PERSPECTIVES FROM THE FIELD

The strength of Indiana is that we bring together a variety of perspectives from the plethora of areas that touch the field of cyber, especially through the Indiana Executive Council on Cybersecurity (IECC). Hence the name “Perspectives from the Field”, we invite experts to discuss the real and challenging issues that we’re facing in cybersecurity, along with the solutions that could help improve our quality of life for all Hoosiers.

In the latest installment of this series, Adenike Oriolowo, who works as a cybersecurity engineer with the City of Indianapolis and as a member of the digital strategy team for the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), shares her thoughts on what led her to create an imaginative series of comic strips as a way to help people, especially senior citizens, younger kids and teenagers, to learn about cyber in a way that’s fun, informative and engaging.

By Adenike Oriolowo

When it comes to learning a skill, or taking a class, I think we’d all agree that it should be fun, right?

With that in mind, it occurred to me that I could use this approach even with something that (for a lot of us) can be complicated, like cybersecurity.

Within our society, children and older adults are two groups of people, who are particularly vulnerable for a variety of reasons. And, in today’s ever-changing digital world, cybercriminals have found a way to do everything from stealing a child’s identity – before they’ve started kindergarten – to convincing someone’s grandparent, using artificial intelligence (AI) to  create a fake audio recording of a child’s voice, to lose hundreds, if not, thousands of dollars because they are falsely led to believe that their grandchild is in jail, or in the hospital. It’s heartbreaking.

Yet, as with some of the other things we know that we need to do, we struggle with – and even tune out – the messages and the information that are intended to help us. This is especially true in cyber, whether we’re talking about creating strong passwords or using multi-factor authentication.

That’s where the idea of creating a comic strip came from, based on the belief that telling a story, especially visually or interactively, could help us process it more effectively.

Not only that, but it was also my belief that a comic strip could make these topics more relatable and approachable. In other words, it would engage the audience in a way that traditional methods cannot.

As an illustration, one of my most recent exposés focused on elder fraud, in which older adults are duped into disclosing private login information to scammers or are victims of credential theft. In addition, I've authored exposés on how predators lure children into risky situations by using free, open-access online games. These examples illustrate what it means to be secure online and, for all of us, to be aware of potential threats, like malware or phishing scams, in real-world situations.

In taking the time to read the comics I’ve created, you’ll be able to witness an outcome and discover how it occurred, amplifying the impact of the cyber threat and strategies for mitigating it.

In the short term, my aim is to utilize a method for using virtual reality (VR) as an innovative tool for cybersecurity education. By doing so, we can immerse children and seniors in real-world scenarios while providing a safe, entertaining, and humanized virtual environment fully integrated into the scene and presenting them with various threats in a controlled environment.

They will be fully aware of the dangers, able to see and hear them, and will receive guidance on responding to these threats. Ultimately, the goal is to help people become more safety-conscious through interactive experiences. That’s for another day, but I hope you’ll enjoy taking some time to “read the comics”, celebrate Cybersecurity Awareness Month and share the stories I’ve created to help others learn more about cyber in a way that’s as engaging as it is educational.