Educating schools on how to avoid data pitfalls

Chantelle Ralevska is the founder of Psyber, a team of cybersecurity experts, teachers and principals who are making cybersecurity education accessible to everyone.

With her mum they run evidence-based cybersecurity solutions that are proven to reduce risk, by creating engaging and innovative programs through in-person sessions and course-based materials. A group they focus include school-aged children, who they say make ideal targets for online criminals.

"About two years ago we identified a huge gap in cybersecurity education," Chantelle said. "Cyersecurity is a part of the national curriculum. Schools have access not only to student data - health, names, dates of birth - all this information that criminals can use to steal their identity but access to parents' financial information. Schools are a data mine for criminals.

"With technological advancements like ChatGPT and deepfake technology, we've seen that cyber attacks are becoming a lot more sophisticated, making them harder to spot. Education is becoming the next big industry that attackers are targeting because they are lot more vulnerable.

"A total of 99 per cent of cyber attacks are a result of human error. Often someone accidentally makes a mistake and that leads to a huge data breach."

Chantelle said parent education was equally as important. "One of the most devastating things is identity theft. In one case, it took years for the parents to pick up on it. We're sharing so much information about our children online and so much earlier than ever before, so their digital footprint is online for practically the entirety of their lives, and criminals are taking this data, taking out loans, credit cards, in these children's names. You don't think of doing a credit check for your child."

Tina says there was a big need for greater training, even in primary schools. "I was the Dean of a school for 11 years, and being the main contact for parents, I found that they were so afraid to take on their child's passwords, and didn't want to cross any ownership boundaries," she said.

"They want their children in control of the information on their phones. Some of these kids were in Year 4. Our aim is to continually train students - on what not to share."