{"id":188,"date":"2007-12-27T23:35:40","date_gmt":"2007-12-28T05:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fraudbump.wordpress.com\/?p=99"},"modified":"2015-04-07T16:33:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-08T00:33:16","slug":"is-there-an-alternative-to-user-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/is-there-an-alternative-to-user-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Is there an alternative to user education?&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;in global fight against fraud? IMHO, there isn&#8217;t. Although I am not &#8211; by any stretch of imagination &#8211; the first one who arrived to this conclusion, nobody came out with a working idea on how realistically we can move the needle in this direction.<\/p>\n<p>I recently had a chance to present a hastily-put-together &#8220;Cyber-security 101 &#8211; Defensive Browsing for Everyone&#8221; presentation* to a not-necessarily-technical audience. A friend of mine joked after the presentation &#8211; &#8220;most of them will never use Internet again&#8221; \ud83d\ude42 While it wasn&#8217;t really my intention I can&#8217;t but acknowledge that the sheer number of steps to be taken, &#8220;rules of thumb&#8221; and details to pay attention to in order to remain safe online can be pretty daunting to an average surfer. Bridging that knowledge gap for the &#8220;masses&#8221; seems to be &#8211; so far &#8211; insurmountable challenge for the industry.<\/p>\n<p>Now, as a humble &#8220;soldier&#8221; in this fight, I have worked out my own tricks to convey the message. For example, I consider cyber crime having a lot in common with the crime in physical world &#8211; a phenomena which average person is much more familiar with as it is much more tangible and intuitive. Consequently when evangelizing &#8220;defensive browsing&#8221; I use this analogy to explain concepts from the physical World &#8220;equivalent&#8221;. From my past experience &#8211; it generally proves to be quite effective.<\/p>\n<p>For instance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Browser <\/strong>&#8211; the door between your house (in this case perhaps an RV) and the street<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unpatched PC<\/strong> &#8211; the door poorly locked leaving you increasingly vulnerable to all potential thieves in the neighborhood (in case on Internet &#8211; the &#8216;neighborhood&#8217; is the whole World including the criminals who are beyond American justice system)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Browsing suspicious sites<\/strong> &#8211; strolling in known bad neighborhoods at night<\/li>\n<li><strong>Plugging your USB drive to somebody&#8217;s else computer (or the other way around)<\/strong> &#8211; having an unprotected sex with a stranger<\/li>\n<li><strong>Clicking on a link in an email <\/strong>&#8211; opening the door as soon as somebody knocks it and without checking who&#8217;s on the other side<\/li>\n<li><strong>Anti virus<\/strong> &#8211; pest control in the house<\/li>\n<li><strong>Phishing site<\/strong> &#8211; an impostor pretending to be your cleaning person&#8217;s &#8216;cousin&#8217; to get the keys to your house<\/li>\n<li><strong>Open Wi-fi<\/strong> (with no additional precautions) &#8211; a place where the bad guys can easily hook you with a tracking device, a bug or a video surveillance device<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In a way, cyber security can be viewed as an extension of our physical security, so the analogies are really limitless. Making the connection between them is the first step in educating crime-aware and responsible &#8220;netizens&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>*[update] I&#8217;ve put the presentation here:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slideshow\/embed_code\/46747794\" width=\"476\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;in global fight against fraud? IMHO, there isn&#8217;t. Although I am not &#8211; by any stretch of imagination &#8211; the first one who arrived to this conclusion, nobody came out with a working idea on how realistically we can move the needle in this direction. I recently had a chance to present a hastily-put-together &#8220;Cyber-security &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/is-there-an-alternative-to-user-education\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Is there an alternative to user education?&#8230;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,25],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-observations-commentary","tag-cyber-security","tag-defensive-browsing","tag-user-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256,"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amirbekian.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}