October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and its a great time to remind ourselves of the importance of cybersecurity and to learn new ways to protect our businesses and personal information. Recently, Microsoft has updated their resources and guidelines to help businesses stay safe in the world of cybersecurity.
To understand the importance of exercising cybersecurity awareness with your entire organization, consider these stats:
- The average cost of a data breach in 2022 was USD 4.35 million.
- The median time for an attacker to access your private data through a phishing email is 1 hour and 12 minutes.
- 15 percent of lifestyle apps are malicious.
- There are 4,000 password attacks per second.
As security awareness is ultimately about managing human risks, companies can go a long way by offering cybersecurity educational resources.
For example, multifactor authentication can prevent 99.9 percent of attacks on accounts, and it starts with educating our teams about the importance of multifactor authentication.
Help your organization be cybersmart
Here are some of the key areas Microsoft is focused on educating users. You can explore more by downloading the Be Cybersmart Kit by Microsoft.
Protect your devices
To help keep your devices safe:
- Set up automatic updates to make the process smoother and decrease the risk from ransomware and malware.
- Carefully check privacy and security settings to ensure they’re set to your desired level of information-sharing any time you sign up for a new account, download an app, or acquire a new device.
Passwordless is the key
A good way to protect one of attackers’ most common entry points is by going passwordless with authentication solutions. For when passwords are needed, there are a few steps you can take to be safer:
- Set up automatic updates to make the process smoother and decrease the risk from ransomware and malware.
- Carefully check privacy and security settings to ensure they’re set to your desired level of information-sharing any time you sign up for a new account, download an app, or acquire a new device.
Phishing only works if you take the bait
1 hour and 12 minutes is the average time for an attacker to access your private data if you fall victim to a phishing email.
So, how can we avoid taking the bait?
- Check the sender’s email address for verifiable contact information and phishing tip-offs such as an unrelated sender address. If in doubt for any reason, do not reply.
- Don’t click on links or open email attachments unless you have verified the sender.
Learn More
To learn more about cybersecurity awareness month visit Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Awareness page