October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. NCCU joins the nationwide effort, co-led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA), to raise awareness and promote safer online behavior.
NCCU joins the national effort to help students, faculty, and staff build everyday cybersecurity habits that make cybercrime harder and our university community safer. This year's theme is "Don't Make It Easy for Them: Protect the Nest." Every secure choice you make — at work, at home, and throughout everyday life — helps make it harder for cybercriminals to access your accounts, devices, and personal information.
Key Actions: Simple Everyday Habits That Make Cybercrime Harder.
- Lock Down Your Accounts.
Use strong passwords, a password manager, and MFA. Never approve unexpected MFA requests. - Pause, Verify, and Then Act.
Be cautious with emails, texts, calls, QR codes, attachments, and urgent requests. - Update and Protect Your Devices.
Turn on automatic updates and lock your phone, computer, and apps. - Back Up Important Data.
Store important files in approved cloud storage or another secure backup location. - Protect Your Personal Information.
Limit online oversharing and review the privacy settings on your accounts. - Report Suspicious Activity Quickly.
If something looks wrong, report it to NCCU IT Security right away.
What’s New/Why It Matters
- Cyber threats are evolving — phishing is getting more sophisticated, and AI is being misused for disinformation, deepfakes, etc. “Secure Our World” highlights that digital safety depends not just on technologies, but on habits and human behavior.
- Everyone plays a part: from individual device settings to institutional policies. The more of us who adopt strong security practices, the more resilient our community (and NCCU as a whole) becomes.
Fast Facts
- 193,407 phishing complaints reported to the FBI: Phishing was the #1 most-reported cybercrime in the FBI's 2024 data.
- $470 lost (think before you tap): Reported losses to text-message scams were more than 5× higher than in 2020.
- 98% (is your password really safe?): Attackers continue to exploit weak and overused passwords, with password spraying accounting for 97% of the identity attacks Microsoft observed.
- QR ≠ safe (think before you scan): The FBI has warned that criminals use malicious QR codes to direct victims to fraudulent websites designed to steal credentials and financial information.
- $893M lost (losses from AI-related fraud in 2025): AI can help scammers create convincing messages, images, videos, and voices. Stop → verify → then act.