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This October marks the 10th anniversary of European Cybersecurity month. The European Union’s annual campaign is dedicated to promoting cybersecurity awareness among citizens and organisations, to providing up-to-date online security information and best practices sharing. This year’s theme is #ThinkB4UClick, a headline that is being reinforced from last year because of its continued relevancy.

Even if all eyes are on cybersecurity in October, it’s important to be cyber aware all year round, every day. We’re seeing three main trends from a security perspective:

  1. Businesses are hyper-connected and now operate as ecosystems within a complex web with their suppliers, partners, and customers. Vulnerabilities don’t just impact a single organisation alone. They effect the organisation’s customers and supply chains.
  2. When everything is connected, everyone is an insider. Humans are still some of the easiest targets for cybercriminals, attacks are becoming more personalised and wide-ranging.
  3. Considering that hybrid work is here to stay, leaders know they need a new way of securing access for their users regardless of where they are or where the app is they need to access.

Security Resilience

Everyone now needs to be focused on achieving security resilience, so that they can protect the integrity of their business to withstand unpredictable threats and then emerge stronger. It matters how fast threats can be identified and contained, how risk to an organisation can be mitigated, and how quickly teams can bounce back in the event of impact.

It’s not just about using technology as the eyes and ears of the network to actively seek out unusual behaviours to uncover attacks, but also by educating employees to identify the potential threats and act in the right way to prevent and mitigate them.

Phishing and Ransomware

Ransomware has been the top threat seen by Cisco Talos Incident Response (CTIR) over the last 12 months. It’s obvious that targeting end users for criminal intent is not going away, and the practices of Phishing and Ransomware are again the focal point for this year’s campaign #ThinkB4UClick.

In October, we will be hosting two events with Martin Lee, Technical Lead of Security Research at Cisco Talos Threat Intelligence, to help you and your organisation prevent and defend against these types of attacks. For more information and to register your place, please visit our events page here.

Cybersecurity Careers

The skills gap in cybersecurity is still real, with a shortage of over 2.7 million cybersecurity professionals globally[1]. And so is the need for diverse candidates. Read our ebook ‘Diversity in Cybersecurity: A mosaic of Career Possibilities’ to hear from some of the industry’s leading professionals and how they got into security, it’s often a very unique path!

Spend Cybersecurity month with Cisco and follow the @CiscoSecure channels. We’d be delighted to hear from you!

Global Cybersecurity Month page

German Cybersecurity Month page

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[1] Source: ISC2  2021 Cybersecurity Workforce Study