Welcome To Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024
Joel Caskey
Cybersecurity Manager & Partner
NET Xperts LLC
Greetings Cybersecurity Superheroes!
It’s that time of year again – WELCOME TO CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS MONTH!!!!!! (insert your favorite fanfare here)
I found it to be very appropriate that when I turned the page on my “Star Trek: The Next Generation” calendar this morning, the featured picture is Worf. For those that don’t know, Worf was the Chief Security Officer (following the death of Tasha Yar) on the Enterprise NCC-1701-D. I’m not sure if this was a little Easter Egg in the calendar, or if this was completely coincidental, but regardless – very fitting for October!
But I digress – back to the present for a moment… It’s also time for me to do another blog takeover! I’ll be sharing some snippets of my security expertise through the month to help you and your team become Cybersecurity Sound. You’re going to notice a recurring theme this month – education and awareness (it is, In fact, in the title!).
Many small and medium-sized businesses don’t have a “cybersecurity expert” on staff. There are things that happen on your network every day, every hour, every minute that could easily go unseen unless you’re specifically looking for and anticipating them. An attacker can backdoor a computer and have control of the network for months before they make themselves known – and by that point, it’s too late. Awareness is key – see the unseen.
Now, you may be asking, “well, how are they getting in?” – well, most of these entry points are caused by internal actors (your own employees or maybe even yourself). Attackers are finding that it’s way easier to trick someone into opening the door for them vs. breaking it down. To add to that – in most cases, this is completely accidental, and an employee may not even realize that they’re doing something that Is risky business.
My focus for my blog series this month is going to be on the awareness and human elements of the network and your data. This is the part of the cybersecurity posture that tends to get neglected in small and medium-sized businesses, and I feel that it’s the most important piece of the puzzle. Stay tuned – more to follow through the month!
Stay vigilant, Cybersecurity Superheroes!