THE IMPACT OF HOLLYWOOD ON CYBER SECURITY

A star from the series "NIKITA" named Birkhoff.

In terms of global communications, we are living through the most exciting period in human history. There are almost as many mobile subscriptions as there are people on the planet.


Dr. Toure, General secretary - International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies said  by the end of 2013, 2.7 billion people will be using the internet; with 2.1 billion active mobile-broadband subscriptions.

 The rise of the Internet as a platform to share information and conduct business online, the world has never been as connected as it is today. Unfortunately the threat to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information is also increasing at a similar rate.

Cyber terrorism, Cyber war and organized crimes are considered growing threats. Initiatives to the fight against Cybercrime have started to rise to some countries and the impact is expected to be seen near future.

It is about time to each and every individual to understand the fight against Cybercrimes should not remain to a certain group of people but each individual has to play part in the fight in order to win the war against it.

A lot of money has been invested by the large developed country to facilitate the fight against these crimes through training, awareness program and the use of media to add an effort to the fight. Hollywood is playing a major role to the fight against cybercrimes.

A star from "Italian Job"

Cybercrime awareness campaign from Hollywood has a great impact on cyber security; I wrote in Swahili on this including sample videos and picture to demonstrate this campaign. The story can be read at "HOLLYWOOD" 

We have seen the great contribution to cyber security through movies and series. There are fully dedicated movies on cyber security such as “Italian Job”, “operational takedown” and others.

We have also seen episodes from multiple series that are dedicated on cyber security awareness, a good example is from the series named “The event” episode 3 rising awareness on “passwords”. 

Another example is “Nikita” from its final season episode 1 rising awareness on the new technology that allows cybercriminal to “hack” an individual’s phone in order to monitor conversations, messages and other activities ; the crime growing rapidly these days.

On the same episode awareness on cameras that cybercriminals places them to the eyes which makes very difficult for anyone to recognize activities around are recorded and transferred remotely in real time.

Other series contributed on the fight against cybercrimes includes, “Prison break”, “Mentalist”, “24”, “CSI”, “Criminal minds”, “Blacklist” to mention few. In May 2008 a Movie called "Untraceable" was released and it was mentioned to play a huge part on both awareness and knowledge on cybercrime investigations.

It’s time for other countries through their movie industry to insert clips that will raise awareness on the cyber security to extend effort on the fight against cybercrimes as the need to join force is highly required. 

I call upon the society to realize the need to learn on cyber security, practice and play safe online.