Cybersecurity Awareness Month
In honor of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, KnowBe4 created an entire kit of resources for your users. It is important to create and maintain a resilient security culture within your organization to help users keep up their cybersecurity defenses and stay safe from various cyber threats.
This month, there were four main themes to focus on: security culture, ransomware, social media and AI, and lastly, how you can make a difference. Security culture is the ideas, customs, and social behaviors of a group that influence its security. Employees are at the center and with the right culture, they can be an effective human layer of defense against attacks at work or in their homes. Password strength and staying aware and alert of possible attacks are both key for everyone’s security within an organization. For example, employees want to stay aware of possible ransomware attacks, which can cause downtime, data loss, or potential intellectual property theft. Phishing emails remain a leading cause of ransomware entry, meaning employees should have an understanding of warning signs, the typical extortion process, and tactics cybercriminals use.
After security culture and ransomware, another theme focuses on social media threats and the rise of AI. Hackers are often utilizing social media to target victims and perpetuate scams. The popularity of AI tools adds to how employees must be about what they see and share online. From deepfakes to chatbots, employees should stay on top of using social media safely while protecting themselves and the organization against inauthentic and possibly harmful posts.
Lastly, it is important to stress to employees their individual role in keeping the whole organization cyber secure by doing the right things and taking the right actions, and avoiding the wrong things or inactions. Visit here to learn more and to continue defending against cybercrime especially this month but also every other month!
Self-destructing Notes
Privnote.com is a free web based service allowing you to send top secret notes over the internet.
The thought of sending confidential information within your work environment or to family or friends typically feels like a scary one due to cyber criminals and malicious hackers. Privnote is a fast and easy utility that does not require a password or user registration. Although this might make it seem even more risky to use, the notes you write will automatically self-destruct after it has been sent and read by the person you created it for. You write your note and will subsequently receive a link. You can copy and paste the link into an email or instant message to send it to the intended recipient. When that person clicks the link, they will see the note in their browser to read it. After that, it will no longer exist; the link won’t even work anymore.
Visit here to learn more about the service, or to give it a try!
Data Breaches and Cyber Attacks
IT Governance is dedicated to helping organizations tackle the threat of cyber crime and other information security weaknesses.
In addition to offering a variety of resources, including training courses, a newsletter, and free guides, they have also created a 2023 page of data breaches and cyber attacks. The page is a comprehensive analysis of the year’s security incidents so far, with 71 publicly disclosed incidents in September 2023 alone. With each incident comes at least one record, but usually many more, that are compromised; the year’s total is already over 4.5 billion records impacted. Each month there is a monthly list of attacks, as well as overall updated stats like the number of breached records, the biggest data breach, the total number of incidents to date and more.
This page serves as a great reminder, especially during Cybersecurity Awareness Month, that all users must stay vigilant about their online behavior even when feeling protected. To learn more about this year’s attacks and the current figures, visit here.
