Digital Shakti Campaign to skill 10 lakh women in 2 years on cybersecurity, online safety

Digital Shakti Campaign, a cybersecurity awareness programme for women, aims to spread awareness among 10 lakh netizens in two years, a senior official of organiser body CyberPeace Foundation said on Tuesday.

While launching the 4th phase of the campaign, non-profit and digital think-tank body CyberPeace Foundation's founder and global president Major Vineet Kumar said that the programme aims to skill people around cybersecurity and online safety to help them fight the evils that exists in the cyber space like ransomware, stalking, bullying, sextortion etc.

"We look forward to significantly bridging the cybersecurity knowledge gap in India among vulnerable populations and reaching 1 million netizens in the next two years," Kumar said.

He said that technology platforms have become the first point of contact for criminals.

"We are working with the government to address issues like trafficking. Today the first connection that criminals have is on the tech platforms. Criminals have started using various tech platforms and children are vulnerable to it. Pretenders who are there are reaching out to children of all age groups, of all segments. They target them through all kinds of platforms and abuse them," Kumar said.

National Commission for Women Chairperson Rekha Sharma said that several women and girls are not aware of means to remain safe in the online world.

She said most of the crimes against women are done mostly by young boys who are tech-savvy.

"Whether you talk about cyber stalking, cyber bullying, email spoofing, phishing etc, all these platforms are there which make women vulnerable, specially social media. This programme is teaching you how to be safe along with how you can be empowered financially. Marriage should not be the aim of life. You should first empower yourself financially," Sharma said.

Meta Director for Public Policy Rajiv Aggarwal said that the Digital Shakti has been an enabler for more than 3 lakh women.

"With the launch of phase 4, we aim to sensitize more than 1 million women across India on how to be safe online so as to derive the best experience and opportunities that digital platforms have to offer," Aggarwal said.

Vice Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General B S Raju said that cyberspace is not a very kind environment with presence of cyber criminals, predators etc.

"Youngsters would want to start their relationship on the online platforms and then you think you are going to graduate to a physical realm. Please go and meet people in person, come to know who they are and how they are and thereafter transit to establish relationships on the online platforms. There are no online friends," Raju said.

He appealed to youngsters to be open to share their bad experience in the online world with parents and teachers before the problem worsens.