386: Cyber Security for Counsellors

Rory and I taking you through three stops on our journey today, starting off with ethical sustainable practice, where we're going to discuss what would happen If your counselling practice got hacked.

Oh, a shiver as I just think of that topic, Rory.

And then we move on to practice matters.

Rory has beautifully teed that up already.

And a really interesting topic that we're going to be discussing now, and that's counselling those issues.

experiencing dementia.

We then move into student services, recognising students on the formal journey to become counsellors, psychotherapists, or to just gain some skills that you can use within other work.

And today, how do I bring counselling theory and the client together? This is an evergreen topic, so we're going to be digging deep on that.

And I think if you're not a student, this is still going to apply to you.

But let's start, Rory, with... ethical sustainable practice and a horrible topic.

What if your counseling practice was hacked? And just to kind of lay a doormat into this, why do we have these kind of discussions and why do we say these things? And Rory will fill us in as we kind of go along.

But a couple of interesting things have come up in our world that have made us look at this a little bit more closely.

And I'm very mindful that AI is in the news a lot lately, and specifically AI's ability to hack institutions.

Just yesterday, the Australian health...

Our website was hacked by one of OpenAI's agents.

So this is happening more and more and more.

And I guess it's just something that we've got to think about.

So we're not the experts, but we are two colleagues having this discussion.

Over to you, Rory.

What's your thoughts?

well my thoughts is we don't want to be scaring people we don't be telling people scary stories to keep them awake at night nor is counseling tutor a red top newspaper that posts salacious news items to frighten people and get um attention however the fact of the matter is is that cyber attacks um are happening manchester airport near where i live has been hacked Police database has been hacked.

The health records have been hacked.

This is now not becoming something that happens every so many years.

This is something that's happening every so many months by the sound of it.

And I think what's more worrying is there's a precedent for this.