Safer Internet Day 2015

Safer Internet Day 2015 will be celebrated globally on Tuesday 10th February with the slogan ‘Let’s create a better internet together’.

Internet safety is a priority for all of our customers; particularly those within education. The Safer Internet Day is celebrated throughout over a hundred countries – its purpose is to highlight the positive uses of the internet and to give people ideas as to how they can help to make the internet a safer place for all.

In this blog post, I’m going to talk about the importance of internet safety; what we do to maximise internet safety for our customers; and how you can help to make the internet a safer place.

The importance of internet safety
We’ve all seen the adverts telling us to never give out personal data online, not to publish anything that we wouldn’t want our employers to see, and especially never to meet anyone that we’ve only spoken to online – but what about the less obvious dangers?

The internet is essentially a huge sharing platform onto which anyone can publish anything, and see anything that anyone else has published. It’s a fantastic place to share anything from pictures, funny stories or silly videos with your friends, to files amongst colleagues and connect and talk face to face with other people from around the world. However, this also makes it a very open and dangerous place for younger people, with disturbing content, so precautions must be taken. These days most parents are aware of the risks from “adult content” on the internet – but sadly there are now even more horrific sites which even the most internet-savvy users can stumble upon with innocence. Take for example recent videos of terrorist activities which have made the news.

Web Filtering
Our web filtering solutions provide a safety-net against many of these risks, allowing our customers to roam the internet with peace of mind that any unsuitable content is not accessible. With the majority of our customers being schools this is essential as it allows students of all ages to surf the internet, whilst staying safe. We partner with Cyberoam to provide a solution customisable to suit users of different age brackets, so you do not lose the flexibility or functionality provided by appropriate web use.

What you can do
Protecting children and yourself from unsuitable content and other dangers of the internet doesn’t need to be a difficult task. Making your children aware of what suspicious online activity is, and what they should do if they do come across something suspicious, can be a huge factor in keeping them safe, whilst developing their independence on the web. The Met Police provide some great free advice on online safety at http://safe.met.police.uk/internet_safety/get_the_facts.html.

Let’s celebrate internet safety together, and continue to make the internet a safe and amazing tool for developing young people.

– Harvey Ryan