How Parents Can Secure Kids Online Amid Coronavirus School Closures

Multi-Lingual, Step-by-Step Guide and Video Tutorial Help Guardians Protect Children Online 

March 20, 2020 — As schools prepare to close to the majority of children across the UK, SANS Security Awareness, a division of the SANS Institute, is providing a free “Secure Your Kids Online” resource kit to help parents and guardians protect their kids online. 

Coronavirus has resulted in schools across the globe moving to an eLearning format, where education moves out of the classroom and into the home.

SANS Director of Security Awareness Lance Spitzner explains: “eLearning from home is a new experience both for kids and their parents. With this technology, and boundless access to information and people, comes potential risks. ‘Secure Your Kids Online’ was created to enable families to safely and securely make the most of learning from home by arming parents with the skills and knowledge they need to help guide and secure their children.”

Education is ultimately the best defense children have against today’s cyber risks. ‘Secure Your Kids Online’ helps parents develop good online values and behaviours within their children. This includes: 

·       ideas for establishing rules to keep kids safe; 

·       to whom they should report problems in the event someone is being a bully or inappropriate;

·       what types of information they can share and with whom; 

·       the types of sites that are okay to visit. 

Prior to accessing written resources, it is recommended that parents and guardians review the short video first. Direct links to content within the ‘Secure Your Kids Online’ resource kit are included below. 

·       Video that summarizes how to best secure your kids online;

·       Additional resources to learn more (primarily for companies that want to help employees secure their kids).

For additional details on SANS Security Awareness, including timely blog posts detailing how to create a secure work-from-home experience for parents as well as children, visit: 

https://www.sans.org/security-awareness-training

About SANS Security Awareness 

SANS Security Awareness, a division of the SANS Institute, provides organizations with a complete and comprehensive security awareness solution, enabling them to easily and effectively manage their ‘human’ cyber security risk. SANS Security Awareness has worked with over 1,300 organizations and trained over 6.5 million people around the world. Security awareness training content is translated into over 30 languages and built by a global network of the world’s most knowledgeable cyber security experts. SANS Security Awareness content and training is world-class and available to a global audience. The SANS Security Awareness program includes everything security awareness officers need to simply and effectively build a best-in-class security awareness program. For more information about training programs, please visit: https://www.sans.org/security-awareness-training/products

About SANS Institute

The SANS Institute was established in 1989 as a cooperative research and education organization. SANS is the most trusted and, by far, the largest provider of cyber security training and certification to professionals at governments and commercial institutions world-wide. Renowned SANS instructors teach over 60 different courses at more than 200 live cyber security training events as well as online. GIAC, an affiliate of the SANS Institute, validates a practitioner’s qualifications via over 35 hands-on, technical certifications in cyber security. The SANS Technology Institute, a regionally accredited independent subsidiary, offers master’s degrees in cyber security. SANS offers a myriad of free resources to the InfoSec community including consensus projects, research reports, and newsletters; it also operates the Internet’s early warning system–the Internet Storm Center. At the heart of SANS are the many security practitioners, representing varied global organizations from corporations to universities, working together to help the entire information security community. (https://www.sans.org