School pupils learn about cyber safety at RGU

The event, run in collaboration with Skills Development Scotland and CyberSafe Scotland, looked at online exploitation, data harvesting and social media attacks, in a bid to educate the pupils on the dangers associated with the internet.

Throughout the course of the workshop, the team from RGU and CyberSafe Scotland provided live examples of cyber-attacks, set up honeypots - which are designed to purposely engage with hackers – and gave information and advice on how to avoid being caught out.

Ian Harris, Course Leader for BSc Cyber Security, said: “As part of the drive to educate and inform young users, RGU School of Computing hosted its first Safer Internet Day event. 

“The event was designed to equip the students with the personal skills to recognise the risks they face in their online social activities. 

“By combining a programming element with a language processing technique, we hoped to allow the students to identify the word and conversation style that online predators may use.  Raising the topic of online predators with teenage students is a difficult conversation but not one that should be avoided. 

“The students are far more aware and engaged in different social media platforms than even professional IT industry adults can keep track of.   By providing the students the ability to recognise what, the often long and gradual, process of online exploitation may contain, we hope that they can avoid or alert to any risks they may face.”

Debbie McCutcheon, who looks after the cyber programme at Skills Development Scotland, added: “I’d like to say a big thank you to Cyber Safe Scotland, RGU, the schools and the pupils for making this event such a success.

“Online safety is so important nowadays, but it’s still essential that we teach our young people about online protection in an inspiring and engaging way. And of course once they learn the digital skill needed to stay safe in the virtual world, many are inspired to pursue course choices, and careers, related to the field of cyber security in the real world.

“Cyber related skills are very much in demand, and cyber security is one of the fastest growing professions in the country right now. We need to make sure our young talent are ready and able to make the most of that opportunity. Events like this will help them do that.”

Around forty S2 and S3 children from Cults Academy, Oldmachar Academy, Harlaw Academy and Turriff Academy attended, along with representatives from Aberdeenshire Council, Skills Development Scotland, Education Scotland, Orbit Agency Ltd and CyberSafe Scotland. 

Annabel Turner, from CyberSafe Scotland, commented:  “We were thrilled to be able to run the event yesterday in partnership with RGU and SDS. This was the first event, which we know of, in the UK which provided students with an opportunity to engage in constructive coding-based activities which illustrated how predators operate online and showed a mechanism by which cyber security professionals are working to try to protect young people from predatory behaviour.”

For further information about careers in cyber security please visit the DigitalWorld website.