Digitization can only succeed in conjunction with digital security. That was the tenor of a conference organized by the BMBF, which provided a stage for current research funded by the ministry. This included the interdisciplinary research project “Digital Fitness for Citizens – Realistic Risk Perception, Safe Routines” (DigiFit). The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding DigiFit with a total of 1.9 million euros. The project partners include the Chairs of Human-Centred Security, System Security and Educational Psychology and Technology at Ruhr University Bochum, Macromedia University of Applied Sciences and the companies AWARE7 GmbH and Hornetsecurity GmbH.

The interdisciplinary research project DigiFit deals with the question of how the “digital fitness” of citizens can be sustainably strengthened. The goal is to create more resilience against cybercrime and attacks on personal data.

How can communication help promote digital security?

In a presentation at the IT conference, Florian Meissner explored the question of how communication science findings can help to effectively teach digital skills. The challenge here is that “many people know measures to protect themselves and their own data online, but few implement them consistently.” Effective security communication must therefore above all be understandable and motivating.

DigiFit employee Christine Buse also presented a poster at the conference with initial research results from a preliminary study for the project. Among other things, she showed that media coverage of digital security has increased significantly over time. At the same time it seems that a large part of the media content so far offers rather limited opportunities to promote safe online behavior, she said.