Policy Analysis 2

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Including Cybersecurity in Standards of Learning

            Including cybersecurity in standards of learning (SOL) is not only a commonly discussed topic but a crucial subject that needs to be prioritized considering that children in grade school are not being introduced and learning cybersecurity as they should be. The foundation and basics of cybersecurity need to be pushed to grade school. With cybersecurity being one of the biggest policy issues in society, why not decided to push the idea to younger generations and be able to start them with the foundational knowledge and cybersecurity. Currently there are minimal requirements when it comes to K-12 learning in cybersecurity but there are actions being taken to push these requirements to ensure grade school students are getting additional material introduced to them in terms of cybersecurity. These legal requirements can include the Family Education Rights and Protection Act (FERPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Over time there has been government officials and policy makers who have addressed this policy while also coming to conclusions about the potential benefits or consequences this policy could have.

            Getting into the political implication of including cybersecurity in standards of learning. Implications for this cybersecurity policy would be to introduce cybersecurity to a younger audience considering the demand for cybersecurity professionals in present time and in the future and the lack of people not interested in cybersecurity and the ability to fill those empty roles. Being able to teach young people in society about protecting data and valuable information and the ability to mitigate security breaches would also be included in policy implications. It would only be a nightmare to image if cybersecurity does not make its way into standards of learning and grade school to be able to introduce grade school students to cybersecurity and potentially allow them to find their passion early on, therefore bringing in more cybersecurity professionals in the future to fill the high demand of roles that are not being filled.

            Next, I have conducted research on the topic of including cybersecurity in standards of learning. One of the journal articles from Greg Austin, a senior role and leader of the cyber, space and future conflict program for the international institute for strategic studies talks about cyber security education and bring the technical and social challenged in cybersecurity and how these challenges can evolve in the future. The purpose is to acknowledge the shortage of cybersecurity professionals internationally (focusing on China). He uses different attacks in the past such as Stuxnet in 2010 and how those attacks were managed, often being shorthanded and needing to bring in not the best trained people in cybersecurity to the front line to help defend and recover from the attack. Greg also mentions that as the new attacks are evolving, we need to bring in more cyber professionals that can evolve along with the technology field. A journal article by Wenting Yu and Fei Shen discusses the relationship between online political participation and privacy protection. They talk about how the lack of data protection and usage can place political parties and candidates in a bad spot if their personal data gets leaked or misused.

            Finally, there is a journal article focusing on the education of cybersecurity and training techniques used. In this article they talk about statistics on increasing cyberattacks and the most common attacks that are used by malicious users. They state, “in the last five to six years have reported that internet crime complaints have considerably increased, showing 515,612, complaints in 2020, while 162.091 complaints were reported previously”. In the year 2021, they state “phishing and allied cyberattacks, business emails, and malware were the main sources of data breaches”. In this article they aim to focus on the education of cybersecurity stating, “considering the alarming increase in cyberattacks and their potential financial implications, the importance of cybersecurity education and training cannot be overstated.” This meaning that additional cybersecurity education should be applied to standards of leaning to bring more potential industry professionals to not only fill empty job roles, but also be able to drop these statistics and mitigate more risks.

            Along with journal articles who are speaking out to push for the addition of cybersecurity in standards of learning, there are policy makers who are also addressing the policy and initiation for including cybersecurity in standards of learning. Joe Biden, President of the United States, is launching a new initiative to help strengthen cybersecurity in k-12 schools (edweek.org). Education secretary Miguel Cardona, stated that “just as we expect everyone in a school system to plan and prepare for physical risks, we must now also ensure everyone helps plan and prepare for digital risks in our schools and classrooms” and “ The Department of Education has listened to the field about the importance of K-12 cybersecurity, and today we are coming together to recognize this and indicate or next steps.” This comes to show that policy makers and government officials are aware of the matter and are taking action to address and come to conclusions about this topic.

References

  • Austin, G. (Ed.). (2020). Cyber security education: Principles and policies. Routledge.
  • Alnajim, A. M., Habib, S., Islam, M., AlRawashdeh, H. S., & Wasim, M. (2023). Exploring Cybersecurity Education and Training Techniques: A Comprehensive Review of Traditional, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality Approaches. Symmetry (20738994), 15(12), 2175. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.odu.edu/10.3390/sym1512217

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