Author: sHq_LoGiNz

Kim Bishop, Corporate Responsibility | Impact Blog

Every year, more than 100 countries around the world celebrate Safer Internet Day, a global effort to help people use technology responsibly, respectfully, critically and creatively — especially children and young people.

At Gen, digital freedom is at the core of what we do. Helping people stay safe online through education and training is a key pillar of our social impact strategy. We partner with nonprofits across the globe to equip families, educators and young people with the tools they need to navigate an increasingly complex digital world with confidence. As technology evolves, we regularly update our resources to reflect emerging platforms, technologies such as AI, and changing behaviors. Together with our partners, we are strengthening digital resilience, safeguarding personal information and advancing digital literacy at scale.

Empowering families to talk about digital safety

Parents and caregivers play a critical role in shaping healthy digital habits. That’s why National PTA and Norton, one of our trusted Cyber Safety brands, developed The Smart Talk. This free resource helps families start open, positive conversations about online safety and privacy. Through guided prompts and practical tips, The Smart Talk supports families in setting boundaries, understanding risks and building trust together. Since launch, more than 20,000 people have accessed The Smart Talk.

It is a featured resource in National PTA’s Safer Internet Day toolkit, which also includes a live conversation on digital parenting, teen-focused tip sheets and resources on mental health and belonging. The Smart Talk is also a signature offering of PTA Connected, an initiative designed to create judgment-free spaces where families can learn about digital safety with guidance from expert resources. Norton is the Founding and Presenting Sponsor of PTA Connected and, in 2025, sponsored grants for 20 local PTAs, enabling them to host digital safety workshops in their school communities.

Bringing digital safety into the classroom 

We also work with our partners to get digital safety resources into the hands of educators. Since 2023, Norton has worked with Discovery Education on My Digital Life, a multilingual platform offering digital safety activities and lesson plans for children in grades three through eight. In 2025, we introduced new AI literacy content, expanded the program into schools across the UK and added Spanish, Arabic, French and German translations. Discovery Education estimates the program has now reached nearly 490,000 students with essential digital safety skills.

Gen also supports Discovery Education’s Digital Citizenship Initiative, which promotes respectful and responsible online behavior. Since launching in February 2025, the initiative has reached more than 647,000 students through videos, classroom tools, lesson plans and educator resources focused on AI literacy, media literacy and the cognitive impacts of technology.

Advancing digital safety around the world

Our global partnerships reflect the unique digital safety needs of communities worldwide. These include the following:

• World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) has reached nearly 113,000 children and young people globally through Surf Smart 2.0 digital education programming between July 2024 and December 2025. Check out our Safer Internet Day video with WAGGGS, announcing the organization’s new advocacy curriculum and featuring Smart Surfers talking about some of the best digital safety tips they have learned on their Surf Smart 2.0 journeys.
• Save the Children – India (Bal Raksha Bharat) has delivered digital skills training across 190 schools over the past four years, supporting students and educators with safe and responsible technology use.
• With The Trevor Project, we created the Online Safety Guide for LGBTQ+ Young People and continue to support and scale TrevorSpace, a moderated, AI-supported global peer community for LGBTQ+ young people.

This Safer Internet Day, we’re excited to celebrate with our partners and communities around the world. To learn more about our digital education and training efforts, explore our latest Social Impact Report.

These grants were awarded from the Gen Foundation, a corporate-advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

By Hwee Yng Yeo, Contributor

A routine click on a recommended link via the AI overview of my browser on November 18 yielded a glaring “internal server error” (Figure 1) when I clicked on a search-referenced website. The Cloudflare outage disrupted connectivity on various platforms, including ChatGPT, Canva, and X. Undaunted, the cyber community had a memes field day when services were restored, flooding their feeds with humorous outage memes.

On a more serious note, data center and internet outages are no laughing matter, impacting businesses from online shopping to cryptocurrency exchanges. While the November outage at Cloudflare was attributed to configuration errors, another outage two years earlier was due to power failure at one of its data centers in Oregon. Cloudflare is not alone in their outage woes. In fact, power failures outweigh network and IT issues when it comes to disrupting online user experiences.

Data from the 2025 Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey shows that although 50% of data centers experienced at least one impactful outage over the past three years, down from 53% in 2024 (see Figure 2), power issues remain the top cause.

It’s not surprising that just a few years ago, electric vehicles (EVs) were deemed to be the new energy guzzlers of the decade, only to be rapidly overtaken by data centers. From crypto mining to generating “morph my cat to holiday mode” image creation prompts, each click adds strain to the power grid, not forgetting the heat generated.

Why must grid modernization happen sooner than later?

Data centers currently consume almost five times as much electricity as electric vehicles collectively, but both markets are expected to see a rise in demand for power in the coming years. In developed countries, power grids are already feeling the strain from these new energy guzzlers. Grid modernization must happen sooner than later, to buffer the impact of skyrocketing electricity demand from both data centers and the EV market, to ensure the power grid’s resilience, stability and security. Without swift upgrades, older grids are at risk of instability, outages, and bottlenecks as digital infrastructure and EV adoption accelerate.

What does grid modernization entail?

Grid modernization requires a strategic overhaul of legacy power infrastructure at the energy, communications, and operations level, as illustrated in Figure 4. Existing energy infrastructure must be scalable and be able to incorporate and integrate renewable and distributed energy resources (DERs). Bi-directional communication protocols must continue to evolve to enable real-time data exchange between power-generating assets, energy storage systems, and end-user loads.

This transformation demands compliance with rigorous interoperability standards and cybersecurity frameworks to ensure seamless integration across heterogeneous systems, while safeguarding grid reliability and resilience against operational and environmental stresses.

Towards Grid Resilience

Grid modernization can significantly reduce both data center outages and power shortages for EV charging, although the impact will depend on how fast the power infrastructure gets upgraded. The modernized grid will employ advanced sensors, automated controls, and predictive analytics to detect and isolate faults quickly. This will further reduce the number of data center outages due to power issues, and mitigate the dips in power currently plaguing some cities’ EV charging infrastructure. As the world powers on with increasing load demands, our grid energy community must work together to plan, validate, and build a resilient grid.

Keysight can help you with your innovations for this exciting grid transformation. Our design validation and testing solutions cover inverter-based resources (IBRs) and distributed energy resources (DERs), to tools enabling systems integration and deployment, as well as operations.

Contact us for expert advice on grid modernization.

 

^{[1] Data source: Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2024
[2] Image source: Keysight’s Accelerate Grid Modernization Poster}

By Hwee Yng Yeo, Contributor

A routine click on a recommended link via the AI overview of my browser on November 18 yielded a glaring “internal server error” (Figure 1) when I clicked on a search-referenced website. The Cloudflare outage disrupted connectivity on various platforms, including ChatGPT, Canva, and X. Undaunted, the cyber community had a memes field day when services were restored, flooding their feeds with humorous outage memes.

On a more serious note, data center and internet outages are no laughing matter, impacting businesses from online shopping to cryptocurrency exchanges. While the November outage at Cloudflare was attributed to configuration errors, another outage two years earlier was due to power failure at one of its data centers in Oregon. Cloudflare is not alone in their outage woes. In fact, power failures outweigh network and IT issues when it comes to disrupting online user experiences.

Data from the 2025 Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey shows that although 50% of data centers experienced at least one impactful outage over the past three years, down from 53% in 2024 (see Figure 2), power issues remain the top cause.

It’s not surprising that just a few years ago, electric vehicles (EVs) were deemed to be the new energy guzzlers of the decade, only to be rapidly overtaken by data centers. From crypto mining to generating “morph my cat to holiday mode” image creation prompts, each click adds strain to the power grid, not forgetting the heat generated.

Why must grid modernization happen sooner than later?

Data centers currently consume almost five times as much electricity as electric vehicles collectively, but both markets are expected to see a rise in demand for power in the coming years. In developed countries, power grids are already feeling the strain from these new energy guzzlers. Grid modernization must happen sooner than later, to buffer the impact of skyrocketing electricity demand from both data centers and the EV market, to ensure the power grid’s resilience, stability and security. Without swift upgrades, older grids are at risk of instability, outages, and bottlenecks as digital infrastructure and EV adoption accelerate.

What does grid modernization entail?

Grid modernization requires a strategic overhaul of legacy power infrastructure at the energy, communications, and operations level, as illustrated in Figure 4. Existing energy infrastructure must be scalable and be able to incorporate and integrate renewable and distributed energy resources (DERs). Bi-directional communication protocols must continue to evolve to enable real-time data exchange between power-generating assets, energy storage systems, and end-user loads.

This transformation demands compliance with rigorous interoperability standards and cybersecurity frameworks to ensure seamless integration across heterogeneous systems, while safeguarding grid reliability and resilience against operational and environmental stresses.

Towards Grid Resilience

Grid modernization can significantly reduce both data center outages and power shortages for EV charging, although the impact will depend on how fast the power infrastructure gets upgraded. The modernized grid will employ advanced sensors, automated controls, and predictive analytics to detect and isolate faults quickly. This will further reduce the number of data center outages due to power issues, and mitigate the dips in power currently plaguing some cities’ EV charging infrastructure. As the world powers on with increasing load demands, our grid energy community must work together to plan, validate, and build a resilient grid.

Keysight can help you with your innovations for this exciting grid transformation. Our design validation and testing solutions cover inverter-based resources (IBRs) and distributed energy resources (DERs), to tools enabling systems integration and deployment, as well as operations.

Contact us for expert advice on grid modernization.

 

^{[1] Data source: Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2024
[2] Image source: Keysight’s Accelerate Grid Modernization Poster}

By Hwee Yng Yeo, Contributor

A routine click on a recommended link via the AI overview of my browser on November 18 yielded a glaring “internal server error” (Figure 1) when I clicked on a search-referenced website. The Cloudflare outage disrupted connectivity on various platforms, including ChatGPT, Canva, and X. Undaunted, the cyber community had a memes field day when services were restored, flooding their feeds with humorous outage memes.

On a more serious note, data center and internet outages are no laughing matter, impacting businesses from online shopping to cryptocurrency exchanges. While the November outage at Cloudflare was attributed to configuration errors, another outage two years earlier was due to power failure at one of its data centers in Oregon. Cloudflare is not alone in their outage woes. In fact, power failures outweigh network and IT issues when it comes to disrupting online user experiences.

Data from the 2025 Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey shows that although 50% of data centers experienced at least one impactful outage over the past three years, down from 53% in 2024 (see Figure 2), power issues remain the top cause.

It’s not surprising that just a few years ago, electric vehicles (EVs) were deemed to be the new energy guzzlers of the decade, only to be rapidly overtaken by data centers. From crypto mining to generating “morph my cat to holiday mode” image creation prompts, each click adds strain to the power grid, not forgetting the heat generated.

Why must grid modernization happen sooner than later?

Data centers currently consume almost five times as much electricity as electric vehicles collectively, but both markets are expected to see a rise in demand for power in the coming years. In developed countries, power grids are already feeling the strain from these new energy guzzlers. Grid modernization must happen sooner than later, to buffer the impact of skyrocketing electricity demand from both data centers and the EV market, to ensure the power grid’s resilience, stability and security. Without swift upgrades, older grids are at risk of instability, outages, and bottlenecks as digital infrastructure and EV adoption accelerate.

What does grid modernization entail?

Grid modernization requires a strategic overhaul of legacy power infrastructure at the energy, communications, and operations level, as illustrated in Figure 4. Existing energy infrastructure must be scalable and be able to incorporate and integrate renewable and distributed energy resources (DERs). Bi-directional communication protocols must continue to evolve to enable real-time data exchange between power-generating assets, energy storage systems, and end-user loads.

This transformation demands compliance with rigorous interoperability standards and cybersecurity frameworks to ensure seamless integration across heterogeneous systems, while safeguarding grid reliability and resilience against operational and environmental stresses.

Towards Grid Resilience

Grid modernization can significantly reduce both data center outages and power shortages for EV charging, although the impact will depend on how fast the power infrastructure gets upgraded. The modernized grid will employ advanced sensors, automated controls, and predictive analytics to detect and isolate faults quickly. This will further reduce the number of data center outages due to power issues, and mitigate the dips in power currently plaguing some cities’ EV charging infrastructure. As the world powers on with increasing load demands, our grid energy community must work together to plan, validate, and build a resilient grid.

Keysight can help you with your innovations for this exciting grid transformation. Our design validation and testing solutions cover inverter-based resources (IBRs) and distributed energy resources (DERs), to tools enabling systems integration and deployment, as well as operations.

Contact us for expert advice on grid modernization.

 

^{[1] Data source: Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2024
[2] Image source: Keysight’s Accelerate Grid Modernization Poster}

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential for building resilient supply chains – but what does it look like in practice?

In a new article by Sustainable Brands, CARE and partners in the The Hershey Income Accelerator Program (HIAP) in Côte d’Ivoire share insights which demonstrate how strategic partnerships between global brands, NGOs, and farming communities create shared value across the supply chain. From cocoa-producing regions to corporate boardrooms, these collaborations show that when companies invest in producer livelihoods, they strengthen their own supply chain resilience while driving measurable social impact.

Read the full article to find actionable lessons for building trust, reducing risk, and creating business value through community-centered partnerships: [https://sustainablebrands.com/read/multi-stakeholder-collaboration-in-global-supply-chains-lessons-from-hersheys-income-accelerator]

Originally published on Sustainable Brands.

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential for building resilient supply chains – but what does it look like in practice?

In a new article by Sustainable Brands, CARE and partners in the The Hershey Income Accelerator Program (HIAP) in Côte d’Ivoire share insights which demonstrate how strategic partnerships between global brands, NGOs, and farming communities create shared value across the supply chain. From cocoa-producing regions to corporate boardrooms, these collaborations show that when companies invest in producer livelihoods, they strengthen their own supply chain resilience while driving measurable social impact.

Read the full article to find actionable lessons for building trust, reducing risk, and creating business value through community-centered partnerships: [https://sustainablebrands.com/read/multi-stakeholder-collaboration-in-global-supply-chains-lessons-from-hersheys-income-accelerator]

Originally published on Sustainable Brands.

Multi-stakeholder collaboration is essential for building resilient supply chains – but what does it look like in practice?

In a new article by Sustainable Brands, CARE and partners in the The Hershey Income Accelerator Program (HIAP) in Côte d’Ivoire share insights which demonstrate how strategic partnerships between global brands, NGOs, and farming communities create shared value across the supply chain. From cocoa-producing regions to corporate boardrooms, these collaborations show that when companies invest in producer livelihoods, they strengthen their own supply chain resilience while driving measurable social impact.

Read the full article to find actionable lessons for building trust, reducing risk, and creating business value through community-centered partnerships: [https://sustainablebrands.com/read/multi-stakeholder-collaboration-in-global-supply-chains-lessons-from-hersheys-income-accelerator]

Originally published on Sustainable Brands.