EPC strive to enhance their current mission, to Enhance UK Resilience.
EPC leading the way in building a resilient UK
Today the Emergency Planning College (EPC) is a fundamentally different organisation. Where it was once simply a College, it is now a service with a mission to ’enhance UK resilience’. Without deviating from its strategic purpose, EPC’s services are now broad enough to reflect the increased diversity of the resilience community. The Hawkhills site provides the EPC with a platform to manage these services and as part of this ongoing transformational strategy the Hawkhills is developing into a campus delivering services to support its mission.
Cyber Security Exercising
As part of the EPC’s commitment to achieve this mission we regular review our services and routinely look at the national risk register and chart our advisory, educational, exercising and implementation skills against the threats to the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. In many of our impact assessments and in exercising organisations the understanding of cyber security, response measures and the key decisions to be taken were often misunderstood and were difficult to test. It’s a fact that today you can test a fireman, a pilot or a paramedic in a live exercise scenario, but it is difficult to replicate a live exercise to prepare your information security teams to deal with a malicious cyber attack.
We’ve now addressed this requirement by introducing a cutting edge Cyber Exercising capability, known as cybX, which enables organisations to train, prepare and rehearse their IT security teams in a demanding simulated environment against a continually refreshed threat profile. Taking organisations through basic, intermediate and advanced skills it will enable confidence and highlight gaps. This new exciting capability will be embedded into the Hawkhills campus and will enhance the current core services.
Welcoming the Professional Community into the Hawkhills
The EPC is delighted to welcome the Emergency Planning Society (EPS) and Royal British Legion (RBL) to the Hawkhills campus. Both these organisation have chosen the Hawkhills to support their future service delivery. Now having four organisations (EPC, CybX, EPS & RBL) ‘under one roof’ provides each with an exciting set of resources and the ability to draw on knowledge and experience from one another.
Expanding the Team
Such has been the rapid expansion of the Hawkhills the EPC has recently employed Ronnie Christie to consolidate the site into a central resilience hub. Appointed as the Hawkhillls Site Manager he has the monumental task of overseeing the day to day running of the campus to ensure all stakeholders are provided with the support they need. Ronnie joins the team following a distinguished 30 year career with the Army, during this period Ronnie was responsible for managing the operational and logistical requirements of domestic and international multi discipline campuses.
Ronnie says, “I am delighted and excited about joining an organisation that consistently demonstrates distinguished performances. The site team have already shown their industriousness, conscientiousness and diligence as they prepare to pick up a prestigious Serco Global Pulse Award for their outstanding customer service delivery during 2013. With the additional growth of the EPC I have been given a fantastic opportunity, and look forward to optimising all of the available resources, and demonstrating my imaginative insight. Delivering the ultimate teaching environment for our delegates at the Hawkhills. ”
His appointment will allow the site to continue to strive towards enhancing UK resilience, as we continue into 2014, we welcome him to the Hawkhills and wish him well as he contributes to the continued success of the Hawkhills campus.
About EPC:
The Emergency Planning College (EPC) delivers multi-agency, major incident training, consultancy and exercising for, and on behalf of the UK Cabinet Office. Managed by Serco since 2010, it is positioned at the heart of the Government, within the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS).