Head of Department letter October 2025
‘It's about feeling safe.’ That's roughly how the advert broadcast in Denmark during my youth went. I'll avoid mentioning the company behind it, although I agree with the message: we need to feel reasonably safe in order to be creative and dare to look beyond short-term solutions.
Security is a broad concept. It can mean not being exposed to violence, threats or unpleasantness in the workplace. It can also mean not having to worry about your work or reputation being destroyed, or feeling financially secure. We have talked a lot about finances and the working environment at the department during the year. At a higher level, in meetings with the faculties, other heads of department and within LU in late summer, the focus has instead been on security. We have also had a new series of meetings with the security police. The discussions have mainly been about protecting LU's data and reputation – in other words, information security and protection against espionage.
When it comes to information security, especially IT security, most of us are already on our toes. It's hard to forget about it between reports of new cyber attacks, and we've all learned about two-factor authentication. Hopefully, most of you have also taken the university's web-based course in basic information security and know that it's about more than just avoiding clicking on suspicious links. If you haven't taken the course yet, it's available in the Competence Portal.
Read more about information security on the LU Staff Pages.
You can also contact Lund University's information security department for support and advice on specific issues. If you have specific questions, you can send an email to Lund's information security department at informationssakerhet [at] lu [dot] se (informationssakerhet[at]lu[dot]se).
Discussions about espionage are not yet part of everyday life for most of us, but I expect it will become more common in LU's communications going forward. This is especially true in light of the university's increased focus on internationalisation. The focus is often on certain countries and subject areas that are considered particularly vulnerable or interesting.
The most important message from all the meetings is this: be aware of what you have access to that may need to be protected. It may not be your own research that is sensitive, but rather your contacts. Or someone may want to use an LU connection to hide their true affiliation. It is unlikely that your long-term partners are engaged in espionage, but perhaps someone in their network is.
For those of you who work extensively with innovation and industrial collaboration, security aspects are often already a natural part of your routines. But for those of us who work with basic research, it can feel more distant. This is fundamentally a positive thing, as research needs collaboration! So don't stop collaborating where it is needed to advance research, even if your collaboration partner happens to be from the ‘wrong’ country from a current security perspective.
But don't be naive. Think about what needs to be protected – and protect it. Both your own data and that of your partners.
Else Lytken
Head of Department of Physics