Student Use Ninjas to Teach Computer Security

Winners of a student video contest used everything from ninjas, to bandits, to techno music to teach others about computer safety.

The contest, which concluded this week, was put on by several education and computer security groups: the Higher Education Information Security Council, the National Cyber Security Alliance, CyberWATCH, and the ResarchChannel (a nonprofit founded by research and academic institutions to share their work with the public). Their goal is to raise awareness and increase computer security in colleges and universities across the country. Ten winners, whose work educational institutions have the right to distribute as public service announcements, were announced as part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

The Gold Winner of the Training Video category, called “Cyber Security Awareness” and made by Nathan Krochmal of Grand Valley State University, used the suburbs as an allegory for the Internet. In this world wooden mailboxes could receive viruses, nefarious scam artists set up card tables in driveways, and masked bandito hackers could lasso your wallet.

In “Icon Ninjas” a man completely clad in black garbs crawls out from the bottom of an Internet browser page, crawls and tumbles his way to the My Computer icon, only to be punched into the Recycle Bin by a protective gumshoe. The video then says, “Your computer can’t do this on its own, it needs your help.” 

Taking another approach, Hillary Luvshis and Matt Crescenzo of the University of Deleware were Silver Winners of the Public Service category with their animated story infused with a techno music sound track. As the video begins, animated typography dances across the screen while the narrator reads the tale of a computer crashing and zapping all music, all photos, and the paper you’ve been “slaving away countless nights” for your “neurotic professor.” The video ends with a robotic voice urging the viewer to “back up often.”

Ms. Luvshis, who wrote the script, thinks the video has the potential to save some students from the agony of losing everything.

“The story is relatable,” she said. “Everyone knows about this stuff, but usually people don’t take any action until it’s too late. This could be just the reminder they need before anything happens.”