National Cyber Security Awareness Month

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, as proclaimed by the U.S. DHS. The premise behind this is good: create awareness for cyber security. The DHS’s campaign will seek to: 

• Raise awareness of cybersecurity risks, consequences and available resources to a broad universe
  of information technology stakeholders  
• Reinforce shared responsibilities and provide a call to action to all computer users
• Direct stakeholders to tools, products and services they can use to protect their part of cyberspace
• Leverage Awareness Month events and activities to build a common culture of shared priorities
  across the full range of cybersecurity stakeholders
• Encourage interest of students in the cybersecurity field and help develop the next generation of
  cybersecurity professionals
• Promote the Cyber Security Awareness Volunteer Education Program (C-SAVE)

Security professionals the world over need all the help they can get to create awareness of their craft. For the most part, security measures, be they physical or cyber, are business expenses. The challenge security professionals have is to justify those expenses in a manner that helps improve the overall business appeal from the prospectives of the customers, partners, employees and investors.

For most of us working in the cyber security profession, we are viewed a smart but our value is questioned. “We pay this guy how much for doing what exactly?” “If we did not do ‘this’, what would be the impact?” “Do we really need to jump through all of these hoops?” “Do we really need to buy all of these security tools, applications and appliances?” “Wasn’t our security policy just updated?”

Some things are just hard. Cyber security is one of those hard things. It is tough to see, quantify and qualify. The better we are at creating reasonable awareness of the issues confronting or business and industry, the better and more effective we will all be at performing our security jobs.

This entry was posted on 2 October 2009 at 11:24 and is filed under Security Policy, Homeland Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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