Your annual serving of Christmas-time cyber conversation crackers is here!
Christmas is an incredibly busy time of year for everyone. Fitting in pre-Christmas meetups with family and friends, planning fun activities for the kids, or finding the time to wrap and deliver presents is just the top of the list for most of us.
It’s a busy time for us all... including cyber criminals on their most observant behaviour trying to catch us out. Cyber impacts each and every one of us as we shop, bank, and manage our lives online, so we’re on a mission to help you get cyber safety into your Christmas conversations.
Whether it's around the table with family, down the pub with your mates, or in the office, show you care this festive season by spreading the good word about cyber safety and helping to keep those close to you safe from cyber criminals.
Here are our favourite cyber safety conversation starters to get your colleagues, friends and family talking, and thinking, about staying safe online throughout the festive season (and beyond).
“What’s a good cyber security habit that you always follow?”
Encourage those around you to share their best cyber security tips. This is a great way to share knowledge and spread good cyber cheer.
We all carry around mini computers with us, and get them out to make calls, check bank statements, read emails, and click on links anytime, anyplace, so we all need to make sure we keep ourselves safe online.
Whether that is choosing not to save card information in online shopping accounts, having privacy settings turned on on social media, or setting up multi-factor authentication. Speaking about these cyber safe behaviours can give the people around us ideas of, and encouragement to make, small, sustainable changes in their own lives.
“Something I’ve never understood about cyber security is…”
The vast majority of us are not cyber security experts, and that is totally fine. To help the people around you to stay safe from cyber criminals over the festive period encourage them to ask questions.
Why not ask everyone around the dinner table or everyone in the office to complete the statement, and get a discussion going about all the cyber security related things the group isn’t sure about. You get to share knowledge, help each other out, and keep each other safe.
Another benefit of doing this exercise is that it answers questions that others didn’t even know they had. There’s something to learn for everyone.
“Have you ever had a cyber security scare?”
While we often hear about successful cyber security attacks, or people becoming victims to scams, we don’t talk about the ‘almost’ moments anywhere near as much as we should.
From receiving an email from your ‘courier’ that says they need an extra payment to process your Christmas delivery, to nearly clicking on a phishing link in a text message from your ‘bank’ before realising that something isn’t quite right, we have all had a cyber security scare.
It’s important that we share this information with the people around us. Sharing our cyber scare moments helps others to see what they should be suspicious of, shows others how easy it can be to fall victim to scams, and highlights the prevalence of attempted cyber crime.
These moments also allow us to share the lessons we have learnt from narrowly avoiding a terrible situation, as well as the tell-tale signs of cyber crime.
“What does cyber safety mean to you?”
We all experience the world differently, and we all have different priorities which dictate which people or things we want to protect. Cyber safety means something different to everyone. Coming together to share stories, experiences and values is key to making cyber safety personal, and an ongoing conversation.
Encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to share what exactly cyber safety means to them.
If you’d like to see an example, head to our social media (LinkedIn/Twitter), or search for the hashtag #whatcybersafetymeanstome.
Let us do the work
Our cyber safety communications and behaviour change programme, CyberSafe, contains everything your people need to know to keep themselves and your organisation safe from cyber security attacks. What are you waiting for?
Curious about what CyberSafe could do for your organisation? Send us an email hello@insideoutconsulting.co.uk or visit our website insideoutconsulting.co.uk.