Google wants to demystify cybersecurity

Simply Secure is a new organization with a single aim -- making it easy for people to protect themselves and their data when online.

Simply Secure is a new organization with a single aim -- making it easy for people to protect themselves and their data when online.

For the tech-savvy, creating impossible-to-guess passwords, implementing two-factor authentication and avoiding things like accidentally downloading malware or misusing public wi-fi hotspots are second nature.

But for everyone else, things aren't so simple, partly because many of the current online security tools available to the public weren't designed with the public in mind.

Announced on Thursday, Simply Secure which also boasts cloud storage firm Dropbox and the Open Technology Fund as founding members, wants to change this. 'Simply Secure represents an exciting opportunity to bring together diverse groups in pursuit of an important goal: making security and privacy tools more user-friendly,' said Sara Sinclair Brody, Director of Simply Secure and a product manager at Google Ideas.

The organization promises to bring together some of the best minds in the industry in order to solve this problem in an 'open source' way -- i.e., anything that Simply Secure develops will be available for all to integrate into their web services.

'If technology is secure but impossible to use, is it really secure? It's a challenge to provide proven, open source tools to the public in ways that meet their high expectations and modern use cases. With its clear mission, an exceptional board, and a community-focused approach, we believe Simply Secure can bring us much closer to a world in which ubiquitous security is the norm,' said Meredith Whittaker, Open Source Research Lead, Google.

Thanks to the recent celebrity photo hack, online security is finally firmly on many people's radar and therefore the creation of Simply Secure is perfectly timed. However, the organization is yet to establish any sort of timeframe in regards to delivering on its promise.