K-12 Cybersecurity Program Evaluation and Its Application

As the use of the Internet and computers continues to increase, so does the prevalence of cybercrime. However, there is currently no global standard education curriculum guideline in place to prevent cybercrime or cybercrime victimization. The purpose of this study is to examine programs designed for students in grades K-12 that have already been implemented in communities across the country in order to determine the amount of information taught and to identify a global standard preventative program for all educational institutions. This project will be an exploratory study in which existing K-12 curriculum programs are reviewed qualitatively using a content analysis method based upon the theoretical framework of Choi’s Cyber-Routine Activities Theory (Cyber RAT) (Choi, 2008). The expected outcome of this research is to identify and create standards for an ideal cybersecurity educational program for students in grades K-12. This research is timely and imperative in the field of criminal justice because crimes are becoming increasingly prevalent in the cyber-world with very limited means available to control or prevent them. Findings in this study suggest that most programs teach students a sufficient amount of topics relating to computer hygiene, computer ethics, and technological skills. However, further research must be conducted to determine the quality of these programs in adequately informing students about topics involving cybersecurity and cybercrime

The “three M’s” counter-measures to children’s risky online behaviors:mentor, mitigate and monitor

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to scope the field of child-related online harms and to produce a resource pack to communicate all the different dimensions of this domain to teachers and carers.Design/methodology/approachWith children increasingly operating as independent agents online, their teachers and carers need to understand the risks of their new playground and the range of risk management strategies they can deploy. Carers and teachers play a prominent role in applying the three M’s: mentoring the child, mitigating harms using a variety of technologies (where possible) and monitoring the child’s online activities to ensure their cybersecurity and cybersafety. In this space, the core concepts of “cybersafety” and “cybersecurity” are substantively different and this should be acknowledged for the full range of counter-measures to be appreciated. Evidence of core concept conflation emerged, confirming the need for a resource pack to improve comprehension. A carefully crafted resource pack was developed to convey knowledge of risky behaviors for three age groups and mapped to the appropriate “three M’s” to be used as counter-measures.FindingsThe investigation revealed key concept conflation, and then identified a wide range of harms and countermeasures. The resource pack brings clarity to this domain for all stakeholders.Research limitations/implicationsThe number of people who were involved in the empirical investigation was limited to those living in Scotland and Nigeria, but it is unlikely that the situation is different elsewhere because the internet is global and children’s risky behaviors are likely to be similar across the globe.Originality/valueOthers have investigated this domain, but no one, to the authors’ knowledge, has come up with the “Three M’s” formulation and a visualization-based resource pack that can inform educators and carers in terms of actions they can take to address the harms

Teachers’ awareness, knowledge and practice of information security in school

Master's thesis in Information systems (IS501)We found that the teachers in our respondent schools lacked formal training on topics of information security. Most of them did not know what phishing, backdoors and keyloggers are, and many reused passwords across multiple sites. The teachers were also concerned about lacking the knowledge to properly teach their students about information security and netiquette. The principals did not consider information security to be a primary concernand the IT-department employees had varying knowledge of information security.Meanwhile the municipality has been focused on procuring hardware and softwarefor the teachers and students, and ensuring proper use of these digital teaching aids, while neglecting the information security aspect. Based on our findingsand literature from the IS field, we have developed an overview of the 15 key problem areas we identified withimprovement suggestions.Allour suggestions are concrete measures to transition towards a more information security friendly organizational culture.Thischange in culture must be encouraged by the municipality.We suggestarranging a yearly information security weekand workshops, partnering up with already existing national incentivesto increase teacher knowledge.We also suggestshort weekly discussionson information security led by an information security champion to keep awareness levels high.Furtherstandardization of the applications used in schools and the introduction of a password manager andmoremulti-factor authenticationare also encouraged

Preservice Teachers: What do They Know about Cyberlaw?

This paper presents preliminary findings from an exploratory multimethod study into preservice teachers’ perspectives on legal and ethical issues relevant to the use of ICT in schools. It identifies requirements for legal literacy that support legally compliant behaviour as well as the development of active citizenship in students and highlights areas of factual legal knowledge which may require more attention in preservice education

A cybersafety educational framework for primary school learners in South Africa

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have made life much easier for many people but have also brought many dangers to the world. School learners are amongst the users of ICT who are becoming cyber citizens. This age is good at exploring new things, with a growing number of school learners having access to ICT devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and desktop computers. This is due to the affordability of mobile phones, which they normally receive as gifts from their parents. Due to easy access of ICT, school learners can now access cyberspace which offers them many advantages and benefits. Such advantages and benefits include having a platform to socialise, improved and ease of access to information as well as improving their learning. Despite these benefits, school learners (primary school learners in particular) are prone to falling victim to a range of cyber risks and attacks since cyberspace is an unregulated platform that poses many potential dangers Common cybersafety threats associated with school learners include cyberbullying, sexting/“sextortion”, engaging with strangers, accessing inappropriate content and being exposed to a breach of privacy. Because the cybersafety of children, especially primary school learners, is often compromised, there is a need to protect them from the threats associated with ICT. However, protecting children from the aforementioned cybersafety threats is complicated because access to cyberspace is no longer confined to the home computer, but has extended to mobile phones, which are even more pervasive. Therefore, it is essential for school learners to be educated on how to protect themselves and their information in the virtual computer world. A number of developed countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) have included cybersafety education in their school curricula. Similarly, the rapid growth of the Internet around the world, allowed some countries in Africa to take the initiative to start implementing cybersafety education in schools including Mauritius, Tunisia, Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Cameroon, Egypt and Rwanda. Countries like Uganda, Sudan, Morocco and South Africa are still facing challenges in this aspect. This study is focused on the cybersafety of primary school learners in the South African context

A cybersafety educational framework for primary school learners in South Africa

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have made life much easier for many people but have also brought many dangers to the world. School learners are amongst the users of ICT who are becoming cyber citizens. This age is good at exploring new things, with a growing number of school learners having access to ICT devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and desktop computers. This is due to the affordability of mobile phones, which they normally receive as gifts from their parents. Due to easy access of ICT, school learners can now access cyberspace which offers them many advantages and benefits. Such advantages and benefits include having a platform to socialise, improved and ease of access to information as well as improving their learning. Despite these benefits, school learners (primary school learners in particular) are prone to falling victim to a range of cyber risks and attacks since cyberspace is an unregulated platform that poses many potential dangers Common cybersafety threats associated with school learners include cyberbullying, sexting/“sextortion”, engaging with strangers, accessing inappropriate content and being exposed to a breach of privacy. Because the cybersafety of children, especially primary school learners, is often compromised, there is a need to protect them from the threats associated with ICT. However, protecting children from the aforementioned cybersafety threats is complicated because access to cyberspace is no longer confined to the home computer, but has extended to mobile phones, which are even more pervasive. Therefore, it is essential for school learners to be educated on how to protect themselves and their information in the virtual computer world. A number of developed countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) have included cybersafety education in their school curricula. Similarly, the rapid growth of the Internet around the world, allowed some countries in Africa to take the initiative to start implementing cybersafety education in schools including Mauritius, Tunisia, Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Cameroon, Egypt and Rwanda. Countries like Uganda, Sudan, Morocco and South Africa are still facing challenges in this aspect. This study is focused on the cybersafety of primary school learners in the South African context

Who is best placed to support cyber responsibilized UK parents?

The UK government responsibilizes its citizens when it comes to their cyber security, as do other countries. Governments provide excellent advice online, but do not provide any other direct support. Responsibilization is viable when: (1) risk management activities require only ubiquitous skills, (2) a failure to manage the risk does not affect others in the person’s community. Cybersecurity fails on both counts. Consider that parents and carers are effectively being responsibilized to educate their children about cybersecurity, given that young children cannot be expected to consult and act upon government advice. Previous research suggests that UK parents embrace this responsibility but need help in keeping up to date with cybersecurity ‘best practice’. In this paper, we consider a number of possible sources of parental advice, and conclude that support workers would be best placed to support parents in this domain. We then carried out a study to gauge the acceptability of this source of help. We find that parents would be willing to accept advice from this source, and suggest that cybersecurity academics be recruited to train support workers to ensure that they have current ‘best practice’ cybersecurity knowledge to impart to parents

Awareness and knowledge of cyberethics: A study of pre-service teachers in Malta, Norway, and Spain

This paper explores the awareness and knowledge of cyberethics held by pre-service teachers across three European countries. The study was conducted via an online survey and yielded 1,131 responses from pre-service teachers in Malta, Norway, and Spain. The facets of cyberethics included in this study focused on behaving responsibly online, safeguarding privacy, respecting copyright, seeking consent of friends before posting images or videos on social media platforms, and considering their professional identity as future teachers when posting online. The findings indicate that pre-service teachers reported relatively similar levels of competence in applying copyright and respecting privacy rules with pre-service teachers in Malta and Norway reporting higher degrees of knowledge and awareness than their counterparts in Spain. Malta had the most participants who reported that they always considered the potential impact that posting media online may have on their professional teaching career, followed by Norway. Spain had the largest number of pre-service teachers who stated that they rarely or never thought about this impact on their teaching career. This indicates a lack of awareness of behaving in an exemplary manner online in a more public and professional capacity. Our findings highlight the need for pre-service teachers' knowledge of cyberethics to be prioritised during Initial Teacher Education (ITE), especially at such a time when their professional identity is being shaped. A clear tension was noted between the perceived knowledge or competence and the declared practices of some pre-service teachers concerning the cyberethics items featured in the study. In light of our findings, we recommend that all ITE programmes include digital competence and cyberethics components in their curricula. This would enable pre-service teachers to develop an emerging professional and digital identity to face the challenges of becoming teachers in the 21st century

A Literature Review-Digital Citizenship and Elementary Education

This literature review was conducted as part of a dissertation research study. The review examines what scholars have studied in relationship to educators’ implementation of technology and instructional practices relating to digital citizenship. Additionally, the review examines the knowledge and beliefs of educators to include pre-service and current service teachers and students in K-12 education. Often research, as well as educational institutes, have emphasized the negative aspects technology or the misuse of technology by users. Alternatively, this review highlighted the knowledge, beliefs, and professional practices of educators in order to ascertain what gaps exist to understand what needs to be addressed in promoting digital citizenship instruction in preparing students to use technology appropriately, responsibly, and ethically

The Effectiveness of a Hybrid Cybersecurity Summer Camp for Teachers

Cybersecurity teacher education plays a vital role in narrowing the gap in the need for cybersecurity professionals in the workforce. In this paper, the authors examined the effectiveness of a hybrid cybersecurity summer camp for secondary education in-service teachers. The pre- and post-camp quizzes showed significant statistical difference, t(17) = -8.42, p \u3c .001, with a large effect size of 2.24. Focus group interviews with the teacher participants further suggested that the hybrid modality is not only viable but also a preferred format welcomed by the teachers