Fall is a time defined by yearly rituals. For some of us, that means breaking out our favorite knit sweaters, indulging in pumpkin-flavored everything, or — in the immortal words of George Costanza — “shifting into soup mode."
The information security world has its own autumnal observance: National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), promoted each October by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). To kick off the 2021 edition, we're overviewing this year's themes and providing some ideas to help security professionals make the most of a whole month devoted to their practice.
What's it all about?
The stated goal of NCSAM is "to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity across our Nation, ensuring that all Americans have the resources they need to be safer and more secure online." Given the growing threat of ransomware and the increased prevalence of high-profile, high-impact data breaches, this year's installment serves as a much-needed call to focus our collective efforts on security issues.
The numbers bear out the need to shift our combined attention toward security. A stunning 18.8 billion records were breached in the first 6 months of 2021. That's 2.37 records per individual person living on planet Earth today. In the first half of this year. And of course, these are just the statistics for reported breaches.
We live in a time when digital security is everybody's business — so it may come as no surprise that CISA's goal with NCSAM is correspondingly broad and user-centric. The weekly themes for NCSAM 2021 are all about generating smarter and sturdier end-user awarenes ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
