Raytheon UK assists cyber students with bursaries at Lancaster University
Above: Charles Carter building, Lancaster University.
The innovative cyber course is accredited by GCHQ and includes a comprehensive view of cyber with modules in business, law and psychology to ensure students are best prepared for the working environment.
Raytheon UK will provide a £3000 bursary each to six students towards their annual fees – three students reading data science and three reading cyber security. Students who want to be considered for the scholarship will be set technical challenges and will be asked to respond with a one page project outline.
“As in other global regions, the UK needs more cyber specialists. Through this partnership with Lancaster University, we want to build awareness around careers in the field, narrow the talent gap that exists, and ensure the UK is best positioned to tackle cyber threats in the future,” said Raytheon UK’s head of cyber Graham LeFevre, “Industry, academia and government are now putting a lot of effort into improving cyber education and training across the whole academic sector. Through our community relations and other initiatives, Raytheon champions the development of the next generation of cyber workforce so that our country can operate confidently in the cyber domain.”
Professor Jon Whittle, Head of the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, said: “It is great to see a company like Raytheon investing in future talent by providing these bursaries.
“It has been widely recognised that there is a major skills shortage in the cyber security and data science fields. Lancaster University is at the forefront of helping supply graduates equipped with the relevant skills, and experience and investments such as this from leading companies like Raytheon are a significant step towards helping to meet future industry demands.”
Raytheon’s 2015 Global Cybersecurity Megatrends survey, which interviewed over 1000 professionals, revealed that cybercrime keeps information security professionals up at night. Those professionals rated cybercrime as having the greatest impact on their organization’s state of cyber security – ahead of other concerns, including current technology tools, human factors, emerging technologies and compliance costs. Additionally, the talent gap within the cyber sector continues to be a concern to businesses, with 66% of European and UK respondents saying their organisation needs more security professionals.
Raytheon UK is committed to cyber sector and earlier this year opened its Cyber Innovation Centre in Gloucester as part of a global network of cyber centres. The company is looking to hire over 100 of the UK’s most talented cyber experts to protect against evolving cyber threats for both government and commercial customers.