When I was writing this article at night, it was already clear that the Azeri attack on the Armenian positions in Tavush on July 12 would have long-lasting consequences. Apart from the fact that the shooting continued at night, it is also uneasy in the virtual domain.

Many media pages are being attacked by patriotic but vulgar Azerbaijani users, a lot of swearing and other obscene comments are being posted.

They enter the Telegram groups with fake accounts, suffocate the news with similar vulgar content.

Several websites are under DDoS attack. Most likely, all this will continue. What can editors do at the moment to protect themselves from virtual attacks?

a. Naturally, the priority for the news is the website. The main danger here is DDoS attacks. Fortunately, most Armenian media outlets are already installed on the Cloudflare platform, which protects against such attacks. If you’re not there yet, contact the free news portal Cloudflare Project Galileo.

Of course, it may be necessary to consult a specialist if the site is not optimized. In any case, this is a tool that is needed in peacetime, if the defense system is not yet connected, then in the future this is a good opportunity to work it out.

b․ In the case of Facebook pages, the main problem is the polluters in the comments. Here are some solutions ․

1. Immediately block all obscene posters, do not spend time on moral and psychological work.

2. Turn on the filter in the page settings section, which will automatically delete all internationally accepted swear words.

3. Enter the most common words in the moderation section, and the comments containing them will also disappear.

4. In extreme cases, turn on country restrictions and turn off entrances from Azerbaijan, unless otherwise moderated. However, do not forget to turn off this feature when the situation calms down, as freedom of speech is also important, decent users from Azerbaijan should have the right to read and comment.

Besides, the page will also cease to be visible to some people in Artsakh.

c. Return to digital editing security. All employees who have access to social networks as admins or to the internal system of the site must activate two-stage authentication on both social network accounts and emails.

Samvel Martirosyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.