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��By Kelsey Kendall

Imagine you get an email with a shipping update for your package. When you open it, you learn your order has been stolen by pirates, and you need to act immediately to get a refund by clicking a link.

Do you click?

Hopefully not, because that was a phishing email drafted by high school students during the first ever Cybersecurity High School Expo hosted by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Coastal Virginia Node.

About 50 students from high schools in Norfolk and Virginia Beach came to campus Friday for the inaugural event, meeting with ���������� cybersecurity students and experts to learn about different career paths within the field and how Old Dominion University can help them reach their goals. These students are already studying cybersecurity through their schools, so the expo helped them see the different directions they could go.��

“The whole thing is boosting my experience,” said Nick Moore, a senior at the Advanced Technology Center in Virginia Beach.

Throughout the morning, students went from room to room in the Webb Student Center to tackle hands-on activities like learning how to identify phishing schemes – emails, messages and calls that are designed to trick a person into sharing personal information with nefarious entities. This activity included the students writing their own, showing how they understood the methods used to deceive people in these kinds of cyberattacks.

There were representatives from the Nava Information Warfare Center, Brooks Crossing Innovation Lab and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium leading the activities.

In a panel with experts and current cybersecurity students at ����������, the high school students learned about artificial intelligence and its impact on the field as well as how cybersecurity affects every industry. Panelists emphasized that even if the high schoolers decide not to pursue a degree in cybersecurity, it is good to be aware to protect future business ventures and personal information.

“I think cybersecurity is open to anybody with any skill set,” said John Costanzo, chief administrative officer for the Coastal Virginia Center for Cyber Innovation. “You can look at policy. You can look at other things besides just the technical side of it.”

The high schoolers also learned about the opportunities they can find at the University, should they choose to attend.

For high schoolers getting ready to decide what comes after graduation, college can seem a bit daunting. There is navigating financial aid and an entirely new school environment. Angel Perryman, a senior at Norview High School in Norfolk, has already been accepted into ����������, so being around the cybersecurity students at Webb Center gave him a taste of what is to come.

��“Being in this building and learning about cybersecurity, I can really understand that the future is not scary – it’s just different,” Perryman said. ��

Deborah Marshall, a teacher specialist in career and technical education at Norfolk Public Schools, said the expo was a great opportunity for the students to get out of the classroom.

“They get to ask questions of people they don’t get to necessarily see in their classrooms,” Marshall said. “Going outside of your classrooms walls to learn is just as important as being in the classroom.”

Virginia Beach City Public Schools’ Linda Lavender, a network administration and cybersecurity instructor, said she hopes bringing the high schoolers to ���������� encourages them to seriously consider its cybersecurity program after graduating high school. She added that events like the Cybersecurity High School Expo shows students what they could be a part of.

“I’m hoping what they did was see themselves in these shoes, as being those people to run (the event) next time and being those emerging cyber leaders,” Lavender said.