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Tips for Cyber Security Awareness Month

Are you #CyberAware? Cyber Security Awareness MonthAre you #CyberAware? October is Cyber Security Awareness Month. It’s a great time to review the online security practices you use at home, as well as at school or at work. When we all work together to prevent cyber attack, the internet as a whole can get safer.

Individuals can protect their computers and networks by following some of these simple tips:

  • Apply patches and updates as soon as they are available. Sure, it can be annoying to continually run updates on your computer. But take a lesson from the massive WannaCry attack. It took advantage of a system vulnerability in the Windows operating system. Updating Windows prevented the attack. Yet many outdated computers were affected for lack of an upgrade. (2017, Saito)
  • Never click on links that seem suspicious. Sometimes the email may be from someone you know. But if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. When in doubt, reach out to the person who sent you the link another way to make sure the link is legitimate before clicking.
  • Practice good password hygiene. Make sure your passwords are long, use a combination of symbols and letters, and are changed frequently.

In addition to the above tips, businesses should also keep in mind the NIST Security Framework. This framework includes:

  • Identify
  • Protect
  • Detect
  • Respond
  • Recover

Learn more about the framework, and how to apply each of these steps for your business, at StaySafeOnline, powered by the National Cyber Security Alliance.

Everyone needs to do their part to prevent cyber attacks, and Cyber Security Awareness Month is a great time to start. The number one key is to educate yourself on the tricks cyber criminals use, so you can defend against these attacks.

Ready to learn more about cyber security, or even considering a cyber security or ethical hacking career? Check out the IEEE online course programs: Cyber Security for Today’s Environment and Hacking Your Company: Ethical Solutions to Defeat Cyber Attacks. These courses will give you a solid foundation in the basics of cyber security to prepare you to defend your company’s network from cyber attack.

How do you defend against cyber attack? Please share your tips in the comments below.

 

References

Saito, W. (2017, May 18). 9 Ways to Stay Safe from Cyber Attacks.  World Economic Forum.

Stay Safe Online powered by the National Cyber Security Alliance. (2017) https://staysafeonline.org/

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