HUMANE Seminar

Navigating cybersecurity challenges in higher education – Safeguarding universities

Hosted by Ghent University (BE)

February 5-6, 2026

Universities are a prime target for cyber criminals, from individual opportunists looking for financial gains, to highly organised groups seeking to disrupt IT systems. With their international reach in education and research universities are targeted for the amounts of data they hold in their digital infrastructures and for their large storage capabilities.

Security failures can have potentially devastating effects and costly consequences on universities, leading to massive disruptions to teaching and learning and to the entire organisation, to students and staff; it can lead to massive financial, reputational and personal damages.

For all these reasons, universities need sophisticated governance, robust policies and practices to safeguard against hostile interferences, including internal and external audits, technology (systems, services and infrastructure). They must have an organisational culture focusing on institutional resilience, to support risk awareness. The senior leadership needs to be highly committed to security issues, and staff systematically made trained.

The HUMANE seminar will explore all these issues, to share expertise on threat intelligence and good practice approaches to enhance institutional preparedness for cybersecurity. We will discuss national/international regulatory frameworks and requirements, and in Europe the impact of the EU NIS2 directive (Network and Information Security Directive 2). All EU Member States must enact the directive in national legislation, for compliance by all organisations, including universities. The aim is to increase overall cybersecurity posture, improve incident reporting and crisis management among others.

The seminar will also look at cyber security and institutional digital resilience with examples of strategies adopted in universities, focusing among others on risk prevention and mitigation, business continuity, transparency and responsibility).

Save the date! Registrations are now open here.