S2E18 Cybersecurity Awareness on a Shoestring Budget

Welcome back to ByteWise! October is right around the corner and it is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This episode is packed with budget-friendly, creative ideas to boost security awareness in your organization and personal life. The four key themes of this year's Cybersecurity Awareness Month: strong passwords, multi-factor authentication (MFA), recognizing phishing, and updating software.

The hosts discuss why these "usual suspects" are still critical topics. They explore the importance of MFA not just at work but on personal accounts like email and online banking. To make learning engaging, they brainstorm several low-cost activities:

• "Build Your Digital Fortress" Workshop: A hands-on session to walk employees through setting up MFA on their personal accounts.

• The MFA Rollout Race: A friendly competition between departments to see who can get the highest adoption rate, with winners receiving fun, inexpensive prizes like stickers or 3D-printed trinkets.

• "Password Creation Cook-Off": A challenge encouraging employees to create the most creative and strong passphrase, using online tools to "score" their strength.

• The "Set It and Forget It" Campaign: A drive to teach people how to enable automatic software updates on their personal devices to ensure they are always protected.

• "Reverse Phishing" Challenge: An innovative activity where employees are challenged to create their own convincing (but harmless) phishing email to better understand the psychology and tactics used by attackers.

The conversation also touches on the importance of using password managers, following NIST guidelines for password creation, and the critical need for leadership buy-in to make any awareness campaign successful. The key is to make security training engaging, positive, and presented in bite-sized, low-cost pieces to ensure it resonates with everyone.