Fortinet Enhances Students’ Cybersecurity Awareness and Safety with Availability of Free Training and the Release of a New Children’s Book

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 30, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —

John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet
“Fortinet’s mission is to secure people, devices and data everywhere. As part of this mission the company is committed to educating the global community on cybersecurity knowledge and skillsets regardless of age, background or life experiences as cybersecurity affects everyone. Fortinet’s NSE 1 and NSE 2 training courses are available for free as part of the NSE Training Institute and can be taken by anyone of any age, including children.”

Renee Tarun, Deputy CISO and VP Information Security at Fortinet and Co-Author of “Cyber Safe”
With more children being online for prolonged periods of time as a result of remote learning, it’s especially important to educate our youth about internet safety. The “Cyber Safe” book was written to help protect kids by teaching them from an early age how to behave and to keep themselves safe online.”

News Summary
Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced continued commitment to educate students and underrepresented groups on cyber awareness and safety. In addition to Fortinet’s NSE 1 and NSE 2 training courses focused on fundamental cyber awareness providing an overview of threat actors and their tactics, Fortinet is releasing a children’s book designed to increase cyber awareness amongst children ranging from 7 to 12 years old. The book “Cyber Safe: A Dog’s Guide to Internet Security” was co-authored by Renee Tarun, Deputy CISO at Fortinet.

• The release of this children’s book further builds on Fortinet’s NSE 1 and NSE 2 training courses’ focus on basic cyber awareness and an overview of threat actors and their tactics. These two courses – part of the eight-level NSE Certification Program – are free for anyone interested and is for all ages including young children.
• The children’s book takes readers on a journey to learn how the Internet is a useful place, and how to stay secure. Lacey, the cyber smart dog teaches her friend Gabbi the cat how to use the Internet safely.
• With a strong focus on seeding cybersecurity education at all levels, Fortinet will make copies of the book available to elementary and middle schools across the country to instill a strong foundation of cybersecurity at an early age as part of the NSE Training Institute’s initiatives to close the skills gap.

Instilling Foundational Cyber Awareness Knowledge from an Early Age
A year into the pandemic and many students are still learning virtually. With the onslaught of new devices on the home network linking students to teachers, threat actors have identified an open opportunity to execute ransomware attacks, target specific devices to steal information and compromise public school districts’ security defenses. Young children are especially a vulnerable target for cyber criminals due to their little understanding of all the bad actor tactics and methods and the detrimental impact of falling victim to these actors.

With the influx of online activity, it’s crucial for both parents and children from an early age to know basic cybersecurity best practices as many continue in a hybrid capacity through the end of this school year and into the next. “Cyber Safe: A Dog’s Guide to Internet Security” provides an easy to understand introduction to possible dangers for children connecting online for school, video games, streaming shows and more. For parents, the book includes a parent’s guide with details on what they should be aware of when their children are online.

To purchase the book, please visit here.

NSE Training Institute’s Cyber Awareness Courses
Through the NSE Training Institute, Fortinet offers cyber awareness courses via NSE 1 and NSE 2 that can further develop foundational cybersecurity skills, complementing the “Cyber Safe” book lessons. Fortinet established the NSE Training Institute in 2015, comprised of the NSE Certification Program, the Security Academy Program – which is aimed at bringing cybersecurity education to academic institutions – and the Veterans Program, as well as programs focused on global nonprofits. In 2020 the NSE Training Institute also launched the Information Security Awareness and Training Service available for free. This service can be used by any organization, including schools, to bring cybersecurity awareness to their non-technical staff. To get started on NSE 1 and NSE 2, you can sign up here. To register for the InfoSec Service, sign up here.

Supporting Quotes

“With the rapid shift to virtual learning last year, cybersecurity awareness became more important than ever.  The “Cyber Safe” book by Renee Tarun made cybersecurity a relatable topic and enjoyable to read at the same time. We would like to start including the book as part of our mandatory Cybersecurity Awareness training and hand it out to all of our elementary students when they are issued a new device at the start of the school year.”
– Troy Neal, Executive Director, Cybersecurity and Technology Operations from Spring Branch Independent School District

“This is an artful, amusing, and accurate description of the dangers of unprotected Internet access. The book makes it easy to take pro-active measures to protect children and their parents against cyber-harms.  It is an enjoyable read that will give educators the language to help students use the Internet responsibly and safely.”
–John Windhausen Jr., Executive Director of Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition 

 “The complex concepts addressed in the “Cyber Safe” book are important for both children and parents. The book gives enough information to create interest and understanding in children. One aspect I really liked about the book was a focus on safety and how things such as a child’s identity information and others in a young person’s orbit can compromise this. Telling the security story through identifiable characters will help younger internet learners to see information security from a new perspective.”
-Bob Turner, CISO at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Additional Resources

• Read Renee Tarun’s blog for more information about the children’s book.
• Find out how the Fortinet Security Fabric platform delivers broad, integrated, and automated protection across an organization’s entire digital infrastructure.
• Learn more about FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence and research and the FortiGuard Security Subscriptions and Services portfolio.
• Learn more about Fortinet’s Network Security Expert (NSE) Training Institute, including its free cybersecurity training initiative, the NSE Certification Program, Security Academy Program and Veterans Program.
• Read more about how Fortinet customers are securing their organizations.
• Engage in the Fortinet User Community (Fuse). Share ideas and feedback, learn more about our products and technology, and connect with peers.
• Follow Fortinet on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. 

About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organizations around the world. Fortinet empowers our customers with complete visibility and control across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements today and into the future. Only the Fortinet Security Fabric platform can address the most critical security challenges and protect data across the entire digital infrastructure, whether in networked, application, multi-cloud or edge environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide and more than 500,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. Both a technology company and a learning organization, the Fortinet Network Security Expert (NSE) Training Institute has one of the largest and broadest cybersecurity training programs in the industry. Learn more at http://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.    

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