Learners, as consumers of educational products, ask: What is the value of a degree in the future world of work? What do I do when a degree is not enough to meet my life and work goals?

Employers, as consumers of a skilled, productive workforce, ask: What is the value of a graduate to my business and what does it take to make them productive?

Competency-based education (CBE) gives universities the opportunity to pivot to a learner and consumer-centric model that recognises mastery of outcomes rather than just volume of learning or time. It also reveals the benefits of unbundling services and products to appeal to a larger market and gives learners more agency. Finally, employers can proactively contribute to and benefit from this process, enhancing graduates’ ability to hit the ground running.

What is CBE?

Australia’s vocational education and training (VET) system is competency-based, with an explicit emphasis on training and mapping competencies against industry skills needs. Simply put, learners must demonstrate attained skills that meet industry-defined standards.

While CBE has remained on the periphery for universities, a deeper weaving of CBE into existing and parallel programs offers a robust growth engine. It provides an opportunity to meld the intellectual rigour, deeper learning and knowledge synthesis of university programs with the more specialised, skills-based capabilities required for workplace success.

Co-creation of competencies and outcomes is where the model starts; it is an intentional and transparent approach to mapping development needs, assessment design and content strategies.

CBE precisely aligns with programmatic outcomes. Most importantly, it gives choice and control to learners to better align life, educational and career and work goals.

Why aren’t we there yet?

Change is difficult, business disruption is fraught, and the future is uncertain. That’s why we need to make intelligent, evidence-based bets on where we invest resources, create products, and innovate for growth. 

As dual sector universities know, this requires core systems that integrate effectively and efficiently into the IT and business ecosystem. It also demands cleaner, consolidated data flows that fuel a seamless learner-first experience. And finally, it calls for trusted skills and learning warrants that are supported by employees, industry and most importantly, the learner who consumes these programs and expects results. It if doesn’t do what it says on the tin, universities will never gain the necessary buy-in from learners and employers.

A shift to CBE?

By any measure, universities are a critical economic contributor. They play an essential role in providing quality education that empowers Australians to improve their circumstances and positively contribute to society.

A shift to CBE may be coming sooner than you might think. Last month I hosted a face-to-face gathering of thirty leaders from universities, the vocational sector, as well as government and businesses. Alongside global thought leader Doctor Paul LeBlanc, I led a panel session and exploration of questions around personalised learning – the clear benefits of competency-based education were front and centre.

Over the next two days, many of these leaders returned to this question with me to consider some practical actions and next steps for their organisations.

When properly co-designed with external stakeholders, CBE can contribute to a holistic and trusted framework. One which meaningfully maps a learners’ attained awards, micro-credentials, skills and competencies across their life and work journey in a way that employers can recognise, value and reward.

At this intersection of evolving learning pathways, CBE is ideally placed to contribute to a more productive future—one where learners and employees can find deeper personal purpose and more extraordinary work and life fulfilment.

The takeout

It’s easy to get excited about the merits of CBE. Quite honestly, what’s not to like about a system that guarantees that students achieve learning outcomes?

When CBE succeeds, it guarantees that every student will leave university prepared for the workforce. Working to improve performance and obtain mastery is the end game, and in so many ways, this is how things work in the real-world.

I am not saying that CBE will be easy to implement; however, if universities, governments, and businesses work together to overcome any concerns and challenges, this will help us better prepare students to succeed in the complex future of work.

Tony Maguire is regional director, Australia & New Zealand at D2L.

Student to staff ratio is calculated as the sum of student EFTSL (excluding work experience in industry) divided by sum of staff full-time equivalence (FTE) in teaching and teaching/research functions, including actual casual staff.

Using our own institution as an example (over a five year period – or 17 trimesters) we have matched the Student Feedback on Units (SFUs) aggregates (internal); the QILT annual outcomes (external); and the grade distributions (internal) – and overlaid them on the changing SSR during the same period.

SFUs and SSR

The following graphs are a comparison of the Student to Staff Ratio (SSR) and the Student Feedback on Units (SFU) surveys for the period Trimester 1,2017 to the most recent Trimester 2,2022 (that is 6 years and 17 trimesters).

This graph shows the consistency of the SSR between 32 and 39 up until T2 2020, when COVID impacted student numbers. Since then the SSR has been in steady decline to a level of 14.7 in Trimester 2, 2022. The SFUs remained constant throughout the whole period between a tight range of 4.2 to 4.4 out of a possible 5.

The correlation between these two variables is -0.17. This indicates a negative, weak correlation. There is no impact of lower SSRs.

QILT and SSR

The Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) surveys are an annual request for feedback from all students at universities and independent higher education institutions who chose to join.

Since 2016, our School has been involved in the QILT Student Experience Survey. “The SES is the only comprehensive survey of current higher education students in Australia. It focuses on aspects of the student experience that are measurable, linked with learning and development outcomes, and potentially able to be influenced by higher education institutions. Information collected in the SES helps higher education institutions and the government improve teaching and learning outcomes for students.” – www.qilt.edu.au/surveys/student-experience-survey

The following graphs are a comparison of the Student to Staff Ratio (SSR) and the QILT Student Experience Survey for each year from 2017 to 2021 – which includes the latest results available for QILT.

The line graph for SSR shows the same steady level of SSR in 2017 – 2020, in an annual range between 31.6 and 38.6. There is a steep decline in the SSR in 2021 to 21.4. The QILT SES score is consistently high between 78.3 and 78.5. There was a drop in the 2020 survey to 74.4, due to the negative impact of COVID.

In 2021, the QILT SES rebounded to 78. There is no correlation between SSR and QILT with an r = 0.09. It can be seen that the impact on QILT is due to a range of other factors (mostly COVID) and nothing to do with the SSR.

Grade distribution and SSR

The following graphs are a comparison of the Student to Staff Ratio (SSR) and Grade distribution (progression) for the period Trimester 1, 2017 to the most recent Trimester 2, 2022 (6 years/17 trimesters).

This graph shows the consistency of the SSR between 32 and 39 up until T2 2020, when COVID impacted student numbers. Since then the SSR has been in steady decline to a level of 14.7 in Trimester 2, 2022. The grade progression was a band of between 57% – 63% up to the end of 2018.

The grade progression, then, steadily improved to a high of 77% by Trimester 3, 2021. During the time from mid-2020 the SSR steadily decreased.

For 2022, as the SSR dropped to its lowest level of 14.7, the grade progression dropped back to 70%, reversing the previous trend. The correlation between these two variables is - 0.66. Which indicates a negative, moderate correlation.

What we can clearly see is that the SSR is essentially irrelevant and bears no impact on student feedback and performance.

Amongst a flurry of suggestions on how to improve student satisfaction has been the suggestion to reduce the SSR – a waste of effort!

The focus needs to be on quality teaching and learning that is well done by our private providers – but poorly done by our research focused institutions. If you want to engage students, put the time and effort into that very thing.

Emeritus Professor Greg Whateley is the deputy vice chancellor (Universal Business School Sydney/Melbourne) and vice president (Academic) at Group Colleges Australia.

Dr Andrew West is an adjunct professor at the Universal Business School Sydney/Melbourne.

William Kelton, from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, has been involved in the ETH Zurich research, aimed at preparing for future coronavirus variants using AI.

Dr Kelton’s concept was to take proteins from the coronavirus surface and create multiple artificial mutations, screening them to discover which ones allowed binding to cells.

Sai Reddy and his team at ETH then expanded on the concept by adding antibodies to mimic the selection pressures a virus might undergo in a human.

Information was then used to train machine-learning models to predict how well a new variant might bind to cells and escape antibody binding from tens of billions of possibilities.

Dr Kelton said the model was very accurate at predicting potential pathways by which new variants might evolve.

He said it might also provide a path to fighting future variants.

“If we can get ahead of Covid, we can make drugs and antibodies before these variants emerge and design solutions to combat them,” he said.

“We can also test to see how existing drugs work against panels of potential variants.”

It comes as Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton warned this week Australia was in a Covid-19 “trough”.

“It’s clear we’re in the ‘trough’ part of Covid-19 activity now, with fewer cases and hospitalisations than we’ve seen for months,” he tweeted.

“That’s very welcome, of course. It may also be that the coming wave is lower and slower than the waves we’ve seen in 2022, for different reasons.

“Most previous waves have been driven predominantly by new variants of concern.

“The coming ‘wave’ – if that’s the term – may be driven more by the waning hybrid immunity (recent infection plus vaccination) than by any particular variant. Make no mistake, the variants will come.”

Professor Sutton said there could be a peak closer to the end of the year.

“We never know what’s around the corner, however, and BA2.75.2 is causing concern in immunological circles, for good reason – immune evasion,” he wrote.

“So peaks and troughs will continue and we therefore have to focus on the key protections that can mitigate their impact.

“There’s a legitimate debate about what potential impact protections have and what’s reasonable to take up or prioritise.

“What shouldn’t be in dispute is that 50 Covid deaths in Australia a day is huge as a cause, and that long Covid is emerging as a very significant, ongoing burden of illness for thousands and thousands of people.”

With dropout rates reported at 30 to 50 per cent, the quality of student experiences and outcomes is drawing increasing criticism.

The HDR journey can be a long, lonely and challenging one. Often finding themselves at the bottom of an entrenched cultural hierarchy, HDRs have historically fallen between the classification of staff and students and, accordingly, fallen between the cracks.

In a new study by the UK Association of University Directors of Estates (AUDE) and Campus Intuition, we found that this is also reflected in the physical spaces allocated to HDRs on campus. Amidst the undergraduates and permanent faculty, they have become an invisible cohort, lacking the appropriate ecosystems on campus to provide both motivation and a scaffold to their academic lives.

Having the right kind of spaces can potentially unlock greater potential in PhDs, providing a more supportive environment.

A key issue is that HDR workspace is both little studied and tricky to manage. Their space needs can change extensively over their course of study, as well as by discipline, and are not well understood by facilities teams.

The result is that allocated space is not a top priority and is frequently sub-optimal. This leads to a cycle of low utilisation, diminished community and reduced opportunities for professional networking.

Typically without a syllabus to follow, the research experience can be highly entrepreneurial, emotional and unstructured. In lieu of structured workflows, physical space on campus helps to fill the void, supporting HDRs to achieve routine, discipline and motivation.

For many HDRs, the home environment does not offer a conducive workplace; a 2020 survey of over 15,000 US postgraduate students during the pandemic identified that the biggest barrier to timely completions was an inadequate work from home environment. This was more significant in those with caring duties, disabilities, or low socio-economic status.

From laboratories to desk-based environments, accessing high-quality space to work and engage with peers and supervisors has a material impact upon HDR output. It is critical as a site for the interactions – both formal and informal – that foster feelings of belonging and communities of practice.

Social isolation is a major factor in attrition rates and, for what was already an isolating experience, the pandemic has brought new poignancy to the need for social support during doctoral study.

Bearing in mind that our research questions were about space, it was telling how many respondents referenced relationships: connections with fellow researchers, collaborators, mentors and others with whom to share ideas, source advice and unlock opportunities cultivate professional networks – material to career progression – as well as friendships.

When HDRs do not have access to physical places on campus that facilitate encounters, their ability to build these, and consequently belonging, is fundamentally impeded.

The typology and quality of space dedicated to HDRs varies across institutions. We spoke to students assigned desks in corridors, silent areas in the library or with no allocated space at all. For the students concerned, the physical space they are given on campus is a reflection of their perceived importance and value to the university.

This is felt particularly acutely by those without a desk. Poor space provision can reduce motivation, engagement and sense of purpose in terms of career, especially amongst part-time students. Space, even when unoccupied, gives researchers a sense of value and identity at a critical stage in their academic career.

All too often, though, there has been a lack of strategic planning in this arena. Data on workplace provision and utilisation is often lacking; with decisions based upon what infrastructure is available rather than what would help HDRs to succeed. Furthermore, in the drive to recruit faculty talent, HDRs are the first to be forced from their offices to make room for incoming academics.

Increasingly, institutions are adopting shared, open-plan spatial models for HDR workspace. These environments can conflict with the ability to work and think deeply. However, they can also work well, particularly in fostering interaction, but only when accompanied by a clear understanding of how HDRs collaborate and by easily accessible support infrastructure – kitchens, meeting rooms, social spaces, storage and seamless technology. Small amenities make significant differences.

A better spatial experience will unlock greater potential for HDRs and, in turn, unlock greater research productivity for their universities. To achieve this, institutions need to walk in the shoes of their students.

Spatial planning needs to be redefined based upon the nature of HDR work. It needs to recognise the different spatial use patterns across the different stages of the HDR career; the multiple roles they perform – scholar, teacher, researcher, employee and so forth; and the additional challenges juggled by part-time students. In essence, the key is to design for effectiveness and not just space efficiency.

The full report can be downloaded here.

Samantha Hall is principal director at Campus Intuition.

Isabelle Taylor is head of research at Turnberry Consulting.

The front page of Honi Soit bore the headline “Queen dead, Charles next”, with a photoshopped image of the Queen lying in a morgue with her son King Charles surveying the body.

Inside, the editors describe the late monarch’s death as “gruesome, lonely and painful” and a faux interview in her final moments in which that talks about her “gene pool” and euthanising her corgis.

The University of Sydney Conservative Club president Cooper Gannon told The Australian that the front page was in “extreme distaste”.

“I think it’s nothing short of absolutely disgraceful,” he said.

“It’s a poor reflection of a paper that is meant to represent students.”

Some took to social media to share their distaste over the coverage.

“Disgusting piece of trash. Shame on you,” one commenter wrote.

Others shared their praise for the magazine making a statement.

“So brave so stunning,” one Twitter user said.

The student magazine is not the first public voice to receive backlash for commenting on the Queen’s death with a lens of criticism.

NRLW player Caitlin Moran has been banned by the NRL following an investigation by the integrity unit after an offensive social media post referenced the Queen’s death.

Australian comedy royalty The Chaser also stirred up controversy for posts poking fun at the Queen’s death that were called out for being “a bit soon”.

Honi Soit’s editors responded pre-emptively to criticism on their website, saying they know “many people won’t like the cover of this week’s paper or the tone with which we have reflected on the Queen’s death”.

“We ask these people instead to reflect on the irreparable damage the Queen’s legacy, as a beacon of violence and colonialism, will leave. In Australia, in Palestine, in Ireland, in South Asia, in every single one of the colonies

“Why is it that we hold this woman, whose wealth and whiteness existed on an almost metaphysical scale, in such high regard and not that of those who suffered under her reign?”

The editors also advised that they hadn’t yet received any backlash on campus, and their audience had “responded positively so far”.

The University of Sydney has reaffirmed that all editorial decisions are made by the editorial team independent of the university.

“This cover appears to be a deliberate attempt to shock and create attention, as student news­papers have always done, and we understand many will consider it in terrible taste,” a spokesman said.

“We also recognise one of our fundamental roles as a university is to champion free speech and be a place where ideas can be freely discussed, including those some may view as controversial or offensive.”

Graciela Metternicht has joined WSU as its new Dean of the School of Science.

Born and raised in Argentina, Metternicht will head west from UNSW Sydney where she is currently professor of Environmental Geography in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.
Her research interests include environmental geography, with a focus on geospatial technologies and their application in environmental management and policy.

Metternicht said it is an exciting time to be joining WSU, particularly since it was named world’s best for sustainable development in the latest THE University Impact Rankings.

“WSU is uniquely positioned to create enduring impact at regional, national and international levels through its world-leading education, research and engagement with industry and community,” Metternicht said.

INDIGENOUS FOCUS AT TORRENS

Torrens has created two Indigenous-focus roles in its Health Sciences team.

Lesli Kirwan has been appointed Senior Learning Facilitator – First Nations Curriculum, and Ren Perkins as Learning Facilitator – First Nations Curriculum.

“These identified academic roles are the first of their kind at our university and an exciting step towards our Reconciliation Action Plan,” said Rochelle Morris, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Liaison Officer.

Kirwan, a proud Ngarabal Yugambal woman from the far north of NSW, said “engaging two Aboriginal academic staff in the health vertical to share knowledge and culture with staff and students is an exceptional move in the right direction”.

Perkins is a Quandamooka man with connections to the Wakka Wakka Nation, and has worked in Indigenous education for over two decades.

“I am most looking forward to working with the team at Torrens University to help promote the university as a place which embraces and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures,” Perkins said.

SWINBURNE DOUBLES DOWN

After acting in their roles for several months Swinburne has now appointed Jim Ogloff AM (left) as Dean of the School of Health Sciences, and James Verdon as Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education.

Ogloff has more than 35 years’ experience in clinical and academic positions and is Distinguished Professor of Forensic Behavioural Science and Director of the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science at Swinburne.

“I am honoured to have been appointed as Dean to help lead the health expansion strategy and to realise the goals in the Horizon 2025 strategy,” Ogloff said.

Verdon has been at Swinburne since 1997, during which time he has held the positions of program coordinator of VET offerings in Screen and Media, course director of the Bachelor of Film and Television, and most recently, chair of Swinburne’s Department of Film, Games and Animation.

“I am energised and excited by the opportunity as Dean to lead a School firmly committed to fostering and supporting sustainable, just and creative futures through genuine innovation in our teaching, research and engagement,” Verdon said.

NEW DEPUTY VC AT MACQUARIE

Professor Rorden Wilkinson is Macquarie University’s new Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic).

The international trade, global governance and international development expert joins Macquarie from UNSW, where he is Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education & Student Experience and Professor of International Political Economy.

Wilkinson is a passionate advocate for increased access to higher education and a champion of the role universities play in transforming lives.

Macquarie’s VC and President Bruce Dowton added that Wilkinson’s “skill set and experience closely aligns with Macquarie’s goals of truly putting students first”.

Britain’s longest reigning monarch died on Thursday evening in Scotland at the age of 96.

Her legacy was complicated, as the emotional and varied responses to her death have highlighted.

Some critics have cited the Stolen Generation and erasure of Indigenous cultural identifiers as part of the Queen’s legacy, labelling her a “war criminal”.

Professor of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University Sandy O’Sullivan argued discussion of the Queen’s impact on Indigenous lives and cultures shouldn’t be silenced because of her death.

“For those saying we should be magnanimous about the passing of the Queen, a reminder that the Queen inserted herself into the lives of Indigenous people here multiple times,” the professor said.

“She wasn’t a bystander to the effects of colonisation and colonialism, she was an architect of it.”

The professor said it was “outrageous” to demand respect from people whose lives were negatively impacted by the monarch’s action, or even inaction, during her long rule.

“It’s worth considering what she could have done – and didn’t – to effect change,” they said.

Professor O’Sullivan said it was important to hold up a mirror to the crown and the Queen amid the accolades and praise for her life’s work.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi took to social media to share her condolences with those who loved the monarch, but said she could not ignore the negative impact of her rule.

“I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples,” she said on Twitter.

“We are reminded of the urgency of Treaty with First Nations, justice and reparations for British colonies and becoming a republic.”

An Indigenous activist from Western NSW took to social media to criticise the outpouring of grief for the monarch, who she said was responsible for “murder, theft and the absolute destruction of a beautiful way of life for so many Indigenous people out there.”

“I won’t disrespect my ancestors by commemorating the death of a war criminal,” she said in a video on social media.

“It is unreal the amount of destruction that one family has waged across the country we live in and also the entire world.”

Renowned artist Vincent Namatjira, who had painted the Queen many times, told SBS News he was shocked to learn of her death.

“Personally, I’d like to see Indigenous leaders and heroes past and present have the same level of recognition and respect that the royal family does,” he said.

Many Indigenous people took to social media to question the decision to fly the Aboriginal flag at half-mast on the Sydney Harbour Bridge to honour the death of someone who symbolised oppression to many.

CEO of GetUp! Bundjalung woman Larissa Baldwin said she was disappointed the parliament would not be sitting for 15 days when there were pressing issues to be handled.

“As an Aboriginal woman, she’s not my Queen, but it just feels so wrong for a modern Democracy,” she wrote on Twitter.

Produced anually by the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS), the Sustainable Campus Index uses a using a rating system that addresses environmental, social and economic considerations to recognise top-performing universities across 17 sustainability impact areas.

USyd received a silver rating and and tied in first place with Cornell University in the Coordination and Planning section, which focuses on how institutions organise, implement and publicise sustainability initiatives.

It was one of only three Australian Universities to feature in the 2022 edition of the index, alongside the University of Tasmania and the University of Queensland, and the only one to achieve a first-place position.

UTAS tied for fifth place in the Air and Climate section, while UQ reached eighth position in the Wellbeing and Work category.

“We are passionate about cultivating a local and international culture of sustainability. It’s wonderful to have our efforts noticed and celebrated,” USyd Provost and deputy vice-chancellor Professor Annamarie Jagose said.

"We’re committed to embedding sustainability in every aspect of University life and have made a strong start in achieving our targets, from switching to 100 per cent renewable electricity to reducing the amount of waste we send to landfill.”

USyd's Sustainability Strategy targets include net zero emissions by 2030, zero waste to landfill by 2030 and five star green ratings for all new buildings.

The full 2022 Sustainable Campus Index can be accessed here.

Spare a thought for regional communities. While our capital cities struggle through the worst skills shortage in recent memory, regional Australia is doing it even tougher.

Recent National Skills Commission data reveals regional employers can only fill 57 per cent of their vacancies, compared to 63 per cent in the cities.

And of the 127 occupations that are currently in shortage in Queensland, for example, 18 are unique to the regions. According to the regional employers I’ve spoken to, it’s only getting worse.

As our nation’s thought leaders converge on Canberra this week for the inaugural Jobs & Skills Summit, I urge them to spare a thought for their friends outside of the big smoke.

The 2019 Napthine Review reminded us that Australians who grow up in regional, rural and remote communities are around 40 per cent less likely to attend university than their city counterparts. Similar statistics exist for the VET sector.

You can draw a direct line between this disturbing trend and the current regional skills crisis; shortages of teachers, nurses, engineers and physiotherapists mean basic services aren’t being delivered, even in regions that are rapidly growing as a result of the inflation-driven exodus from the cities.

Need proof? Gladstone – a regional Queensland city of around 35,000 people – has a 14-bed, state-of-the-art maternity ward, but I understand there is not a single working obstetrician to staff it. Parents in labour must make the stressful and potentially treacherous 90-minute drive to Rockhampton to birth their children.

Fixing this shocking imbalance requires innovative policy and funding measures to make regional education and training more attractive to regional people – and that should be a focal point for the jobs and skills summit.

It may be tempting for our metropolitan colleagues to dismiss this plight as a “country problem”.

Not true; Australia derives around 80 per cent of its national export revenue from regional, rural and remote communities – so a failure to solve this challenge for regional industry puts the entire country in economic peril.

And this challenge can’t be addressed by metropolitan solutions that simply “hollow out” the regions – regional communities need the support to provide their own long-term solutions.

I’m happy to see the Albanese Government tackling the jobs and skills issue so early in their first term of government. And I’m delighted that Universities Australia has a seat at the Summit table, to represent the concerns of their regional member universities.

But it’s tangible solutions – and not just lip service – that are desperately needed if we are to defeat the skills shortage that has befallen regional Australia.

It’s our regional tertiary education and training providers that are on the front lines of this battle. We now desperately need the ammunition to win the war.

Professor Nick Klomp is vice chancellor at CQUniversity and chair of the Regional Universities Network.

For example, according to SLACIP, CI operators must report serious breaches of cybersecurity to the federal government within 12 hours of an attack. ² This has made it even more important for higher education organisations to understand how to strengthen cybersecurity measures to protect student and faculty privacy against unauthorised access.

Cyber security within the education sector is often neglected due to reduced budgets and skill shortages in the market. Because of this, education departments have become the path of least resistance for cybercriminals looking to exploit vulnerabilities.

The Australian higher education sector is also a prime target for cyberattackers because of the valuable intellectual property, sensitive contact information, and financial data stored in systems owned and managed by tertiary institutions.

In the past two years, this vulnerability has increased, especially when lockdowns around the country saw students shift to online learning. In response, universities and other educational institutions were quick to accelerate digital transformation; however, this rapid adoption has created several cybersecurity gaps that has increased the risk of cyberattacks.

In 2021, the University of South Australia³ as well as Melbourne’s RMIT University and Swinburne University of Technology were all targeted by cyberattacks in May, February, and April respectively. It’s clear that the higher education sector is a prime target for cyberattacks. As such, it’s become increasingly important that CI operators proactively manage cyberthreats by establishing a cybersecurity risk management framework.

However, before developing a framework, higher education organisations should consider three key areas:

1. Gain total asset visibility

As cybercriminals become increasingly sophisticated, organisations must achieve total asset visibility for cybersecurity programs to reach maximum effectiveness.

Staying ahead of threat actors warrants security and IT teams to have complete visibility of what’s within their environment. With complete visibility, IT teams can assess which assets are of greatest value and would compromise business operations if affected in a cyber event.

To achieve total asset visibility, organisations can leverage the Purdue Model, a hierarchical structure for CI operators to easily break down and define CI assets across the network.

2. Maintain control of critical assets

Higher education organisations must be able to maintain control over critical assets to resist against present and future cyberthreats. As tertiary institutions handle large volumes of sensitive information, it’s more important than ever to understand what they need to manage and defend against new and emerging threats.

However, this can be challenging, especially when educational organisations don’t have the specific knowledge needed to defend and protect their environment. To close these knowledge gaps, universities will need to leverage shared knowledge bases such as the MITRE ATT&CK framework for industrial control systems (ICS) to better understand real-world adversary groups and their known behaviours, techniques, tactics, and the software they employ to aid in their attacks.

3. Focus on non-intrusive detection

To help protect CI assets against threats, higher education organisations also need to understand the different types of threats and ways of approaching them. Non-intrusive approaches typically involve a simple scan to identify any vulnerabilities that are open to exploitation during an attack. Once the IT teams are aware of vulnerabilities, they can take the appropriate course of action.

In most cases, this involves developing a remediation plan that decides which issues are the most worthwhile to fix before applying a multi-layered virtual patching solution to avoid unnecessary downtime and give IT teams the time to assess the vulnerability and to fix flaws in their security.

Beyond these three key areas, it’s also essential for educational institutions to consider their wider network and the risks that this poses to their environment.

Adopting the MITRE System of Trust (SoT) framework⁴ is one way that organisations can better protect their environments from vulnerabilities inherent in their network. The MITRE SoT framework helps to build a basis of trust within the network by assessing the three main trust aspects of supply chain security: suppliers, supplies, and services.

It then identifies and addresses 14 top level decisional risk areas that are associated with trust that the institution must evaluate. Adopting this framework can help educational institutions further strengthen their cyber resilience.

Over the past two years, the fragility of CI hasn’t gone unnoticed, especially with the recent spate of cyberattacks on notable Australian universities. Cybersecurity breaches and attacks are costly and result in widespread disruption.

As such, it’s crucial for higher education organisations to take a considered approach to cybersecurity. Once an organisation can identify its most valuable CI assets, it can begin to understand, control and mitigate all forms of cyber risk to achieve the best possible protection.

References
¹https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-publications/submissions-and-discussion-papers/slacip-bill-2022
²https://www.cisc.gov.au/resources-contact-information-subsite/Documents/mcir-guidance.pdf
³https://www.unisa.edu.au/connect/enterprise-magazine/summer2021_22/story2/#:~:text=UniSA%20became%20one%20of%20those,UniSA%20experienced%2C%20is%20often%20misplaced.
⁴https://sot.mitre.org/framework/system_of_trust.html

Michael Murphy is head of operational technology and critical infrastructure – Australia at Fortinet