National Cyber Security Awareness Month

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October 1st, 2009 - Posted by Kent

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month and the big question is: How will you celebrate? The Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance want you to learn how to keep yourself safe online. According to their press release, "just 40% of Americans have had any formal type of online security or safety training."

Really? That number seems rather high. A brief and unscientific study of our office showed that no one here could remember ever attending any kind of "online security or safety training" but we all know not to click on unknown email attachments, download strange programs from LimeWire, or pay attention to web pages that warn us that our computers are infected. And we all have Internet security software installed.

The feds have a vested interest in cyber security because bot-infected computers have been used to run denial of service attacks on government web sites.

As a digital society relying on the Internet for nearly everything from financial services to supply chain management to an increasingly smart electric grid, to name a few, America's ability to fortify the security of the Internet is critical to the nation's economic success, the government's ability to deliver critical services, and every American's access to information.

The focus of NCSAM is to make people aware that infected PCs are not just potentially dangerous for bank accounts, they're also dangerous to us on a larger scale. Plus, a DoS attack can totally knock out Twitter, and Senator McCain loves to Twitter.