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A two-day workshop on ‘Digital and Physical Security for Journalists’ ended making recommendations that journalists should practice safety and security to protect themselves from digital threats.
Bangladesh NGO Network for Radio and Communications (BNNRC) organised the workshop yesterday (Thursday) with support from Internews Network held at the Daily Star Centre in the capital.
The workshop was attended by 23 journalists and academicians representing print and electronic and online news organisations.
Speakers at the workshop observed that as journalists face an unprecedented risk from sprawling hackers and criminal groups, news outlets rely more on freelancers to cover conflict and unrest.
Steps should be taken to increase safety and gain access to resources, including equipment and training in physical and digital security, they added.
Country Director of Internews Syed Zain Al Mahmood said, “Digital communication has expanded the horizons of journalists but at the same time it has brought new threats.”
He added Internews is committed to building capacity to help journalists protect themselves in their professional work.
Addressing the participants, AHM Bazlur Rahman, Chief Executive Officer of BNNRC said, “The workshop is an opportunity to learn about the digital safety and security and how to protect journalists from digital threats.”
He strongly believes that this is a context sensitive knowledge driven media training programme that would greatly contribute in preventing digital hazards in the digital era.
As part of the best practices to protect information, news, sources and devices, the participants were exposed to sessions on how to safely protect emails and use internet, how cookies work, what are the safe internet websites, how to remove internet browsing history, what is incognito browsing, what is anonymity network, effective use of pseudonyms, how it protects identity of email account user, encrypting mails and hard-drive, hiding information with veracrypt and creating strong passwords.
Brian Conley, from USA, conducted the training where he also mentioned risks of tracking unprotected and unlocked information and data sent by emails and SMS. He strongly suggested authenticating mails before sending out mails.
Brian has wide-range of international reporting experiences in many countries including war devastated Iraq.
The participants were later given certificates for participating in the workshop at the end of programme.