My specialization is in the area of Cyber Security and I can clearly see a connection between Digital Literacy cyber security. We do know that being security conscious and knowing about the basic security is an indispensable part of being digitally literate. In this post I will shed some light into how mass digital literacy can help secure the Internet.
Digital literacy taught was to know about our digital foot prints, to be critical about how we consume and share information on the Internet, to know about our privacy issues and the overall building blocks of the Internet. One of the common ways hackers are stealing data is through a technic known as Social Engineering which is a very easy way to tricking someone to share information or click on links that shouldn’t be clicked. A digitally literate person have developed a habit of thinking before doing anything online, checking the source, understanding the motive and overall, knowing what danger a simple link can pose. It does not matter if an organization have top of the line technical and physical security unless each and every person understands how they can make the whole organization exposed by a simple click on a link or just opening an email they shouldn’t have opened. Hackers who does attacks through social engineering they take advantage of personal information available on the Internet. In many cases, the person being targeted does not know how much personal information they have made available for public on the Internet. They key to know about this and to be safe against this type of social engineering attacks is to know one’s digital footprint and then putting control in place so that personal information is available only for intended audience.
So, it is really important to educate people from a Digital Literacy point of view in order to enhance our security on the Internet. An organization having digital literacy among its employers will be less prone to cyber attacks.