During an ongoing two-day cybersecurity education workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Defense Department unveiled its national awareness campaign that will be launched during National Cybersecurity Awareness month in October.The “Stop. Think. Connect.” campaign hopes to make more Americans aware of threats in cyberspace through various multimedia platforms.
“We really are interested in public-private partnerships,” said NIST Program Lead for the National Initiative For Cybersecurity Education Dr. Ernest McDuffie. “Engaging with academia and private industry, letting them know what the federal government is about, what we’re trying to do and how they can help us achieve these goals. It’s pretty clear that the issue of cybersecurity is so big, that it’s well beyond the scope of any federal agency, even the entire federal government.”
In March, Janet Napolitano announced the “National Cybersecurity Awareness Campaign Challenge.” The initiative was created to improve cybersecurity awareness and education for Americans of all ages.
According to Federal News Radio, Bruce McConnell, cybersecurity counselor at the National Protection and Programs Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, commented on the campaign.
“We want to increase awareness, we want to increase the percentage of the people who understand what the risk is and what they can do about it,” he said. “We can get more people involved and begin to shift the perception (about cybersecurity) among the American people.”
DHS will target the most important target audiences during the initial phase of the campaign and then shift to a focus on businesses and senior citizens during the second phase.
The “Stop. Think. Connect.” campaign will begin Oct. 4, 2010.
