More than 10,000 students have taken advantage of a new resource to learn about cybersecurity and the actions they can take to protect themselves and their organizations. Ransomware attacks remain a serious threat to infrastructure and industries worldwide. “In order for policy makers, industry officials, and consumers to be prepared, they need to understand how to recognize the risks and take steps to combat potential attacks,” said Charles Harry, Associate Research Professor in the Public Policy and Information Schools, and the Director of the Center for Governance of Technology and Systems (GoTech).
That’s where Cybersecurity for Everyone comes in. Launched through the online learning platform Coursera last summer, the course invites anyone who wants to learn the basics of cybersecurity to participate in the self-paced class taught by Harry. In the first six months after its July launch the course was in the top 5% of all single courses on the Coursera platform. In the month of January alone, more than 2,300 additional students enrolled.
The course has had lucrative results in generating interest and engaging its target audience: non-technical people. “Many participants have zero background in technology and feel that the course is the perfect introduction to learning the ins and outs of cybersecurity,” said Harry. Students come from a range of backgrounds and are based all over the world. Harry says that while many professionals receive cybersecurity training from their employer once a year, it usually stops at advising employees not to click on suspicious emails.
According to Harry, cybersecurity becomes a public policy concern when cyber attacks stop being only a private problem and start to become a public concern. He explained that we have begun to see a new kind of cyber attack. While attacks aimed at private business were common, attacks that target key systems that impact millions of Americans are on the rise. “Such as the Colonial Pipeline attack last summer that impacted computerized equipment and caused fuel shortages along the Southeastern coast of the U.S.,” Harry offered as an example.
“Having a grasp on cybersecurity allows policy makers to categorize and understand the consequences, as well as infer policy interventions in order to reduce strategic risk to a state or country,” Harry said. The Cybersecurity for Everyone class enables students to start making the connections between technology supporting human function that generates larger system dynamics, such as infrastructure, international relationships, and more, much like the courses offered to public policy students enrolled at the University of Maryland.
Due to the success Cybersecurity for Everyone has had in its first year, Coursera has contracted Harry to develop two more courses to round out the course package, which he is preparing to record and launch in the coming months. The first of the two new classes will focus on strategic approaches to cybersecurity and generating tactics for defense; and the second will center on measuring strategic risk, and serve as a kind of final capstone for participants. Harry explains that by the time a student is finished with all three courses, they will have a better understanding not only of threat actors and consequences, but also of how to organize defenses, specifically how to assess risk in order to make better decisions and prioritize resources.
Harry is thrilled about the achievement of the program so far and eager to see how it advances. “The course is a big boon for the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. It highlights that we do bring that expertise and puts us on the map of doing cybersecurity here at the school,” said Harry.