Madness, right? Let’s compare how we (don’t) teach cybersecurity skills in our schools to how we *do* offer first aid training.
Last week we were in Newfoundland doing digital skills outreach, cybersecurity and emerging technologies outreach with Skills Newfoundland and schools across the Avalon Peninsula. While out there the mighty Micaela, a teacher in her first years of practice at Waterford High School asked if we might try out the new Google dorking lesson I’d developed after taking The Canadian Centre for Open Source Intellence’s analyst course. (The Canadian OSINT Centre).
Dorking is an interesting case in point. It’s something anyone can do. You don’t even have to learn how these days because AI will create the dork commands for you. What it essentially does is use specific operators like file type or site type to enhance a search. You could just type in “Canada’s role in the War of 1812” in a Google search, but if you typed in: “war of 1812″ “Canada’s role” filetype:pdf OR filetype:ppt OR filetype:doc) (site:edu OR site:gov OR site:k12.* OR site:sch.* you return a search of only documents (PDF, PPT, DOC) from education sites (.edu, .gov, .k12) that include the text “war of 1812” and “Canada’s role”. Try both and see the shocking difference in results. I’m told we shouldn’t teach this because students might find nasty things on the internet. Better that they do that on their own, I suppose, because those nasty things are on the internet anyway.
I’ve been given various excuses over the years including that this sort of material might be upsetting to students or that teaching students these skills will make them dangerous. There are interesting parallels between first aid and cybersecurity education that I’d like to consider.
First aid training is inherently unsettling (you’re learning how to act in an emergency situation where your lack of action could lead to death – it’s intense!), but no one is about to say we’re cancelling first aid because some might find it upsetting. The value of having more people with these essential skills is obvious when the blood starts flowing.
Cyber injuries through crime and foreign attacks cost Canada in the vacinity of four billion dollars in 2024. For comparison, we spent 5.75 billion in total on national policing in the same year. These cyber loses have huge emotional and physical costs, but that doesn’t move the needle on public education’s engagement with cybersecurity skills development even with all that financial woe. We’ve also had a rash of cyber-attacks aimed *at* education but this doesn’t stop the ‘head in the sand’ approach to cyber everyone feels most comfortable with.
Learning first aid would also allow you to hurt people more effectively, but that’s hardly an excuse not to teach it. The skills themselves aren’t good or bad, it’s how they’re used which matters. A doctor could go all Hannibal Lector to great effect, but that’s hollywood. The vast majority learn medicine for good. How would learning cyber skills be any different?
A student asked me why I’d be teaching them to ‘hack’ at our first dorking session. My reply was, “I’m not teaching you how to hack, I’m showing you how technology works – this is literally how Google search is meant to work. There are bad people out there using your ignorance against you, I’m giving you some digital kung-fu to fight back with.”
I only wish more education, union and ministry officials felt the same way. If I see cyber-education at all it’s performative poster making during cyber month in October, but these are skills we can teach that not only defend our students, their familiies and communities, but also opens pathways to high-demand careers. Cyber-skills development isn’t someone else’s job. We languish as one of the least digitally skills developed countries because public education isn’t prioritizing this increasingly important skillset.
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| Signal Hill where Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901. In the century and a quarter since communications technologies have radically changed the world. We need to keep up! |
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| A grey fox on a hike around Signal Hill – we need to start getting craftier like foxes with how we deliver digital skills development in Canadian education. |
The peril involved in it is (and this might come to a shock to you) but there are many nasty things on the internet and this kind of advanced search skill might uncover them. But our preference in education is to hope that the digital ignornance we have so carefully nutured over the past two decades will protect students from that nastiness – I can tell you it isn’t working.
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