AMES, Iowa – With a twangy guitar and a cartoon train, “Cyber House Rock!” delivers a simple video message about email security.
“Driving across the cyber land, with safety in our hands, encrypt your data, make passwords strong, to keep away all the malware, spam and email scams,” go the lyrics to a song titled “Email Rail.”
Doug Jacobson, Iowa State University’s cybersecurity outreach and education specialist, shook his head. Never, ever, did he think he’d be producing cybersecurity music videos.
No, this isn’t his skill set, said Jacobson, a University Professor of electrical and computer engineering, the director of the university’s Center for Cybersecurity Innovation and Outreach and executive director of the Iowa Cyber Hub.
But here he is, in the final days of 2024’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month, unveiling a series of music videos, with more to follow, for anybody confused by cybersecurity.
“We really want this to be in the genre of ‘Schoolhouse Rock,’” Jacobson said, referring to the series of 65 instructional music videos that debuted in 1973 on Saturday morning children’s television. “These videos are really designed to be cute and get people to think.”
The videos won’t make people cybersecurity experts, he said. But they’ll include links to resources for more help and details. The videos and resources are available at cyberhouserock.info.
Jacobson is supporting the video project with funding from his named faculty position, the Sunil and Sujata Gaitonde Professorship in Cybersecurity.
The project is also supported by a team of students and staff (see sidebar) who do have skill sets that include singing and AI-assisted music and video production.
That includes Lindsay Foster, the program specialist for the Center for Cybersecurity Innovation and Outreach. Foster has a background in choir and a degree in English, theater and film. She’s the singer for most of the videos. (And she’s now joking that she can finally use her major on the job.)
Cyber House Rock! is part of the center’s larger Cybersecurity Ambassador Program. The program is recruiting and enlisting a corps of students and other volunteers to help friends, families, businesses and communities take proactive measures to keep their online information safe and secure.
The outreach efforts – including other video stories and explainers – are all about teaching people in fresh and helpful ways.
“By blending education with entertainment,” Jacobson wrote in a paper for an engineering education conference, “‘Cyber House Rock’ effectively lowers the barrier to understanding cybersecurity, making it more accessible to the general public and reinforcing the importance of being vigilant and informed in the digital world.”
