See Yourself in Cyber: The Importance of Cybersecurity Awareness Month for YOUR Business

October has been known as Cybersecurity Awareness Month since the President of the United States and Congress declared it in 2004. The goal of this annual campaign is to help users keep themselves protected online from threats as technology grows and compromised data becomes increasingly grows more common.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) lead a collaborative effort between government and industry to raise cybersecurity awareness nationally and internationally. 

This article will introduce the theme of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022, action steps you can take to improve your security online and free resources to help you and your team defend against cyberattacks and breaches.

See Yourself in Cyber

The Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022 campaign theme is “See Yourself in Cyber,” which makes the point that cybersecurity has traditionally been thought of as a complex subject, but ultimately it’s all about people. This year’s theme aims to focus on the “people” part of cybersecurity. This is achieved by providing information and resources to help educate the public while encouraging both individuals and organizations to make smart cyber decisions for work, at home, today, and moving forward. 

Take action to stay safe online by implementing basic cyber hygiene practices, this includes updating your software, thinking before you click, having strong and unique passwords as well as a password keeper, and enabling multi-factor authentication for all of your accounts. 

4 Things You Can Do

Throughout the month of October and beyond, it is crucial that users take the following key steps to ensure the safety of their accounts:

• Think Before You Click: if a link looks suspicious, that’s usually for a reason so it’s important to think before you click. By being able to recognize phishing or ransomware attempts, you prevent the possibility of an attacker gaining access to sensitive information or installing malware. 
• Update Your Software: if you see a software update notification, act quickly or consider turning on automatic updates.
• Use Strong Passwords: adopt the habit of using passwords that are long, unique, and randomly generated for each online account. Use password managers to generate and remember different, complex passwords for each of your accounts, this will also encrypt passwords keeping them secure.
• Enable Multi-Factor Authentication: enabling MFA makes you significantly less likely to get hacked with several factors to confirm your identity before logging in to an account.

For more tips, have a look at our Email Security Tips and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest email security tips, information, and insights.

Perform an Email Risk Assessment 

To improve your organization’s email security strategy and defend against today’s advanced email threats, you must first understand your email risk, the effectiveness of your current email security strategy, and measures you can take to improve your email security posture. Conducting an email risk assessment can help provide you with these critical insights.

Assessing your email risk involves the process of using an email address for transactional risk assessment and fraud prevention and consists of painting a comprehensive picture of the reputation and identity of the buyer by using data associated with an email address.

Implement Adaptive, Multi-Layered Email Protection

It is critical that businesses implement adaptive, multi-layered email protection that offers multiple layers of security that detect and block threats in real time and build on each other to provide more effective defenses. Guardian Digital EnGarde Cloud Email Security is engineered to defend against sophisticated attacks such as targeted spear-phishing, ransomware, and emerging zero-day attacks, to protect your users and your business against today's most advanced threats. EnGarde’s fully-managed email protection draws on a combination of features and characteristics designed to work harmoniously to offer the highest level of protection.

The Bottom Line

Individual users and businesses of all sizes run the risk of being attacked online. By implementing and enforcing best cybersecurity practices, that risk is significantly mitigated. While October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, these practices should be followed year-round. It has never been more necessary, or more possible to See Yourself In Cyber.