I receive many cases, and some stand out. During a school holiday two years ago, a parent complained that their child was “always on the phone.” Games. YouTube. Endless scrolling. The usual frustration. The solution they tried was the usual one to confiscate the phone, restrict Wi-Fi, and threaten punishment. It worked for a day. Then the cycle returned.
Instead, we tried something different. We asked, What if screen time is not the problem, but the waste of it is? The child was given a basic cybersecurity challenge. Nothing dramatic. Just simple tasks. How passwords are guessed. How fake links work. Why accounts get hacked. How to spot a scam message. The phone was no longer just for consumption. It became a tool.
Within days, behaviour changed. The child started explaining phishing to siblings. They began questioning suspicious links. They stopped oversharing online, not because they were warned, but because they understood risk. Screen time did not reduce. It became purposeful. This is the reality many parents miss. Children are already digital. The danger is not the screen. The danger is ignorance.
In another case, a teenager helped their parent avoid a mobile money scam. The message looked genuine. Same tone. Same urgency. But the child spotted the red flags immediately. Wrong link. Poor domain. Pressure language. Money saved. Lesson learned.
Cybersecurity is not an IT subject. It is a life skill. At the Institute of Forensics & ICT Security (IFIS), we teach children to cross the road, not because we expect accidents, but because risk exists. The digital world is no different. Children are online earlier than ever, interacting with strangers, sharing data, clicking links, and building digital footprints they will live with for years.
This holiday, the question is not whether your child will be on a screen. They will be. The question is whether they will leave the holiday with nothing but high scores and short videos or with a skill that builds confidence and judgment.
Cybersecurity training does something powerful for children. It trains them to think before they click. To question before they trust. To understand systems, not just use them. It quietly builds discipline, curiosity, and responsibility.
When school resumes, the difference shows. These children are not just users of technology. They are safer, sharper, and more aware. They do not panic online. They pause. This is how you future-proof a child. Not by banning technology, but by teaching mastery over it. Do not stop children from crossing the road. Teach them how to cross the road safely.
Turn screen time into skill time.
Enroll your child in cybersecurity training this holiday season.
Because the digital world is not waiting
The breach you never notice until it owns you
Let me describe the most dangerous breach I have ever seen. No alarms went off.
No systems went down. No ransom note appeared on the screen. Business continued as usual.
That was the problem. In this case, a staff member clicked a harmless-looking link. Nothing happened. Or so it seemed. No files disappeared. No money moved. Everyone relaxed.
What they did not know was that access had already been granted.
For weeks, the attacker watched quietly. Emails. Approvals. Password resets. Internal conversations. Who reports to whom? How money is approved. Which controls are ignored when people are in a hurry?
By the time the fraud happened, the breach was old news.
The attacker did not break in loudly. They moved in politely.
This is how most real breaches work. Not dramatic. Just silent.
In another case, a company kept blaming staff for “carelessness.” But the truth was that the breach was not caused by one click. Habits caused it. Shared passwords. No monitoring. Outdated systems. Trust without verification. The breach was not technical. It was cultural.
The most dangerous breaches are the ones you normalise. Small policy exceptions. One person with too much access. Alerts that are always ignored. Logs no one reads. Over time, attackers learn your organisation better than new employees do.
And when they finally act, it looks like an insider job, because from the system’s point of view, it is. By the time money moves, reputations fall, or regulators arrive, the breach already owns you. It knows your weaknesses. It knows your delays. It knows your fear of disruption.
This is why prevention is not enough. You must assume compromise and design for detection. Early. Constant. And relentlessly. Cybersecurity is not about stopping every attack. It is about spotting the quiet ones before they grow teeth.
If you only react when systems fail, you are already late. The real question leaders should ask is simple. If someone got in today, how soon would we know? If the answer is “after damage,” then the breach is already ahead of you. The breach you never notice is the one that owns you.
