CyberShield: Empowered Citizens for Cyber Resilience
Collective cybersecurity is essential to ensure that citizens navigate the digital environment competently, safely, and responsibly and gain from the benefits of technology. By protecting our online presence, we build a society that respects privacy, security, and the ethical use of new technologies, thus cultivating a cyber-resilient ecosystem. This is a struggle in North Macedonia where the majority of citizens, especially vulnerable groups of citizens, due to a lack of digital literacy and limited access to digital infrastructure, remain vulnerable in their online activities with few public legal remedies, often resulting in the theft of their personal data and identity, hate speech, the spread of disinformation, and even financial loss. This also applies to civil society organizations, especially those working with vulnerable groups of citizens, who often lack the resources and capacities to protect their own and their constituents’ online presence.
Project Goal: Fostering an ecosystem resilient to cyber threats by strengthening civil society organizations and raising citizen awareness about cyber threats and cyber hygiene.
Expected results:
- Promoted culture of cybersecurity awareness and responsible online behavior within the community;
- Strengthened and educated civil society organizations, able to apply good cybersecurity practices and increase their resilience to cyber threats, through capacity-building training and mentoring;
- Increased awareness of cybersecurity and cyber hygiene among citizens through a promotional awareness-raising campaign;
Project activities:
- Three trainings for 30 civic activists from 20 civil society organizations, followed by mentoring for interested trained civil society organizations to design personalized digital security plans, in order to strengthen their capacities and foster the effect of strengthening collective resilience to cyber threats through these empowered activists;
- Three podcasts and three video tutorials on issues related to cybersecurity and practicing regular cyber hygiene.
Timeframe: 7 months (1.3.2025 – 30.9.2025)
The project activities foster awareness and understanding among the community about the importance of cybersecurity, ensuring that issues of proper and regular cyber hygiene and effective handling of cyber threats (phishing, social engineering, malware, online disinformation, personal data theft, etc.) receive the necessary attention, resources, and joint efforts needed for effective solutions.
The project “CyberShield: Empowered Citizens for Cyber Resilience” is supported by the National Interventions grant for the regional project “SMART Balkans—Civil Society for Shared Society in the Western Balkans” implemented by Centar za promociju civilnog društva (CPCD) (Center for Civil Society Promotion), Center for Research and Policy Making (CRPM) and the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM), and financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Norway.
