Welcome to Cyber Kindness
Challenge Ideas. Respect People
Cyber Kindness is a global campaign that asks you to stop and consider your actions online, at work and anywhere your words reach another person.
Although Cyber Kindness started off as a campaign for the cyber security industry, in the light of recent events, it has now been widened to cover all industries and is applicable to everyone.
Take the cyber kindness pledge. Use the resources. Stop and think before you act.
The Case For Cyber Kindness
Abuse is not expertise. Silence is not neutrality. Kindness is not weakness.
Every field depends on people noticing what others miss, owning mistakes early and challenging assumptions before they become failures. None of that happens when people are afraid to speak. In cyber security, where this campaign started, the cost of that silence is an incident nobody reported. Elsewhere the cost looks different and is no smaller.
It is easy for safety to be framed as something only some people need. It is not. Men are bullied, harassed and stalked as much as women are. So are people of every background, identity and level of experience. When we treat safety as a problem for 1 group, we let everyone else down and we miss the point.
Cyber Kindness is for everyone. The behaviours we ask for, and the safety we want to see, are for all of us.
Our Core Principles
Challenge Ideas
Rigour and hard questions are welcome. Argue with the point, the claim or the evidence. Take it apart as hard as the facts allow. We debate the work, never the worth of the person doing it.
Respect People
Dignity is not optional. The person holding the idea is not the idea. Criticism has a target and a limit.
Raise Standards
Check before you share. Correct yourself in public when you get it wrong. Refuse to reward cruelty with attention. Kindness is professional conduct and a leadership responsibility.
Active Support
Say something to the person on the receiving end. 1 private message from somebody who sees them as human changes the arithmetic of a bad week.
Take The Cyber Kindness Pledge
The Cyber Kindness Pledge is a public commitment to treating people decently, online and at work. By taking it, either publicly or anonymously, you agree to challenge ideas without attacking people, to call out bullying, harassment and exclusion when you see it, and to support those who are new, returning or still finding their voice. It is open to individuals and organisations in any sector, and it takes moments to sign.
The pledge is not about lowering standards or avoiding hard conversations. It is about making clear that high standards and human decency belong together. Every name added sends a signal that toxic behaviour is not the price of doing your job, holding an opinion or being visible in public, and that respect, accountability and psychological safety are things we are willing to stand behind by name.
Our Latest News and Blog
A Letter to Anyone New to Cyber Security
by Lisa Ventura MBE FCIIS, Founder of Cyber Kindness If you are new to cyber security, there are a few things I wish someone had told me at the start. Consider this the letter I did not get. You will not know everything, and you never will. The field is enormous and...
Psychological Safety for Security Leaders
Psychological safety is not about comfort. It is about whether your team will tell you the truth in time to act on it.Psychological safety is the shared sense that you can speak up, admit a mistake or ask a question without being punished or made to feel small. It is...
What Kindness as a Security Control Really Means
"Kindness as a Security Control" can sound like a slogan. Here is what it means in practice and why it belongs in every security conversation. When we talk about kindness being a security control, it is meant literally. The way people are treated changes the way...