Software Engineering Institute

In this webcast, as a part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, our experts provided an overview of the concept of cyber hygiene, which bears an analogy to the concept of hygiene in the medical profession. Like the practice of washing hands to prevent infections, cyber hygiene addresses simple sets of actions that users can take to help reduce cybersecurity risks. Matt Butkovic, Randy Trzeciak, and Matt Trevors discussed what some of those practices are, such as implementing password security protocols and determining which other practices an organization should implement. Finally, they discuss the special case of phishing—which is a form of attack that can bypass technical safeguards and exploit people’s weaknesses—and how changes in behavior, understanding, and technology might address this issue.
 
Good cyber hygiene is important because an organization's threat landscape changes daily, and new variants of attacks on computer systems appear by the hour. The sheer number of security vulnerabilities in hardware, software, and underlying protocols—and in the dynamic threat environment—make it nearly impossible for most organizations to keep pace.