The Good, The Bad, And The Downright Ugly Of Cybersecurity Education...?

thank you everyone um legitimately um I can't actually feel my arm at the moment so that's a good thing or a bad thing it's snapped in

to hold on yeah so our first for about doing this talk to highlight issues I found as a student with cyber security both as a university student and a self-learner I actually spent a lot of time doing this so with one hand it's really broke so we're just gonna admire this for a second okay brilliant so The Good the Bad and D ugly as cyber security education uh yeah the boring stuff uh fulltime I'm a full-time applied cyber security student um I'm a full-time self-learner and I'm active stem ambassad that's something I'm really proud of um I got a dog he's my favorite dog he actually broke my arm I do for give him though

but you notice he's wearing some like kind of Spacey kind of frow so he's very very fitting for this talk um and I Like Cows as well that's just some random stuff I've got like a quote unquote South Park disclaimer so this talk is not meant to disrespect anyone I'm not naming names I'm not bad mouthing anyone I might do after a few drinks in the pub when we're not recorded and no one can actually like blame me um so yeah just pretend that all any bad stories it's not really around here it's some of a different galaxy or Universe um again I started to do this talk thinking about all the bad side of cyber

security education but then as I was writing I realized it's actually a talk of opportunity so I want to discuss the current Landscapes so popular paths everyone has a different Journey with education and get into industry got self-learning there's pros and cons to that um I'm not going to cover all learning paths today we got boot camps I will not touch them at all um cuz it's so polarizing that I'd probably get killed um apprenticeships I love apprenticeships if I could have one wish it we see more cyber security apprenticeships out there in the world um it's one of the best ways to ear and learn um and University so there are a few a few paths and today I'm going to

focus on self-learning and University so self when we say self learning we're really saying I'm taking account of my own my own my own Journey my own my own destiny you could be working in a shop you could sorry I'm emotional actually you could be working in a shop you could really HTE your life but you could take charge and learn um it's it's a daed approach you you can really aim you don't have to learn about digital forensics if you don't want to learn about digital forensics you don't have to learn about hacking if you don't want to learn about hacking if you want to focus on GRC you can do that and no will make fun of you cuz

they will in University so self learn is also fantastic Money Saver you can pirate stuff you can YouTube stuff you can ask questions you can go and go to bsides you can learn or have a wealth of knowledge all your fingertips and it could cost you nothing or it could cost you everything if you're going through certifications like Sans for example the main problem I see is lack of recognition so this is a popular um cyber security learning learning platform and this person I don't if you can see here has managed to answer 996 questions in one day so the average room will have say three to four four questions and they take five minutes to load so somehow

this person's managed to defeat time to get this get these answers so some are argue and say perhaps they've cheated lack of Direction cyber security is a really complex topic do you want how do you want to learn about pentesting do you want to learn networking do you want to learn critical a critical natur critical natural infrastructure like there's so many paths you can take and you can potentially waste your time self-learning struggles I do when I said a full TI Lear learner I do a Blog every day of my learning progress and I get messages from all around the world sorry of people that are struggling cuz they don't know what to do they're how do they learn this is

just one I've got a whole feed it's sorry it's quite overwhelming sometimes cuz a lot of people are struggling what they're after though is an opportunity to prove themselves university has some major Ben benefits recognition and credibility nothing is more recognized than a University degree having that bit a peace paper can just open the doors no matter how well you've done there are jobs in cyber security that Acquire a degree for no reason at all they just require you to have a degree and they say computer science they say software development they say all these kind of maths math degrees but they're for cyber security roles so it really doesn't make sense from me at

that point um there's me there I'm the skinny one peer learning that is some of the best experience I've had with um learning cyber security University I'm quite older than most of the other students they helped me and I help them so we kind of support each other and that's one of the best for me the best things you have at University is the peer learning and structured learning you know that you're going to do this this day this this day this this day and and at the end of the day if you do everything you're told and pass you're going to get your piece of paper here is's a problem though what if your course doesn't align with what you

want to do so for example there are a lot of University degrees that have PHP we web hacking and they also have digital Fric crime scenes they kind of contradict each other there what do you want to do some some universities have like what I quote qu filler modules where where they just I'm serious me where this is getting interesting now where they're like almost filling a gap because they have to have it you have to have the employability module but the the lecturers haven't worked in Industry so they're teaching you employability for something they haven't done themselves so again interesting problems there this works better um fees fees are a really interesting one uh this is just this year they they

could potentially go them next year they say average overseas I see average about 14 Grand that's a very procedes University I think um here lies another problem of University funding they keep changing the laws on and the rules they keep making it hard for universities to get money so a lot of universities are losing staff left right and Center um one University near Sunny beach in Wales is just uh let go 100 members of staff so yeah that's a that's that's the one of the problems we have um staff this is a tricky one some of the best lectures I had have been there for 20 years and some of the best lectures I had have been there for like two

weeks some of the worst yeah yeah we with we'll talk about this more after a few drinks but basically it's not only the attributes it's the skill set so I know one story for example where one of the lecturers was off sick for depression for 6 months they could not find a replacement they had to get a PhD student to cover the lesson that has never covered the sub subject and they was just doing this the whole lesson reading from the slide and just talking to them so clearly they weren't qualified to teach but there was no other solution because they couldn't find the staff and rightly so if we're saying the figures are correct like you become a pentester

75,000 a year why would you be a lecturer for start in 40K for example it it doesn't make sense um yeah yeah there's some more issue yeah after a few drinks but ultimately for me I think they're trying to find themselves they're trying to learn from each other and this is where it gets really really struggles and covid wasn't too long ago and I've noticed myself interact with students that literally cannot look at you in the eye they're so shy they won't ask answer a question they know the answer to they can write on a piece of paper they physically physically won't get involved it's it's a problem there's not much been done to solve that solution unfortunately

there's not universities have mentorship programs but they're the blinds leading the blind if that's complety correct what I really wanted to cover today and what really changed was the mindset of let's not blame let's change here we have a cyber first as I said I'm active volunteer for a cyber first um this was a little survey they've done of people of children the age of 14 to 16 if they were interested in cyber security before and after a course with cyber first as you can see they started at 53% and they raised the 90% a 37% increase that's amazing there's nothing like that out there at [Music] all the same thing for older generation but it's slightly changed so that maybe

they lose an interest or maybe the older generation fighting themselves here's another problem though they're not not going to be doing this anymore this is potentially going for funding for funding reasons so what we need to do really is have IND professionals that actively want to be involved and help students help young [Music] people I've made this little um this tricky one hand sorry I made this little uh one to watch these are a few companies that really really inspired to me and I kind of change my talk after thinking about work they've done this company stud cyber for example they've gone to universities all across Wales and they've developed courses and they've done assessments they've engaged

students with real world problems that's not a ftic piece of paper that's making a real snow they can actively learn from um for Fox security so why why I um why I put them on here was I was invited to their um start the launch event and one of the first thing they said they want to give back they want to help educate the students help keep them safe they're only a small company but if they can do it why can't the bigger companies do it North Green SEC security and lovely company they've just literally won a reward for Innovation cyber security education involving students there was up against some Giants there was up against some Giants

and one so get emotional about this cuz I honestly believe we can really make a difference to people's lives so opportunity you have an opportunity to change the future what I mean by this is sorry there's some people that really struggled in life one of the students I know um the university everyone called him the weird [Music] kid a company came it came into the university and interacted with him and they gave him a job a little summer internship so this weird kid his life was changed by a company giving him an opportunity and and I just get emot about that because we never really understand what people are going through and what they're having to deal with and life is

really really hard for these students they they're struggling so much we have issues with confidence lack of self-respect the University does try they give out surveys some of them are too too afraid to even write it down because they think oh I'm be recognized because they have these conversations with me um and that's basically my little rant over I I don't want everyone to put anyone down cuz we we we don't know what people going through but ultimately if you want you can change someone's life just by giving a bit of your time thank you sorry it's the drugs it's not me the drugs yeah I'm sure there's no no questions if you have any questions just

give me a shout or find me I'm I'm the fat B beard guy with one arm congratulations Joe that was UN they would