Teaching internet safety to children, teens and the elderly
Patrick Craven, the director of ISC2's Center for Cyber Safety and Education, teaches kids how to be safe on the internet, and he does so with the persuasive power of Garfield! On today's episode, Patrick discusses the goals of the center, including how they received exclusive use from Jim Davis to use his characters to teach internet safety to kids, teens, parents and the elderly. He also shares tips for staying safe online and how to help friends, family and loved ones stay safe from bad actors on the internet.
Patrick Craven has over 30 years of experience working within the non-profit industry and has held various C-Level executive leadership roles across the country at notable charitable organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the Boy Scouts of America. As Director for the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, he is responsible for all business operations, supporting the Board of Trustees, service delivery, providing leadership to employees and volunteers, managing multiple income streams, overseeing marketing and business development functions, new program development and liaising with external agencies. Patrick has been successful across the country, developing innovative and award-winning marketing, advertising, sales, management and fundraising programs. He has a bachelor's in communication from Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH). Patrick is also a member of the ECPI University, Lake Mary Campus' Program Advisory Board, Cyber and Network Security.
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Transcript
Chris Sienko: It’s a celebration here in the studio, because the Cyber Work with Infosec Podcast is a winner. Thanks to the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards for awarding us a best cybersecurity podcast gold medal in our category. We're celebrating, but we're giving all of you the gift.We’re once again giving away a free month of our Infosec skills platform, which features targeted learning modules, cloud-hosted cyber ranges, hands-on projects, certification practice exams and skills assessments. To take advantage of this special offer for Cyber Work listeners, head over to Infosecinstitute.com/skills, or click the link in the description below, sign up for an individual subscription as you normally would, then in the coupon box type the word ‘cyberwork’. C-Y-B-E-R-W-O-R-K. No spaces, no capital letters and just like magic, you can claim your free month.Thank you once again for listening to and watching our podcast. We appreciate each and every one of you coming back each week. Enough of that. Let's begin the episode.
Welcome to this week’s episode of the Cyber Work with Infosec Podcast. Each week I sit down with a different industry thought leader and we discuss the latest cybersecurity trends, how those trends are affecting the work of infosec professionals, while offering tips for those trying to break in or move up the ladder in the cybersecurity industry.
Today’s guest is Patrick Craven. He is the Director of the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, a global non-profit charity formed by the International Information Security Systems Security Certification Consortium, or ISC2.
The Center for Cyber Safety and Education is aimed at empowering students, teachers, parents and the general public to secure their online life with award-winning cyber safety education and awareness programs to the community. Among the primary constituents and users are young children, teens and senior citizens.
We're going to talk to Patrick today about the aims and methods of the center, while also providing some tips for our listeners on staying safe online, as well as helping friends, family, loved ones, who might not be as online as aggressively as you and I are and helping them to also keep themselves safe.
Patrick Craven has over 30 years of experience working within the non-profit industry and has held various C-level executive leadership roles across the country at notable charitable organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the Boy Scouts of America.
As Director for the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, he is responsible for all business operations supporting the Board of Trustees, service delivery, providing leadership to employees and volunteers, managing multiple income streams, overseeing marketing and business development functions, new program development and liaison with external agencies.
Mr. Craven has been successful across the country developing innovative and award-winning marketing, advertising sales management and fundraising programs. He has a BS in Communications from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Patrick is also a member of the ECPI University, Lake Mary Campuses Program Advisory Board Cyber and Network Security. Patrick, welcome to Cyber Work today.
Patrick: Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to get this going.
Chris: Great. I wanted to ask you as I asked all of our guests at the start of the show about your tech and security journey. It sounds like you've moved more through the philanthropic and non-profit sector, but how did you first get interested in cybersecurity and were you an early Internet adopter?
Patrick: Well, by early Internet, you mean dial-up with AOL back then maybe? Yes.
Chris: That's right there. You’re right in it.
Patrick: That’s the perfect example.
Chris: Gold star.
Patrick: Delta is our first computer that we had in the house. Yeah, we've been along the journey a long way. You're right, I do come from a totally different background than probably most your guests and maybe a lot of your audience. Hopefully we don't lose them, because I am not a cybersecurity expert. I don't hold certifications and anything like that. As you pointed out, my background is the non-profit side. I have come through working for various non-profits, spent 24 years as an executive with the Boy Scouts, all around the country, moved us around constantly and came into the cyber realm with this opportunity about five years ago through ISC2.
They created the Center for Cyber Safety and Education. Well actually, it was called the ISC2 Foundation, for any of the members out there who remember that, but it was originally called the ISC2 Foundation. We found it about nine years ago and it was designed as a give-back opportunity for members was its original thing. I was brought on just five years ago. As we were having a transition with our executive director who unfortunately was suffering from cancer and we have since lost her. I was brought on to continue her legacy and we have made a variety of changes. One of which was the name. We switched it from the foundation to the Center for Cyber Safety and Education and began the effort to make it outward focus. It was just for cybersecurity professionals. We've got an important message. As you all know, we need to find more ways to get that message out there and that's what we're trying to do.
Chris: Tell me about some of the work you did prior to joining the center here. What job skills and titles did you hold? You mentioned the Boy Scouts, so what were some of the things especially that you felt got you ready for the challenges of helming the security-focused organization?
Patrick: Well, a big part of it is just a variety of experiences and started off just an entry level in the non-profit world and doing fundraising, which everybody in the non-profit world has to do. It’s no matter what your job title is. Working from that standpoint and then worked my way up. I've been the CFO of the organizations. I’ve been the CEO. I've had the marketing positions. Really, just a lot of different experience again in the non-profit sector.
It's a very different creature than the for-profit, yet it's not. At the same time, it's a business. You have to run it like a business, you have employees, you have payroll, you have all the challenges that any business, CEO has. We just have them in a different format. I think one of the big differences we're running a non-profit such as ours, a 501c3 is the mission. It’s really their sure well, these companies have missions, but our people believe it. They're just into it, my employees. There's only five of us that are running this whole organization. They're dedicated and committed people to do whatever it takes to make things happen.
Chris: Walk me through your every day as the executive director of the center. What are some things – We always like to show people, regardless of the height or low of the job title or whatever, what it's like to do the job that you do. What are some things you can expect to do every day in your position? When you get up in the morning, are you on-call at all times? Are there some tasks you love? What are some tasks you wish you could delegate to someone else?
Patrick: I'm not happen to be on-call all the time is again, your listeners would be more to that in the security end of things. I spend a lot of time in meetings and in planning and developing. We're constantly trying to expand the program, trying to come up with new innovative ways to get the message out about how to keep people safe. I mean, we really focus on children, parents, senior citizens. We're trying to find new ways to be able to do that, new ways to reach them, innovative ways.
So much of what we talk about is the same message that we've all been hearing, right? You got a better passwords and phishing and all those kinds of things. Obviously, that's a constant message it has to go out there. We're always looking for new ways to do that and looking for new partners. Again, as a non-profit while we are associated with is ISC2. We are a division of ISC2. We're separate. It's always a confusing thing for even us internally.
We're in their offices, they're building all that stuff. But by IRS regulations, we’re a separate organization. We're a 501c3. ISC2 is a non-profit, but it's a non-profit membership organization. We have to raise all the money that we spent; the cover payroll to cover the production of things like that. We have to go out. We're also doing fundraising, we're doing charitable things like that that any other non-profit would do in the mix of just trying to deliver our mission. A big part of that is finding corporations who are excited about what we're doing, who see what we're trying to do and getting them to come on board with it. We spend a lot of time during the day trying to work on those projects.
Chris: Okay. What are some of the big errors about the use of the Internet that people most commonly make and that you're trying to prevent?
Patrick: One of the big things, as already mentioned, you can talk about phishing and passwords and all those things we all talk about in security, right? What we're really trying to focus on is the human aspect of it, about what parents are doing to help protect their children. That is a super-hot conversation. Seniors are just subject to scams all the time. We're trying to reach them in a practical human way by a conversation, by presentations, trying to make them aware of these things.
Of course, then we have our children's program, we have programs for elementary school children, which I'm sure we'll get to and we have our middle school programs. We have stuff online that people can go to. They can download, they can watch videos. A big part of our program though is delivering program, volunteers go out and put on presentations at the community center, at the library, at a school to try to reach them. What we've done is created those materials for them.
You know, everybody watching those how much work it is to create a good-quality PowerPoint presentation that goes on for an hour. Well, we've done that. We've already got that. If you want to go talk to the Senior Center and put on a presentation for them, we've got it. You just go on to our website iamcybersafe.org. You can download it. It's actually available in 24 different languages now. It’s really on a global basis. You should be able to find your language to be able to go out and deliver those educational programs.
Chris: Tell me about the use of Garfield the Cat in teaching young people about cyber safety. Do you find that having a mascot like Garfield helps kids to understand the concepts better? I see it on your shirt and I see him in the background there too.
Patrick: That is exactly what has become our cornerstone program right now. We hold the exclusive global rights to Garfield. We work with the creator Jim Davis, an awesome, awesome person who sees the value in using Garfield to help reach the younger children. Focus on grades first through six, so the younger kids, which goes back even to your previous question about what are the things out there that we need to be doing. To me, that's one of them is reaching children younger.
Kids are getting online younger and younger, they're getting on social media long before they're supposed to be. Supposed to be 13 to get on those platform and they're not. We're finding them half that age and they're already have some profile on social media. The average child gets a phone by 10. We did some research a few years ago, Internet usage study for elementary school children. That was what really prompted us to make a big pivot in our educational programs.
We found that 40% of elementary school children had already chatted with a stranger online. Not high school kids, elementary school kids. Of those, over half of them had given out their phone number. I think it was 11% of them had actually met with a stranger. That's when we said we have got to start reaching these children younger and younger and teaching good habits. It's much easier to teach them a good habit than it is to break a habit when they're in high school. We can't wait that long anymore.
We got to come up with a better way to do it as little guys going out and doing a presentation, a PowerPoint presentation, which we've all had our fill of those, right? Is to go out and do that for second and third graders was not going to be effective. We reached out to Jim Davis. He was onboard instantly. He loved the whole concept. We've been working with him with creating cartoons, comic books, posters, stickers, trading cards, all different fun ways to engage, if you got to get them to listen.
Again, listening to us do a presentation is not going to do it the way a Garfield cartoon will. That's what teachers tell us. They tell us there isn't anything they do all year where they get the kids attention any better than sitting and watching a Garfield cartoon.
Chris: Now does Garfield – I'm very curious about this. Is he the character that dispenses the cybersecurity wisdom to others, or is he the one making the mistakes? Which side of it –
Patrick: Actually, somewhat neither. We used Nermal, if you're from the cartoon. Nermal is the kitten in the group.
Chris: Little baby cat. Yeah.
Patrick: Yes. Yes. The little gray cat, who he's more the age of the audience that we're reaching if think about it. They see them – Nermal more as them. Garfield of all things, right? Garfield is the adult in the group. Garfield is in the situations, but it's typically Nermal who has done something. He's given out information, or he's posted something that he shouldn't, or he said something that he shouldn't. He reaches out to Garfield and Arlene about the problem and then they turn around and reach out to a brand new character that Jim Davis created for us, Dr. Cybrina, because it wouldn't be in Garfield's character keeping within the Garfield character. Garfield is really good at eating and sleeping. He's not the cyber expert.
Chris: He’s not a study sort.
Patrick: Yeah. It wouldn't fit. The children wouldn't catch that. We created a whole another character, Dr. Cybrina. Dr. Cybrina is the outside expert. She's the CISSP, we threw a little in there, make her one of the guests. She is the expert who comes in and does it and they've created – I'll hold this up here for you, so can see it.
Dr. Cybrina here, she is a Siamese cat who fits into it. Then we got Nermal and Garfield, of course. Dr. Cybrina, we purposely made it a female character. As we all know, enough girls and women are not going into STEM careers, so we thought this would be a little way to plant a seed maybe and hopefully encourage girls to consider STEM careers when they see Dr. Cybrina. She’s a really cool cat and she's a lot of fun. We've really tried to incorporate all of that into it.
She's the one. Be honest with her assistant Bisby, a robot. Got to have a robot nowadays. We threw a robot in there as well that goes on the adventure and helps teach the kids what they've done and what they shouldn't do.
Chris: Now are they watching videos? Are they doing interactive things? What is the span of the course?
Patrick: Yeah, it’s all the above. We've won three educator awards just in the past year for this program. The box I was just showing you, it's a kit that has that everything that a teacher, or a group leader needs for 30 children and all in the box. There's three different lessons and each one comes with a comic book that is also an activity book. In the back of it, there's eight pages of games and puzzles for the kids to do.
Chris: Oh, it’s fun.
Patrick: We have in there. Starts off with the teacher, we'll just use a classroom setting a teacher ask them questions of which we provided her or him everything they need, just to get a feel for what the kids are doing. They're always shocked with the answers of what the kids are already doing. Then it shows the cartoon. The cartoon is an original Garfield cartoon created just for us. We hired the Hollywood voices. When you hear Garfield, you know that's Garfield. That’s not a cat pretending to be Garfield. That's really Garfield. That draws the kids in right away.
Video goes on for say, 10 minutes and so it varies with each lesson. Then they pause it. Then the teacher has a set of questions that they lead the kids through and get their answers to. Then once they're done with that, they hit play, finishes the whole storyline, the happily ever after thing afterwards. Then the cartoon part is done. Each of the child children gets the comic book or activity book, and so they can continue to read the exact same storyline. It's got the puzzles and questions in the back, so it keeps reinforcing it from that standpoint. There's training cards that the kids get. They get a sticker that they can wear around the school for the rest of the day that they’re cyber safe and they're just eating it up. They're loving it. They're engaged with it.
We did some analytics of it. We tested, it was over a 1,000 students before they did the lesson and after they did the lesson. We did a pre and post-test. We found on average, their answers, or correct answers went up 36%. It only takes 20 to 30 minutes to do this lesson, so that's making an immediate impact on the children.
Chris: Yeah. I want one of those stickers. Your bio also mentions that you offer scholarships through this organization. What type of scholarships are available through the center and what type of education are they created to facilitate? Also, what type of people apply for and receive these scholarships?
Patrick: Sure. Yeah. Now it's one of our other big things. We're going to give a probably, I think this year, will be about $200,000 in scholarships in financial aid. Majority of them are college scholarships, so they're designed that you have to be studying information, cybersecurity, something in that realm. We really try to keep the focus on increasing that pipeline. We've all heard about there’s a shortage.
Chris: Right. No, we talk about it a lot here.
Patrick: All those ways that we try to contribute with that. ISC2 sponsors them, Raytheon sponsor them. Noble Four, SAIC are all onboard and they help sponsor these scholarships. We have about a thousand applicants, it varies year to year for the scholarships. We give away 60 or so scholarships each year, so there's significant dollars. They’re not $250 book scholarships.
We’re talking and some of them $10,000 scholarships that we are providing to them. We break it out. We've got all these applicants and we try to break it down and make sure that we're reaching as many people as we can. The majority of the scholarships are global, so we have people from around the world applying and being awarded the scholarships, but we break it out separately for women, we break it out for undergrad, we break it out for graduate. SAIC sponsors a cyber warrior scholarship, which is a little different than the other ones.
The other ones are pretty much focused on the ones from Noble Four, Raytheon and ISC2 are focused on tuition. The SAIC cyber warrior scholarship focuses on veterans who are transitioning. They're coming out of the service with a lot of experience already. As we know, many of the companies, you got to have a certification in order to really get the job and to show that you know what you're talking about. That's what SAIC is focusing on for us is helping those warriors, those veterans earn their certification.
It's providing them with their training courses. It's providing them with books, pays for their exam fee, things like that to help them part of that transition and land a better job when they come out. Those are something we do. Unfortunately, we literally just finished the application period for this year's round. There may be some more that come up as we're looking for more sponsors. Like I said, we've got a 1,000 applicants. We give away about 60 of them. I guarantee you, number 61 who didn't get one is just as good as number 60 with just that.
Chris: Absolutely. Oh, we have the same problem. We have –
Patrick: A decimal point difference in the scoring. If we can get some more sponsors, we'll do even more scholarships throughout the year. We typically start from November, December. They can go to our website again iamcybersafe.org and they can get on the notice of when it is and just keep an eye out for it. That is something we’re really proud of.
Chris: Okay. Do you have any tips – this is maybe a little out of your range, but let's see what happens. Do you have any tips for our listeners for staying safe or online? I mean, it's clear that if you're on a podcast catcher, or YouTube watching this video about cybersecurity, you’re probably a little savvy already. What are some common unsafe practices, even among people who shall we say, ought to know better?
Patrick: Yeah. I'm trying to think. It could be anything that's really different than what – that we already know. The biggest thing, one of the things we should probably teach I guess parents is that they need to be monitoring and staying involved with their children. Now this is a little different than what many people do. Probably again, some of your listeners and viewers, or developers and things like that. We don't really promote, we don't object to all the absolute monitor, the track what your kids are doing. That's great, but a tool.
The real thing you've got to do is you got to talk to the kids. I think that's the thing that we're missing the most is we have got to talk with them. They have to understand why they shouldn't be doing that and that it's not going to be good for them. They can't think 10 years ahead. They can't think about when they're applying for college, or think about it, just over the past couple of years, the Heisman Trophy winner, the Cy Young winner, where as soon as they get their award, boom, tweets come up from five years ago when they were a freshman in high school, that they said something that was funny back then or was acceptable back then that is no longer acceptable and boom, their careers are in trouble. Kids can’t understand. We need to be having conversations with them.
Using the monitoring apps and all of that, that's good. We say, talk with them. We say, get on the platforms with them. If they're on Instagram, be on Instagram and be following them. If they’re on Facebook, Snapchat, wherever they are and be following them. Don't stalk them is what we tell parents. Don’t be putting hearts and loving everything that they post and all that stuff.
Chris: Yeah, give them a little distance.
Patrick: Yeah, absolutely. We all act different. If your boss is watching you, you’re going to act a little different and it's just human nature. If they know that you're there, they might think twice before they post something like that. Or if something does get posted, you can have a conversation with and say, “Hey, John, Chris Pratt. Was that a really good picture to do? Or what you said to Bob, was that really – it might have been funny, but it may not have been funny.” That's actually one of the lessons we do with Garfield.
We have the three lessons; one on privacy, one on safe posting and one on cyber bullying. The cyber bullying one, we often refer to it as accidental bullying. Nemal post a picture of his friend Otto and it's a funny picture. Otto was eating hotdogs and he’s got mustard on him. We've all done that, right? We've all posted a funny picture of a friend, family member, but this one goes crazy and people start saying mean things and they're calling him fat and slob and all that stuff. That was not what Nermal was doing. He just thought it was a funny picture of his friend.
Those are the kinds of things, the conversation that we should be having with our kids saying, was that really a funny picture? Maybe that was a little mean what you said. Have the conversation with them.
Chris: Let’s go to the opposite end of the spectrum and talk a little bit, you mentioned you also are training seniors and so forth. For those of us who consider ourselves more cyber savvy, I mean, especially after listening to this episode, we're very cyber savvy now, but might worry for our parents back home and what they're what they're getting into when they're online, or what coupon offers they're clicking and so forth. What are some easy ways to help people understand the importance of staying secure online without sounding like you're lecturing them?
Patrick: Yeah, that's a great one and a great challenge, because I'm a parent and I know I'm smarter than my kids, right? That's the attitude we all have. You don't know that's nice, but you don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's I think probably one of our most vulnerable areas. Two big areas of course would be the young children and then the seniors on the opposite spectrum. I think often, we could be doing the exact same trainings for both.
We've actually thought about taking the Garfield program and giving it to seniors to help teach some basic Internet safety, because that's what we're trying to do is teach them basic stuff. The big thing with the seniors is the scams. That's really what we focus the majority of our time on. They can get on the computer. We're not teaching them how to use a computer. We're trying to how to use it safely.
It really becomes again, back to conversations, showing not telling. You can't lecture your kids, you can't lecture your parents. It works both ways. As to talking with them about it and the different examples were out there. The problem you run into and again, same with kids and parents, excuse me, kids and seniors is they're trusting. They believe, they don't believe anybody's trying to scam them. He seems like such a nice guy. It was a great e-mail that's came from Suzie. I know Suzie. Well, you and I know it didn't come from Suzie. They've pulled it up from their profile or something like that.
I talked one time with a security expert. He talked that he constantly was dealing with his parents, because their actual screen on their computer was this big, because they had so many of the browsers, all those screen browsers that you can download and you had this much room that actually rooted from this on the computer, because they kept accepting everything. He was constantly happen to go back in and that was mirror everything back out all the time, because the computer wasn't running right.
It boils back to the conversation, not a lecture, but a conversation and the big challenge is to get them same as we're trying to get any adult is to don't click on stuff. If you want to shop at Target, if you want to shop at Amazon, or Kmart, or wherever you're going, type it in. Type it in. Don't click on the ad that popped up. Type it in. You're going to get the thing. That special is there too. It’s going to be on the website. Don't click on it, mom. Just type it in. If you see something that popped up, then do that. Ad blockers, things like that. There's security people, we can go in and maybe help set it up and put some things on there that'll help block some of these things form as well. VPN and stuff like that could be of use too as well.
Chris: Okay. We’re starting to wrap-up a little bit here. Do you see any new types of social engineering approaches, or attack vectors that are becoming more prevalent in the current days, have the hacking, the phishing patterns that changed it all since you've started. Are there any hopes or expectations for the next 5-10 years for this type of cybersecurity education, or is it just stay the course? You guys have a pretty good product there, but is it changing over time?
Patrick: Yeah. Well, we're trying to teach basic stuff is a big part of ours, the Garfield program, the parents, the seniors. We don't get into for example, again with the Garfield, we don't get into Snapchat or Instagram, because those things are changing. It doesn't matter if you don't share your password, you don't give out personal information. Think about what you're posting. We try to teach those basic things. Things we see I'd say on the rise would be for the seniors, we were just talking about dating scams is really becoming a big one. I'm still always amazed that the Nairobi principle is still out there, that people are still falling for it.
Dating scam seems to be a one that we're really seeing a lot more of and we're adding more and more information to our website and to our presentations about the dating scams, is just again, back to the trusting. They’re just trusting, he's a sweet guy, he's a nice girl. We really hit it off. We got so much in common. The whole time they're being played. Then again, that reverts right to the children who are being groomed by pedophiles out there, who are doing things.
What I think an interesting thing that I've noticed when it comes to children and the abductions, or meeting in hotels and things like that, it's not just girls. It's the boys as well, if not even more that are falling for it. We have to be keeping an eye on it for all that. Those kinds of things are just getting bigger and bigger. As the kids are getting on younger and younger and actually the seniors, or people are on older and older who don't understand all of this, I think that's probably the biggest thing is the trust factor is still out there that people are utilizing that and they're getting better at it, because we have so much information out there.
We've got profiles, we've got pictures, we've got our grandkids, our dogs or whatever. It is so much easier for a bad guy to strike up a conversation, because they looked everything up online about you. Even if it's not the parent, or say grandparent who's online that much, we, or us, or our kids, we're posting pictures with grandma, we're posting pictures with the grandkids and we're tagging everybody in it.
The information is out there, so I think that's probably the biggest change over the years is that how much of the personal information is already out there. You don't really don't have to be hacked to get it anymore. We put it all out there for everybody to see. I think that's probably one of the biggest areas that we need to be focusing on is how much we're inadvertently putting out there in an effort to keep friends informed where we are. With my career again, and with the Boy Scouts, we've moved every two to five years. This is the eighth state that I've lived in. My wife and I were counting the other day, we’ve had 12 houses. We've been everywhere.
We have friends all around the country and with Facebook and things like that are a great way to keep in touch with old friends, but we're also putting out way too much information when we do that.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. That is a good way to wrap up here. We actually have the problems in front of us here and we want to get the information from the right people. If our listeners want to know more about the Center for Cybersecurity and Education and how to utilize your services in their area, where can they go online to learn more?
Patrick: Yeah, it’s great. Our website, iamcybersafe.org. Iamcybersafe.org is where we have everything. We would love to have them help us out. Everything on the site is free. There's a PowerPoint presentations that are already done, we talked about that you can download right now and go put on a presentation at your local PTA, at the library, at the Senior Center. They are looking for program and they would love to have somebody who has some knowledge about it to come and talk to them. It's a perfect scenario. It's already done. It's in 24 different languages, so it's right there for you.
The Garfield program is the only one that we have an expense for, the charging because of all the printing and everything. Again as a charity, we don't have the resources to just give all that away. We have it at cost. We would like to get that for your child's school, then it's available for purchase. If we were really finding so much of our outreach is coming as companies getting involved with us now and adopting a school in providing the program to their local elementary school as a community service. They do in a variety of ways with the adoptive school.
Someone simply buy it and provide it and let the teachers do it again. It's so simple that they don't have to be trained to how to do it. Some of them are doing it as a complete thing too, where they're going into the school as a guest and putting it on schools. Love that. It can be done either way.
Another big activity we have and we would love to find more people to help us with is what we call Cyber Safety Days. We started piloting these just over the past year and a half. We did New Orleans, we've done Orlando, we just did Tampa, where we go in and take over the city type of thing. In New Orleans, the first one we did with 2,300 students in one day. We did Orlando back in October, we did 6,600 student third graders in one day. We just in Tampa in January. Tampa, we did 10,500 third graders in over a 106 I think it was elementary schools in one day, all got the Garfield program.
Well, that came from corporations sponsoring, helping us provide it, coordinating with the schools, getting the district signed up. We're going to be doing Toronto this fall. 20,000 third graders in Toronto are going to get the program. We've just got a partnership. AWS had said, “We love this. We want to help.” They're helping us sponsor. We're going to do Orlando again. We're going to do Pittsburgh. We're going to do New York City. We've got SAIC says, “We want to help. We're going to look at Charleston.” We're just looking for more cities to be able to do this.
We need local people to help us coordinate with the schools, help us find local sponsors. A company, a pizza parlor could be a sponsor, buy a kit for a classroom, all the way up to a company like an AWS that's putting out in tens of thousands of dollars to help us reach literally tens of thousands of children in one day. It's a lot of fun. The media loves it. The students love it. It creates a buzz. You could do it any time, but when you're doing it all at once, it just creates that buzz.
If we were to do it at a local elementary school for a 100 children, that's great, but there's nothing newsworthy about it. When you're doing 10,000, 20,000 children, the television stations show up for us to do it. It's a lot of fun and it's a great way for us to reach a lot of children. Again, one thing is five years ago, we were doing 10,000 cyber-safety lessons a year between all of our programs, our parents, our senior, our children. This past year, we did a 143,000 lessons.
Chris: That’s a huge number.
Patrick: We're doubling every year. Everything we're doing is catching on. The Garfield is a 100,000 of that lessons we did last year was using the Garfield program. About 43,000 lessons were using the programs that we've had for years. Expanding it to all the different languages now really helps the global audience. Somebody in Germany, somebody who's watching and can download it in German and go present it. We did that with ISC2 volunteers, with members who volunteered. We had some 300 volunteers from around the world who took the program and translated in-country.
It's not you and me counting on our high school French class to try and do it. It's literally people in France, look people in Germany, people in Brazil are adopting it, making it culturally correct, using the right dialect and making it local. That's how people can get involved, come and be able to just simply come to iamcybersafe.org, get the programs. If you want to help us out with a Garfield program somewhere, help us in sponsoring a scholarship, reach out to us. We would love to have you be a partner with us.
Chris: All right. Patrick Craven, thank you for joining us today and congratulations on all the global success of this.
Patrick: We appreciate. Thank you so much for your time and we look forward to working with you and back again soon, I hope.
Chris: Okay. That sounds good. Thank you all as usual for listening and watching. If you enjoyed today's video, you can find many more on our YouTube page. Just go to youtube.com and type in Cyber Work with InfoSec to check out our collection of tutorials, interviews and past webinars. If you'd rather have us in your ears during your work day, all of our videos are also available as audio podcasts. Just search Cyber Work with InfoSec in your podcast catcher of choice.
Thank you once again to Patrick Craven and thank you all again for watching and listening. We will speak to you next week.
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