I was honoured to be able to organize and moderate the interactive session on Youth awareness and online safety, by Neil Walsh (UN Chief of Cybercrime, Anti-Money Laundering & Counter-Financing of Terrorism Department). This session highlighted a prominent issue in today’s world, especially post COVID-19: online safety. With over 80 students, parents and teachers on the Zoom session and over 500 people who watched this webinar on Facebook live- the session was a grand success. The immersive session created countless opportunities to answer questions ranging from the right precautions to take in a cyber-bullying situation and online safety to cryptocurrency (bitcoins) and the dark web. Personally, I was over the moon, as I am very interested in pursuing cybersecurity as a career and I got to ask the UN’s Chief about career paths and what his job entailed. This has only fueled my passion towards working in this field. Overall, the session was an eye-opener and definitely sparked a drive to make a change in all of us.
-Karthik Sridhar