SMART Community Review (SCR) SMART Community Exchange 2018 Program | Page 19

Cyber Resilience
Cyber emergencies can happen without a warning, at any time
and at any home, school, organization, or community. While
emergency personnel do their best to quickly respond to
emergencies, it could take days, weeks or even months for
them to respond to a Cyber emergency. The best way to help
citizens to be safer, is to help them build resilience by sharing
with them information and resources they need to mitigate
risks and prepare for emergencies before one occurs.
Youth Cyber Resilience - mitigation, planning, preparedness,
response, and recovery - efforts include children’s unique
needs and assets. Establishing a Youth Cyber resilience
program in your school or community is an involved effort.
Youth Cyber Resilience program was designed to help
educational institutions effectively implement Cyber resilience
awareness, education, and workforce development and
training programs in their schools and communities.
Why Youth Cyber Resilience?
Children comprise approximately 25 percent of our population
and are the future of our communities. They can play an
important role in building Cyber Resilience and during Cyber
Emergencies. Many programs do not consider children in their
planning. It is important that children know what to do to
mitigate cyber risk and how to prepare for cyber emergency.
Strengths Youth Bring to Cyber Resilience
While children have unique needs during an emergency, they
can also play a very important role when it comes to Cyber
Resilience in our communities.
• Children are positive influencers. Children involved in
youth preparedness programs can effectively spread
important messages about preparedness to their family
members. They can be change agents. Participating in
emergency preparedness activities such as helping their
parents make a family preparedness plan by educating
adults about preparedness.
• Children can become leaders. By participating in youth
cyber preparedness programs, children are empowered to
become leaders at home and in their schools and
communities. Children who’ve participated in preparedness
programs across the nation have responded in emergency
situations and have taught others about preparedness.
• Prepared children are more confident during an actual
emergency. Studies and anecdotal evidence support the
idea that children who have learned about emergency
preparedness experience less anxiety during an actual
emergency. The knowledge of what to do during an
emergency empowers them to act with confidence and
enables them to become active participants in emergency
efforts.
Understanding Challenges
There are some challenges when implementing a youth
preparedness program. For example:
• Children are often overlooked in being an active member of
family preparedness activities. They can and should take an
active role.
• Many adult preparedness programs exist, but for children to
be effectively prepared, they need to receive age-appropriate
materials and messaging. Many community preparedness
programs don’t offer this.
• Youth preparedness initiatives require resources. From
funding and program materials to instructors and staff,
successful youth preparedness programs may require
resources, and this can be a challenge for startup programs
with little funding and personnel. Cyber resilience awareness
program was designed to be implemented in schools and
communities today with very limited resources.
Benefits
You will notice positive changes in your community as your
program is implemented:
• Enriching Education – Children have the opportunity to
receive an education filled with practical applications of the
concepts they’ve learned in school.
• Behavioral Changes – As children are learning about
preparedness and bringing the information to their families, a
behavioral shift will occur, making family preparedness a
priority.
• Community Cohesion – Working with business, leaders,
and other organizations will create a unified team of citizens
within the community dedicated to a common goal.
• First Responder Familiarity – For many youth, seeing first
responders, police officers, and emergency personnel incite
fear or uncertainty. Youth preparedness programs that
enable first responders to work with children help cultivate
positive relationships and help children understand that first
responders play a positive role in their communities.
Awareness & Education
SMART Cyber Exchange (SCE) cyber resilience program is
an awareness program for schools and and community-based
organizations. The program was designed to help
organizations begin implementing cyber resilience programs.
Specifically, to help them to:
1. Define the key elements of what cyber resilience is and
what makes cyber resilience programs effective.
2. Provide information and direction to schools and
community-based organizations on how to successfully
implement, evaluate, and sustain effective cyber resilience
programs using readily available resources.
3. Provide information about existing resources so
organizations do not have to start from scratch.
Getting Started
Assess Your Community’s Needs and Risks. The first step in
implementing a Youth Cyber Resilience awareness program in
your school or community is to decide what your goals are.
Before making this decision, you first need to assess your
needs and risks. Our citizens, communities, organizations,
and enterprises across the nation are at risk for specific types
of Cyber threats and emergencies.
We can help you identify pre-determined hazards in your
school district and schools, and we can provide many valuable
resources as you implement your Youth Cyber Resilience
program.
www.SMARTCommunityExchange.com