Cyber Safety For Students

Report

Cyber Safety For Students session was held in collaboration with ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Centre) foundation on the 28^th of October at 4 PM and students who were available attended a hybrid meeting at Anugraha Hall (AB-3).

The session was presided over by Prof. M. Sethumadhavan, Centre Head at TIFAC-CORE in Cyber Security, Group Captain P Aanand Naidu, Director at ISAC, and Ms. Lakshmi Mini, Head Intervention at CopConnect ISAC. Mr. Rahul Alwal IPS, Superintendent of Police at Lunglei, Mizoram also joined the session for an interactive talk.

With the primary goal of Cyber Awareness Month in mind, our initiative aimed to cultivate a safer and more robust online environment for our peers. We achieved this by furnishing information, resources, and best practices to ensure safety in this digital era.

The event started with a prayer song by Ms. Parvathi, WiCyS Amrita Student Chapter Secretary. Following the prayer, the President of WiCyS Amrita Student Chapter Ms. Deepthi J, gave a bird’s eye view on Cyber Awareness Month and introduced various initiatives by TIFAC-Core in Cyber Security namely CybeReach (Cyber Research and Creative Hut), WiCyS Amrita Student Chapter and B-RIG (Blockchain- Research Interest Group). The event was inaugurated and opened by Prof. M. Sethumadhavan. Group Captain P A Naidu gave an overview of ISAC, which is an international Non-Profit Organization, that solves larger problems impacting the connected digital world on Cyber Security. This was succeeded by Ms. Lakshmi Mini who gave voice to her thoughts on ‘Cyber Safety For Students’. Ms. Lakshmi Mini highlighted the essence of how important it is to be cyber-aware. She then proceeded to explain about the different types of scams and online frauds one should prevent themselves from getting trapped by. The types include:

• Fake profiles
• Types of people based on how they react to cyber crimes
• Phishing attacks
• Financial frauds
• Bitcoin frauds via Instagram
• Loan App frauds
• Sextortion
• Add me cart frauds
• Fake websites/pages/jobs
• Addictions and Pornography
• Identity thefts
• Impersonation and cyber bullying

She, being an experienced CCIO, was able to quote cases from her past as examples of the above scams. The session was very informative and understandable even for people without any technical background. Mr. Rahul Alwal, IPS joined the session and gave his insights on impersonation and identity theft and talked about some cases that he had come across in his tenure. He also highlighted the importance and the risk it presents. A 5-minute quiz based on the session, testing the participant’s understanding of cyber safety intricacies was a highlight of the event. The winners were chosen based on the accuracy of their answers and the time with which they responded. ISAC courses valued at a total of around 1 lakh 45 thousand Rupees were given as prizes to the top 3 scorers.

Winners and prizes:

First Prize: Pavan Shanmukha Madhav Gunda [2nd year B.Tech CSE(CYS)]
Gift voucher for CCIO, CPEW, Certification in Basics of Information Security (ICBIS), Certified Penetration Tester (ICPT).
Second Prize: N Meera [2nd year B.Tech CSE(CYS)]
Gift voucher for CCIO, CPEW, Certification in Basics of Information Security (ICBIS).
Third Prize: Agilprasanna P [2nd year B.Tech CSE(CYS)]
Gift voucher for CCIO, CPEW

Ms. Amita Narayanan Kutty, Voice of the Club in WiCyS & Ms. G Hamsini compered the session.