Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Global security company Kaspersky Lab recently staged a Cyber Day to educate students from different universities in the kingdom about online crimes and threats.
More than 2,000 students from the University of Bahrain and Bahrain Polytechnic attended the event that featured an informative presentation highlighting the dramatic increase of ransom ware and mobile malware, increased threats to Mac machines and targetted and malware attacks.
Maxim Frolov, managing director for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Kaspersky Lab, said: “Cyber education at university level is crucial as students are curious, emotional and highly connected to the internet for both academic reasons, as well as during their free time.”
Research done by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International has indicated that young people aged 16 to 24 are active users of the internet with almost 80 per cent of them using their smartphones for emails, uploading and sharing content, and online shopping.
Less than half of them have a security solution installed on their devices.
Maxin added: “Teenage students are heavy internet users and early adopters of new technology making them the tech experts in their families. Education against cyber threats will not only aid in protecting them against dangers but will shield their families and communities too.”
This is one of the many initiatives hosted by the cyber security corporation within the region and abroad to support youngsters and teens from falling prey to online crimes.
One of the programmes it features is called The Safe Kids Roadshow which is a series of interactive presentations held at schools aimed at educating children against the dangers of the internet and encouraging them to ‘think before they click’ on links or interact with strangers online. Also, Kaspersky Lab has teamed up with partners such as Dassault Systems, PWC and Schlumberger to create a talent discovery programme named Cybersecurity.
It is targeting students and young specialists, with and without a security background.
Kaspersky Lab plans to ‘scale up’ its activities in 2018 to include all universities in the kingdom.
