Security News > 2022 > October > National Cybersecurity Awareness program 18 years on: Don't click that

If you've ever found yourself in an interminable meeting listening to the CISO ramble on about the important role you play in protecting yourself and the company from cyberthreats, you could probably point an accusatory finger in large part at the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month program.

To be fair, if you've ever found yourself sitting at your desk, staring at an email that didn't seem right - that seemed a little off - and you decided to just close the message and alert the cybersecurity team, you likely could give a nod of thanks to NCSAM. Every October since 2004, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and National Cybersecurity Alliance in public-private cooperation have directed NCSAM in an effort to make organizations and individuals around the world more aware of the myriad cyberthreats out there and how to guard against them.

Curtis Franklin, senior analyst at Omdia, views cybersecurity awareness on a spectrum.

According to Ryan Kalember, executive vice president of cybersecurity strategy at Proofpoint and a NCA board member, two trends that helped to fuel the NCSAM declaration were the creation of the Department of Homeland Security - which brought cybersecurity under that aegis of a government agency - and the growing push for public-private collaboration in the space.

Analysts at Global Market Estimates expect the cybersecurity awareness training market will grow from more than $1.8 billion this year to $12.1 billion by 2027, driven in part by the spike in cyberattacks since the onset of the pandemic.

Some businesses are skeptical about security awareness training, according to Rick Holland, CISO and VP of strategy at cybersecurity firm DigitalShadows.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/10/03/cybersecurity_awareness_month/