How Schools and Society Benefits from Better Cybersecurity and Digital Literacy Programs

Almost 50% of American children between the ages of 3 and 4 use the internet at home, but unfortunately, the internet is not limited to a nice Pokemon Go community; there are a lot of malicious actors out there. As a consequence, about one million children experience identity theft or fraud every year. In the US alone, 1 in 50 children falls victim to these schemes because cybercriminals target their clean credit histories.

One way to combat this is to educate students in digital literacy as a foundation for recognizing and coping with cyber threats. By raising awareness about common cyber threats, such as social engineering tactics, phishing, online behavior, and so on, schools can create a more secure cyber environment. The fact is that cyberattacks aren’t just a monetary concern for organizations and governments; they can have a severe impact on individuals.

Children are so adept at learning new things, that teaching them a few basic cybersecurity skills can help reduce the problem. Let’s take a look at why cybersecurity is so important within the context of digital literacy and what measures can be taken to keep children safe online.

How Cybersecurity and Digital Literacy are Linked

Put simply, digital literacy informs better cybersecurity practices, while developing a cybersecurity mindset contributes to improved digital literacy. Teaching digital literacy to students, as well as to teachers and staff, helps them understand the consequences of their online activity. Not being aware of these consequences can negatively impact things like cybersecurity, data privacy, and personal safety.

There are a few fundamentals that students and teachers need to be aware of. Firstly, mastering password settings is a good defense when they are regularly updated. Secondly, students need to be aware of what constitutes a safe website, for example, knowing the importance of “https://” and staying away from public Wi-Fi for sensitive tasks. Lastly, they need to know about installing and updating antivirus software, activating firewalls, and routinely updating devices to mitigate potential cyber threats.

These simple measures have never been more important. In the third quarter of 2023, malicious actors used various methods to hack students. Of the reported attacks, phishing websites were top of the list, accounting for 54%, followed by email at 27%, social media scams at 19%, and instant messaging hoaxes at 16%.

How to Educate Students on Cybersecurity and Digital Literacy

There tends to be two schools of thought when it comes to incorporating digital literacy into the curriculum: integrated across subjects or dedicated courses. In today’s reality, the broader themes of digital literacy—such as basic computer skills, conducting online research, and digital media literacy—are going to be incorporated into other subjects fairly organically. 

But when it comes to cybersecurity and online safety, it’s a different story—there should be dedicated courses or classes on these subjects, particularly for middle school students and continuing through high school. Historically, students have just been provided with online tools without much guidance about their use. As students are being given more access to more areas of the internet and more online collaboration tools, they should be going into it with a better security and safety foundation.

It’s not just about providing education; there need to be metrics to accompany it. Schools also need to ensure that teachers receive the professional development required to teach such concepts. They can use teacher surveys and/or assessments to gauge how well teachers grasp the concepts and improve their understanding and ability to deliver the material.

Further, some schools find it helpful to compare the number of incident reports that occur before and after training. If your district uses some kind of monitoring software to track cybersecurity and online behavior, it can be helpful to establish a baseline before implementing your digital literacy curriculum. Then, you can compare incident reports after students, teachers, and staff have had a certain amount of training to that baseline. 

The Benefits of Teaching Digital Literacy in Schools

The first, and perhaps most obvious, benefit to schools and society is that we would see a reduction in cybersecurity incidents impacting school districts. That is not to say that data breaches and ransomware would go away entirely, but there would be a noticeable reduction in the number and severity of attacks if we had a more cybersecurity-aware population in K-12 schools—inclusive of students, teachers, staff, and parents/guardians. 

Looking longer-term and more broadly, teaching students digital literacy will have many positive benefits on their lives and society as a whole. Digital literacy skills improve students’ academic performance and career opportunities while helping foster critical thinking and innovation. All of these can have a positive impact on economic growth and social well-being. 

Teaching students cybersecurity skills early in their academic careers can also specifically benefit their career and income potential. There is a significant need for cybersecurity professionals in the job market, and the gap between market need and available skills is projected to grow over the coming decades. Developing a future cybersecurity workforce would benefit students individually and society, which desperately needs ethical cybersecurity professionals.

The genie is very much out of the bottle in terms of taking action for cybersecurity in schools. Governments and administrators might have been hesitant to act prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but given the mountain of attacks that have taken place in the last four years, there is no avoiding its importance. The most important thing is to work across functions to implement a plan to incorporate digital literacy that includes a focus on cybersecurity and safety into the curriculum. What that looks like and how students experience that will vary across school districts and age groups. But the need and the proof is already out there.

Article by Charlie Sander, CEO of ManagedMethods, who has over 30 years of IT industry experience. Charlie holds ten patents and earned a BSEE degree from the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering.

This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company