Lesson Plan: Chapter 6
Connecting to CSTA Standards
| Grades | Concept | Subconcept | Standard Number | Practice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6-8 | Networks & the Internet | Cybersecurity | 2-NI-05 | Communicating About Computing: 7.2 |
Explain how physical and digital security measures protect electronic information.
Information that is stored online is vulnerable to unwanted access. Examples of physical security measures to protect data include keeping passwords hidden, locking doors, making backup copies on external storage devices, and erasing a storage device before it is reused. Examples of digital security measures include secure router admin passwords, firewalls that limit access to private networks, and the use of a protocol such as HTTPS to ensure secure data transmission.
Learning Outcomes/Goals
This chapter is about security, both cyber security and physical security of data centers. By using a metaphor around creating a security barrier with a password protection around vulnerable moss species, the student is encouraged to think of the many ways that your data is (or should be) secured as it flows into and through the internet.
Differentiated Instruction
| Lower level students | Higher level students |
|---|---|
| Can complete the project recipe in the emulator and explain how they would enhance it | Can enhance the project to design a way to avoid hard-coding a password in the codebase |
Transfer Learning
"Real life" security can be observed both online or in person. Think about all the various barriers that have been constructed to keep people and their information safe and consider how they were designed. Think about how the physical barriers that are constructed have influenced the design of virtual ones. How does a firewall, for example, work in real life vs. on the internet? Are there similarities or differences?
Vocabulary
- Animation: Refers to the various ways that programmers and animators can manipulate pixels to make them appear to move on a screen
- Disaster recovery: Focusing on the technical needs of businesses, disaster recovery defines policies and tools used to enable an organization to recover from a natural or accidental disaster
- Passwords: A string of characters used to identify a given person
- Security: Protection from potential harms; in the case of internet security, the concept covers the various techniques available to protect from data breaches as data flows around the internet
Assessment
Consider the many ways that secure systems are constructed and show how each solve a particular purpose.
| Formative | Summative |
|---|---|
| Research the various types of physical and digital barries such as secure storage, firewalls, passwords, and secure protocols. Create a diagram detailing one of them. | Write a summary of the ways that physical barriers are similar to and different from virtual barriers. |
Quiz Answers
Animations are built by connecting a series of:
a. Tags
b. Items
c. Frames
Disaster recovery includes methods to help systems to recover from:
a. Outages
b. Physical damage
c. Both of these
Which of the following are features of secure systems?
a. Firewalls
b. Clear text passwords
c. Hard-coded passwords
More Resources/Materials
Solution Code
The full solution codebase can be found on GitHub and on MakeCode Arcade
Assignment and Rubric: Research a Secure Site
In the real world, securing a site that is high-value like a bank or wallet is a race between the professionals who keep the site secure versus the hackers who are trying to break into the bank. Choose a website that has the ability to request user credentials such as a login form, sign-in form, and password reset form.
Explore its security mechanisms, including the way the site is protected against hackers on the frontend, according to what you can see from looking at the construction of the forms and using browser developer tools. Then, make some guesses about how the site is protected on the backend, using such things as firewalls, secure handling of sensitive user data, and physical backups. Research if (and how!) this site has ever been hacked (an Internet search can often turn up interesting information).
| Exemplary | Adequate | Needs Improvement |
|---|---|---|
| A site that meets the above requirements is presented in a well-researched and meticulously presented way as an illustrted report | A site is researched but not fully analyzed | A minimal report is produced |
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