Peter progresses from York College IT classroom to helping save the NHS from cyber attacks

Peter, now 25, is Deputy Regional Cyber Lead for the NHS in the Midlands, having progressed from an apprenticeship with the publicly funded institution after leaving College in 2017.

Whilst he might not be performing surgery, it can legitimately be claimed that Peter’s work helps save lives with the consequences of a successful cyber-attack being severe to the NHS.

Little wonder, then, that he finds his job very rewarding and Peter, who confesses that he had a “fantastic time” at college, is now hoping to collaborate with his former post-16 education provider.

In his current role, Peter is part of NHS England’s Cyber Operations team with a remit of making the Midlands’ local NHS organisations more cyber security resilient.

His duties include support with onboarding services and any cyber security needs that might crop up.

Peter’s technological skills, first honed at York College, are also regularly called upon while he often visits sites for Cyber Incident Response Exercises (CIRE), where plans and procedures are discussed for certain scenarios to ensure staff members are meticulously prepared for the possibility of an attack.  

It all complements his previous role as an analyst working with the 24/7 National Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC)’ Protective Monitoring Team, which saw him monitor alerts for suspicious and malicious behaviour to help detect malware and then, resolve such situations with organisations as swiftly as possible.

On the high level of job satisfaction, he derives from the nature of his work and being employed by the NHS, Peter said: “You do feel that you’re making a difference and that feels very rewarding. I speak with a lot with our local Trusts where I’m able to support them with our services.

“Money is tight with the NHS, so being able to deliver centrally funded support to the front-line means they’re able to spend the money they’re saving on cyber services on other priorities locally, and working closer together means we can all ‘Defend as one’ for the NHS. We are also protecting the NHS from threats which, if they were not stopped, would almost certainly lead to things like ransomware.

“Cyber incidents can have a real impact on patient care if the right controls are not in place and the resources, skills and tooling aren’t there. Even systems that perform critical surgery are connected to devices that could be impacted. If those were to be impacted by a cyber incident, then that would put a halt to those operations. 

“In the public sector, everybody is passionate about their work, because you feel that you’re doing something for a reason and the greater good. The NHS are also a great employer. 

“I feel well supported by my management team and I’m able to do training and share my ideas and input. There’s a lot of flexibility for me to be me, which is great.”

In 2017, the WannaCry cyber attack was the largest ever to impact the NHS with 34 hospital trusts affected among the 200,000 computers that were compromised in total across 150 countries.

At the time, Peter was still studying his IT course at college, not knowing that six months later he would be joining the team tasked with responding to the attack as an apprentice. 

He has not experienced anything approaching that scale since and points out that the NHS’ focus is always on prevention.

“Cyber attacks are an evolving threat to organisations. New vulnerabilities are being found constantly that people could try to exploit, so it is a constant threat that never goes away,” Peter explained. 

“We have a Threat Hunting Team within the CSOC that proactively learns the latest tactics, techniques and procedures of attackers and they hunt through monitoring tools for that kind of behaviour so we can do our best to stay one step ahead. It’s a cat-and-mouse race, as the attackers are always evolving their techniques so the threat landscape we face is always changing.”

Peter first decided he was interested in pursuing a career in IT when he did work experience as a Year 11 school student at an IT shop in York city centre, where he learned how to build computers and helped diagnose basic problems for customers over the phone.

That then influenced his thinking when he was considering his next educational step after GCSEs. 

“I really enjoyed the work experience, but there wasn’t an option at my school to do IT at A Level and I’m also very much a hands-on person so vocational courses were what I was looking at and wanted to do,” he recalled. “York College came up straight away and looked the right option.

“At the time, there was a software development side to the course and also an IT network system support side, which is what I ended up doing having focussed on that during my work experience.”

The course proved a perfect pathway into cybersecurity for Peter, but he also felt studying IT offered a multitude of different next steps for students.

“I knew that I wanted to get into something in IT - that was a certainty - and I knew the college course would teach me the fundamentals,” he declared. “But there were so many different avenues I could have taken from that point because IT is such a huge field.

“I could have become an IT Support Analyst, worked on a help desk or gone into engineering. Cyber was still quite a new field seven or eight years ago but, what I learned on my course, formed the backbone for what I needed to go down that pathway, because you need to know how the fundamentals of a network operate.

“On my apprenticeship, the first couple of weeks were about IT networking and I found that my college course gave me a head start on that. The methodology of how I approach a problem started at York College and that has been transferable in terms of what I went on to do in my apprenticeship and what I do in my career now. I also had a fantastic time at York College and have so many fond memories from being there.”

Peter will be able to relive those memories soon with plans for him to return to Campus to stage a crisis simulation workshop with our T Level Cybersecurity students.

The T Level educational model, with its workplace element, is one that Peter admits would have appealed to him had it been available when he was considering his options after leaving school, saying: “If T Levels had been around when I was at College, they would have been a serious consideration for me. They represent a good opportunity in terms of career pathways because having that industry work experience, alongside the classroom learning, is crucial.”

Peter added that cybersecurity continues to grow as an industry, with job opportunities plentiful for skilled applicants and prospects strong.

“I’m always being told there are not enough people in cybersecurity or enough people getting the training,” he said. “It’s a constantly evolving field where we need more people to stand up to the threats we face every day.”

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