Obama White House Raising Online Security Awareness: "Cybersecurity" Awareness Month and Protecting Yourself Online

As many regular blog readers are probably aware, the Obama White House is taking a long-overdue, proactive stance on raising awareness of online security issues. While I personally could do without the overuse of the rather unhelpful "cyber" prefix on everything from "security" to "threat" to "war" to... ahem... "cyber hygiene," (really?), the administration should be applauded for helping to raise awareness of the computer security, data privacy and infrastructure risks that all of us face.

October has been designated "Cybersecurity Awareness Month" and as part of that, the White House has been posting basic but well written and accurate information on what ordinary citizens can do to stay safe online.

If you haven't seen this, I thought the President's video address on "Protecting Yourself Online"—while very introductory—was actually quite well done and I've embedded it below. There really is a need for this kind of thing: In some informal online research that I recently conducted, I found that more than half of US respondents feel that the government doesn't provide enough information on how to use the Internet securely. So this is definitely a step in the right direction.

The series of blog posts continues with an entry that summarizes the overall threat posed by malware and phishing attacks (see, "Cybersecurity Awareness Month Part II") and a post today reminiscent of Proofpoint's own "Golden Rules for Staying Safe Online" (see for example, this recent Proofpoint Email Security Blog post), which you can find here:

White House "Briefing Room" blog: "Cybersecurity Awareness Month Part III"

In that post, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterroism, John Brennan gives four simple tips (expanded in his original post, of course) for improving one's own defenses against online threats, including:

• Keep your security software and operating system up-to-date.
• Protect your personal information online.
• Know who you are dealing with.
• Learn what to do if something goes wrong.

Like I say, a step in the right direction!