Acumen Cyber, a CREST accredited cyber security service provider, today announced the launch of SecureEd, a new service built specifically to protect the Higher and Further Education sector from sophisticated cyber threats.
SecurEd is a purpose-built managed Security Operations Centre (SOC) service, created by Acumen, in collaboration with HEFESTIS, which can be easily procured in a compliant way through sector-approved frameworks on a direct award basis.
It delivers enterprise-grade cyber defences to Higher and Further Education on a predictable, fixed price basis, tailored to the specific needs of the sector.
Unlike traditional SOCs that are priced on log ingestion, per-user fees or data volume, SecurEd provides per-staff/faculty pricing with free student accounts included. This means costs remain completely transparent, allowing institutions to budget with confidence, while knowing security coverage is never compromised, regardless of data volume.
The government’s 2025 Cyber Security Breaches Survey revealed that 85% of colleges and 91% of universities have suffered cyber attacks in the past year, which are levels comparable to the country’s largest enterprises. Yet, unlike other large organisations, universities and colleges often lack the resources and budgets to manage these escalating threats effectively.
Sitting at the intersection of knowledge, innovation and collaboration, the Higher and Further Education sector is uniquely exposed. Its open, accessible environments, which are supported by EdTech platforms, research partnerships and cloud providers, create multiple entry points for attackers. Meanwhile, the constant influx of students, staff and contractors every year makes access management and endpoint security increasingly complex, leaving institutions facing a perfect storm of rising threats, compliance pressures and limited funding and resources.
SecurEd has been established to specifically tackle these challenges.
“SecurEd has been created to protect the complex and diverse environments of universities and colleges,” said Mark Robertson, CEO at Acumen Cyber. “Over the past year we’ve worked closely with the sector, building partnerships with a number of institutions, including West Lothian College, Edinburgh Napier University, Heriot-Watt University and Ayrshire College. Their insights have helped us design a service that removes the unpredictability of cost, eases the pressure on internal teams and delivers the enterprise-level protection the sector needs, with pricing that’s affordable and predictable.”
Combining Acumen’s engineering-led SOC with HEFESTIS’ unique role as the customer’s voice, SecurEd has been co-designed specifically for the Higher and Further Education sector. It delivers fixed, predictable pricing and a 24/7 UK-based, CREST-accredited SOC, staffed entirely by security engineers. Every incident is managed end-to-end, from detection to resolution, which eliminates handoffs, reduces delays and provides measurable outcomes with a true partnership approach.
The service offers organisations continuous monitoring, proactive threat hunting and decisive response across their entire technology stack, which goes beyond just alerting, to deliver real containment, recovery and remediation. Universities and colleges are also offered a seamless combination of Acumen’s proprietary IP layered with market-leading technologies, including Elastic SIEM, hyper-automation, Recorded Future threat intelligence, and best-in-class EDR from partners such as CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. Additionally, every client has a dedicated SOC lead, providing customers with a trusted, responsive relationship, where queues and delays are completely eliminated.
While other service providers offer managed security services to the sector, they are often generic rather than tailored and do not take into consideration the specific requirements of Higher and Further Education. Costs are often unpredictable, alerts are handed back to internal teams to resolve, round-the-clock protection is rarely in place, and true collaboration between provider and customer is largely absent.
“Many providers offer one-size-fits-all security, but that doesn’t work for universities or colleges facing unique environments and budget pressures,” said Brian Henderson, CEO of HEFESTIS. “SecurEd is different. Pricing is transparent and predictable, customers are offered market leading technology platforms and security is enhanced through Acumen’s security engineers’ expertise, who act as an extension to internal teams, so they can focus on what matters most.”
SecurEd delivers round-the-clock threat monitoring, detection and response as well as full access to Acumen’s expert security engineers. Their deep expertise in the education sector and wider threat landscape ensures timely detection and mitigation of malicious activity, stopping attacks before they cause harm.
Acumen Cyber is also committed to strengthening the Higher and Further Education community – not only by defending institutions via the SecurEd service, but by helping nurture the next generation of cyber security talent. This will be achieved through graduate recruitment schemes, academic engagement, where SecurEd’s team will host guest lectures, as well as supporting academic projects and PhD research.
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