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Pathway · Getting Ready to Work with AI·1 of 6

Digital Foundations

Devices, accounts, networks, and the personal cyber foundations every adult learner needs before touching AI.

Time
~1.5–2 hr
Lessons
8
Exercises
6
Level
Basic

Module overview · ~2 min · captions available

What you'll learn

  • Explain where your data actually lives (at rest, in motion, in use) and which lock protects each.
  • Verify three Tier-1 locks are on: full-disk encryption, screen auto-lock, and auto-update for OS + browser + apps.
  • Set up a password manager + phishing-resistant MFA + recovery codes across your most-used accounts.
  • Decide whether a Wi-Fi network is safe for work activity, and when a VPN actually helps (vs. when it's theater).
  • Build a 3-2-1 backup that survives ransomware AND your own AI-assisted mistakes.
  • Audit installed apps + browser extensions for what shouldn't be there (a documented AI attack vector).
  • Know your incident-response basics: who you call, what you reset first, in what order.
  • Produce a one-page map of your device, accounts, and data. The artifact you'll reuse in M2.

Description

Most AI training assumes you already know how to manage devices, accounts, networks, and your own data hygiene. If you do, skip this module. If you don't, this is the on-ramp. It is canon-aligned, not invented.

Grounded in DigComp 2.2 (EU Joint Research Centre adult-citizen framework, the version that added AI-system literacy in 2022 Annex 2), NCSC Cyber Aware (UK national cyber-security guidance), and ICDL Digital Citizen (international computer-literacy task set). Lesson 6 bridges into AI literacy as the explicit handoff into Module 1.

By the end you can answer: which locks does my laptop have on right now? Is my password manager covering every account? Are my backups real? Could I recover from a phishing-driven account takeover in under an hour? And what changes about my data the moment I open an AI tool?

Lessons

8 lessons in this micro-course