NYC Digital Safety Training

Everything you need to run in-person workshops

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This 3-hour in-person workshop expands upon the lessons from the legacy training modules. Here you'll find materials to help run one of these training sessions.

  • Downloads

    Handouts, surveys, and signs you'll pass out to participants.

  • Agenda

    An agenda summary for participants in the NYC Digital Safety workshops.

    1. Welcome and Introductions (10 Minutes)

      • Get to know each other
      • Facilitators and participants introduce themselves
      • Group prompt: “what’s the first digital activity you do every day?”

    2. Workshop Overview (10 Minutes)

      • Know what to expect
      • Review agenda
      • Review community agreements
      • Review space logistics

    3. Online training refresher (15 Minutes)

      • Recall online training, reflect on learnings and address questions
      • Briefly run through the topics introduced in each module
      • Share reflections, takeaways and observations from online training

    4. How the Internet works (45 Minutes)

      • Gain an in-depth understanding of terms, definitions, infrastructure and information flow
      • Play “Web Mechanics Speed Dating” game to review terms and definitions
      • Review internet information flow and discuss privacy vulnerabilities
      • Reflect with a spectrogram activity

    5. Break (10 Minutes)

    6. Personae Introduction (15 Minutes)

      • Understand how everyone’s unique context shapes their digital privacy
      • Introduce personas and scenarios
      • Discuss how each person may engage differently in the information flow

    7. Risk Assessment and Best Practice (60 Minutes)

      • Analyze threats to a person’s digital security and privacy, the motivations behind those threats, and how to mitigate them
      • Introduce digital security risk assessment/threat analysis template
      • Group activity: conduct a risk assessment for each persona/scenario
      • Share out and discuss assessment results
      • Compile a data privacy best practices cheat sheet

    8. Wrap up (15 Minutes)

      • Conclude with a meaningful reflection
      • Complete workshop survey
      • Share takeaways and questions
      • Gather feedback

  • Key Terms

    The terms below were presented in Module 2 of the NYC Digital Safety online training.

    • Browser

      Software on the computer that displays web pages and web applications

    • Domain Name Server (DNS)

      A service that maps numeric versions of web addresses to human-readable URLs. Can be thought of as the internet’s “phone book”

    • Fiber optic cables

      A high-speed data transmission medium that carries light beams. Digital data is transmitted through the cable via rapid pulses of light

    • Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)

      The prescribed method that clients and servers use to share information on the internet

    • Internet

      A physical infrastructure comprising computers, modems, routers, and cables

    • Internet protocol address (IP address)

      A unique number assigned to each device connected to a computer network or the internet, enabling it to exchange data with other devices on the network

    • Internet service provider (ISP)

      A communications company that provides subscribers with an internet connection

    • Local Area Network (LAN)

      A locally connected computer system involving two or more computers

    • Modem

      A device that converts data into a format that can travel along an Internet Service Provider’s cables

    • Packet

      A container used to transmit data across a TCP/IP network. Comprised of both data and metadata, a typical example contains around 1,500 bytes

    • Router

      A device that connects and “directs” internet traffic between computer networks

    • Server

      a computer that stores and provides access to content and services on a network

    • Shared Protocols

      An agreed upon, standard method of communication that all devices use on the internet. HTTP is ony of many of these.

    • Third party

      A company or an actor that is neither the user or the content provider (e.g. an advertiser)

    • Virtual Private Network (VPN)

      A system that enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to a private network

    • Wi-Fi

      A protocol that enables network connectivity via radio waves so that devices can connect to computer networks

    • World Wide Web

      A system of linked content like digital pages, images, audio, and video