Inspiration session P@CT: Professionalising Cybersecurity in Education

On 4 June 2019, TNO organised an inspirational cybersecurity session for educators of the School for ICT from ROC Mondriaan. 31 lecturers from both ICT and general education streams participated in two interactive cybersecurity workshops. The session concluded with an in-depth discussion about how to incorporate cybersecurity in the curriculum. This inspiration session contributes to HSD’s goal found in the recently released Human Capital Agenda 2019-2022 to train educators in the domain of cybersecurity.

Introduction to Cybersecurity

From the perspective of small to medium business-owners, Petra Vermeulen, Scientist Innovator at TNO, started by setting the scene of the cybersecurity domain with a brief outline of current trends. The workshop demonstrated how security runs as a common thread through everyone and everything and also what the influence of human factors on cybersecurity is. Matthijs Veenendaal, Senior Scientist Integrator at TNO, continued by describing how national security services such as police and the military deal with cyber threats. The workshop concluded with the impact of technological advancements on future job requirements.

Hands-on Hacklab

The educators of ROC Mondriaan took matters into their own hands to discover what can go wrong when you connect computers to a network and just how much security is enough security. Under guidance of the workshop leader Jacco van Buuren, Cybersecurity Consultant at TNO, lecturers investigated vulnerabilities within services, but also vulnerabilities in IP networks and the Internet. The participants experienced what happens during a cybersecurity incident and, themselves, followed several steps to respond during an incident.

From Knowledge to Education

Building on their newly-developed knowledge, the lecturers used the afternoon for discussing how these cybersecurity trends can be more integrated into the curriculum of vocational education (mbo). This is especially relevant considering new curriculum requirements making cybersecurity an important part of education.

Societal Value in a Wider Context

This inspiration session is one of the many activities that the P@CT programme realised since its inception in 2016 and contributes to HSD’s goal as depicted in the recently released Human Capital Agenda Security 2019-2022. One of the goals of the P@CT programme in the Agenda is to develop cybersecurity skills and to train at least 20 educators in the cybersecurity domain. By organising this session, TNO makes a societal contribution by:

• Increasing the level of knowledge amongst lecturers,
• Improving the effectiveness of ICT education programmes,
• Increasing the quality of ICT-education on vocational level education
• Improving the connection between ICT education and the job market

Partners involved: TNO, Roc Mondriaan (school voor ICT).