Introduction
Among all school outreach activities iCSS has been doing, supporting NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre)‘s CyberFirst programme is an essential part due to the University of Kent’s double recognition as an ACE-CSE (Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education) with Gold award status and an ACE-CSR (Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research).
Since 2023, iCSS represents the University of Kent as a member of the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre)’s CyberFirst programme, which makes it possible for iCSS to access NCSC’s CyberFirst training materials and to deliver CyberFirst-branded activities independently.
In addition, since the establishment of the KMCSN (Kent & Medway CyberSchools Network), iCSS’s CyberFirst activities and other school outreach activities have a special focus on serving members of KMCSN while also open to any local schools in Kent and Medway. KMCSN is co-founded by iCSS with two collaboration partners: KMCC (Kent & Medway Cyber Cluster Ltd), and The STEM Hub.
CyberFirst Events
In October and November of 2024, iCSS organised two half-day events for Year 8 girls to inspire more girls to consider a cyber security career pathway and to participate in the 2024 CyberFirst Girls Competition. Both events are open to all local schools, including but not limited to members of the KMCSN (Kent & Medway CyberSchools Network). Both events were supported by KMCC and the second by KMCS3 (Kent & Medway Cyber Security Student Society).
- 8th October 2024: The first CyberFirst Girls Competition promotion event was held at the Maidstone Grammar School for Girls, which runs a NCCE (National Centre for Computing Education) Computing Hub in Kent and Medway. This event was attended by 56 girls from 7 local schools, as part of the 2024 iCSS Cyber Security Awareness Month. Read a news story about the event.
- 5th November 2024: The second CyberFirst Girls Competition promotion event was held at The Folkestone School for Girls, which was attended by 42 girls from 2 local schools.
In addition, iCSS and KMCC are also planning to organise a CyberFirst Trailblazers event (for Year 8 pupils) and a CyberFirst Adventurers event (for Year 9 pupils), potentially as a combined event on the same day in the 2024-25 school year. Different from the 2023 February event iCSS hosted, these 2024-25 event(s) will be delivered by iCSS using its Cyber Ambassadors and other supporters.
Last but not least, iCSS will also provide two summer research internships as part of the CyberFirst Bursary Scheme. These will be released later in October to all students funded by the the CyberFirst Bursary Scheme.
More Past CyberFirst Events
- 9th March 2024: iCSS hosted a CyberFirst Investigator Day on the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent, which saw over 40 school pupils from from local and regional schools participating.
- 24th to 28th July 2023: iCSS hosted a one-week-long CyberFirst Advanced Course on the Canterbury campus of the University of Kent, which saw around 50 school pupils from local and regional schools participating.
- 28th February 2023: 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, which was attended by over 90 pupils from local schools in Kent and Medway.
- 30th November – 4th December 2020: For the CyberFirst EmPower Cyber Week, 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.
In addition to the above activities, KirCCS (the predecessor of iCSS) also planned to host two NCSC-funded CyberFirst courses on campus at the University of Kent in 2020, 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 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.