Cybersecurity Education in Rural Indigenous Canada

Canada is one of the largest countries by area in the world. Rural populations of Canada have for decades suffered from lacking the infrastructure necessary to offer technological advancements to its citizens. Finally, in recent years, we have seen our Canadian government take the initiative to ensure our remote citizens have the Internet capabilities needed to operate in our digital world. With advancement also comes challenges, which in the context of this paper involves the additional risk to Canadian citizens to cyber-threats. Through an educational initiative funded Nationally, this paper discusses the efforts to offer cybersecurity education to rural Indigenous citizens in the province of Manitoba, Canada. We discuss in detail our initial progress, recent workshops with results, and the future of this program post-COVID-19.