Date: 24th - 25th November 2026
Location: Manchester Central
This Security Conference will explore how institutions can proactively prevent, detect and be ready for any incident - and how they should respond to the high sophistication attacks that continue to impact research organisations, universities and colleges. Empowering institutions to anticipate, withstand and recover from complex cyber threats.
This year you can find CDW, partnered with Zscaler at the event. We’ll be ready to meet delegates at our stand in the exhibition hall as well as joining the content agenda.
From VPN to Zero Trust: How Imperial College London Transformed Secure Access for 25,000 Users
12pm - 12:40pm Thursday 24th November
Higher Education institutions face a unique security challenge, vast, distributed user populations including students on personal devices, academics travelling internationally, and researchers working in the field, all requiring seamless, secure access to sensitive systems and data.
In this fireside chat, Thomas Willson, CISO at Imperial College London, will share the candid story of how Imperial replaced its legacy VPN infrastructure with Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) as part of a broader Zero Trust transformation.
Thomas will walk through the challenges that drove the decision, the operational frustrations, the security risks, and the moment it became clear that the existing architecture could no longer support Imperial's scale and ambition. He'll cover how Imperial built the internal case for change, managed adoption across a complex and diverse user base (including branding the solution as "Unified Access"), and what the outcomes have looked like in practice, from measurable security improvements to a dramatically improved user experience
To find out more about the JISC Security Conference or to register, visit their website or reach out to a member of our team to discuss attending.
