Teaching Cybersecurity

As you may know, October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Organized by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), National Cyber Security Awareness Month is an intensive awareness campaign reaching out to consumers, small businesses, educators, children and other stakeholders in order to raise awareness about the importance of computer security and to educate individuals about practices they can use to protect themselves online.
As part of the McAfee Initiative to Fight Cybercrime, announced in October 2008, McAfee is kicking off our McAfee Cares – Cybersecurity for Kids program to teach K-12 students across the U.S. about cybersafety, cyberethics and cybersecurity as part of the month-long activities. McAfee employees in Santa Clara, St. Paul, Plano and Beaverton will be the first to teach this curriculum in their communities. We are very excited to note that over 100 McAfee employees have volunteered to teach students in their local community as part of this pilot program. And because they already see the great value in these important topics, many of the schools have requested more than the initial planned sessions.
NCSA’s 2008 National Cybersafety, Cyberethics, Cybersecurity Baseline Study found that only 22% of educators are comfortable teaching about cyber bullying, identity theft and other types of cyber crime. The NCSA worked with the Department of Education to create curriculum to help fill the (continue reading...)