Northern hosted a significant industry conference on Monday, November 11th, to address the critical issue of cyber resilience. The event brought together over 100 rail industry professionals to share insights and strategies for safeguarding critical infrastructure.
Key speakers at the conference included:
- Mark Philips, Chief Executive of the Rail Safety & Standards Board, who emphasized the importance of proactive planning for cyber threats.
- George Bearfield, Director of Health, Safety, and Cyber Security at Rock Rail, who shared valuable industry expertise.
- Tom Wild, Project Engineering Manager at Eversholt Rail UK Ltd, who contributed insights into cyber security best practices.
- Arinder Badyal, Head of Information Security at Transport UK and Chair of Rail Information Exchange, who urged attendees to take immediate action to bolster cyber defenses.
Northern’s Digital Programme Manager, George Copeland, outlined the company’s comprehensive “identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover” strategy, which is applied to its fleet of 360 digital trains and 36,000 digital assets.
The conference, which was delivered with support from Angel Trains, was organised by Marc Silverwood, Northern’s on-board systems manager, who said: “In the world of cyber resilience, ‘sharing really is caring’ when it comes to industry best practice.
“We wanted to bring the rail industry together to learn from each other and ensure the topic of cyber resilience remains at the top of the industry agenda.”
Commenting on the importance of the conference to the industry, Alex Cowan, chief executive of RazorSecure, said: “The event was a great opportunity to engage in detailed discussions with train operators and share key cyber security insights and learnings from our long-standing partnership with Northern.
Other speakers included Sash Rigby from Modux, Martin Shaw from Icomera and Stephen Carroll from Marlborough House Partners.
Northern hopes the conference will become an annual event and plans to reach out to delegates in the coming weeks to discuss the level of demand and topics of interest to industry figures.
Northern is committed to making this conference an annual event, reflecting the growing importance of cyber resilience in the rail industry. The company plans to engage with attendees to gauge interest and identify future topics for discussion.
