11 October 2022 - DCMS request for assistance

As you may know, UCISA has worked with the DCMS and their partners Ipsos for the past two years in order to drive up responses to their annual the Cyber Security Breaches Survey, an Official Statistic telephone survey on cyber security within higher education institutions.   As a result of your support the survey reached the critical threshold needed to be able to publish the results for our sector. Last year’s results are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/cyber-security-breaches-survey-2022.

The results guide DCMS policy and NCSC guidance for the higher education sector to ensure our institutions remain amongst the most cyber secure universities across the world. In previous years results have been used to inform progress on the National Cyber Strategy, develop government policy and target government guidance, ensuring that the UK cyber space is a secure place for all organisations.

Last year 37 Institutions took part, and UCISA would like to thank them for their support. We are sure you will join us in hoping that we can increase this number to ensure the results provide as full a picture as possible.  The survey responses you provide are confidential, and results will be aggregated, so nobody can identify your institution or yourself individually within the findings that are sent to DCMS and published. You can read more on Ipsos’ and DCMS’ privacy notices.

To address any confusion, this survey is different form the Jisc cyber postures survey. You may recall that last year John Chapman from Jisc lead a webinar setting out the differences between the two and why you should support both if you can.

How you can support this initiative:

If you took part last year and gave permission for Ipsos to keep your contact details, they will contact you via the phone number and/or email address you provided them with last time.

New participants should send the email address (and ideally, telephone number) of your representative to csbs@ipsos-mori.com

In either case, Ipsos will then contact you to arrange a timed call to complete the Interview survey.

• It takes just over 20 minutes to do the telephone interview with Ipsos..
• They want to speak to someone senior responsible for cyber security – this could be a Chief Information Security Officer, or another senior cyber security professional within your institution.
• You can arrange to do it at any date and time from October to mid- December, so it is fine to book in an interview in a couple of months’ time if you do not have availability until then.
• Ipsos will also be providing a link for those who would prefer to take part online.