DHS lifts curtain on cybersecurity education effort

President Obama has made cybersecurity education for everyone from toddlers to seniors a national priority. Today, educators and cybersecurity experts are wrapp...

By Max Cacas
Reporter
Federal News Radio

In a little over 45 days, Americans will find a new way to observe National Cybersecurity Awareness month.

In keeping with President Obama’s mandate that cybersecurity awareness and education be improved for everyone from toddlers to senior citizens, the Department of Homeland Security is slated to launch a month-long multimedia campaign aimed at helping people of all ages cope with cybersecurity threats.

The campaign, which is still in its pre-launch development stage, was previewed yesterday at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland. There, about 200 educators and cybersecurity experts are meeting in a two-day conference and workshop for the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, or NICE.

“We really are interested in public-private partnerships,” said Dr. Ernest McDuffie, NIST program lead for NICE and the organizer of this conference. “Engaging with academia and private industry, letting them know what the federal government is about, what we’re trying to do and how they can help us achieve these goals. It’s pretty clear that the issue of cybersecurity is so big, that it’s well beyond the scope of any federal agency, even the entire federal government.”

Bruce McConnell, Cybersecurity Counselor at the National Protection and Programs Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, discussed his agency’s role in what is called simply, “The Campaign”.

We want to increase awareness, we want to increase the percentage of the people who understand what the risk is and what they can do about it. We can get more people involved and begin to shift the perception (about cybersecurity) among the American people.

The campaign is expected to coincide with National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which over the last several years has taken place in October.

Sounding more like a marketing executive than a cybersecurity expert, McConnell says DHS is the lead agency in designing and executing what he calls a “nationally branded multimedia campaign” initially targeted at several primary demographic audiences:

  • teens aged 12 through 17
  • the parents of those teens
  • young adults, 18-25, better known as the “millennials”

The message of the campaign will revolve around the words “Stop. Think. Connect.” and will be designed to make citizens aware of cyber threats. It will provide actionable information on what they can do to protect themselves and attempt to answer the question “what do I do?”

The campaign will include teen advisory boards, a cyber citizen ambassador program…but interestingly, there will be no initial outreach to another growing population of cybercitizens: seniors.

McConnell says that DHS has decided in this first year to focus on their most important target audiences with special emphasis on businesses and senior citizens in year two.

Because DHS will be involved in a multi-national cybersecurity exercise on October 1st, the “Stop. Think. Connect. ” cybersecurity education campaign will officially roll out on Monday, October 4th at a West Coast location to be announced.

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