Students in Teju Herath’s information assurance class put their projects on display Tuesday in the name of educating their peers.

Herath, a professor in the Goodman School of Business, had her students develop posters to increase awareness of cyber security issues across campus.

The posters were displayed along the Canadian Tire bridge Tuesday, Oct. 31 and were judged by Associate Vice-President of Information Technology, David Cullum, ITS Client Services Director Andy Morgan, Technical Analyst Russ Fisenko and Goodman’s ITS and Physical Space Manager John D’Amico.

“It’s important for students to be learning about cyber security in their classes because they live in the world of security,” said Cullum.

The ransomware poster created by Karamvir Jaswal, Ryan Ho and Connor Parnham placed first.

“It’s very different from when I grew up and we weren’t carrying two or three — we didn’t even have a cell phone. Now it’s all about protecting your data. Every time you turn those devices on, you have to worry about it and it is very serious.”

The poster competition was held in collaboration with Brock’s Information Technology Services department which has been hosting workshops throughout the month of October in observance of National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

“The assignment is to train the students in the practice of security,” said Herath. “We partnered with Brock ITS on their cyber security initiative, so the project has a two-fold purpose: students learn more about information assurance, and we create awareness on campus about the issues as part of Cyber Security month.”

The ransomware poster created by Karamvir Jaswal, Ryan Ho and Connor Parnham placed first, followed closely by the phishing poster created by Hassan Butt, Andrew Lin, Stephen Margison and Vince Vat.

“We’re trying to communicate with our poster that ransomware is becoming more and more prevalent,” said Jaswal. “We wanted to show how the ransomware attack process occurs, and what you should or shouldn’t do if you find yourself in that situation.

“Ransomware is very disruptive and it happens more often than you think. As people become more educated on this issue, the frequency of these attacks will hopefully decrease.”