TWC SBE: Option: Small: Building Public Cyber Health - Designing and Testing the Efficacy of a School-Focused, Gamification Approach to Create a Secure Computing Environment

随着网络攻击的频率和复杂性的增加，创建安全计算环境的方法必须超越从外部保护的技术障碍，从内部建立网络健康的协作文化。使用在线激励措施已被证明是提高个人参与任务的有效工具。该项目探讨了使用在线激励和社交网络，通过合并组织内个人的微观网络行为来改善组织的网络健康，以创建一个更安全的计算环境。学校是测试这种网络安全新模式的理想场所。教师，教师和家长的动机，以保持学生的安全和保障。此外，今天的大多数学生都非常精通技术，这将技术作为一种理想的手段来教授学生网络风险以及如何避免这些风险，并加强良好的网络行为，同时减少不良行为。该项目将学校作为一个系统，通过使用数字介导的干预措施来改善和维护网络安全，这些干预措施将联合收割机在线心理激励与学生参与和社交网络相结合，以加强社会和权威人物的影响力。简而言之，该项目的总体目标是通过让多个利益攸关方参与进来，帮助建立一个更强大的公共网络健康系统，从而“建立网络安全”。通过在三个学生群体中实施的干预实验，正在探索激励措施在建立集体网络安全意识和加强积极网络行为方面的有效性：1）第一次在学校环境和家中接受数字设备监督使用的小学生; 2）中学生是数字设备的“实验”用户，对网络安全概念的认识有限; 3）大学生被证明表现出危险的网络行为，这些行为往往使他们和其他大学利益相关者处于危险之中。 最近在学校为基础的公共卫生干预措施，以修改个人健康行为的成功通知该项目的方法，以建立公共网络健康。特别是，众所周知的健康信念模型提供了一个透镜，用于探索个人在决定是否采取该行为时，如何平衡他们对网络威胁的易感性的信念与他们对所提出的缓解行为的有效性的信念。然而，公共卫生和网络安全之间存在重大差异。特别是在公共卫生领域使用的在线激励措施，已被证明在改变个人已经知道他们应该执行和他们已经知道如何执行的行为方面最有效。这项研究将探讨通过数字设备提供的干预措施是否可以成功地改变个人目前的危险行为，并在不同年龄段引入新的安全行为。为了评估干预措施的影响，在整个研究过程中，将通过调查和监测干预实验收集有关个人网络安全知识、感知和行为的数据。如果成功，该项目中开发的新型公共网络健康干预措施将为雇用参与学生的企业、采用干预技术的其他组织以及更广泛的网络社区提供长期的好处。在短期内，该项目将通过提高学生参与者以及教师和家长的网络安全知识，感知和行为，从而降低他们的风险，从而直接受益。此后，开发的技术将被其他学校和组织广泛使用，随着个人变得更加安全，该项目的影响有可能被参与者在组织环境之外的安全行为进一步放大。此外，特定的高危人群是研究的目标？两个参与的学生群体为我们的研究提供了独特的挑战，如果我们的研究成功，他们也会获得独特的奖励。小学生将来自北卡罗来纳州一所完全由少数民族青年组成的特许学校，这些少数民族青年面临着重大的社会、经济和教育挑战。这所中学位于经济困难的北卡罗来纳州东部农村地区，正在努力为学生提供在更广泛的全球经济中取得成功所需的技术技能。

As the frequency and complexity of cyber attacks increase, approaches to create secure computing environments must look beyond technical barriers that protect from the outside to building a collaborative culture of cyber health from the inside. Use of online incentives have been shown to be an effective tool for enhancing an individual's engagement with a task. This project explores the use of online incentives and social networking to improve an organization's cyber health by coalescing the micro cyber behaviors of individuals within the organization to create a more secure computing environment. Schools represent an ideal setting in which to test such a new model for cybersecurity. Teachers, faculty and parents are motivated to keep students safe and secure. Further, most students today are very technologically savvy, which introduces technology as an ideal means by which to teach students about cyber risks and how to avoid those risks--and to reinforce good cyber behaviors while reducing bad behaviors. This project approaches the school as a system in which cybersecurity is improved and maintained through the use of digitally-mediated interventions that combine online psychological incentives for student engagement and social networking to reinforce social and authority figure influences. In short, the project broadly aims to "build cybersecurity in" by engaging multiple stakeholders to help build a more robust public cyber health system. The effectiveness of incentives in building collective cybersecurity awareness and reinforcing positive cyber behaviors is being explored through intervention experiments that are implemented in three student populations: 1) elementary school students who are being exposed to supervised use of digital devices, both in a school environment and at home, for the first time; 2) middle school students who are "experimental" users of digital devices and have limited awareness of cybersecurity concepts; and 3) college students who have been shown to demonstrate risky cyber behaviors that often put them and other university stakeholders at risk. Recent success in school-based public health interventions to modify personal health behavior informs the project's approach to building public cyber health. In particular, the well-known Health Belief Model provides a lens for exploring how individuals balance belief in their susceptibility to a cyber threat against their belief in the effectiveness of the proposed mitigating behavior when deciding whether to adopt that behavior. However, there are important differences between public health and cybersecurity. Online incentives, used in public health in particular, have been shown to be most effective in modifying behaviors that individuals already know they should perform and that they already know how to perform. This research will explore whether interventions delivered through digital devices can be successful in both changing an individual's current risky behavior and introducing new safe behaviors, at various ages. To assess the impact of the interventions, throughout the study data will be collected on individuals' cybersecurity knowledge, perceptions and behaviors using surveys and by monitoring intervention experiments. If successful, the novel public cyber health interventions developed in this project will provide benefits that cascade over the long-term to businesses that hire participating students, additional organizations that adopt the intervention techniques, and the broader cyber community. In the near term, this project will directly benefit student participants, as well as teachers and parents, by improving their cybersecurity knowledge, perceptions, and behaviors, thus reducing their risks. Thereafter, the techniques developed will be made widely available for use by other schools and organizations, and as individuals become more secure, the project's impacts have the potential to be further amplified by participants' security behaviors outside of the organizational environment. Further, specific at-risk groups are being targeted in the study?two of the student populations participating provide unique challenges to our research as well as unique rewards if our research is successful. The elementary school population will be drawn from a charter school composed exclusively of minority youth in North Carolina that face significant social, economic, and educational challenges. The middle school partner, located in a rural, economically-challenged eastern North Carolina, is struggling to provide the technical skills that its students need to succeed in the wider global economy.