Cybersecurity Education in High School: Exploring Cyber Assets, Cyber Value at Risk, and Authentic Assessment

In the realm of cybersecurity, a knowledge chasm exists among high school students. High school students face a significant gap in cybersecurity knowledge, essential for safeguarding the digital environment. This educational deficit renders them vulnerable to cyber threats, compromising personal and school-wide digital security. The global shortage of cybersecurity professionals exacerbates the issue, threatening future defenses against cyberattacks. This paper introduces Cyber Value-at-Risk (CVaR), a concept adapted from finance, to evaluate the risk to digital assets. It outlines a model using basic math and probability to assess and mitigate risks to these cyber assets, which include data, vulnerability, and potential negative impacts like financial or reputational loss at the time of cyber incident. The approach equates cyber assets to financial terms-assets, liabilities, and capital-to demonstrate how additional countermeasures can reduce cyber asset value. The paper emphasizes the importance of consistent cybersecurity practices, akin to the effects of compound interest, and aims to demystify cybersecurity for students using financial literacy and mathematical concepts. The paper uses the proposed method to calculate cyber risks for the prominent cyber-attacks such as Phishing, DDoS, Data breach, Ransom ware, and loT Vulnerabilities in the context of school. It further explains the value of problem based learning and provides an authentic assessment framework to establish a practical learning of cybersecurity concepts for high school students. Finally, it advocates for the integration of security measures in internet use, covering authentication, authorization, encryption, firewall, secure connections, and systems' upgrade to reduce cyber risks. With the rise of online education, gaming, social media, and digitalization, cyber awareness is crucial for high school students. The criticality of internet security is making cyber knowledge an urgent educational priority. Due to growing demand of loT and artificial intelligence (AI), the paper suggests future research about explaining cyber risks to high school students using machine learning, human behavior, and system anomalies.