Leveraging 2nd life as a communications media: An effective tool for security awareness training

Virtual worlds bleed into the physical world in increasingly interesting ways. This paper examines developing an in world island designed to prepare avatars for responsible global citizenship. It examines the unconstrained nature of these types of citizens; how trust and rights are beginning to evolve and be enforced in this environment; and how we might begin to prepare avatars to become good citizens. The latter is explored in the context of a new program on virtual worlds at the University of Washington in which students immerse themselves, by both learning and working in the Second Life environment for an entire academic year. An end-of-term student project, creating Cybersecurity Island, is described as a place created for avatars to learn lessons in online security that can lead to good citizenship behavior and practices. This educational program is conceived as a first step toward helping to guide the way that avatar citizenship develops. As the virtual and physical worlds blend, it is important to be aware of the kinds of virtual communities we are creating and to be certain we create foundations for civility in this new space. Avatar, the movie, is `playing´ now on your laptop presenting interesting challenges! Our work begins to address how we can ensure security and trust in virtual environments.