Cybersecurity Knowledge-Building Workshops with BUIB in Cameroon

On 18th November, our first out of four cybersecurity workshops has taken place. It was an essential result from our TPH-supported project “Cybersecurity Capacity-Building with BUIB”. In this project, we are researching together on the dimensions of national culture and their impact on cybersecurity behaviour. The focus of our first workshop was to share and further deepen our research findings. This included a initial ideation on a potential future cybersecurity curriculum for BUIB.

Moreover, we took the chance to reflect on our joint research journey and collect our main takeaways. These are:

1. We feel grateful:
   Looking at the rich results that we achieved in our research, we feel very grateful for the fruitful and professional collaboration. We not only had an insightful collaboration but have grown together as a team!
2. New research insights:
   Our findings on cybersecurity and culture will add to the existing academic but also practitioner knowledge bank. Our research showed that aspects such as power distance, or individualism/collectivism impact how we act in the cyberspace. One learning: you can’t just think in simple categories. Every cultural dimension comes with advantages but also disadvantages when it comes to potential vulnerability to attack.
3. Future research collaboration:
   This project has given us the change to strengthen our collaboration and improved our coordination skills in a cross-cultural and distance setting. We all agreed that we want to continue our research journey.

Overcoming challenges:
To achieve our results, we had to overcome challenging circumstances – this included a lack of stable internet access, and we had to cope with lockdown situations that hindered our work. We learned a lot from the Swiss side – not only about cybersecurity and culture, but also about life in Cameroon in general.