Research, teaching and administration increasingly only work with digital tools. This increases the risk of cyberattacks, often with far-reaching and costly consequences that can disrupt business processes for weeks and render entire departments unable to work.

By investing in education, prevention and the establishment of security standards, the effects can be mitigated in an emergency. This is why the universities in NRW have made a commitment to the Ministry of Culture and Science (MKW) to sign and implement the agreement on cyber security at universities (VzC). Part of this agreement is, among other things, the introduction of mandatory training for all persons who operate in the university network. These must be completed once a year, and the Executive Departments for Information Security and Data Protection provide a comprehensive range of courses for this purpose. One training course must be completed in the area of information security and one in the area of data protection. A combination of the different courses is possible; the Executive Departments also offers a 120-minute Webex training course that covers both areas.