Cyber Security - Theokotos Foundation

This is a presentation of a programme developed to protect the beneficiaries of Theotokos from the dangers of the internet.

It all started 2 years ago, when one of our beneficiaries posted a photo of his naked girlfriend on his account, without realizing the seriousness and the consequences that this action could have. Concerns include security, hacking, trolling, spoofing, identity theft, and spamming.

We started piloting the training for our beneficiaries, and we enriched it with real life scenarios that we worked on for their better understanding.

As time passed we discovered the true dimensions that this issue was taking on and we turned to the cybercrime unit, as they are the most expert and their experience and expertise would help us to be more effective and make more targeted interventions.

They showed great interest from their side as well, we exchanged visits and discussed everything that had concerned us, analysing in detail the specificity of our population, where sometimes the boundaries between abuser and victim are not distinct.

Initially, they came to Theotokos and recorded the needs of the trainers through a three-hour interactive briefing, which kept the participants' interest.

Next steps:

• The training programme we have developed will be enriched with new areas identified by the cybercrime officers, in order to be more comprehensive and to raise awareness among our service users on other topics that we were not aware of.
• The second training manual will be aimed at professionals so that they themselves are aware of and can address an issue that arises.
• The trainers are usually the ones who receive the first information or the information reaches them from the beneficiary's friends or family.
• Finally, a manual will be created for parents so that they know how to handle similar situations and protect their children.