Social organizations must also be attentive to the security of the information they handle and improve their practices to avoid unwanted intrusions, loss or leakage of information and lack of availability in access to technological services needed now for daily work. Can you imagine the daily life of an organization without its mail working or with its website down? Not to mention the problems that arise when information about research or projects is lost or falls into bad hands.
Given this possible scenario, it is vital for social organizations to begin to address security issues as one more internal policy and thus include norms, procedures, digital security methods in an integral way to their activities. Adopt tools tailored to your needs that help you have a safe digital life. This is not a complete cure, there is no 100% security, but if we are aware of the problems, it will help us recognize what are our weaknesses and abilities to implement measures that help us reduce risks.
This guide is the product of several months of working with a small but diverse group of human rights organizations in Colombia, which opened their doors and relied on our work to assess the status of their digital security.
The work that started this guide was carried out in several phases, which included a previous diagnosis of the digital practices of organizations, their information systems and technological infrastructure; an awareness and basic training to the personnel of the organizations, whose purpose was none other than to inspire the transformation to safer digital practices; and an audit in digital security in situ and at a distance to analyze in depth different categories (eg physical, organizational security, online accounts, website, etc.) and offer a series of recommendations, which were discussed with the organization’s staff , to start the path of strengthening the security and digital privacy of organizations.
We have also included two special sections on two topics – the use of WhatsApp and the problem of trolls – which were recurring in the work with human rights organizations that allowed us to develop this guide.
Meet the complete guide here (in spanish) and share it.