About the programme
How do we recognise a deceptive message? What happens when we open a website? What can digital traces reveal? Cybersecurity Academy invites students to investigate these questions through practical challenges, teamwork and experimentation.
Starting with everyday digital safety, the programme explores how computers, networks and applications work. Students analyse educational incidents, test defensive approaches and learn to document their findings. Activities take place in a controlled learning environment using systems provided for practice, with respect for privacy and responsible technology use.
“The suspicious email”, “Who changed the file?”, “Decode the message”, “Tracing an incident” and “Design a safer school computer lab”.
Learning outcomes
- Recognise digital threats, protect accounts and data, explain basic network operations, assess digital evidence and recommend justified protective measures.
Modules
- Digital identity, privacy and digital footprints.
- Account security: unique passwords, password managers and multifactor authentication.
- Phishing, social engineering, online scams and evaluating content reliability.
- Computers and operating systems: files, permissions, updates and introductory Linux.
- Networks and the web: IP addresses, DNS, HTTP/HTTPS and safer Wi-Fi use.
- Cryptography: ciphers, encryption, hashes and data integrity.
- Application security: weaknesses in purpose-built training examples and secure coding principles.
- Digital forensics: metadata, logs and timelines using synthetic data.
- Incident response: identification, containment, recovery and reporting.
- A final team Capture the Flag challenge and presentation of findings.
Requirements
- Lower and upper secondary school students with basic computer skills. No previous cybersecurity experience is required. Difficulty is adapted to age and experience. Optional Python extensions support more experienced learners.