During World War I and World War II, citizens of Allied countries worried for the safety and security of their communities. To ensure people at home had enough to eat while food went to soldiers on the front, Allied governments encouraged civilians to grow “victory gardens” in their yards and neighborhoods. Scouting organizations pitched in, too. Their efforts cared for and protected their communities even if they couldn’t fight.
In this time of cyberwarfare, what can we do to support our communities? There are no established Geneva Conventions to protect bystanders against frightening new developments in attacks. We’re watching, feeling helpless, as ransomware shuts down local hospitals and governments, our identities are stolen, and people in faraway places try to manipulate our votes in elections.
But as it turns out, if you know how to garden, you already have an excellent set of tools for understanding digital security in your home and workplace. Even if you don’t, thinking about “pests” and “pesticide,” “soil,” “fences,” and other simple garden metaphors can help you take small steps that make a surprisingly big difference in defending the digital assets of your family and community.
In this workshop, Dr. Andrews shares what each of us can do to help the global digital security effort. Through simple, non-technical exercises based on gardening metaphors, participants will build an awareness of their digital assets, gain a clearer sense of risk, and develop the courage and confidence to do disaster preparedness work in their digital lives.
These in-person workshops can be conducted in sessions as brief as 90 minutes, or extended for full-day sessions as desired. If you’d like to bring Dr. Andrews to your community in the summer of 2020, get in touch!
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
