Session
Organizer 1: Juliana Novaes, ARTICLE 19
Organizer 2: Emmanuel Nii-Akwei Mingle, Ghana Code Club
Organizer 3: Rodrigo Alexandre, Internet Society
Speaker 1: Ilona Stadnik, Civil Society, Eastern European Group
Speaker 2: Eric Sowah Badger, Private Sector, African Group
Speaker 3: Samaila Atsen Bako, Technical Community, African Group
Speaker 4: Nidhi Singh, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 5: Sávyo Vinícius de Morais, Government, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Juliana Novaes, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Emmanuel Nii-Akwei Mingle, Private Sector, African Group
Eileen Cejas , Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Round Table - Circle - 90 Min
Cybersecurity practices and mechanisms: What are the good cybersecurity practices and international mechanisms that already exist? Where do those mechanisms fall short and what can be done to strengthen the security and to reinforce the trust?
Ensuring a safe digital space: How should governments, Internet businesses and other stakeholders protect citizens, including vulnerable citizens, against online exploitation and abuse?
This session aims to tackle the issue of cybersecurity given the context of the pandemic and the transition from traditional education to online education. It addresses the challenges for privacy and safety of children and youth, who are the most impacted by online educational platforms and the roles of each stakeholder in improving the trust of digital educational spaces for the purpose of expanding teaching and learning to the Internet.
It aims, therefore, to tackle the policy question of good privacy an cybersecurity practices and international mechanisms that oculd be useful to increase trust in online education.
Besides this, it also addresses the actions and measures taken by different stakeholders, including government, civil society, technical community and private sector to address the issue by creating a safer environment for education, considering the fact that underaged groups are especially exposed and vulnerable in this context.
4. Quality Education
4.4
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
9.2
Targets: The provision of safe online environments for online education is a key element to ensuring inclusive and equitable education and lifelong opportunities. Adequate cybersecurity measures ensure that online education environments are resilient, secure and stable and that the personal data of users is protected. This encourages universities and schools to expand the opportunities of access to educational resources through the Internet and avoid that the provision of education is even more impacted by COVID 19. Cybersecurity applied to educational platforms ensure a commercial environment surrounded by trust, which brings opportunities for business development and expansion of the educaiton sector beyond national borders and providing incentives for local education initiatives, fostering the achievement of SDG 9, which refers to industry, innovation and infrastructure.
Description:
The COVID-19 emergency has brought light to the importance of the Internet as a tool for accessing education and academic activities. The migration of schools and universities to the remote mode also raises awareness on the possible risks and threats that derive from sharing personal information of children and youth in educational platforms, videoconference tools and all the environments associated with the provision of educational services on the Internet. Thinking through the shift of education to the Internet, it is important to reflect on the security and privacy of students, especially those who are underaged, who, on a daily basis, share their personal information online as they go about their educational activities. Besides this, it is essential to ensure that online education providers are well equipped and the huge amounts of data they keep is well secured to protect all the users involved. This session, therefore, aims to discuss the issue of cybersecurity in the context of Online Education, in a workshop with a high representation from young people, who are the group most impacted by educational services moving online and are underrepresented in the discussions about privacy and cybersecurity.
The questions that it aims to address are:
What are the new forms of cybersecurity challenges that arise with the transition from traditional education to online education and what are their impacts for students?
What has been done so far by different stakeholders to tackle the issues? What are examples of policies and actions taken by governments and the private sector?
What are the remaining challenges and opportunities and how can youth be more involved in policy making regarding cybersecurity in their educational environments?
The first outcome of this session will be to raise awareness to the issues involving cybersecurity that derive from the migration of educational services to the online mode and the digitalization of the sector as a whole which was catalyzed by the pandemic. This discussion aims to capacitate participants to disseminate information on this issue and produce relevant impact by influencing governments to invest in cybersecurity in the public education system, private sector to invest in security-related tools and projects, academia to produce relevant knowledge about the topic and civil society to defend the interests of students and those involved in online education.
The second outcome of the session will be the creation of a network of young people from different parts of the world interested in policymaking in the field of online education and cybersecurity. This group will be engaged in the topic by producing relevant material and participating in policymaking activities regarding cybersecurity. This group will continue to be in contact and draft youth messages regarding this issue.
As a result, the session aims to produce relevant and long-term impact on the topic on various multistakeholder actors.
The workshop will be organized in the form of a debate and will be guided by the following questions: (a) What are the new forms of threat that arise with the transition from traditional education to online education and what are their impacts for students?
This first question will be introduced by the moderator and the first speaker will address it during 15 minutes, highlighting the main issues involved and mentioning at least one real-life case. After the intervention from the first speaker, the audience will be invited to participate in the discussion during the next 15 minutes.
(b) What has been done so far by different stakeholders to tackle the issues? The second question will be introduced by the moderator and the second and third speaker will address solutions and opportunities found by the private sector and governments during 20 minutes, highlighting the main issues involved and mentioning at least two real-life cases. After the intervention from the first speaker, the audience will be invited to participate in the discussion during the next 10 minutes.
(c) What are the remaining challenges and how can youth be more involved in policy making regarding cybersecurity in their educational environments?
The last question will be introduced by the moderator and the last speaker will address it during 10 minutes, highlighting the main issues involved. After the intervention from the last speaker, the audience will be invited to participate in the discussion during the next 20 minutes. The opportunity for participating in the debate part of the session (which represents ⅔ of it) will also be extended to remote participants, who will be given the opportunity not only to ask questions through the dedicated online forum, but also make interventions at any time during the session.
A collaborative document will gather these records of comments and questions during and after the workshop, to be later integrated into the report. Remote participation tools will ensure an inclusive, accessible, and global audience both via the IGF online participation tools and Youth Observatory online discussion forums.
The structure of this debate is intended to foster an inclusive conversation and promote constructive exchanges between discussants and other round table participants. In order to promote an informal discussion on the proposed topics between onsite and online audience and to allow interventions, online participation will be facilitated as mentioned above, as well as via the Youth Observatory online discussion forums.
Usage of IGF Official Tool. Additional Tools proposed: Social networks. In addition to the aforementioned fora, we will also promote a dedicated hashtag (#CyberSec4EduPlatforms) so that the speakers, audience members, and online participants can discuss the issues raised in real time through a widely accessible medium.