Educational Institutions report astounding rates of security breaches and cyber attacks, with millions of hacking attempts into information systems. Educational Institutions are vulnerable to losing valuable intellectual property such as patents awarded to faculty and students, as well as personal information of students and faculty/staff. Because of the frequency of cyber attacks on institutions of learning, the need for increased cyber awareness has never been greater.

There are various threats to students in cyber space, including cyber bullying , sexual grooming, sexual harassment and child pornography. Most students are unaware of these problems and realize that they have been victimized by a cybercriminal only when the damage has been done. On the other hand, parents and teachers either have inadequate information about need and the means through which they can safeguard their students on the internet or may have little time or resources or training to ensure they adopt steps to safeguard their students on the internet.

The Global Youth On-Line Behavior Survey conducted by Microsoft declares that 53% of the students between age 12-23 in India have become victims of cyber bullying. Most cyber bullying cases were arising out of social media and encounters on Facebook comprised of 60% of these cases. Mobile phones and on-line chat rooms were second and third comprised of the remaining 40% cases. Moreover, many social network sites do not use or deploy age verification mechanism as a result of which students create fake profiles and are able to access adult content.

Faculty, Students & everyone in the education sector need to know about the real-life problems of identity theft and cyber attacks that can devastate a Institution's infrastructure and its personnel's livelihood.

Towards this end, National Cyber Security Research Council is carrying out extensive Awareness, Training and Research programs by conducting "Faculty Development Programme on Cyber Security" as part of "National Cyber Safety Programme", so that the Institutions are made aware of the dangers of the internet, and how they should be careful and avoid falling into cyber traps.