DF3: Lesson 2 Early Stage Cyber Defence

Train students to think like cyber analysts from the start. This KS3 / lower secondary computing lesson drops them straight into a real-time threat environment, where they must identify suspicious behaviour before a breach occurs.

Students take on the role of a digital forensics operative assigned to an Olympic venue cybersecurity team. They’ll analyse live log entries, classify risks, and decide whether early warning signs are random - or part of a developing attack. A guided simulation builds fluency with anomaly detection, while scaffolded tasks push students to build breach theories and explain risk in professional language.

The challenge escalates as students apply a formal scoring system (Severity × Likelihood) to prioritise log entries and justify incident response decisions. The final task mirrors real-world triage: ranking threats and making the call on what to act on first.

With expert vocabulary, forensic logic, and industry-standard techniques, this is a forensic thinking masterclass wrapped in a high-stakes scenario.

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