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All across Canada, the month of October signals the start of the fall. The leaves change colours, the mornings and evenings become progressively darker and cool breezes to remind us that the warmth of summer is fading. October can be a scary month; there’s Halloween which brings out the annual season of horror and tales of the supernatural, and secondly, it is cyber-security awareness month. Unlike ghosts and ghouls, however, the fears of ransomware and data breaches, the costs of handling and recovery are all too real.
During National Cyber Security Awareness Month, Packetlabs will be releasing numerous articles surrounding cybersecurity to help keep your organization and personnel educated and up-to-date on best practices, trends, statistics and much more. You can continue to stay up-to-date and informed on security topics by subscribing to our once a month mailing list, available on the right-hand side of this page “Join our mailing list.”
What is Cyber Security Awareness Month?
Cyber Security Awareness Month was set into existence to help inform the public about the importance of cybersecurity. It will help people around the world, including Canadians and Canadian businesses, to become more secure online. There are many simple steps to take to protect your business and yourself from the dangerous online landscape that is the modern day internet. There are many complexities of computers and networks. Most attackers go after the low hanging fruit that are easy to exploit, such as systems missing security patches, weak or default passwords, and tricking people through email phishing. The Government of Canada has launched a cybersecurity awareness website titled Get Cyber Safe to help educate Canadians.
In the coming days and weeks, Packetlabs will be releasing new blogs, a few to name are Are Windows Updates Failing You, Password Security, Data classification and many more. If you’re looking to scratch the itching desire to read up on security right now you can read our previous articles, a few notable mentions are:
If you’re looking to get educated in-person, the annual SecTor conference starts October 7th in Toronto at the Metro Toronto Convention Center. SecTor is Canada’s premier IT Security conference featuring in-person training sessions, keynote talks by industry leaders, and talks aimed at every level of education and position relating to security. Whether you’re a system admin or a manager looking to learn how to protect your business SecTor welcomes everyone. If you would like to attend you can use our promo code Packetlabs2019expo to get a free expo pass.
Will hackers target my business?
The office of the federal privacy commissioner of Canada estimates that 19 million Canadians were affected by data breaches between November 2018 and June 2019, which is nearly 60% of Canadians. Cyber Security Awareness Month is an excellent opportunity for businesses and individuals alike to improve their cybersecurity. The Privacy Commissioner on the topic of national cybersecurity awareness month that: “We encourage organizations to continually monitor and refine their structures and processes for safeguarding personal information. This includes, for example, ongoing employee training on personal information handling processes as well as the importance of remaining vigilant to evolving attack threats such as malware and phishing.” Quote from ITWorld.
Cybersecurity is a global issue. In the online world, your small business may feel unheard, and under spoken, but business of all sizes are constantly under attack, including Canadian small businesses. Attackers can thrive off small targets as they are often not well protected, at Packetlabs we have seen numerous cases where businesses lose hundreds of thousands of dollars or in some cases millions to cybercriminals through preventable methods. Finding out you’ve been hacked is something we want to prevent. If you’re looking to improve the security of your organization and don’t know where to start, book a meeting to learn about how a penetration test can help identify critical weaknesses in your online footprint.