October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

What do you associate with October? Pumpkins, corn mazes, autumn leaves, Michael Myers? What about cybersecurity? Okay, probably not, but did you know that all the way back in 2003, the Dept. of Homeland Security deemed October National Cybersecurity Awareness Month? (NCSAM) The campaign was created to educate both private and public sector on the importance of cybersecurity, provide tools and resources, and “increase the resiliency in the event of a cyber incident.”

2003 was almost 15 years ago already. Though it’s been that long, it’s not too hard to think back at what the world wide web was like. Do you remember a world without WiFi? Flip phones? Maybe you were a techy and had a Blackberry. In 2003, Broadband internet was still conceptual, described as “a much richer internet service that brings video on demand to your PC.” The world was integrating, rapidly. This is why the Dept. of Homeland Security knew cybersecurity awareness had become vital for everyone to understand. Today, with the threats facing personal information in every sector, Cybersecurity is more important than ever.

You can check out the free Stop.Think. Connect toolkit provided by the Department of Homeland Defense, featuring materials to help educate everyone from K-8 students to parents to older people. They also have over 20 different PDFs that provide great information on various topics of cybersecurity like Identity Theft, Malware, Mobile Banking, How to Prevent Cybercrime and much more.

Each week is broken down into topics to focus on.

It’s very important for your employees to understand cybersecurity to the fullest. With as much information being passed through the workplace, through both work related communication as well as things that pass through mobile devices. Your IT department can do what they can to help prevent threats like ransomware and malware, but with as much responsibility and tasks they have, attacks are always a possibility. 

Choosing to turn to a Managed Service Provider for IT services and support is becoming more and more commonplace, due to the amount of data and confidential information being stored on the cloud. Superior IT Innovations can provide data security and disaster recovery when facing cybercrimes that require specialized skills and services. We have worked with companies all over the country to recover lost data due to things like malware and ransomware. Choose a team you can trust, so that you don’t have to find one when it’s too late.