University of East London examines youth cybercrime prevention | #cybercrime | #infosec

The University of East London (UEL) has brought researchers and crime prevention specialists together to examine how young people move from online experimentation into cyber offending, and where education and routes into cybersecurity employment could interrupt that progression.Held at the university’s Stratford Campus on October 7, the Pathways Into and Out of Youth Cybercrime Conference combined research with firsthand experience of offending. Participants included the National Crime Agency, London’s Violence Reduction Unit and Professor Thomas Holt of Michigan State University.Conor Freeman described a pathway that began through Minecraft at age 11 and led to his arrest at 18 in connection with a $20 million cryptocurrency hack. He now works with Hacking Games, drawing on his experience to encourage technically skilled young people to pursue legitimate cybersecurity careers.The event was organized by UEL’s Child Online Harms Policy Think Tank, part of its Institute for Connected Communities. In a LinkedIn post about the conference, the university said: “Young people can drift into cybercrime gradually, sometimes without recognising when their behaviour becomes illegal.”UEL’s research draws on work involving 8,000 young people across eight European countries. Researchers have examined both pathways into offending and opportunities to prevent escalation.In the university’s account of the event, Dr Ruby Farr, Associate Director of the Child Online Harms Policy Think Tank and Senior Research Fellow, explains: “Many of the cybercriminals we interviewed told us they had engaged in illegal online behaviour early on, with many describing a gradual almost accidental progression into more serious offending. What was particularly striking was that some did not recognise when their experimentation had crossed a legal boundary.”Discussions considered how digital literacy and earlier support could help young people understand legal boundaries before their behavior becomes more serious.Figures highlighted by UEL show that 73.6% of males and 64.6% of females surveyed reported engaging in cybercrime or high-risk online behavior. The measure combines those two categories; it does not establish that those proportions committed criminal offenses.Professor Julia Davidson, Professor of Criminal Justice and Cybercrime and Director of both the Institute for Connected Communities and the think tank, argues that intervention needs to extend beyond the justice system.“Families, educators, industry, policymakers and law enforcement all have a role to play in helping young people understand where the legal boundaries sit online and giving them opportunities to use their digital skills positively,” she says in UEL’s account.Sessions also examined gender and cybercrime, girls’ experiences in online gaming, toxic masculinity online and approaches to hacking prevention. The program brought those discussions together with research on entering and leaving cyber offending, rather than treating young people’s technical interests as a single route into crime.The conference also marked the publication of the Routledge book Pathways into and out of Youth Cybercrime, which brings together research intended to inform prevention strategies.

Click Here For The Original Source.

——————————————————–

…………

Related