Prerequisites

• General experience using technology and the internet.

Course Description

In a media environment filled with advanced spyware and deepfake technologies, digital security is no longer a luxury but a necessity to protect journalists and their sources. This course focuses on understanding risks and practical protection mechanisms through applied models and workshops that help ensure safe journalistic and field work.

Course Objective

By the end of this course, participants will:
• Increase awareness of modern digital threats, manage their digital footprint, and reduce the risks of exposure and targeting.
• Remove metadata and limit personal information available to the public.
• Use secure communication channels to transfer sensitive data and protect source identities.
• Apply field risk-management protocols and cross borders safely.

Course Outline

• Digital threat landscape and understand modern risks:
- The evolution of digital threats from random phishing to targeted attacks.
- Spyware and AI-driven deepfakes.
- The difference between privacy and security, and how users can be exposed through their scattered data.
- Methods of digital trace tracking and how they appear to attackers.

• Device and account security:
- Problems with traditional passwords and transitioning to password managers and two-factor authentication.
- Device security: encryption and indicators of spyware infection.
- Techniques to minimize apps, permissions, and exposed accounts to reduce breach opportunities.

• Secure communication and source protection:
- Basics of using secure networks and VPNs, and identifying “honeypot” networks.
- Distinguish between Signal, WhatsApp, and Telegram in terms of encryption and metadata.
- Methods for removing metadata from images and files to protect locations and sources.

• Field security and crisis management:
- Prepare devices before traveling to conflict zones and dealing with checkpoints.
- Early indicators of digital incidents and early detection of breaches.
- Steps for isolation, documentation, reporting, and incident-response strategies.

Course Benefits

• A graduation certificate by Al Jazeera Media Institute.