What National Cyber Security Awareness Month Means to You

So it's October 1st. And this means it's National Cyber Security Awareness Month! I suspect that unless you're knee deep in security like we are, I bet you didn't know this. I would also wager that you probably didn't even know that there's a whole month dedicated to this topic.

So what is this all about? Well, with all the threats out there the Department of Homeland Security decided that this is the perfect time of year for individuals, businesses, and other organizations to reflect on the universe of cyber threats and to do their part to protect their networks, their devices, and their data from those threats.

Consider this:

Within the past year, personally identifiable information has been stolen in a number of significant cyber data breaches, impacting industries like health care, government, finance, corporate, and retail.
The use of malware by online criminals continues unabated, and of the available intrusion devices, the “bot” is particularly pervasive, allowing attackers to take control remotely of compromised computers. Once in place, these “botnets” can be used in distributed denial-of-service attacks, proxy and spam services, additional malware distribution, and other organized criminal activity.
Cyber criminals perpetrate a wide variety of crimes online, including theft of intellectual property, Internet fraud, identity fraud, and any number of financial fraud schemes.

What's more important than securing your valuables? And what's more valuable to you and your business than your valuable and proprietary information?

I'm sure there's going to be a ton of information flowing all over the place about this topic in the next few weeks. And already there is. If you're on twitter, the hashtag to use and follow is #cyberaware and the Army's slogan is "stay protected while connected."

To learn more about this topic, here are some helpful links:

Federal Bureau of Investigation

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

U.S. Army

Also, here are a couple of interesting articles:

Cyber Slackers: Millennials Lax with Cyber Security

Defense, Intel Leaders: Cybersecurity Priorities are Defense, Deterrence

Learn How to Win Against Cyber Threats

If you're interested in learning more (and giving up your contact info), Paloalto Networks is giving away the e-book Cyber Security for Dummies.

Lastly, if you're interested you can "attend" Microsoft's upcoming Virtual CIO Summit (on October 6) where cyber security is sure to be a hot topic.

So there you have it. Stay safe and you can start by being #cyberaware.