Stay Safe Online Blog

Late last week as news spread about the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett, the Web once again proved to be the go to source for information and breaking news. According to a story  in Yahoo! News, the story about Michael Jackson being rushed to the hospital...

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about the site peoplesdirt—a site designed specifically to amplify rumor, slander, and negative comments  between high school students-- and its lack of any redeeming social value.

We do occasionally run into a website with no redeeming value in helping us achieve a digital culture where citizens use technology productively and responsibly.

An article in today’s Washington Post about sexting  (sending sexually explicit photos by cell phone) accurately portrays the difficulties schools, law enforcement, and prosecutors have when new uses of technology don’t necessarily fit into laws and polices already on the books.  Often young people embrace technology and find new, and sometimes negative uses, before parents, schools, and the community have the opportunity to proactively respond.

More and more people are turning to social networks to keep in touch with friends and familiy and expand their personal networks. Facebook, one of the most popular social networking sites, has more than 200 million users.

Unfortunately, there are always people out there ready to take advantage of people during times of crisis.

Yesterday, at a featured panel at the RSA conference, NCSA launched a volunteer program for IT professionals to go into schools and teach cyber security, cyber safety, and cyber ethics.

The RSA Conference (RSA the security division of EMC, an NCSA Board Member) this week in San Francisco is an important event in the annual cyber security calendar. Thousands of IT security professionals gather to learn.

At NCSA,one of our major focus areas is encouraging small and medium size businesses to do more to secure their business data, customer data, and intellectual property.