This month marks the 10th Anniversary of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, or NCSAM, here in the United States and hopefully influences folks from all over the world to learn, prepare and take action to make our shared cyber world a safer one.
The theme is “Our Shared Responsibility” and I think that really hits the head on the nail when it comes to cyber security. Some people might think that using the Internet safely is purely for personal protection but it also protects potential victims that could only be attacked because of a single reckless user.
Consider a work environment where one employee brings in a USB stick with music AND malware that executes automatically on the system? Then the entire network could potentially be compromised.
An even more personal example would be allowing malware to infect your system and then sending spam to your contact list, a list of friends and family.
Maybe your lack of cyber security resulted in your parents or grandparents being infected because they trusted a false e-mail coming from your account?
The fact that you are reading this blog post is a good sign that you are in tune with common security principals and staying safe online, however not everyone is and it’s all of our responsibility all the time, but especially this month, to make sure and spread the word about cyber threats and common tips to avoiding the bad stuff.
To kick off the awareness month right, we want to make sure you spread the word about a brand new zero-day exploit for Microsoft Internet Explorer. Microsoft has yet to release a patch for the exploit but in the meantime there is a work-around to make sure you are secure.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/srd/archive/2013/09/17/cve-2013-3893-fix-it-workaround-available.aspx
Click the Fix It button after clicking the above link and install the software downloaded. The fix should keep you secure from this potentially dangerous attack.
All month long we will be sure to include extra information in nearly all of our blogs that give our readers security tips to share.
Thanks for reading and happy NCSAM!
