October is the 18th-ever Cybersecurity Awareness month.
Let’s look at the history of this initiative and look at some of the best online safety practices.
This month began similar to the initiative of checking your smoke alarm batteries twice a year.
Instead, we need to be updating our antivirus software twice a year and keeping secure passwords.
The CISA in the United States provides helpful resources.
Whether you use technology as a business or an individual, we all play our part in cybersecurity.
These resources from the CISA will help business leaders, IT professionals and remote workers.
They also act as a cybersecurity framework for small businesses when operating online.
Phishing makes up over 80% of malware delivery methods.
As mentioned, phishing attacks are the most common source of infection and as such they should be our main concern.
Therefore, remind everyone to be dubious of unexpected emails, calls, texts or chats from strangers.
For example, if you are not expecting a call from a company then you should assume it is a scam.
Let’s make sure that less victims are hurt from scammers by raising awareness of cybersecurity!
For example, businesses should understand where all of their data is stored and how it is handled.
As a standard, data should be accessible to new employees only on a “need to know” basis.

Lastly, we recommend backups as a minimum and vulnerability scanning monthly and pen testing yearly or bi-yearly.
Total Support Solutions thinks this is the best practice for the most security critical businesses!
We’re here for all technical solutions. Want to learn more? Talk to us today.
