October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a national initiative celebrating its 20th year dedicated to working within public and private sectors to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity.
Baylor University is once again a Cybersecurity Awareness Month champion and will launch a public awareness campaign that encourages everyone to “be real” about cybersecurity.
Director of the Baylor ITS department, Carl Flynn, says the campaign is important because it helps give awareness and access to the community.
“BearAware is our public awareness campaign that we do every year during National Cybersecurity Awareness Month,” Flynn said. “We’ve done this at Baylor since 2007, under the BearAware brand, and our goal is to just continue to encourage best practices in cybersecurity for students, for faculty and staff, as a way to protect that frontline of our information resources at Baylor.”
The campaign will focus on a range of critical topics, including phishing awareness, password security, two-factor authentication, software updates, data protection, and privacy. Baylor recognizes that while its cybersecurity team remains vigilant, the entire university community plays a pivotal role in safeguarding institutional data and personal information.
Junior Ryley Moore, who has fallen victim to cybersecurity threats, is glad that Baylor is committed to helping its community become educated about the problems that occur with an online presence.
“I think that Baylor is doing a great job at taking the initiative and making sure that nobody is ever tricked without having the prior knowledge,” Moore said.
This year’s BearAware theme draws inspiration from the popular BeReal social media app. Every year, the ITS department talks with their interns and tries to develop a theme based on current popular trends.
“Our belief is that if we just continue to come back every year with a creative, new, dynamic campaign, that as our community cycles, as universities naturally do, that we will keep a very high level of basic practices in our community so that people are very aware,” Flynn said.
The current BearAware campaign will run for the remainder of the school year, providing resources for all of Baylor’s community.