When we first embarked on our corporate responsibility journey here in Sweden, we were looking to develop a true sustainability plan, from beginning to end, but also wanted to uncover opportunities that would make business sense. We decided that the family sector would be a great area for us to engage with, especially considering Symantec’s position on online safety. We established a partnership with Friends, a well-known non-profit in Sweden dedicated to the prevention and education of bullying. The organization travels all over Sweden to classrooms and sports clubs teaching students, teachers, and parents how to prevent and deal with bullying.
As the information security leader, Symantec’s mission is to make the online world a safer place. The increasing connected world has opened up new risks and challenges and our business’ goal is to help our customers manage and protect their information. For this reason, one of Symantec’s philanthropic initiatives focuses on online safety. Our internet safety experience is a great complement to Friends’ expertise in anti-bullying. We became a national sponsor for Friends in 2012 and aid their work by funding a full-time staff member dedicated to online safety and cyberbullying. Thereby, several events have been supported, they have been able to increase the amount of training sessions in schools, and introduce a yearly online report on cyberbullying.
Highlights from Manifest Against Bullying Event in Stockholm
In August, Symantec was a key partner in the organization’s Manifest Against Bullying Event in Stockholm providing volunteer support and educating attendees. Approximately 1200 people visited our booth where Symantec volunteers shared the role of online safety in protecting kids against cyberbullying. Another collaboration is the Friends Online Report, an annual report about online bullying in Sweden based on a survey of 1000 young people from ages 10-16 and their experiences with harassment though mobile or web. This year’s report reveals that 1 in 3 young people are subject to some form of harassment online. The aim of uncovering and disclosing these issues is to increase awareness and education around cyberbullying. Media coverage from the launch of this report was picked up by all the big national daily newspapers, influential regional papers, as well as radio and national television. Many of our CSR engagements are related to this ongoing partnership with Friends. However, as we got more and more involved with corporate responsibility, we asked ourselves, what else can we do?
This year we launched a new award called Security Expert of the Future to acknowledge the future stars of tech savvy youth and encourage young people to fight cybercrime. Thirteen year old Mathias Kujula became the first winner of this award for discovering a cross-site scripting vulnerability (XSS vulnerability) in Google’s Translate application. We wanted to award Mathias Kujala for using his computer and security knowledge for something good – something we love to embrace.
Mathias Kujula awarded Security Expert of the Future for using his computer science skills to do good.
In Sweden, schools require middle school students to do a week-long internship called a PRAO at a company to get real world experience. Mathias reached out to us for this internship and we gladly arranged it. He came to the Stockholm office early November where we kept a busy schedule for him to learn about all sides of the business from sales, marketing, and PR. It was an opportunity for everyone to get involved and share back our knowledge. It truly was a wonderful learning experience for us as well. Our corporate responsibility initiatives have organically evolved into much more than expected.
Mathias Kujula, Security Expert of the Future, spends a week at Symantec Stockholm for his PRAO, mandatory school internship.
Symantec is committed to making the world a safer place by helping people, businesses and governments protect their information. As a security company, we not only want to do financially well, we also want to contribute to our communities. By doing so, we can educate consumers and businesses about cybercrime, how threats are evolving, and help them minimize their exposure to online risks by offering advice and solutions to keep safe online.
Carolina Schattauer Ramnö is Symantec's Nordic PR Manager