In today’s Cybersecurity world, awareness is a hot topic. Whether it is being aware of your physical surroundings, or when you are online, one has to be proactive to help insure that they do not become the next victim of a Cyberattack. In order to promote the sheer importance of this, October has been designated aas the “Official Cybersecurity Awareness Month”.
What It Is All About
Believe it or not, the concept of having October for this special occasion was thought of and officially declared by the United States Government back in 2004. So, this October 2023 marks its 20th anniversary. It is important to keep in mind that during this time frame, great efforts are taken between all levels of the US Government, Corporate America, and the educational sector to educate the American public about the importance of being aware.
Many Cyber vendors are offering free resources to anyone that requests them. This is coming in the form of all kinds of content, ranging from blogs to whitepapers to webinars to even educational seminars.
Probably one of the biggest areas of focus is that of Phishing. Even now, individuals are falling prey to this threat variant.
Of course, it has become a lot more sophisticated and covert in nature. People are being led to phony websites that look almost like the real thing, Social Engineering, while an old tactic, is now being used heavily to con individuals into giving out their Social Security number and other kinds of financial information. Then there is Ransomware, which has become far deadlier now than ever before, especially when it comes to launching extortion like attacks.
The only way that people will know about the magnitude and severity of these security breaches is to give them the tools they need to educate themselves, and the proactive steps that they need to take.
A good example of this is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, also known as “CISA”.
What They Do
CISA was enacted by the signing of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018, and it has two goals
- To provide 24 X 7 X 365 Cybersecurity to the US Government at all levels;
- To keep track of all of the latest threat variants that pose the greatest risk to Critical Infrastructure in the United States.
Because of the role that CISA plays, they are always at the forefront when October comes around. In fact, just this year, they launched a new Cybersecurity Awareness Training Program called “Secure Our World”. The primary goal of this program is to kick up the level of situational awareness amongst Americans on a daily basis, which embraces all facets of life. It has three major components to it, which are designed to educate people about the following:
- Securing yourself, and your family.
- Securing your business or place of employment.
- Securing your products. This relates to not only items that you buy, but anything your business might produce.
CISA has launched this program and details can be seen at this link: https://www.cisa.gov/secure-our-world
What The CISA Recommends
They recommend for Americans, especially this month, to adopt the following security measures:
- Create strong passwords: This simply means using a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, and mixing up your new password with alphanumeric characters as well. The use of a Password Manager is strongly recommended.
- Use Multifactor Authentication, also known as “MFA”. Although at times it can be a pain to use, in the end, this will offer you one of the greatest levels of protection possible.
- Recognize Phishing Attacks: The CISA website (cisa.gov) has a lot of information on this for you to use, and they highly recommend reporting Phishing emails to the proper authority.
- Updating your device: Always make sure that it is updated with the latest software patches and upgrades. If you use Windows 10, make sure that this feature is turned on automatically, so you don’t have to worry about doing it.
Conclusions
If you need extra tips or help on how you can stay as Cyber safe as possible, contact us today
