Cyber safety Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Cyber SWAT Program Training Coming To W.Va. Students

The lessons focus on using social media and chat rooms safely and the risks of sharing personal sexual material.

A bill signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice this week creates enhanced cyber safety training for West Virginia students.

The educational program will soon be available to third through twelfth graders statewide. Senate Bill 466 is known as the Cyber SWAT program. That’s short for Safety While Accessing Technology.

The lessons focus on using social media and chat rooms safely and the risks of sharing personal sexual material.

Will Thompson, the U.S. attorney for West Virginia’s Southern District, said children in the state are becoming human trafficking, sextortion or financial crime victims on almost a daily basis.

“With some of them, you’re upset because somebody’s lost a couple hundred dollars,” Thompson said. “Add on even being more upset, because someone’s gotten sex trafficked or something of that nature.”

Thompson said Cyber SWAT lessons include the same things he shares with his own children, especially his 13-year-old. He said cyber safety tips will create simple awareness.

“You don’t chat with anyone that you don’t know in real life,” Thompson said. “If someone tries to friend you on a social media site that you don’t know, stay away.”

Thompson said he sees a lot of children who will be asked either by other children or by bad actors to share compromising photos of themselves. He said the wrong-doing for teens is not always obvious.

“There’s a way of trying to teach that even though it’s a 17-year-old asking for a picture of a 15-year-old, that’s a federal crime, we can’t be doing that,” Thompson said.

The program will teach students the legal and personal consequences of sharing sexually suggestive or explicit material. It also sets up potential collaborations between school districts, law enforcement and other entities.

The program provides student resources with contact information if encountering suspicious or dangerous activity.

Thompson said the cyber safety program, with all of its facets, has lofty, yet reachable goals.

“We might be able to stop somebody from being human traffic,” Thompson said. “We might be able to stop somebody from sending compromising photos, stop somebody from becoming a victim of the sextortion scam.”

The law requires school districts to implement the program for the 2025-2026 school year.

Student Pregnancy, Cybersecurity Focus Of Education Committees

To start the week, education committees in both chambers have focused on supporting students in difficult situations.

According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, West Virginia has the eighth highest teen birth rate in the country.

During their meeting Monday, the House Education Committee discussed House Bill 5179. Also known as Jaycie’s Law, the bill would require that each county board develop a written attendance policy for pregnant and parenting students and excuse all absences due to pregnancy or parenting related conditions up to eight weeks.

The bill originated from a social worker in Cabell County who had seen the school system requiring teenage girls to go back to school one week after giving birth.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, moved to amend language that would require schools to refer pregnant students to pregnancy health organizations.

“It requires the school to refer a girl to an unlicensed health care provider,” he said. “A lot of them also are religious based, maybe they’re not a member of that religion. There’s a lot of issues with that, sending somebody, putting it in code to go to this place that looks like a doctor’s office, but isn’t a doctor’s office.”

Pushkin’s amendment originally removed any reference to pregnancy health organizations from the bill. But after discussion, he reformed the amendment to make the requirement a permissive choice to refer students to the organizations.

Del. Rolland Jennings, R-Preston, said he believed the bill’s referral to resources fulfilled the lawmakers’ promise to support pregnant women made when the state’s abortion restriction was passed in 2022.

“This is giving support where the schools have to at least discuss with these young mothers places where they can go and get support for them,” he said. “If we make it permissive, some schools may do it. Others don’t want to get involved, won’t do it. And I think by making it so they have to do it, we’re doing the best for these young ladies.”

The amendment did pass, and the bill was recommended to the full chamber.

Other Business

The House committee also advanced bills regarding in-state tuition for all National Guard members and their dependents, as well as Hope Scholarship funding.

House Bill 4945 makes several changes to code relating to the Hope Scholarship, including permitting the Hope Scholarship board to provide an estimate of the program’s future enrollment to the Department of Education by Dec. 10 of each year for funding, rather than relying on the prior year’s enrollment.

“This would allow us instead of it being solely based on the number of applications received in the prior year, it would allow us to estimate,” said Amy Willard, assistant treasurer of savings programs for the West Virginia State Treasurer’s Office. “We would do that using trends that we’re seeing in the program, any data that we have on birth, stuff like that to try to estimate that incoming kindergarten class. But there is still the provision that if there was unused money, like at the end of the fiscal year, that that appropriation would be reduced. So we would still always estimate what our need was for the year.”

Pushkin again moved to amend the bill, this time excluding Hope Scholarship funds from being used out of state. About $300,000 in Hope funds were spent out of state in the program’s first year.

However, Del. Wayne Clark, R-Jefferson, pointed out that a similar restriction had been proposed when the Hope Scholarship was being created.

“One of the reasons why it was voted down at that time was because of the purchase of curriculum and purchase of, paying for field trips or paying for other things that the state does buy out of state,” he said. “And when we’re talking about, you know, the amount of students that do potentially attend border school, schools that are outside of our border are from border counties. Remember, we’re still trying to give the parents of West Virginia an option for their education. And that’s the whole purpose of the Hope Scholarship.”

The amendment was rejected, and House Bill 4945 was recommended to the full House, with a reference to the Finance Committee.

Other bills advanced by the committee:

H. B. 4882, extending in-state tuition rates to all members and veterans of the National Guard, reserves, and armed forces as well as their spouses and dependents.
H. B. 5038, relating to research and economic development agreements for state institutions of higher education.
H. B. 5050, relating to authorizing legislative rules regarding higher education.
H. B. 5056, relating to substitute service personnel positions.
H. B. 5153, relating to revising, updating and streamlining the requirements governing the West Virginia Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Scholarship.

Teaching Cyber Security

In the Senate Education Committee Tuesday morning, senators heard from law enforcement about the need for students to be educated about online safety.

Senate Bill 466 requires the state board to develop an education program to teach safety while accessing technology. The committee previously discussed and laid over the bill on Jan. 18, and both times the discussion focused on the requirement for instruction on the risks associated with sharing sexually suggestive or sexually explicit materials.

SGT Jillian Yeager of the State Police’s Crimes Against Children Unit told the committee her office of 12 investigators has received 6,000 tips of sexual cybercrimes against minors in the past four years, mirroring a national spike during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. She said education like the kind proposed in Senate Bill 466 would go a long way to reducing such instances.

“I firmly believe that if we mandate cyber safety training in the state, that it will greatly reduce our number of cyber tips simply by educating children to help themselves not become victims to these predators online,” Yeager said.

The committee voted to recommend the bill to the full Senate, and laid over the only other bill on the agenda due to time constraints.

Federal, State Officials Recognize Cybersecurity Awareness Month

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, which serves as a reminder to be mindful of digital security and how to prevent cyber attacks.

“For each risk identified you don’t mitigate, you’re accepting,” said Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Deputy Director Nitin Natarajan.

Some basic cybersecurity tips include simple tasks like creating strong, unique online passwords, updating computer software and using multi-factor authentication to keep online accounts more secure. That’s adding an extra layer to log in, like inputting a code sent via text message alongside a regular password.

“When we talk about cyber hygiene, and we talk about those core fundamentals, that’s the same whether you’re the multibillion dollar, multinational corporation, as if you’re the individual user sitting at home in West Virginia,” Natarajan said.

Being able to recognize and report phishing, or fake messages designed to trick users into sending important or sensitive information, from suspicious emails or text messages is also important.

Natarajan said ensuring your digital footprint is protected is something that should guide day-to-day decisions.

“As you look to buy software or hardware and frankly, services, you’re looking for those that have security built into the design,” Natarajan said. “If I’m going to choose a bank, do I choose a bank that offers multi-factor authentication, or one that doesn’t?”

The agency estimates cyber attacks happen between every 11 to 44 seconds nationwide.

An email sent from CISA representative Jane Cowley to West Virginia Public Broadcasting said the agency is aware of and helped combat 26 cybersecurity incidents in West Virginia within the past 13 months, including those affecting healthcare services, emergency services, local governments and private organizations.