果冻传媒

The Trustworthy Software Initiative, based in WMG’s Cyber Security Centre at the 果冻传媒, has produced a set of videos to raise awareness of the risks businesses run when they put off installing patches for existing software.

Disregard for patching represents a significant and growing problem for businesses of all sizes. According to the latest figures, untrustworthy software is responsible for over 90% of data breaches worldwide, with 99.9% of these vulnerabilities being exploited more than a year after details were made public.

The videos were commissioned in a partnership between government agencies and some of the world’s leading technology companies including IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, and Dell Secureworks, for the Technology forum. The key messages are: leaving software unpatched amounts to gambling away business; seemingly time-consuming preparation is essential for secure performance; and stressing the importance of trustworthy software to the successful operation of any modern business.

The WMG Cyber Security Centre, at 果冻传媒 has just gained provisional certification from GCHQ for its Cyber Security Management MSc course and its planned Cyber Security Engineering MSc. The certification is a government benchmark which ensures that students are being educated to the highest standards in cyber security.

These MSc programmes are designed for those wishing to develop a career as a cyber security professional, or to take a leading technical or managerial role in an organisation dependent upon technology in its business processes. Typically the students will be from a computer science or information technology education background or from Undergraduate courses with a significant component of either.

The 2015 Higher Education Technicians Summit took place on 30 June and was attended by over 400 technical staff in UK higher education. The summit is hosted by the M5 Universities (Nottingham, 果冻传媒, Birmingham, Loughborough, Aston and Leicester).

It is the largest event held specifically for UK HE technical staff with sessions focused on technical skills and education including the importance of technical skills in driving forward innovation, and current initiatives to ensure the future provision of technical education to young people. The UK skills shortage, employability and the importance of collaborative industry partnerships are also on the agenda.

Recognising the value of technicians Professor Lord Bhattacharyya said “I’m delighted that there’s a new energy about the role of technicians in HE, from professional registration of the science and engineering councils to a renewed focus on career development and outreach. At WMG I’ve made it a priority to encourage technicians to pursue further education, to support their career development, and for technicians to be ambassadors for engineering.” Commenting on the skills shortage he said “There is an ever increasing demand for new engineering workers. Through the WMG Academy for Young Engineers and our Batchelor of Engineering degree we are helping to train future and current engineers to see that this is an attractive career choice.”

A consortium of industry, academia and government bodies have created cyber security learning guidelines which are to be embedded into BCS accredited UK Computer Science and IT-related degrees.

Cyber security understanding and knowledge is necessary to securely build the digital future and the IT infrastructure upon which the UK economy relies. These new guidelines directly address objective four of the Government’s National Cyber Security Strategy: “to equip the UK to have the cross-cutting knowledge, skills and capability it needs to underpin all our cybersecurity objectives”, the initiative will also address a severe skills shortage by introducing more people to the opportunity of pursuing a career within the cybersecurity profession.

The usage of key medicines in developing countries could be significantly increased through improved packaging appearance, a new study by the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) and the 果冻传媒 finds.

Infant dehydration due to diarrhoea results in 600,000 deaths annually in the developing world due to inappropriate or no treatment. Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) combats this dehydration.

The WMG and CHAI researchers worked with over 600 caregivers in India, Nigeria and Uganda to assess their responses to existing and potential new ORS packaging designs. The study found that simple changes to packaging led to significant increases in the willingness of caregivers to provide ORS to their children. Caregivers indicated that current packaging designs had inappropriately large sachets, lacked clear usage detail and were visually unappealing.

Staff from WMG, alongside colleagues from the School of Engineering were pleased to take part in the Cheltenham Science Festival which took place recently (2-6 June 2015).

WMG’s Margaret Low and Diane Burton will be taking part in the Skirting Science Solihull event on Friday 26 June for 200 teenage girls from schools across the town.

A total of 50 students took part in the inaugural 24 hour hackathon on Saturday (20 June) to mark the start of a new partnership between WMG’s Cyber Security Centre and digital identification company Callsign.

Eight teams ‘hacked’ for 24 hours to produce a varied number of new applications for the Callsign platform. They were challenged with finding new ways to interact with the Internet of Things and given access to Callsign’s mobile app with the aim of improving the security and convenience of identity based transactions and activities.

WMG is to be part of the new revolutionary EPSRC UK-RAS Network, which brings together the UK’s core academic capabilities in robotic innovation under national coordination for the first time.

Robotics and autonomous systems has been recognised by the government as one of the eight great technologies that support UK science strengths and business capabilities. WMG’s research focus is on the aiming to understand and inform the trust in autonomous control and the security of driverless cars.

WMG student Hannah Sugrue is thrilled to be joining the Motorsport presenting panel at this year’s National Women in Engineering Day seminar at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE) in London.

The special Motorsport themed session takes place on the evening of Tuesday 23 June and will explore how exciting, challenging and truly rewarding the Motorsport industry can be.

Hannah was selected after recently being celebrated as the 50,000th competitor of the world’s largest student motorsport event, Formula Student. Formula Student, run by the Institution of Mechanical Engineering, is in its 18^th year and challenges student engineers to design, build and race a single seat racing car in one year. The event takes place in Silverstone 8-12 July.