Northern brings rail industry together to discuss cyber resilience

Among those addressing the conference was Mark Philips, the chief executive of the Rail Safety & Standards Board, who told delegates “don’t plan for if, plan for when” a cyber threat to their organisation will emerge.

Other speakers included George Bearfield, the director of health, safety and cyber security at Rock Rail and Tom Wild, a project engineering manager at Eversholt Rail UK Ltd.

The head of information security at Transport UK, Arinder Badyal, who is also chair of Rail Information Exchange, appealed to delegates to “do something now, do not wait for a cyber incident”.

Northern’s digital programme manager, George Copeland, outlined the train operator’s ‘identify, protect, detect, respond and recover’ strategy that applies to its 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.

“It also gave an opportunity to showcase how our joint efforts are protecting their fleets and served as a strong reminder of how collaboration and shared expertise are vital for advancing cyber security across the industry.”

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 the second largest train operator in the UK, with nearly 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across the North of England.