UTT forum highlights cybersecurity risks facing SMEs

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) has host­ed a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty fo­rum aimed at help­ing small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) and cre­ative in­dus­tries bet­ter pro­tect them­selves against grow­ing dig­i­tal threats.

The fo­rum, ti­tled From Aware­ness to Ac­tion: Ex­pand­ing Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty Ca­pac­i­ty for SMEs and Cre­ative In­dus­tries in Trinidad and To­ba­go, was held at UTT's Ch­agua­nas cam­pus with sup­port from the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion.

The event built on a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy sem­i­nar host­ed by both or­gan­i­sa­tions in Sep­tem­ber 2025 and at­tract­ed more than 300 on­line par­tic­i­pants, along­side rep­re­sen­ta­tives of event-based or­gan­i­sa­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies.

Pre­sen­ta­tions and pan­el dis­cus­sions were fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cy­ber Se­cu­ri­ty In­ci­dent Re­sponse Team (TT-CSIRT) and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice's Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit.

A pan­el dis­cus­sion mod­er­at­ed by iGovTT high­light­ed the need to strength­en cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty with­in the cre­ative and events in­dus­tries, warn­ing that dig­i­tal threats could re­sult in sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial loss­es, rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age and, in some cas­es, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.

UTT Act­ing Pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Re­an Ma­haraj said cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty breach­es in these sec­tors could dis­rupt every­day life, un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of build­ing the coun­try's ca­pac­i­ty to re­spond to emerg­ing threats.

He said UTT, through its Cen­tre for In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, was pre­pared to ad­dress the coun­try's evolv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal needs.

Ma­haraj added that the uni­ver­si­ty's fo­cus on ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion was in­tend­ed to pre­pare stu­dents for the fu­ture of work while sup­port­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go's wider tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.