The Youth Mobility Index (YMI)

The Dot Asia is out with its Youth Mobility Index (YMI.Asia) commemorating the first decade of .Asia, and building on our dedication and knowledge in supporting youth engagement and development in the region, a special taskforce was commissioned to look into an initiative that could become a beacon for DotAsia into the future.
The DotAsia Organisation is celebrating our 10 year anniversary of launching the .Asia global Top-Level-Domain.

According to Dot Asia, " Driven by an Asia-wide vision, the YMI framework hopes to provide a robust set of tools to measure, understand and cultivate mobility relevant for the younger generation, and to further enhance regional collaboration, inform government policies and influence corporate behaviours to support mobility as a competitive advantage shared across Asia in a brain-sharing paradigm.  At DotAsia, we believe the attractiveness of the .Asia domain is built on the attractiveness of the region for business and for social development and the mobility of young Asians to make a difference for Asia. The fruition of YMI ties back into the success of .Asia, reinforcing regional collaboration. Next time you are thinking of starting something from Asia or for Asia, think of making it happen on a .Asia domain name!"


Link: https://www.dot.asia/ymi-2018-report/https://www.dot.asia/ymi-2018-report/

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Issues of Youth in IG process

Internet Governance has become the pivotal point that drives the overall internet ecosystem. It has been handed over to the Multistakeholder process but more or less it is still ruled by the transcended values of limiting internet as a commodity of technology that is within the reach of people who have access and money only.

Internet for all or open standards has always been a global issue of creating layers where internet dynamic are creating variable limitation and difference. There has been subjective efforts towards mitigating the problem but with just the limitation of expertise and lack of intervention at the grassroots level youths are bound to suffer the consequence.

When we talk about internet governance and youth there is a huge gaps where things are complicated in many complexity of diversity, and knowledge. More or less the internet politics hinders the process of adaptation.

The major challenges for youth has been subjected not just with the limitation  but it is further targeting the youth with the externalities. In many of these cases youth are suffering the consequences of being victims of  just being users. 

Some of the issues of youth are: 

1. Lack of Internet core values 
2. Lack of awareness about the internet governance process
3. Internet politics around Internet governance process 
4. Orthodox and limited mentality 
5. Limitation of networking and participation in IG events 
6. Lack of diversity 
7. Favoritism and nepotism 
8. Social media and policy 
9. Lack of research and survey about the indicators 
10. Funding and fellowship
11. Lack of proper training

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Smart City a concept or reality

The definition of  of Smart City, varies from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents. A smart city would have a different standards according to geography and technology as per the region and location.

Basically a smart city is a system that works with integration of emerging trends such as automation, machine learning and the internet of things (IoT) that configures the smart system in a certain geographic location adopting certain rules and regulation in  facilitating various services and amenities.

To be precises, a smart city is a municipality or a societal form of city management system that uses information and communication technologies to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public and improves both the quality of government services and citizen welfare. It create better management overarching and  improving quality of life for its citizens using smart technology and data analysis.

In today's context  of smart cities,  energy conservation and efficiency are major priority  where using smart sensors, and IoT devices are the need which is changing rapidly. Every year the standard of smart city is changing with the evolving technology and system. Likewise, smart grid technology can be used to improve operations, maintenance and planning, and to supply power on demand and monitor energy outages.

Focusing on Climate change and resource optimization, smart city initiatives also aim to address environmental concerns and other human threats. Using better technology,   Health, Sanitation and hygiene  can also be improved with smart technology. Similarly, daily necessity needs like food, water, gas can be efficiently control and distributed minimizing the risk of contamination.

Apart from that Smart city technology can be used for  improving emergency preparedness with sensors that can save hundreds and thousands of lives from natural disaster like droughts, floods, landslides or hurricanes.

Smart city challenges and concerns

The major challenges and concern are assumption of cyber attack, surveillance other infiltration to the system of centralized control which can disrupt the services and in major cases can cause devastation in terms of management.
Another aspect of the challenge is the fear of  the exposure of the data that citizens produce on a daily basis to the risk of hacking or misuse is an issue of concern for all.  Additionally, the presence of sensors and cameras may be perceived as an invasion of privacy or government surveillance. To address this, smart city data collected should be anonymized and not be personally identifiable information.

One thing that is very important is when there is opportunity there are risks. This requires a firm backbone of critical infrastructures such as Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) for management of the system and back up of the network.

The CIRT team  is responsible for responding to security breaches, viruses and other potentially catastrophic incidents in enterprises that face significant security risks. In addition to technical specialists capable of dealing with specific threats, it should include experts who can guide enterprise executives on appropriate communication in the wake of such incidents. The CIRT normally operates in conjunction with other enterprise groups, such as site security, public-relations and disaster recovery teams.

Without a functional CIRT the operation and management of a smart city is impossible.

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Cyber Attack and Ransomware

A cyber attack is any type of offensive set of action or program that attacks any system or algorithm in a sequence of disrupting regular services or creating harm to  individuals, groups, or organizations that targets computer information systems, infrastructures, computer networks, and/or personal computer devices by various means of malicious acts usually originating from an anonymous source that either steals, alters, or destroys a specified target by hacking into a susceptible system.

What is a RANSOMEWARE ?
A ransomeware is a computer viruses that is designed to lock down your files and threatens to delete your files unless you pay a ransom are known as ransomware. According to security experts warned that ransomware is the fastest growing form of computer virus exploiting a security hole in vulnerable software by tricking somebody into installing it and then taking in control the system.

Ransomware works by encrypting all your data in the computer making it a situation of lock down with a permanent message demanding a payment to release the files blocking access to a computer system or data, WannaCry encrypts data on the device and demands a ransom of USD$300 to be paid to a given bitcoin wallet within three days or USD$600 within seven days. Unlike other viruses however, WannaCry propagates through the network and infects computers like a worm, which means that their users do not have to activate the infected file or link for the software to continue spreading.

Protection Against RANSOMEWARE?
Microsoft has already issued an update for Windows 10 and other system. Till the time
your operating system is up-to-date, you should be protected from this strain of ransomware. Always make sure you are running the latest version of your operating system with the latest security fixes installed – and run up-to-date anti-virus software from a trusted company. Take in consideration email attachments and always beware suspicious emails asking you to click links or download attachments.

What are loss in Figure ?

It is estimated that ransomware-related bitcoin wallets, in 2016, ransomware attacks cost more than USD$1 billion. The numbers are uncertain as many companies will not reveal that their systems have been compromised by ransomware, and accept payments openly. The average ransom demand has more than doubled, from USD$294 at the end of 2015, to USD$679 in 2016. Bitcoin’s open ledger allows anyone interested to trace the payments being made to the criminals in the WannaCry ransomware attack.

According to Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith said on Sunday: “We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on Wikileaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world.
“An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the US military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen.”

Source: RAYZNEWS  

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Internet Governance, Multistakeholder Environment and Diversity

In a Least Developing Country (LDC) like Nepal, Internet governance is a very least expected topic that makes it to any national level dialogue process. Though various concepts and technologies find its way for communication and discussion, internet governance is still in progress of finding a channel among various stakeholders. Its identity struggles among various stakeholders, who shift their responsibilities in being carefree of putting a monster in a box and criticizing the  negative aspect of internet or social media. We fail to address the issues of its development and values where the current evolution in terms of diversity and adaptation matters.

We have made it or we have created it and we need to accept and move forwards towards finding a proper solution giving it the collaborative approach of multistakeholderism and trust.

Our society of today is not just limited within countable use of internet which prioritizes the involvement and openness of how the internet has evolved and will be further interpreted.

Whether you talk about leadership or technical people, the scope, role and objective of internet governance is very much hidden within the text  where most of the people in power and chair even fail to even address the issue. In recent development, Nepal has updated or upgraded with various wireless broadband technologies and policies,  but when it comes to awareness of internet and its core values people at leadership and normal layman still uses the internet without the knowledge of its basic core values.

THIS IS THE REALITY AND  WE ARE BLINDLY USING AND SPREADING THE USE OF INTERNET, MAKING PEOPLE MORE VULNERABLE.

It is used basically for a  number of applications where these devices are related to its output rather than giving a fair value of understanding or building the moral values of using the internet and its related technology. And maybe because of this the wrong use or the wrong interpretation is happening in most of the cases.

“I strongly believe, internet has been passed on to the developing world not as a service or facility, but it has been passed on as a part of a business promotion strategy which is more focused towards generating revenue rather than awareness and value.”

Reality of today, is  these gaps have been hindering people for its development in countries like Nepal, where internet is treated just as a business commodity and  the government is more focused about the taxes, the private companies are worried about their revenue and subscription and user groups are always worried about their connection only. More or less policies are made limiting the scope and role where survey and research at done at a very minimum criteria of fulfilling the gaps. Likewise diversity is yet another issues which has been long addressed as well. There is no point of talking or discussion about the core value or for what reason it has been phased out or how can we use it in a proper way of ensuring human values.

It is the limitation of human boundaries where we have created this gap and we need to overcome it by creating better core values.

Recently, I was invited to host a program called guffgaff organized  by LoomNepal which is a social organization working towards the rights of women and LGBT group. The program was themed internet freedom and FoE in Internet but with the level of participation, interest and queries I was pretty surprised interacting with the various stakeholders  that internet of today was no different than internet of yesterday. It was a great learning opportunity talking with youths, & other stakeholders, including the #LGBT community leaders. the LGBT group leaders expressed their level of concerned about how the internet is wrongly being used in slashing their rights and FoE. They have been deprived from the government and from polices which even fails to address their issues and rights at times of need.

Certainly, #FoE & #internetfreedom are issues of our concern, they are basic right of any individual ensured by the constitution of Nepal but how many of the citizen know about it is a question.

We need more #collaboration & #cooperation in terms of making governance visible & practical. It still is repressive, offensive and unsecured for the citizen from various angles . It was still the same at various levels of policy enactment and cooperation that was focused more towards promoting business to organization only.

In absence of proper internet core values we have made the internet a compulsive, addictive, un-manged daily commodity which was evolving as a bad habit.

The government was focused more towards regulation, the private sector towards business and the people are lost in communication and adaptation of social media and entertainment redeeming the real values of the internet.

Let's talk & let's be sensitive about these issues only then we can #change our society but first we have understand these core values of internet and further work towards creating awareness. Only then things can change or else  it is just a funding project that works without sustainability option.  

Event Link: Internet Freedom and FoE discussion

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Why is it important to attend APrIGF?

Building on the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals, and the mandate given at the Second Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in 2005, the IGF (Internet Governance Forum) is a United Nations activity initiated in 2006 as a global platform for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on prevailing and emerging issues on Internet governance so as to foster the sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development of Internet.

Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIG) is a regional event of the Asia Pacific which basically served as a platform for discussion, exchange and collaboration at a regional level.  It is an open platform of dialogue for all stakeholders in discussing their technical and other issues in context of national and regional level .


The importance of APrIGF event  are

1. To provide broad platform for discussion at regional level 
2. Better communication of ICT issues and challenges 
3. Easy communication and networking 
4. Diversify internet issues and challenges
5. Collaborative approach to the problem
6. Standardization of internet policy and law
7. Problem identification and collaboration 
8. Creating values and better opportunities 
9. Adopting dynamics of internet 
10. Promoting equality and diversity among stakeholders
11. Discouraging internet fragmentation  
12. lessening digital divide 
13. Promoting net neutrality 

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7 Tips to Stay Safe on Social Media

Social Media is the next big things in our society. We virtually do everything where it has become our existence. To be more precise it has taken the form of addiction that has more cons than pro.
As coming down from the decade old infestation the social media  has evolved with various aspect of vulnerability that are more threatening than benefiting:

1. Privacy and safety issue 2. Human psychology issue 

Here are some of the top 11 tips to stay safe on social media:

1. Always use secure passwords with better integration of security features or authentication methods like phone validation and email validation.
2. Keep your Privacy setting tight keeping your geography data and location to a  limited circle. In case of social media always  turn off your  location and GPS as it draws more battery and make your vulnerable in case of surveillance.
    
3. Most of the times, the security features include security question which can be a life savers at times of revival or retrieval of social media account. try to use this feature following your own secret question and answer.
4. Always use different passwords for your devices and accounts.
5. Keep your friendship list tight and be selective with friend requests. If you don’t know the person, don’t accept their request.  It could be a fake account. Always try personal verification then verifying random search or mutual friends listing.
6. Social media these days have been intervened by lucrative adds and messages always be cautioned about links and adds. Just be careful about what and where you are clicking.
7. Always read the privacy policy and check the various features of the privacy and security
     

"SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS is an unwanted situation which is a wrong representation or interpretation of statement. A social media crisis is a viral situation that occurs at a time of any statement with compliment to various meanings and interpretation occurs randomly being shared #viral. For addressing the issues, it cannot be derailed or dropped in the viral post or cannot be defied with justification. It can settle down with only a strategic compliance of secured answers and data's minimizing confrontation and communication."  

Process of facing Social Media Crisis

Protocol of Social media Attack or threats 

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