The cyber world is amazing! Don’t we all love enjoying our small yet infinite digital worlds, uploading and downloading gigabytes of data in the form of photos, videos, and information every day, without having to worry about who is watching us and where our data is going? Yes, we love it. We love every little bit of it because what is there to not love? Thanks to the internet and its inventors, we can call anyone, from a long-distance friend to a local taxi, with a few taps on our phones. The cyber world is truly amazing! We love using it left, right and center, glued to our screens, for work and for leisure, in sickness and in health, until we are hit by a cyber incident! Once that happens, we become extra cautious, but until that happens, we are quite the embodiment of the ‘devil may care’ attitude.
Why people don’t care about cyber security?
They simply don’t. Do you care about cybersecurity? If yes, how much do you care? Do you care enough to not download pirated software on your computer? Do you care enough to cover your webcam with a black tape? Or do you care enough to make it your own responsibility to protect the world and enroll yourself in an online hacking course? How much exactly do you care if you even do? The fact that people don’t give a rat’s leg about their own digital security is rooted in the fact that people think it’s a lot of work for a lot less benefit. Cyber incidents don’t happen to everybody. Even if they happen to a lot of people, the majority are unaware about it and keep using the internet as they remain in dark about their security posture. You would be amazed to know that your email credentials have probably already leaked in a data leak somewhere months ago and someone must have already bought it off the dark web. Moreover, caring about security is not considered very cool in social circles that foolishly underestimate the kind of damage a cyber incident can do. From conducting cyber warfare to paralysing hospitals, hackers put a lot more than just our money at risk. Not caring about security is like not caring about how smoking ruins your health even though every cigarette packet comes with a bold warning. We like to snooze the reminders for ‘security updates’ on our Operating Systems, just like we like to ignore the warnings on the tobacco packets.
How can we make people care about cyber security?
We need to make it cool. We need to create awareness. We need to make it trendy. We need to make it viral. We need to speak to the netizens about the perils of cyber crime and the importance of cybersecurity in a language they will understand. We need to adopt approaches that resonate with young generations. We need to use the same mediums and methods that they use to create awareness about other issues. If they listen to memes, we need to speak in memes. If they are into games, we need to speak in the play mode. We have more than enough data to analyze what impacts the people more and use that knowledge to push cybersecurity ahead. We need to make courses like CEH certification popular and network defenders cooler. And the public and the private bodies need to do it together. And individuals who care enough about information security need to do their tiny bit as well. It is high time that we stop stalling things, waiting for the right time to knock at our doors and show us the mirror. It is time to raise the mirror ourselves to our face and do something about cyber crime before it is too late for some of us.