Digital security needs to start in your organization

Annie Zaman is a journalist and researcher who divides her time between Myanmar and Pakistan. She specializes in the fields of freedom of expression, journalist safety and media development. Annie completed a DW Akademie digital security training with trainer Daniel Moßbrucker earlier this year. She spoke to DW Akademie about the importance of digital security, particularly for journalists. 

DW Akademie: Why is digital security important to you? 

Annie Zaman: I have a background in digital security and I am an elected board member of Global Voices (an international community of writers, translaters, academics and human rights activists). I’m on the forefront of digital rights. For more than 10 years, I have been part of the global movement to enhance and protect the free, safe and open web. Coming from Pakistan and having worked on two different continents as an independent journalist with the media development sector, I noticed that digital security and digital information has become very important in the last 25 years. Many mainstream organizations tend to forget about how important it is.

What were your main takeaways from the digital security training? 

I found it very interesting and close to what I have been [working on] and campaigning about: that we all have to start with our organizations. I think it’s a very good overall module. In a bigger context, it’s very much part of media literacy as well. Somehow, we tend to forget to let people know we are mainly digital, so digital security and safety should be an integral part of any task we are doing. For example, now we are talking [via WhatsApp] and we hope that WhatsApp is encrypted. What I like is it’s very well researched and I kept in mind that there are different organizations in all parts of the world that maybe they don’t get this chance to learn about digital safety. 

Did you change your online behavior after the workshop? 

For me, since I'm working on this for a long time, I didn’t have to change my behavior as such.What I really appreciate is that it's coming from such a big organization like DW Akademie that cooperates with their partners who really need this kind of awareness. Because this threat modelling is really simple and easy to incorporate in organizations, it’s a really easy guide if you go through it and just sit for half a day in a session. Be it a senior level executive or junior apprentice, it is a really simple guide for how to keep the people you're working with safe. In many countries where DW is working, the regimes are not citizen-friendly and they spy, they [monitor] and even spill conversations with [for example] European international donors, so there are simple guidelines there for how to keep these conversations safe and secure and how to not leave our digital footprints online. 

What is the biggest digital security issue for journalists? 

Digital security is important for the work of civil society organizations. DW Akademie developed a threat modeling tool to evaluate your individual risk.

Right now, I think hate speech. How to protect yourself and your team as an editor, for example, to be safe and secure online is the biggest challenge we are facing right now. I advised one local Pakistani organization outlet, Naya Daur (it basically translates to “new world”). So it’s a small online organization with really good young people and most of them are working online. They face online abuse and it’s very difficult to find best practices for editors and managers to pass on to your reporters. Maybe two years ago it was okay. Things have changed rapidly. For any journalist you cannot live without social media. Earlier we used to wake up and read the newspaper, now you have to go on Twitter to know what’s happening.  

Many journalists, especially women and trans journalists, are more vulnerable to targeted trolling and online hate speech. The trolls are paid to harass them and this is called targeted harassment. This online abuse directly undermines the effort to do reporting or good work. So for digital security, it’s very important right now that someone who is threatening you online should not appear at your doorstep or some crazy troll doesn’t find out where you live. Or if you're going out for reporting — I go to Pakistan for reporting — the biggest threat for international reporters is when you're traveling. You cannot say no to border security checking your phones or laptops. In the [DW Akademie] module, they especially address these threats as well. 

This is also very important for journalists or DW Akademie. Organizations need to get their workers’ social media platforms verified for Twitter, Facebookand Instagram. Why is verification important? It helps protect us from identify theft and fraud. I work in digital security as a consultant in Asia. Many simple requests come to me like “Why is my account hacked?”, even from serious journalists. Many big organizations when they hire people forget to tell them about two-step verification. If one computer is compromised, the whole system can be compromised. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.