Symantec on a safety mission!

With the rise in online threats and cybercrimes, Symantec is playing its role of spreading awareness in the society by initiating regular consumer-based programmes. Full on the fun quotient, these programmes have nothing to do with promoting the company's antivirus products but are aimed at giving the message to the consumers on how to stay vigilant online and give them the picture of genuine security lanscape in the country.   

"Our initiative is to make our consumers aware and educate them about the threats they come across online, what are the latest security trends and what is the purpose of securing their data from such threats. As a matter of fact, we are the only antivirus company to have come up with such a kind of initiative," explains Gaurav Kanwal, Country Sales Manager, Consumer Products and Solutions, Symantec India  

Last year, Symantec ran a programme in around 20 colleges, wherein the students were asked to design T-shirts, revolving around the theme on "How to stay safe online". "The response was tremendous. We got some 1,780 entries and uploaded them online for everyone to view them. We opened these entries for popular votes and the winners were declared on the basis of these votes. Top five winners were awarded too," said Gaurav. 

Another such programme initiated by Symantec is the recruitment of people who are tech savvy, but have a good amount of interactions on the social front. What Symantec does is that it periodically communicates with these guys by way of interactions or e-mails and discusses with them newer technologies and educates them about the latest happenings. They, in turn, go and convey these messages to their kinfolk, friends and families. 

Going forward....

Continuing with its efforts and taking its awareness programmes to the next level, Symantec has come up with a new programme called Discover India, which will be launched shortly. While the earlier programmes were aimed at more or less college goers, the company has targeted to reach out to two million school children through this programme. Devised along the same lines, the new programme is designed in such a way that it attracts more and more number of children by throwing a quiz contest with Anupam Kher as its quizmaster.   

"Children are very curious to click on any malicious sites they come across and this often lands them in trouble. They should know what to do and what not to do, what kind of information to share and what not to share. The programme is also designed keeping the parents in mind as it is equally important for the parents to know these security- related issues which their kids might fall prey to," Gaurav adds.

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