Team 11 Cyber Innovate

Many of our team's background comes from working with people who do not understand technology and thus suffer bad security practices because of this. These people are also targets of these attacks. Working with basic hardening of Windows and Linux systems to understand that security is a complex and daunting task for the end user. Simplicity is the key to reaching out to everyone. Many of the complaints expressed by tech-illiterate people (and even some tech-orientated people) are that there are too many things to keep track of. Update this, changing this, or removing this all manually is not intuitive enough.

Experience and skills we have as a team is recognizing problems in the cyber security field and coming up with practical and achievable solutions for everyone. Our backgrounds give us a unique perspective on what is needed to make cyber hygiene easier.

Despite some of our sample size being surrounded by tech all their life, many people ignore cyber hygiene. As soon as a security practice requires effort to implement, it gets pushed to the wayside due to people misunderstanding how being hacked works. Some people we talked to may have understood cyber hygiene but did not follow it because they believed they would not be targets. Having your information stolen is not for personal reasons but because that person was low-hanging fruit. Users cross their fingers that they aren't on that branch.

What stood out the most was the number of users that ignored cyber hygiene because it was too inconvenient or complicated. Then when asking people why they do not change their ways if they know they are lacking digital security-wise, the rationale of "it can't happen to me" was prevalent.

Helping vulnerable people by making digital security more accessible is the catalyst that brings us together. Instead of a profit-driven mindset to "help" the end user, we take into account the best way to help the end user for them. In addition, technology is only to get more sophisticated, so there will be a constant increase of "bells and whistles." The more people we leave behind to fend for themselves in the digital security world, the more everyone suffers.

We have catered our design to reflect what the end user pays attention to and assists them with the task without prohibiting them. Our focus is to lighten the load for individuals to streamline best security practices.