The University of Malta is a proud partner in the ERA-Shuttle project, with Dr Elena Sultana managing this collaboration on behalf of the university. As part of the project’s outreach strategy, UM participated in the 2024 EARMA Conference, where key insights from the Research Security Summit in Odense were shared.
These contributions highlight the state of research management and security across Europe, and also showcase Global Collaborations. In addition, you can also find contributions about how institutions like Queen’s University Belfast and Concordia University in Canada tackle challenges, offer tools, and also practices for effective implementation and development.
To build on this, a workshop series will take place in the coming months. You can find more info here below, and book your place today!
Global Collaboration Highlighted as ERA-Shuttle Project Participates in Research Security Summit.
Presentations delivered during the meeting provided significant insights into the challenges of research security, along with the tools and support for both organisations and managers to develop such responses. The agenda allowed for the contributions and questions from the audience to add dimension to these insights.
The summit was hosted by EARMA and sponsored by UK Science and Innovation Network, and focused on the following topics:
Session 1 – Why do research managers need to know about research security?
Session 2 – How are research organisations responding to the challenges of research security?
Session 3 – Developing tools and resources to support implementation
Session 4 - Research Security: The Next Steps
In addition, a number of resources were shared with the participants of the summit, including the following guidelines and training packages from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Projects, publications and resources (open access) by ARMA, and the Tri-agency guidelines.
ERA SHUTTLE (Accelerating ERA by Sharing Unique Talents for healthy Life and Environment) is a collaborative initiative designed to enhance research and innovation (R&I) capacity within the European Research Area (ERA), with a particular emphasis on benefiting Widening countries, including Poland, Croatia, and Malta.
By offering training and secondment opportunities that celebrate diversity, ERA SHUTTLE aims to develop core capacities, exchange expertise, and support industry-research needs through the exchange of ideas.
Book your place now! This event invites project leaders. managers, and officers in Europe to build links, knowledge, and expertise about research security and management. The aim is to work better together and focus on guidelines, measures, and compliances across countries.
21 October 2024 Research Security Risks: Insider Threats
15 November 2024 Resources for Managing Research Security Risks
12 December 2024 Products to Support Research Security Management
Each session will provide practical support to manage research including discussion of case studies, signposting to publicly available tools and resources, and commercially available products.
Following the ARMA UK ‘Complex Collaborations’ report, by Jennifer Johnson, Sapna Marwaha, Linsey Dickson and Joe Timlin, the authors will deliver the sessions and focus on the unprecedented challenges about the cross-cutting nature of national guidelines for security in research and the legislation that underpins it.
Here is a summary and a full agenda for more info:
Research Security Risks: Insider Threats
21 October 2024, 10:30 to 12:00 On Microsoft Teams
Research security is generally understood as the measures taken to identify and protect the integrity of the system of international research collaboration from the actions of hostile actors who might seek to exploit or undermine it. The threats posed by hostile actors are varied, encompassing traditional academic engagement such as collaborative research, staff and student mobility, cyber security and personnel. This webinar will focus on Insider Threat or the ways in which hostile actors might seek to gain access to research through insiders who have knowledge of, or access to, an organisation’s infrastructure and information and could knowingly or inadvertently gain access to sensitive research or knowledge for illegitimate purposes.
Resources for Managing Research Security Risks
15 November 2024, 10:30 to 12:00 On Microsoft Teams
This event will consolidate existing guidance to support research security, highlighting the availability of national guidelines developed in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and European Member States such as Denmark. Speakers will also hear from the G7 Academy, a repository developed by G7 members to support research security, and from research managers who have developed their own tools and resources using open source research to identify and mitigate research security risks.
Products to Support Research Security Management
12 December 2024, 10:30 to 12:00 On Microsoft Teams
During this session, attendees will hear from users of commercially available software to support research security management. Users will describe solutions that support different aspects of research security management including workflow management, third party due diligence and research data analytics, providing an operational perspective on their use with an opportunity for Q&A.
Funding for this project is provided by the UK Science and Innovation Network’s Research Security Programme and EARMA. If you have any questions please send an email.
To help build up know-how and identify scams, we'd like to share some key practices to protect your inbox from new threats.
Scammers impersonate figures of authority, and question your security. This includes emails from fake profiles for tech-support, finance management, and also accounts mimicking project leaders, prestigious universities, and national authorities.
Their goal is to exploit trust and gaps in security. To gauge authenticity, always confirm details with accredited, and independent sources. If you receive a conference invite, or an opportunity to publish, check the credibility of the speakers and their institutions. If in doubt, hold a video call to verify the sender and the invitation’s legitimacy.
Build your own trust, and engage directly with your community of academics. Make sure to contact other academics in the field who show interest in the same opportunity, and if possible, check in with the speakers on the programme of a conference. This not only helps build your esteem around a new community of academics, but also ensures that it’s a safe place to share sensitive information.
In short, always look for Trust, Consistence, and Training
Trust: Directly contact the sender or ask a trusted colleague for verification.
Consistence: Look up reviews, check affiliations with major publishers, universities, etc...
Training: Join workshops and keep yourself updated with your colleagues and resources.
If you’ve encountered any scams that bypass your filters for online spam, please reach out to support staff at UM.
To learn more, you can also join IT services and follow this pan-European campaign about cybersecurity or make use of more specific tools at the University of Malta, such as guidelines by IT services about how to fortify your inbox, and the UM Library's database to verify the authenticity of Journals.
The University of Malta is also a proud partner in the ERA Shuttle project, with Dr Elena Sultana managing this collaboration on behalf of UM. As part of this project’s outreach strategy, UM participated in the 2024 EARMA Conference, where key insights from the Research Security Summit were shared. To build on this, a series of workshops will take place in the next few weeks, this includes online sessions about insider threats (21 October 2024), resources to manage risks on (15 November 2024), and software you can use for support on 12 December 2024 - Book your Place Today!