Institute of Cyber Security for Society (iCSS)

Professor Shujun Li, iCSS Director and Outreach Lead, oversees iCSS’s school outreach activities. For more information, or if you’d like to get your school involved, please email us at cyber-info@kent.ac.uk.

News: As an important new initiative in 2023, iCSS is setting up the KMCSN (Kent & Medway CyberSchools Network), together with The STEM Hub and KMCC (Kent & Medway Cyber Cluster). We welcome local schools and teachers in Kent and Medway to join the Network to discuss how we can all work together and with other stakeholders on pre-university cyber security and online safety education and awareness raising activities. If you are interested in this initiative, please visit this dedicated page for more details about the KMCSN including how to join as a member.

Below are some examples of our school outreach activity iCSS has conducted:

• Cyber security awareness video: We partnered with Scriberia to make an animated video for young children and schools to understand more about the interdisciplinary nature of cyber security, the diverse career options and the importance of continuous learning and collaboration. This is a free resource for all to use.

• Cyber security awareness books: The above animated video has been converted to an e-book (download from here) so that children can read it as a book rather than a video, which can help reduce screen time and engage those who like books more than videos. In addition, working with Cyberlite Books Pte Ltd in Singapore, iCSS ordered 1,000 hard copies of Ready, Get Set, Connect!, an online safety book for children of 7-12 years old, for distributing to member schools of the KMCSN. We plan to make more such books in the future.

• School visits
  • On Safer Internet Day 2023, iCSS visited the Junior School of St Edmund’s School Canterbury to deliver two sessions on “How to become a cyber superhero” to their Years 7 and 8 pupils, and also the Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School to deliver a session on misinformation, disinformation and media literacy (which is based on the content of this Futurum Careers article) to their Year 9 pupils. On 10th Feb 2023, we also visited Kent College in Canterbury to deliver a session on misinformation, disinformation and media literacy to their Year 7 pupils.
  • On Safer Internet Day 2022, iCSS engaged with the Junior School of St Edmund’s School Canterbury, to give two sessions on misinformation, disinformation and media literacy to their Years 3-5 pupils, and two sessions on online risks to their Years 6-8 pupils (read the Kent news story for more).
  • If you are interested in arranging a visit for your school, please email cyber-info@kent.ac.uk.

• Inspiring next-generation cyber experts: The Centre is actively working with schools and other organisations to promote cyber security as a future career for pupils who are interested in ICT.
  • On 4th and 5th October 2022, iCSS held its Kent Cyber Security Festival 2022 as part of this year’s University of Kent Youth Summit. The Festival was an opportunity for school pupils in years 9, 10 and 11 to learn how they can stay safe online, as well as what cyber security might mean in a personal context and as a potential future career. Watch the highlights below.

• Jason Nurse was featured in Fantastic Jobs and How to Get Them, a book published by Oxford University Press as part of its famous Oxford Reading Tree TreeTops series (Kent news story).

• Cyber security articles and activity sheets for school pupils: We worked with Futurum Careers, a school-facing magazine for attracting teenagers to study STEM subjects, to produce three cyber security awareness articles, each with an interactive activity sheet (see below for the links and citation information), as well as a ‘top tips’ video that can be used to engage school pupils, parents and staff. All material is released under the Creative Common License Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) and we welcome all to use them for cyber security outreach activities with schools. Please inform us via cyber-info@kent.ac.uk if you use the material and find it useful.

• Jason Nurse and Jamie MacColl, “Can cyber insurance combat cyber crime?” Futurum Careers, July 2023, DOI:10.33424/FUTURUM408
• Shujun Li, Sarah Turner, Rahime Belen-Saglam and Virginia N. L. Franqueira, “Online battles: combatting false information and reducing online risks,” Futurum Careers, October 2022, DOI:10.33424/FUTURUM302.
• Shujun Li and Jason Nurse, “How to Beat the Cybercriminals and Stay Safe Online,” Futurum Careers, Issue 4, pages 32-33, March 2020, DOI:10.33424/FUTURUM43.

• CyberFirst courses and events:
  1. iCSS will host a one-week-long CyberFirst Advanced Course on the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent from 24th to 28th July 2023, which will see around 50 school pupils from local and regional schools to participate.
  2. iCSS hosted two NCSC-funded CyberFirst events (Adventurers for Year 9 and Trailblazers for Year 8) on the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent on 28th Febuary 2023, which was attended by over 90 pupils from local schools in Kent.
  3. KirCCS (the predecessor of iCSS) planned to host two NCSC-funded CyberFirst courses on campus at the University of Kent in 2020 with QA Ltd., a CyberFirst Girls Competition Development day on 17 October, and a CyberFirst Advanced Course from 10-15 August, which unfortunately were both changed to virtual events.
  4. For CyberFirst EmPower Cyber Week (30th November 2020 – 4th December 2020), PhD student Sarah Turner and Dr Virginia Franqueira presented live sessions on the security implications of deepfake technologies and how to perform personal threat modelling. Watch Sarah’s presentation.

• Cyber Champions: We have appointed a number of UG/PGT students as Cyber Champions and some PhD students as Senior Cyber Champions, who help the University and iCSS to conduct cyber-related school outreach activities.