About NCSAM

About National Cyber Security Awareness Month

National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), conducted every October since 2001, is a national public awareness campaign to encourage everyone to protect their computers and our nation’s critical cyber infrastructure.

Cyber security requires vigilance 365 days per year. However, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), the primary drivers of NCSAM, coordinate to shed a brighter light in October on what home users, schools, businesses and governments need to do in order to protect their computers, children, and data.

NCSAM 2009 Report

We would like to thank everyone for making National Cyber Security Awareness Month 2009 the most successful National Cyber Security Awareness Month yet. We invite you to read this brief report of the month’s many accomplishments. The broad participation from government, industry and the nonprofit community made the month’s theme—Our Shared Responsibility—a reality. Some highlights:

• The NCSA reach more than 40 million Americans through media, middle school and high school lesson plans, and partnerships with dozens of companies and associations.
• President Obama issued a proclamation on the month and posted a video advocating the month.
• White House staff blogged about the month on whitehouse.gov.
• For the first time, both the Senate and the House passed resolutions to support the month, as well as citizen awareness of Internet security.
  

NCSAM 2009 Short Report

Our Shared Responsibility

Our lives are becoming web-based.

As the Internet becomes pervasive, we are online from home, school, work, and in between on mobile devices. Even when we are not directly connected, our economy and much of the everyday infrastructure we rely on uses the Web.

Ultimately, our cyber infrastructure is only as strong as the weakest link. No individual, business, or government entity is solely responsible for cyber security. Everyone has a role and everyone needs to share the responsibility to secure their part of cyber space and the networks they use. The steps we take may differ based on what we do online and our responsibilities. However, everyone needs to understand how their individual actions have a collective impact on cyber security.

What are you doing for National Cyber Security Awareness Month?

The success of National Cyber Security Awareness Month rests on all of us doing what we can to engage in awareness activities. There are opportunities for everyone from home users to major corporations and government entities to get involved.

Get the above content in a PDF to share with others (About NCSAM as a PDF)