The Problem
The biggest issue plaguing the cyberspace in this day and age would be the lack of technical knowledge of the average person on threats that can hurt them. Every year, there is an enormous amount of people who are falling for the same traps given to them by these crafty bad actors in order to extract money from people who do not know any better. Primarily these exploits are often made towards the elderly and young kids who have no conceptualization on how phishing attacks are often made. Although the intended target market would be older folks and kids, there are several instances where people with basic technical logic will fall victim to a phishing attack, and that displays a clear need for education on possible ways to spot potential scams.
The Context
Annually, the FBI do a report on how much crime has been committed online, and the demographic that’s affected by it the most. Throughout this public survey, many of the monetary crimes happened to the older generation, with the most recent being in 2020. It is clear with increase in age range, the more likely they are to fall victim to this type of crime. According to the Uniformed Crime Report Statistics branch that deals with cybercrime (IC3), in 2020, there were nearly 200,000 cases of victimization online from people between the ages of 50-over 60 (IC3, 16).
The Solution
The solution to this problem would be a way to educate the elderly and the future generations about the problems that present itself through the rapid growth of technology. Many older folks fall victim to attacks because of time sensitive materials, whereas teens and children often fall for pressure from people who take the persona of a higher authority. Using this need for education, I present the possibility of a 24/7 hotline/extension that is available to answer and educate folks who just are not sure about if an email or ad is too good to be true. This hotline would be sold at a monthly subscription in addition to the Internet bills and would have the capability for a return on investment for both the internet company and the individual having this product available to them.
The Challenges
- There are several challenges that will be presented on the sales of this product/service. One of them would be the legal challenges facing the company that brings this service onto a membership platform. With security being a risky business to be in, scenarios may appear to the person on the hotline, to deal with a possible ongoing attack. Policy will need to be evaluated on how employees would go about dealing with an active crime. In these cases, the company should have a legal team ready to react to such a problem and law enforcement to report attack and best course of action for the employee giving the aid.
- On the opposite side of the legal spectrum, with the growth of crafty ways to scam people, there will more than likely be instances of advice given that will be wrong in some scenarios. The legal ramifications in loss of data/money will be a challenged in court many times. In order to combat this, there would also need to be policies and procedures taken involving the aid to mitigate the possibility of wrong advice and money/data loss.
- An issue with creating a hotline for education and prevention of cyber threats would be the wait times people will have when calling. If there are long waits to receive responses or to find agents to assist with security question, many people could choose to opt out of the extra charge on the basis of being too much work to put in to get the money’s worth out of calling. To combat this challenge, the introduction of a voice system to give the agent an idea on how to assist the caller would increase productivity and decrease call time in order to solve the problem the caller is having.
- Another challenge would be the marketing scheme that will be needing to adopt in order to spread and grow popularity in the product/service. With this type of innovation, the pitch, and the marketing, are key aspects of growing the hotline. At first many companies will see the service as an unnecessary expense with no clear profit, but there are several ways to monetize this type of service. With the improvement in networking technology, many Internet Service Providers can sell this service as an additional charge to make up for the labor and software needed to run the department. Not to mention the promotional avenues that can be given in order to introduce the service under the umbrella of an Internet Service Provider, many people will opt into purchasing the extended package to save themselves potentially hundreds of dollars a year.
- The competitor this service would be software like VPN’s and anti-malware device most people will just download onto their device and forget about it. What this has as an advantage over the software is the fact that it is a lecture-based help line with a broad knowledge on the different threats associated with data traveling across the cyberspace. Anti-malware software only really checks for malware, which completely disregards problems like phishing, and adware (commonly seen on electronic devices owned by older people). VPNs are good, but for a hefty subscription, tunneling through a network also does not help with email security and potential threats occurring passively within a system’s firmware.
The Assessment
The success in this program will depend on the efficiency and rapidity of service distribution along with the efficiency of the hotline itself. The biggest statistic to see success of the service would be improvement in the number of victims to cybercrime and the monetary loss annually, specifically, the phishing department. Each call would be recorded and documented for quality assurance purposes, and with each problem solved, the potential savings people would have in comparison to alternative options would be great in difference.