FEATURE: EDUCATION CYBERSECURITY
PEOPLE NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHY SECURITY MATTERS AND HOW IT PROTECTS WHAT THEY VALUE. turning point. While working for another organisation – he declines to name it – a major breach exposed just how unprepared they were.“ It was a wake-up call,” he said.“ It forced me to think differently about what resilience really means.”
The breach prompted a complete overhaul in how he approached leadership: greater focus on incident response, clearer communication channels and a more profound commitment to embedding cybersecurity culture into every layer of the organisation.“ Cybersecurity isn’ t just about firewalls and policies,” he said.“ It’ s about people. It’ s about awareness. It’ s about creating a collective sense of responsibility.”
Building shared defences can’ t we tap into our third and fourth-year computer science students? We train them, partner with industry and build a talent pipeline for all 26 public universities in South Africa.”
He’ s already initiated conversations with fellow CISOs and academics to explore creating a shared cybersecurity training and internship platform.“ The talent is already here. We need to organise it and focus it.”
A lesson from crisis
Mogotsi also advocates for a more unified front across the higher education sector.“ We’ re all fighting the same enemy,” he said.“ Every university holds student data, IP, and research outputs. Yet our threat intelligence is fragmented.”
All 26 public universities in South Africa share the same national research and education network. Mogotsi argues that this commonality should allow for a unified threat intelligence platform – a shared cybersecurity backbone that can spot patterns and alert institutions before it’ s too late.
Mogotsi’ s philosophy regarding cybersecurity was shaped by a previous experience he describes as a
He’ s begun reaching out to peers and even national government bodies to advance this idea.“ If we
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