The Ernakulam Rural police are in the process of raising a pool of cyber security volunteers as the first line of defence against unsuspecting members of the public from falling prey to the ever increasing cyber frauds.
The initiative has been launched in keeping with the orders of the State Police Chief. The Ernakulam Rural police limits have been reporting cyber frauds of varying hues in recent times.
To begin with, a pool of 374 volunteers across all 34 police stations within the rural police limits has been raised. They include people from all walks of life including government employees, teachers, students, housewives, people’s representatives, and voluntary organisation workers. The enlisting of volunteers will continue based on their interest and aptitude.
“They will act on the basis of the principle that prevention is better than cure. They will be our frontline warriors in disseminating information at the grassroots level on how to maintain cyber hygiene thus keeping fraudsters at bay. We have conducted the maiden session lasting over three hours for 80 volunteers, with the rest of the volunteers to be covered in successive sessions to be held in the coming days. The District Crime Records Bureau Deputy Superintendent of Police will serve as the nodal officer for the cyber volunteer initiative, and the cyber cell will assist it,” said Vaibhav Saxena, District Police Chief (Ernakulam Rural).
The inaugural training session covered a lot of aspects to be careful about while being online. The plan is to club together cyber security cases and turn them into case studies to educate cyber security volunteers so that they are up-to-date about the latest cyber threats and create awareness accordingly.
The session observed that the basics of cybersecurity remained the same — not to reply to messages from unidentified numbers or respond to anonymous calls, not to share one-time passwords, not to click on suspicious links, ensuring that authentic applications alone are installed from trusted sources like Play Store, and being careful about permissions granted to applications at the time of installation.
“People will also have to curb their greed so that they don’t fall for tantalising offers. Being judicious will put up an effective resistance and demotivate fraudsters from making frequent fishing expeditions,” said Mr. Saxena.
The performance of cyber volunteers will be monitored to ensure that they do not enlist for namesake. They will have to attend at least two training sessions and should be able to show results for their work.
