Remote Course on Digital Security for Middle East/North Africa

Participants in a distance-learning course which IWPR ran for web users from the Middle East and North Africa said they came away with sharper digital skills.

Fifty-four people from 13 countries took part in nine online classes over a three-week period in August. The course, run from Beirut by IWPR’s Cyber Arabs Academy, catered for experienced web users as well as novices.

The course explained the digital security threats facing activists and netizens in the region, ranging from communications surveillance to virus and malware attacks and hacking, and offered practical solutions for minimising risk, in terms of both specialised software and common-sense good practice.

“The course enabled me to learn about programmes that I had no knowledge of, such as mobile security, and backing up and restoring files,” one participant said afterwards.

Another participant added, “This course helped me in two areas. It gave me an opportunity to refresh my knowledge on some digital security issues that I had read about, and I learned about new things like VPNs [virtual private networks], file encryption and safe internet browsing.

IWPR launched the Cyber Arabs Academy in December 2013 as an online platform for free courses in Arabic. The first online digital security course took place in January.

Cyber Arabs is an IWPR programme that provides journalists and civil society activists across the Arab world with up-to- date information on digital security risks, and training in how to manage them.

For more information about the Cyber Arabs programme, please visit www.cyber-arabs.com. For the Arab Digital Security Training Academy, see e-academy.cyber-arabs.com