Towards an Education Campaign for Fostering a Societal, Cyber Security Culture

The need for information security has moved beyond its traditional organizational boundaries. It is becoming a requirement for all information technology users. Many countries are recognizing this need for their citizens to be cyber aware and secure. Consequently these countries are beginning to implement national cyber security campaigns and efforts. Literature advocates that these campaigns should aim to foster a national (societal) cyber security culture to be truly effective. Currently there are no guidelines for how to foster a cyber security culture at a societal level. One of the elements required in a culture fostering process is education. This education needs to be effectively conducted to have a foreseeable, positive result which is measurable. Therefore a scalable, culture fostering campaign is needed. This paper reports a study of an annual cyber security educational campaign which aims to begin fostering a cyber-security culture amongst the youth in the Nelson Mandela Metropolis in South Africa. The objective of studying this campaign is to establish a baseline campaign from which suitable guidelines for a future campaigns (at any scale) may be abstracted. Keywords: information security culture, cybersecurity education, case study, cybersecurity awareness, human factor, action research, campaign, youth.