While the UK government is loathe to admit it, hacking is becoming the dominant factor in political, military and industrial espionage. Recent highly sophisticated attacks on the UK parliament, thought to have originated in China, have pushed this issue to the top of the UK’s IT security agenda.

The big hitter in protecting UK from attack is the National Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre (NISCC). They are charged with protecting the UK’s critical information systems and minimising the risk to the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) from electronic attack. This is a complicated task because while the NISCC is an interdepartmental agency, the assets they must protect are largely owned by private companies, many of whom are owned or controlled from outside the UK (giving NISCC a domestic and international remit). Now while education may not sound like a high-risk sector in this context, it is.

Educational institutions, particularly in the HE sector, hold large amounts of sensitive information and research that has direct commercial and military benefits. These institutions are all linked together by the huge SuperJanet network. As any hacker knows, a network is only as secure as its weakest point. Therefore education may be a greater risk than many of the more highly protected networks used by government and the private sector. The bottom line is that securing networks and data needs to be a higher priority within the whole education community.

Unfortunately, many of the most serious attacks seem to originate in China, a key education market for UK companies and institutions.

• www.niscc.gov.uk