Cyber Lions, a group of Penn State Berks IST and SRA students dedicated to raise the awareness of cyber crimes in the local community, volunteered to help seniors avoid scams in the Berks County “Scams Against Seniors” Symposiums on Saturday, October 20, 2018 at the Reading Scottish Rite Auditorium. This is the first of a series of symposiums planned to raise awareness cybercrimes and scams targeting seniors and to protect seniors from scammers and cyber criminals. The event was funded by Michael N. Meitzler Award and supported by a collation of several local and state level organizations, including Penn State Berks.

The symposium started at 8:30 a.m. with opening remarks Tom McMahon, former mayor of Reading. In his welcome, Tom McMahon pointed out Cyber Lions and encouraged seniors to ask Penn State Berks students questions on how to protect cell phones and computers.

The keynote speakers of the symposium included Rev. Dr. Ronald W. Costen, PhD. & Attorney at Law-Elder Justice Specialist and Mary Bach from AARP’s Consumer Task Force.  The symposium program also included several workshops.  David Shallcross, the director of the Elder Protection Unit of the State Attorney General’s office presented how to defend against phone and ATM scammers. Pam Gockley, the founder of the Camel Project, run a workshop on bullying and cyberbullying. Jeffery Bingham of First Financial Group spoke about the importance of financial planning.

Penn State Berks students, Allison Piech, Emily Pfender, Ryan Fletcher, Jason Jiang, Jared McNeil, and Michael Bacon, provided seniors with information about securing their devices and helped to run the symposium.

The symposium ended at 1:00pm.

Cyber Lions plan to organize other events and workshops in the community to educate seniors about cyber scams and teach them how to secure their devices through one-to-one sessions.  They also plan to involve more Penn State Berks students in their activities.

To celebrate Cyber Security Awareness month, The CVCLAB held a Cybersecurity Discovery Day for middle students in the Penn State Educational Partnership Program (PEPP) on October 24, 2018. The program involved a day-long field trip to the Penn State Berks Campus. Middle school students learned how to be safe online, scramble secret messages, break codes, and learn about cybersecurity careers during the workshop. In addition, our guest speaker Pam Gockley talked about cyberbullying.

The curriculum of the workshop was designed by a grant from NSA’s GenCyber program which aims to increase interest in cybersecurity careers and diversity in the cybersecurity workforce of the nation, help all students understand correct and safe online behavior and how they can be good digital citizens, and improve teaching methods for delivery of cybersecurity content in K-12 curricula. Penn State Berks hosted two GenCyber summer camps in 2017.

Penn State Berks 2017 GenCyber programs end with a high node. On February 24, 2018 15 junior high school students from the Penn State Educational Partnership Program (PEPP) were very busy scrambling messages, breaking codes, and a learning about cyber security careers in a workshop, which was the last of a series activities funded by GenCyber program of the National Security Agency.  In the last event of the program, PEPP students learned about cybersecurity and cryptography with a little twist: they did not use any computers.  PEPP students designed and created encryption devices using sticks, cardboards, glue, and. They learned working principles of the Enigma Encryption machine.  Furthermore, they learned about on safe-behavior.

The GenCyber program provides cybersecurity experiences for students and teachers at the K-12 level.  The program was established by the NSA and partially funded by the NSF with the vision of being part of the solution to the Nation’s shortfall of skilled cybersecurity professionals as we become even more reliant on cyber-based technology in every aspect of our daily lives.  The objectives of the program are to increase interest in cybersecurity careers and diversity in the cybersecurity workforce of the nation, help all students understand correct and safe on-line behavior and how they can be good digital citizens, and improve teaching methods for delivery of cybersecurity content in K-12 curricula.