Congress Briefed by Carnegie Mellon CyLab Education Director
February 11, 2004
Carnegie Mellon Universitys Dena Haritos Tsamitis briefed Congressional staff and members of the Internet and Childrens Caucus about the need to raise awareness of cybersecurity threats to Americas youth yesterday in Washington, D.C.
Tsamitis, director of education, training and outreach for Carnegie Mellons CyLab and the Information Networking Institute, recommended national standards and professional development requirements at the state level for K-12 teachers in the areas of cybersecurity and cyberethics in order to effectively educate the nations youth on these critical issues. She joined a panel of experts from law enforcement and industry.
“At the K-6 levels, this would involve molding behavior in young children, including teaching them safe, responsible and appropriate online behavior,” Tsamitis said. “And for high school students, it would involve modifying existing online behaviors that put them at risk; risks they take knowingly and face unknowingly,” she said.
Under the auspices of Carnegie Mellon CyLab, researchers from Carnegie Mellons top-ranked schools in electrical and computer engineering, computer science and public policy will collaborate across disciplines and work closely with government, business and other sectors to ensure trust and security with every log-on.
“I also talked about other CyLab outreach activities aimed at translating technical cybersecurity information into usable, simple messages with the goal of creating ‘cyber aware’ citizens, empowering them to secure their own parts of cyberspace,” Tsamitis said.
Because security exists at different levels, CyLabs goal is to design and deliver a new generation of security technology and to educate tomorrows leaders in a variety of activities relating to technology, policy, security and privacy.
