MORE than 85 per cent of Papua New Guinea's population access the internet through mobile phones and more should be done to ensure it (internet) is used for the right purpose, an official says.
The Papua New Guinea Department of Information and Communications Technology secretary Steven Matainaho said in Port Moresby on Tuesday during Safe Internet Day that more awareness was needed to ensure everyone knew the importance of internet safety.
Last Saturday, a parents’ guide to being cyber smart information was also released.
We have more than 85 per cent of the people in PNG accessing the internet through mobile phones and that brings out the challenge that we need to address safety, because now it is a community effort to make the internet a safer environment,” Matainaho said.
“We are establishing the cyber safety branch, we are working towards operationalising it this year.
“We have also established a monitoring and evaluation unit and I have instructed that we now start to look at work out how we should establish the baseline in the cyber safety space.”
One of the points in the guide talks about cyber safety at work and at home.
It advises to be cautious when considering clicking on links or opening attachments even if an email looks like it is from someone you know.
It also advised not to reply to the email because the sender’s identity could have been compromised.
Other actions to take and areas to be wary of included to:
VERIFY requests for private information. Even if it appears to be somebody you know. Con artists are clever in how they collect information to steal information and identities. Regularly check your financial statements and credit reports;
PROTECT your passwords; Never reveal your passwords to anyone. Make your password long, strong, unique and use multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible. Use different password for different accounts and do not let websites and applications remember your passwords;
KEEP your device, browser and applications up to date: At home consider an automatic software updater and periodically restart your devices to ensure that updates are fully installed; and,
BACK up critical files: Store backups in physically separate location from the originals and periodically test them. For critical work files, use storage options that are approved. For personal files, save a backup on a separate drive (cloud or encrypted Universal Serial Bus – UBS) to securely store it.
The National / Tech Pacific
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