Etienne Maynier – Are these 5 tools in your organization’s digital security toolbox? Public Interest Tech
Transcript
Etienne Maynier: When you learn to cook you learn that you should not put water into boiling oil. When you go online you should know the same thing, how to protect yourself, and protect your private information.
[Etienne Maynier, Ford-Mozilla Open Web Fellow, Citizen Lab. A white man with half-long hair and glasses wearing a purple shirt and gray jeans.]
I’m Etienne, I’m a digital researcher, and I fight off digital threats on activists. What is the most pressing digital threat today? Digital surveillance. The global surveillance industry now is estimated at $5 billion. The terrorist attacks have now allowed the government to move, to pass some very strong surveillance bills, and have very invasive surveillance practices. Everything we do is recorded by someone, somewhere, and we need to stop surveillance before it’s used against us.
Here are five things every organization should know to protect their security. One, know and understand your threats. Two, use two-factor authentication. Three, use a password manager. Four, use Signal to chat with your friends. And five, update your software. Because there is surveillance everywhere, because there is exclusion of a lot of people, because there is a strong inequality to how we access and understand technology, we have to consider that we need to fight for a society that’s more equal. Technology won’t improve our society if we don’t fight for a better society with technology.
[Ford Foundation logo: a globe made up of a series of small, varied circles. Mozilla logo.]
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“Technology won’t improve society if we don’t fight for a better society with technology,” says Etienne Maynier, security engineer and digital researcher. Digital surveillance is all-pervasive in our world and Maynier believes we should know how to protect ourselves and our information when we go online. To him, digital surveillance is the most pressing threat today.
Maynier has created a five-step plan for individuals and companies to protect themselves online.
“Everything we do is recorded by someone, somewhere,” he says. “We need to stop surveillance before it’s used against us.” Fighting for a society that’s more equal means upholding the individual right to privacy.
Etienne Maynier is part of a larger community that wants to see technology serve the greater welfare of society. We call this Public Interest Tech.
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