Join the upcoming meeting of AfP's Digital Peacebuilding Community of Practice on Tuesday, April 19th at 11:00am ET!

Can civil society organizations secure themselves against digital attacks and information disorder—disinformation, hate speech, propaganda? At this session, Danilo Bakovic, Senior Technical Advisor from IREX’s Adaptive Security Program, will talk about how major security and privacy challenges for CSOs in closed societies, conflict zones, and surveillance states are compounded by their relationship to their adversaries and the nature of their threat environments. We'll also hear from Katya Vogt who leads IREX’s work to build resilience to manipulative information and can share lessons from settings such as Ukraine, the Baltics, and the Balkans.

The conversation will explore:

• CSOs and the environment

• Traditional security patterns and their deficiencies

• CSOs capacity constraints and gaps

• Threat actors, threats, and securing human attack surface

• Human “operational systems” vulnerability and resilience

• Timing of preparedness measures and what can be done in conflict/war settings

Danilo Bakovic is Senior Technical Advisor of the Adaptive Security Program. He leads an initiative that increases the resilience and effectiveness of civil society organizations (CSOs), human rights defenders, and other civic actors by strengthening their risk management and mitigation and cybersecurity practices and policies. Helping to improve IREX beneficiaries' safety and security, cybersecurity, and overall resilience within the operational environment context, available organizational, operational capacity, and resources in 25+ countries, mostly closed and closing political spaces for CSO’s work. Prior to working with IREX, Danilo led Information Security and Capacity Project, a flagship USAID project focused on the cybersecurity needs of civil society in 18 countries across the globe.

Katya Vogt is IREX’s Director of Digital, Media, and Information Literacy and Resilience Initiatives. She leads Learn to Discern (L2D) – IREX’s effective approach to building resilience to disinformation. L2D is a global portfolio of initiatives in 20 countries which, together with local partners, co-design and scale a variety of effective long-term resilience and rapid response models to prevent and mitigate the negative impact of information manipulation. Prior to working at IREX, Katya supported teacher training and ed-tech tools development, media strengthening, and youth leadership initiatives. She holds a Master’s degree in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.