In an October 4, 2010 press release, The Department of Homeland Security announced the "Stop. Think. Connect." awareness campaign, part of DHS's Seventh Annual Cybersecrity Awareness Month.
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"'Stop. Think. Connect.' is a national public education campaign designed to increase public understanding of cyber threats and how individual citizens can develop safer cyber habits that will help make networks more secure. The campaign fulfills a key element of President Obama's 2009 Cyberspace Policy Review, which tasked DHS with developing a public awareness campaign to inform Americans about ways to use technology safely."
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As part of the campaign, DHS also launched www.dhs.gov/stopthinkconnect. The website provides a variety of free, downloadable resources aimed at helping the public increase their online security.
With regard to the Seventh Annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, White House Cyber-Security Coordinator Howard Schmidt is quoted in the press release as saying:
"During October, we all have a shared obligation to reaffirm our own commitment to increasing cybersecurity whenever and wherever possible. National Cybersecurity Awareness Month provides a platform for those of us in government, at the federal, state [and] local levels, as well as our partners in the private sector, non-profit, academia, and internationally to help further educate [everyone] about the important of cybersecurity."
The full press release can be found at the link above, or here.
William Snyder
I could find very little mainstream media coverage of the events to kick off cyber security awareness month. The blogosphere seemed to take it as a joke, or at least the “Stop. Think. Connect.” part of it. I do not have the links to the sites I saw handy, but I will try to add them later. The gist of the criticism was “Stop what? Think about what? If you are then going to connect, anyhow, what was the point of stopping and thinking?”
One site is sponsoring a competition to help DHS come up with a better logo and slogan. My favorite of the many comments left was “Take a bit out of crime.”
Still, the point of the awareness month is valid. Studies have shown that the vast majority of “cyber attacks” (80%?) could be prevented by simple measures implemented by individual Internet users: use firewalls and anti-virus software, keep your virus definitions files up to date, download all the security patches for your software on a continuous basis, don’t open attached files from people you don’t know and trust.
Surely, education is an essential tool for an effective U.S. or world wide cyber security strategy. [Maybe a pac-man type critter munching on a malware’s string of 0’s and 1’s taking a bit out of crime?]