2010 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month
Welcome, October. There is a chill in the air here in the Northeast and visions of goblins, witches and ghosts are beginning to appear in front yards and on rooftops around the area. Although most of us associate these ideas with the paranormal, those same visions and chill serve to remind us to be ever vigilant when it comes to computer-based threats. So what better time of year to turn our attention to on-line phantoms such as viruses, worms and trojans?
The National Cyber Security Alliance chose October as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NSCAM). Their website contains a lot of useful materials for businesses, educators and parents. This is a great resource to use as the basis for informing your company, family and self about on-line risks and effective practices for protecting yourself and others from on-line threats.
A core tenet of the alliance’s message is to “Get Involved” and my company, Blue Slate Solutions, is doing just that. Why should we get involved? Like many aspects of life, we are either part of the solution or part of the problem. Users of the Internet who do not understand on-line risks and fail to proactively protect themselves from being victims of cyberattacks become part of the problem.
As a leader at Blue Slate, I take security very seriously and believes strongly in leveraging events like NSCAM to remind our team about the importance of on-line security. We are using the materials available on the site to educate our employees. We will be spreading the word by using the NCSAM posters as a way to catch people’s attention. In addition, we will be referencing specific guidance for safe Internet use through email-messaging and a few surprise channels throughout the month.
It is the responsibility of those with expertise and experience in the on-line security realm to constantly remind, mentor and teach others about good on-line hygiene. Spotting email Spam, identifying phishing sites, using different passwords between websites, challenging strangers in the workplace, refusing to forward chain mail, and even checking Snopes are just a few topics we should be discussing with our teams on a regular basis.
I encourage everyone to review the resources available in support of the 2010 Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Use the banners, posters and articles as a basis for conversations, blog posts and promotion of general awareness with your co-workers and family.
I would enjoy hearing about the types of activities your organization uses to promote awareness of good on-line security practices. We can all help each other improve the security of our operations and, more generally, our shared global network.
Tags: application security, data security, Internet, linkedin, Security, vulnerability