It’s getting increasingly hard to know what and who you can trust online. Scams are becoming more sophisticated. Disinformation more viral. Add in surveillance and data breaches, and the stakes of being online have never been higher, even as the Internet has become a necessity of daily life.
That’s why we believe that connectivity is essential, but not enough. Everyone deserves a safe Internet.
Today, we are excited to share our Safer Internet Initiative, a project designed to protect people online.
What Is the Safer Internet Initiative?
The Safer Internet Initiative is a global, multi-year project that leverages what we know works: targeted funding, targeted trainings, and targeted advocacy. This multi-pronged approach is designed to strengthen and scale the long-term sustainability of online trust and safety work across the globe.
Our global community is already leading this effort: Internet Society chapters, special interest groups and standing groups, staff, and partner organizations worldwide are training seniors, women, refugees, youth, and other groups on how to stay safe online. And they’re advocating for policies and technical solutions that make safety the default, rather than an obligation for individuals to manage alone. The initiative builds on our community’s expertise, insights, and needs, all of which underscore the growing urgency of this work. Those lessons are exactly why online safety is one of the two primary focus areas in our 2030 Strategy.
From 2026 to 2029, the Internet Society and the Internet Society Foundation will double down on these efforts and direct over USD $40 million to safer Internet programs through a combination of our resources and donor partnerships.
Under this initiative, we launched the Common Good Cyber Fund (CGCF) in 2025, a global initiative to strengthen cybersecurity for the public good. It provides multi-year funding to nonprofit organizations that deliver critical cybersecurity services to protect civil society actors at high risk and maintain the Internet’s core cybersecurity infrastructure.
As part of the Safer Internet Initiative, we will also launch an anti-scam effort designed to strengthen digital resilience and expand access to online safety education to address disproportionately impacted vulnerable communities. It will deliver an accessible, adaptable scam awareness and prevention toolkit and curriculum for diverse audiences. Through a train-the-trainers model, interactive learning tools, and targeted grants to local partners, the initiative will enable culturally and linguistically relevant implementation and create a sustainable cycle of local knowledge sharing and protection.
How Does the Safer Internet Initiative Work?
- Educate people to make safe decisions online and empower communities with knowledge, training, and tools to protect themselves.
- Maintain an online trust and safety hub of vetted, multilingual resources that are accessible to all, which we will launch in the second half of 2026.
- Advocate for policies, technical standards, and commercial practices that prioritize user safety, security, and privacy.
- Fund organizations that maintain critical infrastructure, defend high-risk communities, or empower people to stay safe online.
- Support our grantee partners to develop community-based projects that strengthen local capacity and tools for increasing online safety.
- Support Internet Society chapters with resources and capacity-building.
Why This Work Matters
For too many people, online threats are a daily reality. A 2025 global survey of 14,800 people, conducted by Microsoft, found that 66% of respondents reported experiences ranging from disinformation to targeted harassment. Misinformation, online scams, cybersecurity threats, privacy violations, attacks on encryption, and insecure technologies all contribute to a decline in trust.
We also know that online threats are heightened for certain people, especially those in underserved or newly connected communities. These threats not only put people at immediate risk of financial loss or privacy breaches but also serve to keep people cut off from the benefits of the Internet, like access to the workforce, to banking, to medical care, and to family connection.
Increasingly, we also see civil society and journalists on the front lines of state-directed surveillance. Media and nonprofit budgets are no match for these kinds of large-scale actors. In building a responsive cybersecurity ecosystem, we can ensure that they have the expertise and resources they need to do their work safely.
This is just the beginning. If you work with a nonprofit that helps maintain, deliver, support, or advocate for critical online safety and cybersecurity protections, sign up for the Internet Society Foundation newsletter to stay informed about the Common Good Cyber Fund open call and the launch of our online trust and safety hub. In the meantime, you can learn more about the Safer Internet Initiative.
Image © Nyani Quarmyne