Higher Education

Technology is disrupting education—as it is every other industry. But education is also a little different to other industries. Why? Because it uniquely creates our future capabilities. It’s therefore more important than ever that educational institutes and governments plan for the future of work and life.

Lifelong learning is now essential. The future of work will see people having multiple careers over a much longer working life than they do today. As technology disrupts our society, we need to both adapt to working with technology and to shifting to new careers as technology and automation augment traditionally human tasks. Lifelong learning is also implicit in our humanity—we are by nature explorers and creators—and the opportunity to learn should inspire our lives.

Universities face the familiar challenges of cybersecurity-phishing attacks, unsecured personal devices, a lack of security awareness to identify and access management but need to contend with them in the context of a highly distributed technology environment. Open networks may not be properly monitored for unauthorized access, unsafe internet surfing habits and malware infections. Various faculties run their own IT and security departments making enforcement of streamlined security practices difficult. Most institutions lack formal governance structures to address security and compliance. It’s rare to find roles such as a Chief Information Security Officer or established compliance teams. Their absence makes it hard to implement and manage centralized IT security policies and standards. The nature of what institutions do and how they’re organized exposes them to some unique cybersecurity challenges.