Let's face it: changing your password is not the most exciting activity, and tedious activities like it are why it is difficult and boring for users to incorporate cyber hygiene into their daily routine. When exploring the thoughts of our users, they commonly understood the importance or value of cyber hygiene practices but found them tedious or boring to incorporate into their routines. In order to combat this feeling in our users, we needed to prioritize the user experience, so we theorized that a cyber hygiene educational service that engages and entertains the user would be an excellent way to tackle this problem.

The pain of users stemming from not being able to commit to cyber hygiene activities can result in failing to have adequate security while online and using devices, which can then lead to users falling victim to various attacks like phishing, account hacking, and others. Everyone has something that they could be more knowledgeable about that would improve some aspect of their life, whether it be financial literacy, foreign languages, investment, or in our case, cyber hygiene. We want to help by making this knowledge available in an accessible form so that novices can be safe without being overwhelmed.

This problem applies to the vast majority of technology users who are not particularly tech-savvy. When everyday people need to use their devices, they rarely want to be bogged down by maintaining their cyber hygiene, but they also don’t want their information stolen or their machines compromised by ransomware. As exemplified by various purchasable cybersecurity solutions such as antivirus, VPNs, and other software that protects a user’s devices and personal data, there is clearly a large market for users that will pay to ensure their digital safety; in January 2022, approximately 50 million households utilized a paid antivirus software (security.org). If our product can arm users with the knowledge they need to protect themselves on the web, then we believe they will be willing to spend the money to do so to avoid having to rely on antivirus or other software to protect them at all costs.

Almost everyone knows someone close to them who has been affected by some sort of cyber attack. We all know a grandparent whose Facebook was hacked and used to spout the next crypto scam, but it could also be as serious as a phishing scam where your information was stolen and used for identity fraud. The bottom line is that no one enjoys being the victim of a cyber attack. Our personal passion, our "Why" in the INNOVATE "Know Your Why" mindset, is to improve the personal cyber hygiene knowledge and skills of as many people as we can reach, and we believe that CyberSprout has a chance to do just that.