Ms Angela Brittain | Head of STEM

This week, nine of our students across Years 7 to 10 have signed up to have a go at the Cyber Security Challenges presented by the Australian Computing Academy and GROK.  What a fantastic initiative for our students to have access to!  Cyber security is such a prominent issue in almost every aspect of our daily lives, so it is really pleasing to see our students wanting to learn how to be more cyber savvy and expand their digital skillset.

Why is Cyber Security important?

Cyber security is not only a component of the Australian Digital Technologies curriculum and ICT Capabilities, but also impacts every person, business, and organisation in today’s interconnected society.

The new Challenges integrate real-life situations and foster security-conscious students who are well equipped to deal with cyber security challenges both in their personal lives, and later, in the workforce. This Challenge series will ensure that students will be vigilant in all aspects of their digital lives.

I encourage parents with an interest in this area to also have a go.  You will be taught some basics of the coding language Python as you engage in the challenges our students are undertaking.

What are the Cyber Security Challenges about?

Challenge 1 enables students to “ethically hack” into fake personal accounts on made-up social media, email, and banking sites. Challenge 2 teaches them how to make and break cryptographic ciphers.

Challenges 3 and 4 will be on wireless networking and application security. These will become available later in the year so keep those online sleuthing hats on a bit longer.

“Right now, every single job in our economy requires some understanding of cyber security” – Michelle Price, CEO of AustCyber.