The key to our plan is to actively enlist support from every corner of our society – government, industry, academia and private citizens – in a new media version of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps.

The Civilian Cybersecurity Corps for the 21^st Century (CCC-21)

Modeled on the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s

Submitted in response to the Department of Homeland Security’s

National Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign Competition

Submitted By

Homeland Security Television

A division of Homeland Security Communications LLC

Outline of Campaign Strategy

Strategic Overview

Homeland Security Television (HSTV) has been in business since 2004 and is one of the leading producers of new media education, awareness and training content for homeland security professionals and the general public. HSTV was founded by award-winning cybersecurity journalist and author, Dan Verton.

Our plan leverages the full range of new media production and distribution capabilities, as well as traditional print, online and events forums to effectively communicate and cross-pollinate the best ideas for keeping Americans and our critical national infrastructure safe online. Our plan also provides a mechanism for America to invest in a new generation of cybersecurity professionals. This would not only help fill a serious shortfall in the number of cybersecurity professionals in the U.S., but would also play a small but important role in helping to put Americans back to work by updating and enhancing their professional skills and qualifications required in the 21^st century job market.

The key to our plan is to actively enlist support from every corner of our society – government, industry, academia and private citizens – in a new media version of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. FDR’s vision for the CCCs, which operated from 1933 to 1942, was to tackle the unemployment problem that resulted from the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on federal, state, county and municipal lands in every U.S. state, including the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

John C. Verton, the father of HSTV founder Dan Verton, served in the CCCs prior to joining the U.S. Navy. He later went on to serve during the entire course of World War II and was one of 13 survivors of the U.S.S. Sims (DD-409), sunk in action on May 7, 1942 during the Battle of the Coral Sea. The CCCs played a critical role in both his personal development and in his family’s ability to weather the economic storm of the 1930s.

HSTV’s Civilian Cybersecurity Corps 21 (CCC-21) would reach out to all Americans and encourage their participation in a year-long education, awareness and national brainstorming session focused on cybersecurity. Implemented on a monthly basis, the CCC-21 effort would comprise on-demand and live video content, audio podcasts, mobile content (including an iPhone application), television public service announcements, live events in major cities around the country, and a monthly print newsletter providing more in-depth educational and awareness content, service provider directories, tip sheets and more. The CCC-21 program would also be supported by a robust online community portal, which would enable active participation and discussion among members and between members and the Department of Homeland Security.

HSTV believes it is important that the announcement of a winner in this competition by the Department of Homeland Security not be the end of average citizens thinking about new ways to communicate cybersecurity. It is critical, therefore, that the campaign selected by the Department include a robust mechanism for constant interaction – thereby giving members of CCC-21, for example, a mechanism to influence the national discussion. Our learning and community portal would achieve that goal.

The success of such an awareness and education program will be defined by the number and diversity of those we attract to become official members of the CCC-21 program. Viewers and consumers of CCC-21 content will be encouraged to register to become official members of CCC-21. Membership will enable access to an exclusive CCC-21 learning portal that will contain exclusive educational content and materials that will qualify for Continuing Education Units (CEUs). These on-demand video programs will be taught by certified professionals and will be complemented by downloadable materials.  Registered members of CCC-21 who participate in these courses will be required to pass a brief quiz on the material covered during the course in return for a certificate of completion from the Department of Homeland Security.

For both registered and non-registered viewers of CCC-21 program content, HSTV will be able to measure the number of unique views for each program, including how many minutes/hours of each program were consumed on a nationwide basis. And since all of the non-new media components of our campaign will be encouraging and pointing members or potential members of CCC-21 to the online new media content, we will be able to measure the success of the traditional print and television outreach efforts by the number of online participants we attract over time.

Organizations Involved

Homeland Security Television, along with its strategic partner organizations, would act as the lead outreach agent on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Directorate. If requested, HSTV can bring members of its high-profile editorial advisory board to bear on the public outreach effort.

The first phase of recruitment for CCC-21 will involve organizational entities at the federal, state, and local government levels, as well as industry, academia and the media. We will ask all 50 state Chief Information Officers and homeland security directors, all 3,000+ County Executives, corporate members of the Fortune 1,000 and national and local news organizations (television, print, online) to actively support the Department’s outreach effort and the CCC-21 Program by doing three (3) things:

1.     Post a banner link to the CCC-21 portal on their Web site.

2.     Embed and promote the CCC-21 Video player on their Web site.

3.     Register volunteers from their organizations for CCC-21.

a.     Volunteers would be as either members or subject matter expert instructors.

From a content perspective, CCC-21 would rely on the active participation of colleges and universities, as well as subject matter experts from companies in the cybersecurity industry, and government. HSTV will actively engage these organizations to produce an organized and focused editorial calendar for the new media programs as well as the traditional print, television PSAs and live events portions of the campaign.

Target Audience

In an age when children as young as five, senior citizens and every age in between are not only online but actively participating in mobile computing and social networking, any national cybersecurity  awareness campaign must by its very nature endeavor to reach as many Americans as possible.  Given the current realities outlined above, there is little value in reaching out to a small subset of Internet users.

Moreover, CCC-21 would be akin to a national service campaign. Because everybody has a stake in cybersecurity and because each one of us is a potential weak link in the cybersecurity chain of trust, we will be asking people from all walks of life, all ages and all professions to get involved.  From a practical standpoint, this will have the most impact on how CCC-21 programming is produced and organized for distribution.  We envision the following potential membership categories in CCC-21:

1.     Parents & Children

2.     High School & College (ages 17 to 24)

3.     Professionals (ages 24 to 60)

4.     Casual Internet Users (all ages)

5.     Corporate / Institutional Members

Distribution of Message

Traditional Media / Public Service Announcements

Homeland Security Television has extensive experience producing and delivering traditional broadcast media products and public service announcements. Our most recent PSA was used by Amtrak during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver to raise awareness of new security measures and travel documentation requirements for those travelling to and from the U.S. and Canada.

In support of CCC-21, our traditional broadcast media and PSA work would include active delivery and an online repository of programming, including but not limited to the following:

·         Monthly production of a Cybersecurity Minute

o    The Cybersecurity Minute would be a 60-second spot produced in television news magazine style/format and will feature a high-profile personality from the worlds of government, industry or elsewhere discussing the importance of cybersecurity and/or a particular cybersecurity issue making headlines at that time.

o    The Cybersecurity Minute would be distributed to all news media nationwide. The news outlets would be able to “self-promote” their support of CCC-21 as an example of their organization doing its part to help secure our national cyberspace.

·         Proactive News Stories

o    All media organizations have to deal with slow news days. But while slow news days are a problem for the media, they are an opportunity for DHS and the National Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign.

o    CCC-21 would produce short news and information pieces for regular distribution to news outlets. Each program will be delivered with accompanying B-roll for quick edits and cuts into a nightly or evening news broadcast.

o    Once again, high-profile personalities from the worlds of government, industry or elsewhere will be featured discussing the importance of cybersecurity and/or a particular emerging trend in cybersecurity that the general public should know about.

·         Traditional PSAs

o    CCC-21 will produce a collection of standard Public Service Announcements featuring a spokesperson from different fields of endeavor (sports, film, television, theater, government) – all encouraging people to get involved in CCC-21 and to help secure our nation’s cyber infrastructure.

·         Audio / Radio

o    Each Cybersecurity Minute and each Proactive News Story produced by CCC-21 for television use will also be produced into an audio program for distribution to radio stations nationwide.

·         Animation Specials for Young People & Children

o    Reaching out to young people and children can be challenging, especially when it comes to the topic of computer and Internet security.

o    CCC-21 would leverage HSTV’s sophisticated animation capabilities to produce animation shorts specifically for children and young people ages 12 and under.

CCC-21 would enlist the assistance of educators to help write the content and would rely on HSTV’s cutting-edge animation capabilities to produce high-quality animations.

New Media

New media is where HSTV sets itself apart from other organizations. We have a long track record of delivering compelling programming across multiple new media delivery platforms. And we remain on the cutting-edge of technology when it comes to delivering information and enabling feedback from our viewing and listening audience.

Video Programming

HSTV employs a robust Content Delivery Network for both live and on-demand video. Our on-demand capabilities are unlimited and our live Web broadcasts can scale to over 100,000 simultaneous viewers.

HSTV’s video players are fully equipped with the latest social networking capabilities, including:

§  Automatic embed and link code generation

§  Email functionality

§  Post/embed in blogs

§  Twitter feeds

§  RSS feed capabilities

The real power of HSTV’s on-demand and live video players, however, comes from our ability to offer the players for syndication and to control who and what sites are allowed to embed the players.

As part of CCC-21, HSTV will develop custom video players, including tabbed players for presenting multiple categories of content, which will then be offered to the wide array of government, industry, media and academic institutions that will be recruited to support the campaign. These organizations will then embed the CCC-21 video player of their choice (multiple versions of difference sizes, layouts and colors will be offered) on their own Web sites for instant nationwide syndication of CCC-21 on-demand and live content.

Imagine, for example, CCC-21 on-demand and live broadcasts being made available across hundreds of high-profile Web sites, such as CNN, and USA Today, as well as potentially millions of mobile computing devices.

The CCC-21 iPhone App

The CCC-21 iPhone App will put the power of CCC-21 directly in the hands of millions of mobile iPhone users. In addition to watching mobile educational and awareness content right on their phone, iPhone users will be able to interact with the CCC-21 community, and report cybersecurity incidents (especially those that may impact the mobile computing environment).

CCC-21 Learning & Collaboration Portal

The CCC-21 online Learning Portal will include all of the state-of-the-art social networking capabilities currently available, including blogging, Twitter feeds, community forums, and more.

The CCC-21 Learning Portal will be the place where registered CCC-21 members can take part in in-depth learning experiences, including on-demand video courses taught by subject matter experts, and earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs).

The learning portal will also provide the capability for CCC-21 members to collaborate on specific cybersecurity challenges, find potential solutions to ongoing security problems, and communicate their findings directly to the Department of Homeland Security.

Literature & Pamphlets

HSTV’s executive producer Dan Verton, an award-winning journalist and author of four books on cybersecurity, will oversee the production of CCC-21 literature and pamphlets. The goal of this print endeavor will be to reach the casual Internet user or those who have been reluctant to take advantage of the online world due to a lack of information and knowledge about how they can do so in a secure fashion.  Through the print literature, CCC-21 would not only reach this particular audience, but would also build a pipeline of new users for its online educational and awareness content.

The underlying message of the literature and pamphlets will be one of positive engagement with the Internet and the online world. Rather than add to the new user’s apprehension about going online, CCC-21 will endeavor to show the new user that there is a world of great opportunity at their fingertips and that it is possible to participate in a safe and secure manner if you know how to do it.

The key to the success of the CCC-21 literature and pamphlet program will be the effective distribution of the materials. These materials must saturate the environments where new users and potential new users first come into contact with the digital world. To accomplish this, CCC-21 would engage the following institutions and industries to help distribute the printed literature and pamphlets:

·         Primary and secondary schools

·         Public libraries

·         Technology retail stores

·         Computer and Internet device manufacturers (imagine every new computer or Internet device coming with a DHS pamphlet on safe and secure computing)

·         Retirement homes & organizations

CCC-21 would reach out to the AARP for assistance in reaching its 65 million members.

Summary

HSTV believes that the Civilian Cybersecurity Corps for the 21^st Century (CCC-21) program meets all of the requirements set forth by the Department of Homeland Security for its cybersecurity awareness campaign.