Reading through the Red Hat Magazine I found an article with something of a Dejavu: user awareness and “education”. I’ve read it, heard it and said it a billion times; if we can’t make the users aware of the risks that they are exposed to on a daily basis, of some basic concepts, we are all screwed!. I bet all of you have lived at least once to be sitting in an class room, auditorium, web cafe or any other place and the guy or gal next to you just smacks you with the most basic of questions: What is X? in English please! That’s the moment when one of two things happen:

  1. You turn around and look at him with anger and think what the hell is this specimen doing attending this class/talk/presentation/name it?
  2. You remember about that user awareness thing you’ve read about in so many articles and books before , give him a short answer and after it’s all over you try to break this poor soul the basics

As I stated before if we can’t make the users understand a bit of how a computer works, if we can’t help are colleagues, family & friends get the basic concepts of the machine and the network they have at fingers it’s a fight we cannot win. That is because the “bad guys” are going to target them and they are just to many. So when ever you get 5 minutes to work as a multiplier, to break some basics to your users, or better yet are in position to start program in the office do so. The world and all fellow security / technology savvy people will thank you.