Project Description

It is a basic guide of computer security for social organizations.

Via wiki, we are building a directory of security information for organizations to preserve their information and communications, and to avoid risks to their members, other people or activities. The guide will raise awareness of the main risks for the security, through real examples that show how threats and risks work and their consequences. And solutions to these risks too. Some of the tunes are:

-Attitudes and risky behaviors (such as insecure passwords) and how to correct them in email, websites, forums, social networks (facebook, Twitter, etc ...)

-How to audit networks and computers in an organization

-Protection of information: Antivirus, AntiSpyware, Data Encryption, backups, etc

-Wi-Fi networks Security

-Free software and security. The guide also promotes the use of free software, both for ethical reasons, for practical reasons (it is more transparent, usually free and with better levels of security). Therefore, it will briefly explain what Free Software is, and what programs exist to achieve greater security,operating system of computers and servers ,encryption tools, backups, firewall... showing how to configure them properly and how to make them properly sure for these organizations.

The project is already underway, with a wiki in which we are inviting people from different areas of security to contribute. We also want that through the wiki it be decided the structure of the guide. When we collect enough information, we will organize it for distribution to different organizations. We are currently working in Spanish, because it is easier to coordinate in a single language, but our goal is to translate the guide into other languages, and we already have 2 volunteers (Regi & Ramy) to translate into English, French and Arabic, but we expect more.

Inspiration

In October 2007, Burma's military government suppressed the groups calling for democracy and human rights. To identify the dissidents, the military raided the United Nations offices to take the hard drives from the computers. These discs had information about many social organizations, dissidents, etc that had been reported to the UN, it was very valuable information for the military. The UN officials tried to erase the information, but if it was not properly made, it is easy to retrieve and use it for repression.

When I saw that old (or at least old for me) new in a security website, I thought about the current situation and, I concluded that associations, social organizations, journalists, NGOs, human rights defenders, trade unionists ... working in countries and areas at risk, often do not follow minimum standards of security.

Therefore we thought about the development of this guide, along with examples that serve to raise awareness of the importance of security, in order to get that they have the minimum behavior to ensure the security of the information on these organizations and also basic tools of free software and its use, that could be very useful for them.

Who will enjoy this the most?

Journalists, human rights defenders, NGOs, social activists ... especially those in countries where rights are not respected or  is a risk  to fight peacefully for a better world.

The Project

The project is being developed through a wiki, so that different people can make their contributions. Our wiki is:

 http://es.seguridadorganizacionessociales.wikia.com

We hope it will be plenty of information soon.

We'll try to translate to English some entries of our wiki as soon as possible to show you our job. It will be in:

http://securitycivilsociety.wikia.com/wiki/Security_for_Social_Organizations_Wiki