Cybersecurity Awareness Training Available for Health Centres and Schools

AFNTS now has cybersecurity awareness training available for staff at Atlantic First Nation health/treatment centres and schools. Cybersecurity awareness training is a fantastic tool for training health and education staff on cybersecurity risks and making them more aware of common tactics threat actors use to gain access to secure networks. Research has proven that human behaviour is the most common cause of cyber attacks. This is why educating staff is so important. 

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We are currently rolling out two platforms. One developed by Fortinet that was specifically designed for education/schools, and another developed by CIRA (Canadian Internet Registry Authority) that was designed for health professionals. Both platforms are online and involve self-paced training. 

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The CIRA platform (geared towards health staff) contains the following:

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• Cybersecurity awareness training built specifically for healthcare professionals  
• The option to send out fake emails (phishing simulations) on a regular basis to test your users' ability to detect fake emails
• Modules that cover many other areas of cybersecurity

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The Fortinet (geared toward school staff) contains the following:

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• Cybersecurity awareness training built specifically for education professionals  
• Grade-appropriate curriculum, teacher guides, handouts, and other resources to teach security awareness skills to students. 
  
  • Click here for a video on the curriculum available 
• Modules that cover many other areas of cybersecurity awareness

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Having school and health centre staff take cybersecurity awareness teaches them tips they can use to avoid scams, fraud and financial loss in their personal lives and in the workplace. This will help to significantly reduce organizational risk and the impact of a cybersecurity incident. Each staff member would be required to complete 1 self-paced online training course per year (approximately 30 minutes). Supplementary courses may be assigned to users who score poorly on their annual training course or fail a phishing simulation.

Although we highly recommend that school and health centres opt to enroll their staff in this training platform (and require them to complete the training annually), this will be at the discretion of health directors and principals.

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For those who opt in, AFNTS can provide the following:

• Lead a presentation on cybersecurity best practices and introduce the training platform (virtual or in person, if feasible)
• Enroll/set up users (usernames and passwords)
• Assign applicable training to users
• Consultation on how to provide cybersecurity awareness training to students of different age groups and lesson plans to focus on (Fortinet platform only)
• Share a quarterly report with the Health Director or Principal, including
  
  • Who has completed their training
  • The current number of cybersecurity awareness modules taken by staff
  • Risk scores for each staff member (CIRA platform only)

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There is no cost associated with accessing either platform. For more info, health directors and school principals can contact AFNTS Network Project Coordinator, Sean Carroll at sean@aftns.ca.

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