Page 36 - EngineerIT August-September 2025

CYBERSECURITY

Building the human firewall:

why addressing digital illiteracy is

critical for cyber resilience

very year on 8 September, When employees and individuals they use, even in simple terms,
International Literacy aren’t equipped with even basic they’re better equipped to defend
EDay reminds us of the digital literacy, it becomes much themselves. It’s less about deep
transformative power of reading and harder to recognise a threat actor technical expertise and more about
writing. But there’s another form of at work, even with cybersecurity grasping core concepts to adapt to
literacy that is just as vital: digital awareness training. Think of it as evolving threats – and recognising a
literacy. Just as traditional literacy is teaching someone to read without lacking core understanding can be
the foundation for all learning, digital teaching them the alphabet first. harder than one expects.
literacy is the foundation for an
effective cybersecurity defence. Digital literacy helps people Digital literacy versus being
understand how threat actors work “tech-savvy”
at a fundamental level, so they can It’s important to distinguish between
recognise and respond to potential being “tech-savvy” and possessing
incidents, not only the ones they’ve true digital literacy. While tech-savvy
been trained to spot. When users individuals might be comfortable
understand the environments they using new applications, digital
operate in and the technology literacy delves deeper, focusing
on understanding the underlying
mechanisms of online interactions
By Martin Potgieter, Regional CTO at Integrity360 and potential risks.

36 | EngineerIT August/September 2025