Kick-Start Cyber Security Awareness Month With These Essential Tips
October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and it’s more important than ever for businesses to take steps to protect their data. In this blog post, we’ll cover the basics of cyber security and why it’s so important for your business. We’ll also provide some tips on how you can get started with cyber security awareness month.
What is Cyber Security Awareness Month?
Cyber Security Awareness Month, or CSAM, is a month-long initiative to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity and data protection. Launched by the Department of Homeland Security in 2004, it has become an important time for businesses to evaluate their security measures and take steps to improve them.
Why is Cyber Security Awareness Month so Important?
At its core, cyber security is about protecting data. Whether it’s your customers’ personal information or your own business data, it’s vital to keep this information safe and secure from hackers and other online threats. Without strong measures in place to protect our digital assets, we are vulnerable to attacks that can have devastating consequences.
What are Your Top Tips to Staying Safe Online?
There are many things you can do to stay safe online, but some of the most important include:
- Using strong passwords and changing them often.
- Installing antivirus and anti-malware software on all your devices.
- Staying vigilant about phishing emails and other scams.
- Regularly backing up your systems.
One of our consultants top tips is ensuring all your online accounts have multi factor authentication on so even if your passwords do get compromised, you have an extra layer of protection.
What is the Most Common Way Hackers Target Businesses?
The weakest link in cybersecurity is the human factor. And if your employees are unable to make an informed and educated decision about something as simple as, as to what network to connect to our which email attachment to open, you’re at risk of having a cyber attack. I think its crucial that every employer needs to train their employees to be cyber aware and alert at all times. The human error is the most common way that threat actors will get into a business or target employees. The statistic is that over 80% of attacks are generally through an employee being compromised rather than the actual system itself.
Keep an eye out for more cyber security awareness month content over the next few weeks from us here at Pentest People.
Transcript
Welcome to a special edition podcast. As you may be aware, every October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, helping individuals protect themselves online as threats to technology and confidential data become more of a commonplace. I have Andy with me today, our new grad, who will be talking more about this. Welcome, Andy. So there’s a couple of things we need to know online. But firstly, what does the term Cyber Security Awareness mean to you?
To me, it means keeping up to date on your security, making sure you’ve got all the factor authentication, secure passwords, making sure all your devices are up to date.
if I was to say to you, what is your top tip to be safe online? What would it be?
Ensuring all your online accounts have multi factor authentication on so even if you passwords do get compromised, that sort of a layer that traps is enough to get past.
A recent survey had shown that one in five businesses don’t have a procedure or backup plan? Should their data get lost or damaged? Why is it crucial for businesses to have a backup plan?
It’s really important, like there’s various reasons you’d need one could be if a threat actor to go on to systems and delete your data. It could be an accident or an employee. You know, it could just be the hardware degraded. And if you don’t have that backs up elsewhere, you’d be a lot.
So talking about businesses, do you think every business is at risk of a cyber threat?
Yeah, I think most businesses nowadays have an online presence, which in turn puts you at risk.
It’s clear that the weakest link in cybersecurity is the human factor. And if your employees are unable to make an informed and educated decision about something as simple as, as to what network to connect to our which email attachment to open, you’re at risk of having a cyber attack. I think every employer needs to train their employees to be cyber aware and alert at all times. Do you agree with this?
Yeah, definitely. It’s the most common way that threat actors will get into a business or target employees, I think it’s over 80% of attacks are generally through an employee being compromised rather than the actual system itself.
Well, thank you so much for talking us through that, Andy. I hope the information that Andy has given has been informative, and I hope you all stay Cyberware Thank you.
Josh is one of Pentest Peoples Web Application testers, coming from a university background, who's heavily interested in the ethical hacking world.