“I’ve photographed many immersions for Frontier. But this was the first one where I’ve truly felt like a participant, soaking up the experience and knowledge alongside all of the amazing business leaders who joined us on the trip. The city, the stops, the speakers—everything worked so well together. It’s hard to capture the energy of it all, but hopefully these photos can do just that.”
Inside every organization, there’s a threat lurking around the corner: cyberattacks. Thankfully for you, we’re your hack against the hackers. As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we’re starting a conversation with companies across the country about how they can transform their team culture into one of compliance and care. Every week, we’ll bring you a new story that showcases just how critical this conversation is to your company’s entire success. It’s not just your data at stake, but your profit and reputation, too.
We recently sat down with Chris Dovi, the executive director of CodeVA, a nonprofit that promotes computer science education throughout Virginia. Along with the rest of his team, he’s on a critical mission to make sure we’re teaching both kids and adults the foundational basics (and then some) of computer science.
His take on cyber security? If we can teach digital literacy, then we can start to curb a lot of the behavior that leads to those threats. If it sounds familiar, it should. That’s the exact approach we take when working with companies to shift their employees’ behavior cyber habits.
Here, he’s sharing insight into how, culturally, we can start to promote a new kind of literacy.
Tell us, is it really important for everyone to know how their computers work?
True cyber security is completely dependent on understanding the field of computer science. In our modern world, our modern economy, and our modern environment, computer science is a knowledge that everyone needs. It’s on par with needing to understand English and math to be successful. And yet, it doesn’t get taught as much as it needs to. We’re working to change that.
When CodeVA started in 2013, there was really one class, and it was an Advanced Placement level class for high schoolers that was very high-level. Roughly 1,500 students took the AP computer science test that year. That’s it. Within the next few years as Virginia adopts its new computer science Standards of Learning (we wrote the law requiring those SOLs) every kid in the state will learn computer science, including coding, algorithms, and critical thinking.
Why start teaching computer science at such a young age?
If you ask any adult when the first time they went on the Internet was, they’ll probably know. If you ask a 12-year-old, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. It’s all they’ve ever known. But it’s still the Wild West. Computer science includes computer ethics. Teaching them why they should or shouldn’t do something online, or with their bank account or personal information, these are things that are important to computer programmers and to computer users. And understanding the computer science behind why it’s important, like how hackers use your information, that’s important to understand, too. We need to take the mystery out of how our modern world works.
We’re also not just teaching kids how to work on a computer. We’re teaching them critical thinking skills, those same skills that ultimately make us better learners in all other areas of study, like math and science and even language arts. Critical thinking also is, well, it’s a critical skill a workforce needs to ensure the integrity of a future employer’s cyber security. That native knowledge of what is ethical, what is good decision making, and what makes for good computer security habits is easier when we start teaching it at a young age. A lot of adults don’t have this locked in yet.
Why do you think that is?
Adults of 2016 are not digital natives, and we’re living in a strange and unfamiliar world. Consider that nearly every one of us today has a smartphone. These are magic portals to everything in our life. But that magic is something we don’t fully comprehend, and that makes us vulnerable. I can get to my bank, all of my account files, all of my credit cards. But I can also use it to play. I can watch videos on it. I can play Angry Birds. I can shop on it—giving up a lot of personal information. Every time I do that, I’m being tracked and seen. It might be a legitimate tracking by the company I’m interacting or transacting with, or it could be illegitimate. It could be somebody phishing and watching to see what I’m doing.
So the hardest thing about getting adults to understand the threats of cyber security is helping them see how much power they have in the phones they carry around all day. Especially because it’s difficult for people to see the difference between how and when people behave when they use their personal device and when they use their company computer. They’re both screens. Your brain just assumes they’re the same thing. But it’s one thing to risk your personal data; it’s another thing to risk the security of your employer.
How can we stop our brains from making that jump and instead see how much power we have?
We have to pull back the curtain and showcase the science behind this technology. We’re at a point in time where we’re experiencing a big momentous shift in how we understand the world. Think about the Gutenberg press. By making books a mass-produced commodity, it essentially gave everyone access to reading. Before the Gutenberg press, reading was considered its own sort of magic. Reading, writing, and the ability to store and transfer through time knowledge and ideas was something reserved for clergy members. It was mysterious to the average person. Not only was there a technological change with the invention, there was a philosophical change as well. Knowledge is power, and suddenly even the common man could possess that power. We pulled back the curtain.
It’s the same today. Our “digital clergy,” if you will, have been Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos--the tech entrepreneurs who have amassed vast fortunes based on what really amounts to their ownership of massive amounts of data. But now, anyone with a little training and the right program can develop an app. And as more businesses are becoming tech companies skinned as banks or retail stores or music retailers, those businesses need a digitally literate workforce to keep pace. Data--the ability to utilize Big Data as a tool to sell or to invent or to discover or to bank--has us entering a new age in human history, not unlike the transformation brought about by the last time knowledge once reserved for a few was suddenly in the hands of everyone.
So, in essence, we have to promote a modern-day literacy.
Yes, exactly. Just how the press prompted widespread literacy, so too does teaching computer science. It’s just a different kind of literacy—digital literacy.
Just because National Cyber Security Awareness Month is coming to a close doesn’t mean the conversation has to end. If you’re ready to have the Frontier team help you prevent cyber threats by working with your team to shift their behavior when it comes to computer habits, contact Taylor, [email protected].
There was a time when we thought of frontiers as geographical limits – crossing mountain ranges, deserts, or oceans. Today our earthbound frontiers are more abstract – boundaries of science and politics and intellect.
This week, we’ll be in Nairobi at ICT4D working in collaboration with our NGO, tech, and African government friends and partners to address how we cross a huge canyon. Not a physical one, but the digital canyon that separates rich from poor. A gap that appears to be growing as the more connected countries pull away from the less connected countries.
Over executive salons at the conference, we’ll be asking the question of what the world could look like if the huge technological power of global business could blend with the on-the-ground capabilities of leading NGOs and government agencies. Could they really work together, and how might we harness that potential to ensure we meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals?
This is the kind of work that captures our philosophy on being an influence firm. We admit that’s a lofty term, one that a lot of people don’t always understand. When we say we are an influence firm, what we’re saying is that we believe in the power of shifting human behavior and markets to create sustainable change.
That’s why we host salons instead of something like a focus group. Fundamentally, the spirit of a salon exists as much more than an executive meeting. Instead, salons draw inspiration from the French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, representing a rebirth of ideas and a revival of intellectual culture. They’re more honest, because the goal is to embark on a journey toward discourse and discovery and solutions, not to merely comprehend and analyze a complicated issue.
We’ll be deploying a variety of our executive board scenarios along with ideation techniques and strategy tools to make sure we’re stretching the amazing intellect in the room. We’re deeply appreciative to Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, and NetHope for convening the conference and allowing us to be part of it. Their amazing work burdens us with a responsibility to create a dialogue that leads to significantly increased support being delivered to the communities that need it most.
