Key outcomes
- Designed and delivered 4 cyber security challenges which provide cyber security education and awareness for year 7–10 students
- Conducted Cyber Security roadshows across Australia’s major cities
Economic impact
- Over 212,000 students and 5,200 teachers have participated in the cyber security challenges since their inception in 2019
- Facilitated a cross‐industry partnership between the Australian Computing Academy (University of Sydney), AustCyber, ANZ, BT, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac
Government funding
$611,971
Industry funding
$618,464
The AustCyber Projects Fund is a $15 million, three-year initiative designed to help the Australian cyber security industry grows and takes ideas globally. Since launching in 2018, AustCyber has provided this funding to projects that are making a real contribution to growing Australia’s cyber security ecosystem, guided by the Sector Competitiveness Plan.
One of the participants in AustCyber’s Projects Fund was Grok Academy, who used their involvement in the Projects Fund program to design and deliver 4 cyber security challenges that provide cyber security education and awareness for year 7–10 students.
Constantly evolving cyber attacks continue at pace, directed at government departments and businesses alike. Schools are also susceptible to malware threats as students and staff bring connected devices from home and share information across their networks.
Educating young Australians about the risks they’ll face online is important, but so is offering them the opportunity to learn about cyber security at a deeper level. The Schools Cyber Security Challenges is the first cross‐industry collaboration of its kind.
The program aims to close the growing gap in cyber security awareness and skills amongst Australian students by ensuring it becomes an education-critical subject area.
About Grok Academy
Grok Academy is on a mission to educate all learners in transformative computing skills, knowledge, and dispositions.
They’ve taught thousands of students across Australia to program, and are now bringing their STEM education into classrooms and homes worldwide.
Developed by the Australian Computing Academy (now part of Grok Academy) at the University of Sydney, in partnership with AustCyber, ANZ, BT, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac, the program equips Australian high school teachers to teach vital cyber security skills to year 7–10 students, via engaging and relatable classroom challenges.
The challenges are an innovative ground-up approach designed to provide school teachers with resources to support the teaching of cybersecurity concepts and to inform students of career opportunities in the field. Delivered free of charge, the challenges explore general topics including personal information security and data sharing, as well as technical topics such as cryptography and network security. The range of engaging activities involves investigation, deduction and programming to develop student knowledge, skills and dispositions as they work their way through increasingly difficult problems.
Post the Projects Fund project, AWS, ASD, DISR and FifthDomain have joined the initiative, which has expanded to deliver:
- 2 more challenges
- A bi‐annual cyber competition
- A “live” virtual event involving a mass-infrastructure attack scenario
- Unplugged and online activities for primary school students
- Challenges for year 11 and 12 students
- Planned release of 3 more challenges as well as a comprehensive teacher professional development program
Following the initial project it is anticipated there will be a further $2,373,025 of government and $2,100,000 of industry funding contributed to achieving outcomes for cyber security awareness and education.
Learn more about Grok Academy at their website.
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Find out more about the other projects involved with the AustCyber Projects Fund.
