DOJ issues online classes guidelines in bid to thwart cyber attacks

MANILA, Philippines — To ensure the safety and protection of children from possible security breaches and exposure to harmful content, the Department of Justice’s Office of Cybercrime on Wednesday has issued guidelines for distance or online classes.

Private and public schools have opted to do away with face-to-face classes to protect the students from being exposed to COVID-19.

“While videoconferencing services open doors to new opportunities that make access to education easy, application of information and communication technology in the conduct of online classes can cause many security risks, such as loss of confidentiality, availability, and integrity of computer data, as well as the exposure of students to abusive strangers and harmful online contents,” the DOJ said in its advisory.

The guidelines, which were issued by the DOJ-OOC through its Officer-in-Charge  lawyer Charito Zamora, are for parents, school administrators and the public in general.

In order to protect children from online abuses, the DOJ-OCC advised school administrators to avoid the following:

• share meeting room credentials, both the ID and the password to the public

• always set meeting configurations as follows: accept meeting participants’ request to join individually, provide a standard naming instruction for the participants, start meeting with participants’ video off, require a password from the participants, mute participants upon entry and disable desktops and screen

• share for participants who are not assigned in the virtual meeting room as hosts;

• do not allow participants to join before the host, rename themselves, send messages to other participants,

• allow participants to access the file transfer and share their screens,

• allow participants to use annotation tools to add information to shared screens and share whiteboard during the meeting, and allow users to change their background with any selected image;

• never leave students alone in virtual classroom, and

• always update the application you downloaded to its latest version.

As for the parents, the DOJ-OOC said they must teach their children to be discerning of information and contents online to reduce their risk of falling victim to online abuse and cyber attacks.

“Parents are encouraged to promote and implement proper etiquettes to be observed by children under their supervision. There is still no substitute for parental involvement and supervision when it comes to digital literacy and good cyber citizenship,” it added.

On the other hand, the DOJ-OOC advised the public to immediately report any irregularities or unwanted incidents during the conduct of online classes to law enforcement agencies so that it can be properly investigated. [ac]