05.12.2024 - For this year's European Cyber Security Month (ECSM), the NCSC focused on raising awareness of social engineering and artificial intelligence (AI). We worked with a range of partners to develop targeted content for young people, professionals and seniors. This review highlights the campaign’s successes and key findings.
The main objective of ECSM 2024 was to raise public awareness of the growing threat of social engineering attacks, which are being amplified by the use of AI. These types of attacks, in which scammers manipulate people into trusting them with sensitive information, are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect due to new technologies such as deepfakes. The campaign focused on informing the different target groups about the latest threats, and helping them to take the right precautions. The cornerstone of the campaign was an awareness-raising video showing how deepfakes are created and how you can protect yourself against them.
Activities by target group
The campaign reached young people through a workshop run by our partner organisation Netpathie, which creatively explored the topic of social engineering. At the end of the workshop, the young participants produced a video about their experience in the workshop and the main points that they had learned. The video was shown at the ENISA Awareness Conference in Ljubljana at the end of November.
An interactive online event was held for professionals, where campaign ambassador Ivano Somaini and NCSC technical analyst Brian Ceccato gave a detailed insight into deepfake technology and how it can be used for social engineering. A video of the event, which was attended by over 700 people, is available on our YouTube channel. It was also shown at the ENISA Awareness Conference in Ljubljana.
The ECSM 2024 campaign targeted senior citizens with an educational video created in collaboration with Techtipp AG, a partner of seniorweb.ch. The video explains in simple terms how criminals can use voice cloning to manipulate their victims, and how you can protect yourself.
Outlook
In 2025, we plan to continue the campaign with partners such as Netpathie and Techtipp, who will bring their expertise in reaching younger and older audiences. We will also continue to use campaign ambassadors to better reach our target audiences.
Further information:
Last modification 05.12.2024
