As the world continues to go digital, there are more threats we need to take precautions against. Paul Budde reports.

AT HIS farewell speech last week, outgoing Telstra CEO Andy Penn mentioned that the cyber threat has never been as serious as the present. He mentioned the deteriorating geopolitical situation as well as the big shift in the way that criminals operate in the cyber domain.

One thing is for sure — in order to enjoy all the positives resulting from the digital economy, we need to be far more vigilant about the barrage of information that we are receiving and/or have access to.

As we are seeing all around us, there are plenty of people, organisations and even governments that are more than eager to (mis)use digital media for their own self-interest and if that includes misinformation, lies, half-truths, scamming, hacking, phishing and so on, they are more than happy to use these tools in advertising, politics, ideologies and conspiracies.

For too long, we have been used to situations where truth was the norm. Sure, all of the above misbehaviours were there as well, but at a significantly lower scale. In general, we were able to trust our politicians, business leaders and the media.

Since social media, this has changed significantly and we now as societies have to learn to be far more critical in our thinking. While social media cause emotional reactions in us, to which we instantly respond and/or indicate that we like it or not, we…