16% of children have their first smartphone before age 10

• S2 Grupo has warned that the increase in the use of New Technologies by children and increasingly at younger ages, makes it essential to increase awareness of their safe use to prevent them from becoming victims of cybercriminals or themselves incurring crimes for not using them properly.
• According to a study carried out by S2 Grupo from its Hijosdigitales.es blog, in addition, 22% of the minors included in this age group have a profile in social networks.
• Cyberbullying, sexting, loss of privacy, addictions or online gambling are just some of the risks that minors related to this area can face.
• Experts of the company have developed a decalogue for the responsible use of the New Technologies with the purpose that young people and adults increase their cyber-protection.

Valencia, February 5, 2018.- On the occasion of the celebration of the International Day of Secure Internet on Tuesday, February 6, S2 Grupo  has pointed out that the training and awareness on the use of new technologies remains a pending task to avoid being victims of cybercriminals either at a personal or family level or at the business level. The commemoration of this international day was in fact launched with the aim of promoting the responsible use of New Technologies, especially among minors and young people.

In this sense, experts from S2 Grupo have warned that the increase in the use of New Technologies by children and increasingly at younger ages, makes it essential to increase awareness of their safe use to avoid being victims of cybercriminals or they themselves incur crimes for not using them properly. In fact, according to a survey carried out by the company through its Hijosdigitales.es blog, 16% of parents said they bought their first smartphone before 10 years of age and that 22% of minors, included in this age group, already use social networks. "The problems originated in connected environments are multiple and the trend indicates that they will continue to increase, causing alarms to go off, and that public institutions and organizations as well as private entities must start to train and raise awareness among minors and prevent them from becoming victims of crimes related to the use of New Technologies", said José Rosell, associate-director of S2 Grupo. In this sense, cyberbullying, sexting, the loss of privacy, addictions or online gambling are just some of the risks that minors related to this area can face. "Many families think that limiting the use of these technologies is the solution to avoid cyber-problems, but this is useless.

The connected devices are increasingly implanted in every area of our lives and the real way to protect ourselves is to know the risks we face and how to make responsible use of the Internet", claimed José Rosell. Precisely to promote responsible use of New Technologies, experts from S2 Grupo have developed a decalogue of key tips to make the experience secure:

1. Parents must learn to use the same technology as their children. If they do not know the environments in which their children move, a great distance between them is created, which translates into a lack of authority before them because they are aware that adults do not have experience in that area.
2. Use strong passwords. Which are those that contain uppercase and lowercase letters, punctuation marks and alphanumeric characters. In addition, these must be modified frequently and be different for each environment.
3. Do not accept strangers as friends in Social Networks. This can entail a serious danger for minors, who do not know if there are actually people of their age or adults with any type of pernicious intention behind the profiles. This is one of the most important points and difficult to achieve because young people measure their social status by the number of friends in social networks and their activity in them.
4. Protect the webcam. If a computer is hacked, the camera can be activated by remote control even if it appears to be turned off. If on top of that, the device is in the child's room, intimate or naked images could be taken, etc.
5. Do not send intimate photos. This is another of the greatest dangers because minors usually believe that only the person to whom it was sent will see them and once this is done, control over their use is lost. In fact, it can end up leading to highly sensitive situations such as blackmail or harassment.
6. Be careful with what is shared. To be continuously informing, for example, where we are, where we are going, if we are traveling, etc., could put us in danger.
7. The best protection measure is education. Knowing the risks and how to protect yourself is one of the best tools to avoid cyber threats.
8. Do not use public Wi-Fis. These do not usually guarantee enough security and many are really "baits" of cybercriminals to take control of our smartphone and have access to all our information.
9. Correctly configure the privacy of accounts in Social Networks. It is essential to choose the most restrictive option to prevent unwanted people from accessing our data.
10. To prevent our devices from being hacked, it is important that the browser, the operating system and the antivirus are correctly updated.

Protect IT: cybersecurity awareness for all age The ProtectIT project of S2 Grupo is a program aimed at organizations in which it works in an innovative way with all its members and families to achieve an effective culture of security in them. The objective is to increase the global level of cybersecurity and reduce the risk of incidents directly related to one of the key components in this area that are, precisely, people. For this, among other measures, the participants are presented with shocking but daily situations that call their attention to risk behaviors, their consequences and the influence they have on cybersecurity. As pointed out by S2 Grupo, the main aspect that causes families to be at risk is the ignorance of the threats they face in the digital domain. Both adults and minors are not aware of it and, therefore, do not manage the associated risks.

These dangers derive both from the technical vulnerabilities associated with the use of the devices and access to online services and from unsafe behavior practices, mainly by minors. In 2017, S2 Grupo through the ProtectIT program helped raise awareness among more than 10,000 employees and 1,000 families. He conducted more than 150 face-to-face sessions in companies to publicize the importance of a security awareness in any entity, be they large Ibex35 companies, for example, or SMEs. Of these, 75 sessions were held with employees, more than 20 with senior management teams and more than 20 were family security days. There were also more than 10 specific actions of individualized coaching for senior positions. More information: prensa@s2grupo.es