MOOC: Understanding the digital supply chain
© 2025 EPFL
Understanding the digital supply chain and its stakes for humanitarian actors: gain a holistic understanding of cybersecurity and of the supply chain needed to use or provide digital services and explore its impact on people affected by humanitarian crises.
Digital technologies and data have become critical in today’s world and an increasing number of processes heavily rely on digital at every level of society. Modern warfare is no exception to this trend. As emphasized by recent conflicts, warring parties, third states and private companies, compete in cyberspace and operate in digitally innovative ways, generating unprecedented consequences for civilian populations, as well as new challenges to International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and to humanitarian operations.
Humanitarian organizations must strive to improve their cybersecurity, to manage the balance between their technological independence and their ability to exploit new digital capabilities, while maintaining their capacity to use digital services despite this sphere being increasingly pervaded by the tensions generated by political or armed conflict. Most importantly, they must integrate such risks in their assessment of civilian population vulnerabilities and needs, to be able to better serve them.
This course is meant to provide humanitarian staff, journalists or security analysts with a holistic understanding of the global digital ecosystem and of cybersecurity. Equipped with this knowledge, you will be able to better engage in developing, integrating, and evaluating actions in the “digital” area as an essential condition to ensure the success of digital transformation, to maintain diplomatic influence as well as access to vulnerable populations.