2020 SF Digital Equity Conference Recap: Empathy and Skill Building in Cybersecurity Education
By: Varun Almaula
Tags: Equity, Cybersecurity, Education, San Francisco

2020 SF Digital Equity Conference Recap: Empathy and Skill Building in Cybersecurity Education Varun Almaula Follow Feb 25 · 8 min read

2020 SF Digital Equity Conference at Microsoft Reactor

Cyber Defenders was honored to attend last week’s Digital Equity Conference run by the City of San Francisco. Attendees spanning public, public good, non-profit, and private sectors convened to review progress and plans in achieving the city’s goal: “helping the city’s vulnerable populations bridge the digital divide and leverage technology to improve outcomes in education, employment, and health.”

What makes this conference unique is the collection of community organizations that not only connect tech with residents, but also tackle the difficult issues tech cannot solve on its own: community engagement, program intake, trust, physical presence, long term mentoring, and more. For example:

How can we successfully introduce digital literacy skills to a non-English speaking senior who does not have access to a smart phone or reliable personal mobility options, but does have a healthy distrust of online services?

As the city of San Francisco and our partners at CLTC published last year, the digital divide is increasingly about cybersecurity awareness as it is about access. We were eager to hear stories from community organizations about the real world cybersecurity challenges our fellow residents face. We must consider what consequences might be looming if we encourage vulnerable residents to use smartphones or set up digital identities with companies that use or expose personal data. While their needs to access shelter, health, and food services online are immediate, do they become ‘sitting ducks’ when navigating online threats without a support network of advice, tools, and training?

During the breakout session on “Improving Cybersecurity for our Residents + Online Life of Children and Teens” we heard specific examples of this delicate balance.

A job seeker was told that the only way she would find a job is to create a LinkedIn profile. But with her LinkedIn profile public, she was getting threats from vindictive previous employers and relationships. Sexual Orientation and Gender Inclusiveness (SOGI) training and Common Sense programs targeting cyberbullying prevention and news/media literacy provide some good starting checklists for educators…but do they provide a false sense of ‘digital literacy’ training without teaching students how cyber attacks work? Parents and educators want to create safe online spaces for children, but the children may have more literacy and awareness of the cyber attacks in their digital world than the adults. Can you describe the data privacy concerns of using Fortnite or twitch.tv without knowing anything about them?

Building Empathy

A recurring anecdote was that educators and program operators lacked cybersecurity training themselves and had no ‘go-to’ resources to point to. At this point, we introduced the concept of cybersecurity empathy for ourselves. We often focus on developing empathy for vulnerable residents who are learning how to use tools we are already comfortable with: smartphones, search engines, email, and social media. But few people of any generation have had formal training in cybersecurity and data privacy. Naturally, it feels uncomfortable bringing these topics up, let alone building educational programs around them without any guidance. One of the benefits of teaching cybersecurity is that you are constantly learning about what you don’t know and what you have fallen victim to — this is OK!

Beyond Building Checklists … Building Skills

We also want to shift the conversation from relying on checklist guides for cybersecurity training to empowering individuals with critical thinking, problem solving, and skill building paired with ethics and digital citizenship. For example…

Phishing

We can hand out a 5 minute checklist every month about what the new phishing email looks like [this month’s flavor is Coronavirus], but perhaps spending 30 minutes teaching how a basic phishing attack works is more impactful? Anyone can create a free “robert.redfield.cdc+coronavirus.alert@gmail.com” email address without using a real name, google search an organization’s email address format, use LinkedIn to get the names of people in that company, and email a personalized phishing message with a hidden hyperlink to a fake login page:

Without explicitly teaching the technical details behind email protocols and economy of underground crime, this example illustrated that there is no inherent verification of sender email addresses, data privacy trade-offs exist with social media and search engines, the economy of the attack pays out because it can scale to 100’s of messages in minutes without paying a dime, and it only takes one person to catch the bait.

Fake News

For a fake news website like the one below, we can show how easy it is to scrape the html code from the ABC website in Firefox, change the article text and links, upload it to a free website called “abc.breakingnews.squarespace.com” (or even better, pay ~$10–20 for the domain abc.breakingnews.com.co and host it), and get likes and shares after posting it on social media. Without knowing the technical details behind domain registration, html coding, or website hosting, we can quickly show how easy and cheap it is to share fake information among trusted circles.

Examples like these build critical thinking, problem solving, and hopefully interest in a field that is desperate for talent in high wage roles with long term job security.

Similar experiential learning tools we’ve used at Cyber Defenders to build these skills include board games for kids and adults, inter-generational learning with our Harry Potter themed escape room, security tools and resources for non-profits and public good organizations, and industry level skills training for high school and community college students.

Looking to the Future

This conference was invaluable; we learned from our community organizations, reaffirmed our mission, and got a stark reminder that we are just getting started on the daunting task at hand. We are eager to continue working with the city of San Francisco and its community partners to empower our fellow residents towards digital safety and employment opportunities.

Specifically we are interested in:

Running workshops with city departments to create cybersecurity awareness and skill building campaigns for our fellow residents

Running workshops and partnering with SF Digital Equity grantees to help them achieve the city’s Digital Safety guidelines for entrepreneurship, neighborhood community hub, and HW/SW technology access programs.

Doing the above, while translating interest → skills → employment for underrepresented talent in a talent hungry cybersecurity industry. We believe that: (1) digital safety basics are introduced in conjunction with digital literacy basics (2) we must ‘ladder up’ awareness into empowerment by building skills instead of using fear tactics (3) building digital resilience in one builds digital resilience for many due to community networks and employment opportunities

.

.

.

And before you go, checkout some highlights of the conference below…

Highlights From Presentations

To get a taste of the wonderful presentations and groups at the conference, here are some highlights that inspired us on addressing the digital divide from the [Education], [Workforce], and [City/Social Services] perspectives:

City Of San Francisco Digital Equity Team + San Francisco Public Library

[Workforce] Most major employers exclusively accept candidates online

[Workforce] 80% of middle skill jobs require digital skills

[Education] Homework assignments require internet access, students assessments completed online

GAP: 1/8 SF residents lack high speed internet, 1/7 lack basic digital literacy

San Francisco Digital Equity Study

Accenture and JVS : SF Bay Area Workforce Study

[Education/Workforce] SF Bay Area will continue to have a massive skills gap due to declining population growth + low unemployment, which requires a proportional investment in targeted digital skills training with partners like JVS

Accenture Analysis

Electronic Frontier Foundation and SFPL : Cybersecurity and Information Literacy

A handy quick guide to combat typical phishing emails and misinformation on the web

EFF and SFPL

dev/Mission : STEM/CS skills training

[Education/Workforce] Continuing on this theme, there is a mismatch of digital skills training in education and employment diversity for people of color

dev/Mission

MonkeyBrains.net and City of San Francisco Fiber to Home

[City/Social Services] Providing free open-fiber in SF affordable housing units and community centers has a multiplicative return

Monkey Brains

Other great presentations included:

UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations

[City/Social Services] Programs focused on socially aware telehealth: transitioning telehealth from extracting marginal benefits from a healthy affluent population to extracting larger benefits for the underserved.

Chinatown Community Development Center

[Education, City/Social Services] Bringing digital literacy to low income seniors via inter-generational learning with youth

Success Centers

[Education, Workforce] Empowering marginalized youth to build businesses and earn income via experiential learning in entrepreneurship, branding, and marketing. One success story used these skills to turn her passion for hair styling into her own Instagram business for a new stream of income.

Felton Institute

[Education, Workforce] Bridging the digital divide with literacy and professional skills training, so that an untapped workforce can participate in the labor market

Twitter and Compass Neighbor Nest

[Education/Workforce] Moving at-risk families and homeless from basic digital literacy towards self-sufficiency via training and supportive services

St. Anthony’s Technology Tech Lab

[Education/Workforce/City Social/Services] Free Tenderloin tech lab for homeless with individual training and mentorship. In collaboration with ZenDesk, created ‘app-less’, mobile friendly, Link-SF portal to link services to those who need it.

Lighthouse Access Technology Department for Blind and Visually Impaired

Individualized training for the visually impaired to utilize existing digital accessibility tools. Also partners with tech companies in design, accessibility reviews, and user testing to build with visually impaired users instead of for them. For example, check out the Soundscape project!

All these organizations are doing great things, please click on their names and read more about them if their mission resonates with you!