: https://www.ipvtechresearch.org/ (Research team looking at computer security and intimate partner abuse)

Intimate partner abuse and domestic violence support services:

Reconfigure: https://medium.com/@reconfigure2020/reconfigure-introducing-feminist-digital-privacy-workshops-31710b704c47

Data protection is unlikely to be foremost in people’s minds when considering the impact of Brexit, whether it be soft or hard, deal or no deal. The UK Government has, however, recently issued papers about various topics in a ‘no deal’ situation and one of these entitled: Data protection if there’s no Brexit deal. In this podcast we speak with Harry Boje, a Data Privacy expert.

Speaker Profile:

Harry Boje is a Certified Data Protection Officer and GDPR certified data protection specialist, with an exemplary career spanning across the public and private sector for NHS hospitals, leasing companies, digital media specialists, global pharmaceuticals, charities, universities and multi-billion global manufacturing businesses. He has experience in global organisation in world as Group Data Protection Officer & present a Chief Privacy officer for large Non For-Profit organisation. 

Prior to these role Harry has work on GDPR project across different sector for the past 3 years ranging from GDPR Business Analyst, GDPR SME and GDPR Consultant His skills are in business analysis, IT inclusive of Prince2, ITIL and Agile. Most recently has led up to 40 DPOs, data Champions in a global data privacy programme, and supported GPDR process improvement and policy creation in multiple businesses to futureproof against the ever-changing landscape of regulations. Offers additional expertise having managed the life cycle of IT projects to support service transition, system implementations and capability. I have a master’s degree in computer and Network Security, ISO 27001 Lead Implementer, ITIL. In last 4years my passion has been around privacy and data protection during this time I have helped organisation implement GDPR