This year marks 20 years of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. So to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the event, the National Cybersecurity Alliance are looking at how far security education and awareness has come in the past 20 years, and also where it needs to go in order to fulfil the vision of a secure interconnected world.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 “is a collaboration between government and private industry to raise awareness about digital security and empower everyone to protect their personal data from digital forms of crime”.
As with last year, Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 will focus on four key behaviours to promote digital security and work towards its vision. This year’s four key behaviours are:
- Use strong passwords and a password manager – passwords are the key to your digital castle, so you want to do everything to keep them safe. When creating a strong password, consider these three guiding principles; long (at least 12 characters), unique (never reuse passwords), and complex (utilise a combination of uppercase letters lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters). Creating strong passwords is one thing, but remembering them is a whole nother kettle of fish. To save you the headache, consider a password manager to help you store and remember passwords.
- Turn on multi factor authentication – enabling you to protect yourself in a number of ways, think of multi factor authentication like putting your house keys is a safety lockbox that can only be opened via fingerprint. Multi factor authentication essentially requires anyone trying to log into an account to verify their identity multiple ways.
- Recognise and report phishing – phishing is a form of cyberattack that is typically delivered via email, social media posts, or direct messages. Should you click on a phishing link, you could be unknowingly handing your personal information over to a cybercriminal. It is important to not only be aware of phishing so as to not fall victim to these attacks, but also report it. Some email platforms allow you to report phishing attempts so we advise you to do this as quickly as possible.
- Update software – one of the easiest and most underutilised ways to stay safe online is to ensure your software and apps are all up-to-date. Everyday software and app developers work to improve their systems to keeps users and their products safe, so having the latest updates installed means you have the most secure versions available.
As a cybersecurity PR agency, we like to make sure we remain ahead of the game when it comes to awareness events. Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 is an important campaign for all of our clients, and so we like to ensure we provide our clients with all the information they need to stay ahead of the curve and do their part.
Some of the ways we recommend our clients to observe Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 include:
- Social content – Social media plays a significant role in campaigns such as Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023. It enables companies and organisations to reach a wider audience and educate and spread the message through a highly engaging medium. Whether you choose to re-share content from the National Cybersecurity Alliance, or curate your own, there is no better way to publicly get behind a campaign than via social media. And if you do share content across social channels, be sure to use the campaign hashtag which is #CybersecurityAwarenessMonth.
- Blog content – Boost that website SEO, but also inform your audience with a blog around Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 (see how we got that keyword in there an extra time!?). Similar to social content, a blog allows you to educate your audience and provide some useful information around the month’s theme, but in a slightly longer format. It is also a good idea to try to personalise the content to your company, for example we have spoken about how you can leverage the campaign from a PR perspective. Don’t be afraid to be creative!
- Email content – Email marketing is a great way to directly reach out to your audience. Provide engaging but useful content around Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 in the engaging form of an email. If you have produced blog and social content as well, link to all of that in your email to drive social and website traffic.
- Internal training sessions – Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2023 is a great opportunity to look at your own company’s digital safety and whether you have the policies and processes in place to protect private data. Leverage the campaign to deliver internal training sessions to ensure your team are up-to-date with the importance of online safety, and know how to work online in a safe and secure manner.
- Webinars – Similar to training your internal team, Cybersecurity Awareness month 2023 can also be an opportunity to share your knowledge with a wider audience. Webinars are an engaging way of sharing information in an interactive medium that can reach a wider audience.
As a leading Cybersecurity PR Agency, we pull on our wealth of experience to construct and deliver PR strategies for our clients in the tech space. If you are looking to boost your PR and get a new strategy put in place, get in touch with us today to see how we can help!