Speakers

Steve Watt is a European Engineer, Chartered Engineer, Chartered IT Professional, Fellow of the British Computer Society, and recently CISSP certified, with over 30 years’ experience working within the IT industry.  As CIO he is responsible for the strategic development of IT services at the University, which is currently ranked Number 1 University in 2024 by both the Times and Guardian University Guides. For the last five years, key focuses have been cyber security and digital transformation which has positioned the University well in its response to the pandemic and in responding to this existential threat. Steve was listed in Computing’s Top 100 most influential IT leaders in 2023 and he has won numerous awards, including IT Leader of the Year, the GOLD award under the Certified Energy Efficient Datacentre Award (CEEDA) Scheme three times and Microsoft Apprentice Employer of the Year. In 2016 Steve formed a small IT Security Team, which, from a standing start, provides a comprehensive IT Security system, achieving Cyber Essential certification in March 2018 and Cyber Essentials Plus in April 2019.  This team was named joint winner (along with Police Scotland) of the award ‘Outstanding Cyber Team’ at the Scottish Cyber Awards in October 2018, and in 2022, one of his young IT Security Analysts were named ‘Cyber Rising Star 2023’.