New York 5th Grader Takes Top Honors in MS-ISAC National Cybersecurity Awareness Poster Contest
EAST GREENBUSH, N.Y., May 26, 2021 – The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS®) and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (MS-ISAC®) named New York 5th grader, Alyssa, the overall national winner of the annual Kids Safe Online Poster Contest. Alyssa and three other students will have their cyber safety artwork displayed on the 2022 MS-ISAC posters:
- Alyssa, 5th Grade, New York. – National Winner
- Sanjay, 8th Grade, New Jersey
- Whitney, 5th Grade, Iowa
- Sahaj, 1st Grade, New York
As the COVID-19 pandemic created an elevated focus towards the digital environment, the MS-ISAC embraced that shift and adapted their annual poster contest. Rather than the traditional calendar that features the 13 total poster contest winners, the MS-ISAC found a new way to distribute educational and interactive resources and showcase the winning artwork. The result is a cyber safety activity book that will debut in October as part of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The activity book will include cybersecurity related crossword puzzles, word searches, word scrambles, coloring pages, and the poster contest artwork.
“With kids spending more waking hours online than ever before, cybersecurity is of the utmost importance and it needs to be talked about. All of the submissions that we received are real conversation starters, and that’s the point of this,” said Mike Aliperti, MS-ISAC Vice President, Stakeholder Engagement and MS-ISAC Chair. “The National Kids Safe Online Poster Contest is a fun, yet very impactful way that our kids can educate not only their peers, but everyone, on the importance of online safety.”
The 13 winning submissions illustrated the safe use of the internet and mobile devices through: password protection, keeping devices and software up-to-date, protecting personal information, etc.
The 2021 Kids Safe Online poster contest winners* are:
- Alyssa, 5th Grade, New York. – National Winner
- Sanjay, 8th Grade, New Jersey
- Whitney, 5th Grade, Iowa
- Sahaj, 1st Grade, New York
- Haley, 2nd Grade, New York
- Jessalyn, 11th Grade, New Jersey
- Theodora, 7th Grade, New York
- Brice, 9th Grade, Texas
- Luana, 11th Grade, Texas
- Nicole, 12th Grade, New York
- Aniya, 6th Grade, New Jersey
- Melia, 12th Grade, Virginia
- Avni, 6th Grade, Arizona
*Out of respect for the contestants’ safety, only a limited amount of information about the winners is released by CIS.
Every year the MS-ISAC conducts a National Cybersecurity Awareness Poster Contest to encourage young people to use the internet safely and securely and to craft messages and images that will best resonate with their peers across the country. The contest is open to all K-12 students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, U.S. tribal nations, and U.S. military installations worldwide.
About CIS:
The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS®) makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses, and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation. We are a community-driven nonprofit, responsible for the CIS Controls® and CIS Benchmarks™, globally recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data. We lead a global community of IT professionals to continuously refine these standards to proactively safeguard against emerging threats. Our CIS Hardened Images® provide secure, on-demand, scalable computing environments in the cloud. CIS is home to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (MS-ISAC®), the trusted resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government entities, and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (EI-ISAC®), which supports the cybersecurity needs of U.S. elections offices. To learn more, visit CISecurity.org or follow us on Twitter: @CISecurity.
Contact:
Autum Pylant