What is Cyber Safety?

Cyber Safety is the subject and practice of observing basic precautions and taking necessary simple actions to protect yourself and your devices. In the digital world, it’s the equivalent of wearing a seat belt while driving, or looking both ways before you cross a street. Cyber safety is the actions people take to protect themselves, their data, and the devices in their care.

The only issue is, nobody tells you what those basic precautions and simple actions are. And if you don’t happen to be a specialist or go out of your way to find out, you’ll carry on crossing streets mid busy intersections hoping for the best - completely oblivious to the near death experiences you’ve managed to avoid.

Okay, so maybe it’s not a busy intersection, but more of a country road - at least in terms of probabilities, but the fact remains that it’s quite possible for you to take a simple action, like connecting to a hotel Wi-Fi network to watch a movie, and by morning wake up with your bank account emptied.

While many people will carry on connecting to those networks, and most of them may never have anything bad happen, it’s a bit senseless to play Russian roulette unnecessarily - as this will, and does, happen to some of them.

So, why doesn’t anybody teach basic cyber safety? Well, generally, getting involved in the cybersecurity industry takes you down a rabbit hole of specialties, and those that stick around long enough to figure things out tend to geek-out a bit. Plus, it’s a fuzzy line in terms of “good enough” personal cyber safety. Using your house as an analogy, locking the front door would be simple, basic security. Locking the windows and closing any gates and garage doors would be as well. Security cameras and alarms may be for some, but not for others - it’s debatable. Going further, for a celebrity for example, they might need a patrolling security guard or two, but for most people that would be extreme overkill. Cybersecurity specialists generally get so involved and excited about their field, they’ve got electrified fences and are talking complex circuit diagrams when you just need to lock the door and make sure the windows are latched.

Which brings us full circle, as that’s the point of this newsletter’s content. How do you lock that door? And how do you latch the windows?

If you have questions, if you’d like to see specific topics or devices taken up, or if you have general feedback, I’d like to hear from you! Email [email protected].

Please share this newsletter with friends, family, colleagues, and everybody else you know. Democratizing basic cyber safety information is how everyone can be safe without having to get professional level certification.

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Peter Oram
Founder, CEO, & Chief Cyber Safety Officer
The Cyber Safety Company