Bringing CyberSecurity Career Awareness to Your Business & Information Technology Education Course

Not a CyberSecurity expert?  That's ok, but we see daily stories about how CyberSecurity is impacting personal and business activities.  As both youth and adults examine policies and practices that guide our interaction with technology there is frequently a desire to learn more.  The Wisconsin Academic Standards for Business & Information Technology listed below detail a few potential areas to support significant opportunities while diving deeper into CyberSecurity discussions across multiple courses.

• Accounting & Finance Standard AF1.a: Identify current structures and regulations affecting accounting principles and their effects on businesses.
• Personal Finance Standard: BIT.PF4: Students will examine factors that affect incurring debt, cost of credit and legal aspects of credit in order to remain both creditworthy and financially secure.
• Business Law & Ethics Standard: BIT.BLE7: Students will evaluate ways in which ethical concerns affect emerging technologies and their impact on society.
• Global Business Standard: BIT.GB1: Students will analyze the impact of the global business environment on business, consumers and economies.
• Information Technology Standard: BIT.IT2: Students will evaluate and maintain current and emerging hardware as it relates to configuring, installing, upgrading, diagnosing and repairing.
• Networking Standard: BIT.NT1: Students will analyze network system needs and requirements.
• Programming Standard: BIT.PR1: Students will assess customer needs and develop an appropriate software or application solution.
• additionally, the six career and technical education that are shared by all CTE teachers support CyberSecurity academic connections to Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication and Collaboration; Career Development; Environment, Health and Safety; Global and Cultural Awareness; Information, Media and Technology; and Leadership.

Although there are currently limited resources tagged as Cyber and CyberSecurity in WISELearn (Wisconsin's Open Education Resource Portal), we encourage educators to add and tag additional resources as they are used throughout the upcoming school year.  Displayed below are a few resources that may be of interest for educators to start the exploration of how to integrate CyberSecurity topics into your classroom discussions:

• CyberSeek: To help close the cybersecurity skills gap, CyberSeek provides detailed, actionable data about supply and demand in the cybersecurity job market.  This project is supported by the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), a program of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S. Department of Commerce
• STATE OF WISCONSIN Cybersecurity Strategy:  This strategy document provides a high-level overview of all the major cybersecurity-related efforts being undertaken in the State of Wisconsin through robust security and continuity programs.  Ensuring the State of Wisconsin is secure and resilient online is an essential component of building a more competitive and productive economy.  Complimentary registration is available for students to attend the upcoming September 10, 2018 Wisconsin's 6th Annual Governor's CyberSecurity Summit.
• Microsoft Imagine Academy:  Microsoft Imagine Academy provides up-to-date curricula and resources to train and certify students and educators on Microsoft products and technologies in relationship to Computer Science, IT Infrastructure, Data Science and Productivity.  Wisconsin schools may participate at no cost as funding is secured for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years through the Wisconsin IT Education Grant program.
• Technical Incentive Grant Certifications in the Information Technology Career Cluster: The Career and Technical Education (CTE) Incentive Grant program was established on December 11, 2013, by Wisconsin Act 59. Grants from this program incentivize school districts to offer high-quality career and technical education programs that mitigate workforce shortages in key industries and occupations. The grants reimburse up to $1,000 for each pupil in a school district earning an approved industry-recognized certification.
• Cyber Attack Threat Map:  Real time coverage of cyber attacks detailing time, type of attack, source and targets.
• Future Business Leaders of America:  Over 200 Wisconsin schools participate with the largest career student business organization in the world. Each year, FBLA-PBL helps over 230,000 members prepare for careers in business.  Currently, there are 38 high school regional/state/national competitive events and 3 middle level events related to the Information Technology Career Cluster.
• CyberPatriots:  Connect with Wisconsin schools (Baraboo HS, Chippewa Falls HS, Madison Memorial HS, Marquette University HS, Mukwonago HS, Sun Prairie, and Waukesha County Technical College HS partners) who utilize curriculum developed by industry partners with the Air Force Association to inspire K-12 students and join over 5000 teams of students competing in virtual environments that represent operating systems and are tasked with finding cybersecurity vulnerabilities within the images and hardening the system while maintaining critical services. 
• GenCyber Camps:  The GenCyber program provides summer cybersecurity camp experiences at no costs to students and teachers at the K-12 level. Attendees may receive  a $500 stipend for your participation. (You will receive $250 of that after your completion of the camp week. The other $250 is contingent upon completion of implementing at least one camp lesson plan.)  Multiple Wisconsin events are annual scheduled as referenced online. Events were sponsored in 2018 by UW-Green Bay, Marquette University, and Waukesha County Technical College.
• CyberCorps Scholarship For Service:  a unique program designed to increase and strengthen the cadre of federal information assurance professionals that protect the government's critical information infrastructure.  

As educators engage in these educational opportunities, please consider adding additional resources to WISELearn with the tag "CyberSecurity" and align your resource to one of the many related academic standards for Business & Information Technology Education.  Finally, please promote any related resources you contribute to WISELearn through the WI DPI Business & IT Education / FBLA / WEBIT Google Community.