The Connected World is more than a privilege; it is an inalienable right essential to the Human Experience. Basic security literacy is absent for the majority of digital citizens. Democratizing security, bringing tools, knowledge and connected sense to the masses will protect Human rights, guarantee identity autonomy and the continued flourishing of culture and civil liberties.
We know that our devices are hackable, yet we as consumers do nothing. We see in popular media that hackers are rampant, so why don’t we collectively get better at understanding what’s happening, and preventing incidents? This is a difficult subject for the layperson to approach, but we in the security industry have an obligation to make the discipline more learnable, accessible, and actionable.
The Connected World is a necessity, but individuals are forced to assume cyber threats and risks that they little understand. Although an individual’s level of general and digital knowledge is higher than ever before, their knowledge with respect to security literacy is still very low and almost non-existent. Even those laypeople who seek to educate themselves on this topic are presented with an overwhelming flood of uncurated information and noise. At the same time, the prevalence of threats and FUD often leaves the people disarmed and feeling helpless. This does not have to be the case, and the esoteric and distant discipline of security can be made more accessible and universal.
We are born connected and threatened. This is scary since we are seeing an erosion of privacy progressively, and this challenges our notion of privacy itself. Security literacy is essential to have more advanced conversations and to debate the implications thereof. People lack the knowledge they need to adequately secure their identity and their digital assets and presence.
