C&W Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the op­er­a­tors of Flow, Flow Busi­ness, C&W Busi­ness and BTC, joined the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty in cel­e­brat­ing Safer In­ter­net Day un­der the theme “Too Good to Be True? Pro­tect­ing Your­self and Oth­ers from Scams On­line.” 

Safer In­ter­net Day is an in­ter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive pro­mot­ing a safer, more re­spon­si­ble, and in­clu­sive dig­i­tal world, and this year’s theme high­lights the im­por­tance of stay­ing vig­i­lant and proac­tive against the grow­ing threat of cy­ber scams. 

In a state­ment from Flow re­cent­ly it said with a 43 per cent in­crease in cy­ber­at­tacks across the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca since 2021, pro­tect­ing against cy­ber­crime has nev­er been more crit­i­cal. Re­search in­di­cates that one in twen­ty-three or­ga­ni­za­tions in the re­gion is im­pact­ed by cy­ber threats week­ly. 

“Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is a shared re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. As the Caribbean’s lead­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider, we are com­mit­ted to in­form­ing, ad­vis­ing, and ed­u­cat­ing stake­hold­ers about on­line safe­ty,” said Inge Smidts, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, C&W Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. 

Flow not­ed that Glob­al­ly, 71.1 mil­lion peo­ple on av­er­age fall vic­tim to cy­ber­crimes each year with the top five types of cy­ber­crime be­ing ex­tor­tion, iden­ti­ty theft, per­son­al da­ta breach, non-pay­ment for prod­ucts and ser­vices, and phish­ing at­tacks. 

“As a key en­abler of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion across the re­gion, C&W Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is com­mit­ted to equip­ping its cus­tomers, em­ploy­ees, and com­mu­ni­ties with the tools and knowl­edge they need to nav­i­gate the in­ter­net safe­ly. We are proud to con­tin­ue cham­pi­oning the cause of safer in­ter­net prac­tices by part­ner­ing with schools, com­mu­ni­ties, and se­nior cit­i­zen groups to spread aware­ness about on­line se­cu­ri­ty,” added Smidts. 

In part­ner­ship with par­ent com­pa­ny Lib­er­ty Latin Amer­i­ca (LLA), C&W Com­mu­ni­ca­tions has launched sev­er­al ini­tia­tives to mark Safer In­ter­net Day with a range of ed­u­ca­tion and aware­ness cam­paigns de­signed to reach the youngest and old­est in­ter­net users. 

In Trinidad, Flow, in part­ner­ship with the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BATT) host­ed thir­ty pri­ma­ry school stu­dents for a day of ac­tiv­i­ties that in­clud­ed pre­sen­ta­tions by Daren Dho­ray, Dig­i­tal An­thro­pol­o­gist & Cy­ber Safe­ty Evan­ge­list, Cy­ber­SafeTT; Ayinde Fras­er, Vice Chair, BATT’s Se­cu­ri­ty Com­mit­tee and Se­nior Man­ag­er - Pro­tec­tive Ser­vice, Sco­tia­bank; and An­dro­mi­da Kan­goo, Man­ag­er Dig­i­tal Foren­sic, Sco­tia­bank.