03 Feb 2022

 In today’s world where security threats and cyber attacks aimed at accessing, altering, or deleting sensitive information, extorting money from victims, or interrupting normal business operations are widespread, cyber security is of great importance.

It is for this reason that InFuture Foundation, an organisation that promotes online safety, has been running a series of workshops around the country to mobilise and train young people to become online safety peer educators  and empower communities with digital literacy.

The organisation, through a programme called Cybersmart Champions in partnership with Cyber4Dev from Europe, conducted a two-day workshop at Serowe Library from Tuesday.

InFuture Foundation programme director, Mr David Moepeng stated that the workshop was an initiative by InFuture, to promote online safety awareness among Batswana and encourage society to adopt safe online behaviours.
Cyber security referred to every aspect of protecting an organisation and its employees and assets against cyber threats.

“Cyber security is important because not only does it help secure information, but also our system from virus attack,” he said.

Mr Moepeng said as cyber-attacks became more common and sophisticated and corporate networks grew more complex, a variety of cyber security solutions were required to mitigate corporate cyber risks.

He said the main objective of cyber security was to achieve the three elements of confidentiality, integrity and availability.

Mr Moepeng said most attacks occured over the network, and network security solutions were designed to identify and block such attacks.

He said cyber security threat landscape was continually evolving and occasionally, such advancements represented a new generation of cyber threats.

Ms Winnie Motsemeng, one of resource persons, outlined the four objectives of security as being confidentiality, integrity, availability, and non-repudiation.

She said to date, they had experienced generations of cyber threats and solutions designed to mitigate them.

“While using Internet of Things (IoT) devices certainly delivers productivity benefits, it also exposes organisations to new cyber threats,” she said.

She said cyber security was meant to protect the ICT aspect of critical infrastructures, improve cyber security professionals’ skills and citizen sensitisation and awareness, encourage public-private partnerships and boost international cooperation.

“In short, the goal is to guarantee the security of citizens’ online operations by protecting key infrastructures involved in the provision of these services,” she noted.

She said with cyber security, companies did not have to worry about unauthorised users accessing their network or data.

It helped them protect both their end users and their employees. ENDS