Wise & Munro Learning Research

In our paper we present interactions between artificial intelligence (AI) and the field of cybersecurity. We present work of the Horizon Europe CS-AWARE-NEXT project that aims to provide improved cybersecurity management capabilities to organisations and local/ regional supply networks. Such organisations and networks operate in a highly dynamic cybersecurity environment, and must comply with European legislation such as the network and information security (NIS/NIS2) directive. Organisations increasingly understand that cybersecurity needs to be more dynamic and collaborative, building on a shared situational awareness of potential cybersecurity issues relevant to the organisations and networks in question. There is no doubt that there exists a cybersecurity shortfall in many organisations as the majority of their legacy systems have not been designed either to foster cybersecurity awareness, nor are they Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning-ready, in terms of permitting models and algorithms to be deployed, or to interact with the application logic of the original systems. To remedy this, there is a need for experimenting with novel approaches to information systems engineering that can address needs emerging from the inclusion of dedicated Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning modules and components to enable provisions for self-healing, self-protecting, and self-configuration.

In real life contexts, predicting how technology will actually be used is often difficult. This can be a problem in the context of cybercrime: attempts to steal our identities, our money, or simply to frustrate our work by infecting our computers, rely on exceptions, derogations, people not paying attention, or not understanding what is at stake. There are various ways for the criminal mind to operate, but our concern is that future users need to develop more awareness of cybersecurity, meaning not only knowing the risks of using technology, but also how to handle threats that may happen in cyberspace. We will report two qualitative studies that show that cybersecurity awareness is about evolving resilience in a collaborative practice, and therefore cybersecurity awareness is collaborative. This has implications for Technology Enhanced Learning for future citizens.

Collaborative learning interactions involve a subtle interplay between social relations, the knowledge being co-elaborated, and empathetic circulation of emotions. CSCL situations involve specific transformations of the relations between these three dimensions, within an inherently open collective process of tool appropriation, the study and theorisation of which is the objective of this symposium.