This October marks the 16th annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), an effort founded by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the Department of Homeland Security to provide Americans with the knowledge and resources they need to stay safer and more secure online.
This year’s NCSAM theme is “Own IT. Secure IT. Protect IT.”, focusing on personal accountability and proactive behavior in security best practices. Defendify is a proud Champion of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month again this year, and part of our commitment to NSCAM is to work with providers and our partners to share resources and help keep everyone safe online—both at home and at work.
Cybersecurity providers are an important resource and advocate for cybersecurity throughout NCSAM and year-round. Here are a few ways you can support NCSAM principles in line with each component of the 2019 theme:
Own IT.
Accountability is a key component of strong cybersecurity—when each employee understands the importance of cybersecurity and how their actions impact the company, it helps strengthen the whole organization. Providers can help to encourage all employees to take ownership over their cybersecurity to help protect their business:
- Work with management to roll out company policies and ongoing training to help build a culture of cyber-defenders.
- Discuss the importance of staying safe on social media: don’t share too much about work on your personal social media, watch for social media phishing attempts, and exercise caution while traveling.
- Help employees check privacy settings on all programs, software, and applications, and remind them to pay attention to privacy controls and permissions for both work and personal programs.
Secure IT.
Secure IT is all about the steps you and your customers can take to secure information. Technology, employee action, and security best practices all come into play:
- Cover the difference between privacy and security and how to use components of both in a comprehensive data handling strategy.
- Share the importance of creating strong, unique passphrases and using two-factor authentication to protect accounts.
- Reiterate the importance of employee training and involvement in spotting—and avoiding—a phishing email or other attack.
Protect IT.
The last part of the NCSAM theme, Protect IT, covers the importance of proactively protecting information. In today’s world, all businesses have information about their own company and their customers that needs to stay protected, and can help by sharing some tactics:
- Define and discuss sensitive data and methods to keep it safe.
- Set devices and software in your customers’ network to automatically patch and update, and regularly audit update settings to confirm it’s working correctly.
- Discuss the risks of using USB drives and offer safer alternatives for file transfer.
- Set and enforce policies around public Wi-Fi, BYOD, and other risky networking practices.
As a proud advocate of cybersecurity awareness, we work hard to share information through NCSAM and all year-round, and we couldn’t do it without partners and providers. Thank you for all you do to promote cybersecurity, and as always, stay #CyberAware.
Stay Safe,
Your Friends @ Defendify
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