Easy-to-Use Digital Safety Tips
Every October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month helps spotlight simple ways people can better protect themselves online. From regular software updates to learning how to spot scams, sometimes the easiest steps can make the biggest difference in the fight to keep our personal data safe and secure.
At Gen, we’re sharing digital safety tips through a series of new campaigns with our nonprofit partners, to share the most up-to-date information on how to protect the digital and financial lives of people around the world.
Promoting Strong Identity Hygiene
We partner with the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) to highlight specific risks to personal data and how to combat them. For Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we’re focusing on mobile-based scams—why our devices are such common targets for scammers and what we do to protect against them.
Many of the same cybersecurity tips that apply to personal computers are helpful for mobile devices: keeping your software up to date, setting complex passwords, and steering clear of phishing scams. But mobile devices can be vulnerable to a range of unique threats, like fraudulent apps from unauthorized stores and lapsed privacy settings on social media. Visit ITRC’s recent blog post for more background and to learn what to do if your device is compromised.
Tips like these are part of a broader campaign to promote identity hygiene and raise awareness of safe cyber practices for long-term financial wellness, which we believe is more than just budgeting and saving. Identity theft can be a major financial disruptor and learning how to identify scams and protect against cybercrimes are essential tools for financial resilience.
Informing and Empowering Domestic Violence Survivors
Together with the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), a national voice in the United States for domestic violence survivors and their advocates, we’ve joined the fight against technology abuse, a growing component of domestic violence that often includes online stalking, identity theft or financial abuse.
For both Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we’ve launched a new Digital Safety Toolkit, with specific tips for survivors dealing with various forms of technology abuse.
Additionally, our donation program through our partnership with TechSoup has provided more than 3,700 Norton product licenses to domestic violence survivors across the U.S. TechSoup helps facilitate the donations to the Safe Shelter Collaborative, which in turn delivers the products to survivors through its network of member organizations.
The donated products include Norton 360 Deluxe, which can prevent activity or location tracking, information theft, installation of malicious programs and uninvited changes to devices, and Norton Secure VPN, which protects people’s online privacy by hiding the computer’s address from websites visited from any device.
Bolstering the Cybersecurity Talent Pipeline
As the rate of change in the technology industry continues to accelerate, the need grows for a robust cybersecurity workforce equipped with the skills necessary to keep pace with those changes. To close those skills gaps, we work with organizations like Women4Cyber to provide women across Europe with training, mentorship, webinars and other educational resources to enter cybersecurity and other IT careers.
This month, Women4Cyber is spotlighting Gen as an employer of choice for many of the women who graduate from their training and mentorship programs. In addition, Břetislav Šopík, our Senior Data Science Manager, appeared at the Women4Cyber Foundation for a presentation on anti-scam protection in SMS messaging, continuing to share the most up-to-date research with Women4Cyber trainees.
For more information on how we reach individuals, families and vulnerable communities with the knowledge and resources they need to navigate the digital world safely and responsibly, visit our 2025 Social Impact Report.
