Ramallah – September 25th, 2024. The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) concluded yesterday, Tuesday, a training course for journalists on the subject of "Digital Security" at the "Palestine Plaza" Hotel in the city of Ramallah, as part of the project "Strengthening Civic Space and Community Accountability in Palestine" funded by the European Union Office in the city of Jerusalem.
The training course was held on Monday and Tuesday with the participation of 15 journalists, for 10 training hours. It aimed to introduce journalists and media workers to the concept of digital security as one of the various forms of violence that may accompany journalistic work.
The course was opened by welcoming the participants by the Acting Director of MADA Center, Ms. SHIREEN AL-KHATIB, who explained the importance of a deep understanding of the topic of digital security by journalists, in light of technological progress and the accompanying necessity of providing protection for journalists and their data and the necessary mechanism to achieve this goal, as a result of the widespread spread of cyberspace and social media, which facilitated the possibility of increasing the number of those affected by digital violence in general.
Digital security expert AKRAM AL-JARIRI addressed many topics related to digital security, including the most important programs and applications for enhancing digital security, the most prominent encryption tools and choosing passwords, the importance of data, privacy and network protection, identity theft over the Internet, how to deal with personal devices in the field, the most prominent reliable email programs and the most secure social media applications, in addition to encrypting images and content, and other practices related to digital security.
The participants expressed the importance of this training, which helped them understand programming materials that they had not been familiar with, even during their university years. raThus, the training workshop contributed to raising their awareness of the programming aspect of digital security and data protection.
At the end of the training, the trainees made several recommendations, the most important of which was to build an integrated training program that includes theoretical and practical aspects, as well as the legal aspect on digital security practices, in addition to holding training on mechanisms for protection from electronic blackmail, and data encryption in its practical aspect.
