It is October 1, 2020, and as you may know, October is always Cyber Security Awareness Month, and I have a confession to make. For many years as a security consultant and security awareness trainer, October always crept up on me. So, I sometimes didn’t have much material prepared to offer people.

But now, Security Awareness is so important that I’m more prepared, and ready to do live sessions or webinars for people who approach me, as long as I have the time in my schedule. It’s just something that has to be done.

So, if you are wondering how you should be recognizing Cyber Security Awareness Month, I’ve got some quick tips for you, whether you are a manager, and employee or an individual.

1) Let’s start with individuals. We are all busy, and security is certainly not on the top of everyone’s mind, but if you’re here, you obviously have an interest in security. So, for yourself, I recommend finding a trusted source of security guidance. Look for community or professional organizations you can join or just attend a meeting.

If you just want to keep up to date with security tips, then you should find a good podcast that does regular updates. I’m biased, but the Shared Security Podcast with Tom Eston and myself is a great start. Tom does weekly security news stories “you can use”, and we do a monthly episode where I join in for more discussion.

2) For employees, your job may not be security specifically, so it’s good to take a few minutes to see if your employer is offering any sessions or has any recommended tools for you to use at work and at home. Building good security habits at work will help you protect personal information at home, and vice versa. As an added bonus, I recommend you visit canibephished.com – which is Click Armor’s free self-assessment for phishing awareness. It’s a fun 3 minute challenge that lets you test yourself on recognizing a number of phishing threats, and you can find out details about things you may have missed. We use it as a way of demonstrating to everyone how gamified learning can make a huge difference in employee engagement and knowledge retention regarding security practices.

3) For Managers, in addition to the above tips, you should be trying to make security awareness a more continuous process. October is a good time to start, but you can start any time with various free tools, including a trial of gamified learning courses from Click Armor. Through October 2020, we are offering our Home Alone course completely free with private administration of your team that includes a leaderboard and our Home Alone gamified module on “Working from home securely”. This will give you idea of how easy and cost effective it can be to have a continuous security awareness program that engages and builds a self-defending team.

It’s also important to set some goals on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, to keep fresh on new threats, and to keep everybody practicing and ready to spot risks in the real world.

Whatever you do for security awareness month, try to remember that nobody expects to be a target, but using memorable experiences and setting goals will help you be prepared for the cyber winter that just seems to keep getting worse.

To get access to Home Alone or a free trial of other modules, go to: https://clickarmor.ca