Well, almost. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022, so it actually begins tomorrow. As always, it’s a great time to take a look at your organization’s cyber practices.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month was launched by the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in October 2004 as a broad effort to help all Americans stay safer and more secure online, so it’s in its 19th year! It’s now co-led by the NCA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), which was established within DHS in 2018.

Interesting side note is that the NCA was known last year as the NCSA (National Cyber Security Alliance), so I guess that’s their way of saying we should spell it as one word – “cybersecurity” instead of two words “cyber security”. Don’t you hate it when an industry can’t agree on how to spell itself? 😉

Anyway, the NCSA, er, NCA theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022 is “See Yourself In Cyber”. But, this year, they are focusing on four key behaviors instead of weekly themes like they did last year:

• Enabling multi-factor authentication
• Using strong passwords and a password manager
• Updating software
• Recognizing and reporting phishing

The “using strong passwords” tip seems obvious, yet we still see examples of companies not adhering to that principle, such as this one. Regardless, while there is no “Staples-easy button” to full cybersecurity protection, these are four (technically five) important behaviors that will go a long way to protecting your organization against attacks.

I’ll have more posts about cybersecurity trends and best practices throughout the month of October in recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022. Even though eDiscovery Today is considered an eDiscovery blog, we have published 229 posts related to cybersecurity in less than 2 1/2 years (including this one). Cybersecurity, data privacy, information governance and eDiscovery are all intertwined these days.

I’ll leave you with a great quote from Helen Geib (who was promoting what looks like a terrific panel discussion from the Women in eDiscovery – Indianapolis Chapter next Tuesday on The Intersection of Cybersecurity and eDiscovery on LinkedIn) when I commented on her post that tomorrow starts Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022: “I’ve always thought the month of horror movies and haunted houses was a particularly appropriate choice for that campaign.” Well played, Helen!

So, what do you think? How would you gauge your organization’s cybersecurity awareness? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the authors and speakers themselves, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.