Cyber Security: Facebook Unveils Online Safety Centre

Facebook worked with partners including the International Center for Leadership Development in Nigeria and Watoto Watch Network in Kenya to bring its safety resources to life and address local communities Just two months after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Nigeria and Kenya to meet with developers, partners, and entrepreneurs, Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer at Facebook, gave a keynote address at the CyberXchange (http://Cyberxchange.com) security conference in Lagos, Nigeria about the company’s approach to keeping people safe and making the internet more secure for everyone. Keeping you and your information safe is a core part of helping our community grow, connect, and support each other.
Stamos addressed an audience of security industry professionals, researchers, and students who gathered to discuss solutions to cybersecurity challenges in Nigeria and around the world. He explained that Facebook builds security protections to help keep people safe even under non-ideal circumstances that security professionals often overlook—such as weak password usage or running out-of-date devices. Facebook performs automated checks to help detect suspicious logins to protect people’s accounts, and they ship their own cryptography with their mobile app to make people more secure on those devices.
He also stressed the importance of consumer awareness around safety and security to protect people’s information and help them feel comfortable being themselves online. Nigeria officially recognized National Cyber Security Awareness Month in October, underscoring the need to educate the public about how to protect themselves. This focus on awareness is at the heart of Facebook’s newly redesigned Safety Center (https://www.Facebook.com/safety), an engaging resource to help people get the information they need about controlling their information and staying safe.
“People come to Facebook to share important and personal moments in their lives. That’s why we build our services and tools to help people remain in control and protect their accounts. We always have to consider the situations in which our technology will be used so that we can offer people the best security and safety for what they need,” said Stamos.
The new Safety Center walks people through the tools Facebook offers to control your experience, as well as numerous tips and resources for safe and secure sharing. The Safety Center is available in over 50 languages, works well on mobile devices, and includes step-by-step videos on a variety of popular safety topics. Facebook worked with partners including the International Center for Leadership Development (http://ICDLng.org) in Nigeria and Watoto Watch Network (http://WatotoWatchNetwork.org) in Kenya to bring its safety resources to life and address local communities.
This update also brings the Bullying Prevention Hub to everyone on Facebook. The Hub is a resource for teens, parents and educators seeking guidance on how to prevent and address bullying. Developed with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence in 2013, Facebook now works with nearly 60 partners around the world to make the Bullying Prevention Hub more widely available.
For Facebook, making the world more open and connected also means keeping people and their information safe. Check out the new Facebook Safety Center today.

Cybersecurity incidents on rise in India

Cyber attacks in India have risen drastically and cybersecurity watchdog Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has tracked that around 39,730 cyber incidents have taken place this year till October.

The information was provided by IT and Law Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday (November 16) in the lower house of the parliament where he commented that over the period the nature and pattern of cybercrime have become more sophisticated and complex which include phishing, scanning and probing, website intrusions and defacements, virus and malicious code, Denial of Service attacks among others.

Though the CERT-In report suggests that there has been a decline in cyber security incidents from 2014 which had 44,679 incidents to 2016; the NCRB data reports an increase in registered cyber crime cases from 2013-5,693 cases to 2015-11, 592 cases.

"As per current trends, the cyber attacks observed on networks/systems in Indian cyberspace are observed to be directed from cyberspace of different countries including Pakistan," said, Prasad.

Junior Minister of IT and Law, P.P. Chaudhary said that in order to imminent the threats from other countries, “periodic scanning of cyberspace is carried out” adding that various other steps in the form of legal framework, emergency response, awareness, training, legal framework and implementation of best practices to prevent occurrences of cyber breaches are being carried out.

In order to implement the preventive steps, “the government has initiated the setting up of National Cyber Coordination Centre (NCCC) to generate necessary situational awareness of existing and potential cyber security threats and enable timely information sharing for proactive, preventive and protective actions by individual entities. In addition, the CERT-In is also setting up a Botnet Cleaning and Malware Analysis centre for detection of malware infected systems and notify, clean and secure systems of end-users to prevent further infections.