Cybersecurity Champions: Equipping Businesses for a Secure Future
1-13-2025
By Dale Laszig, Payments Industry Journalist and Principal, DSL Direct
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is celebrating its 21st anniversary throughout October 2024. Themed “Secure Our World,” the program reflects continuous efforts to help individuals and enterprises monitor, detect, and mitigate existing and emerging online threats through a range of educational programs and resources.
Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), has seen the program’s impact on public and private sectors. “I’m super psyched to celebrate how far we’ve come in securing our world through cybersecurity,” she said, encouraging everyone to be a “Cyber Protector” by following these four key action steps:
- Use strong passwords: Use password managers to create and securely store unique online passwords with uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers, and symbols.
- Turn on multifactor authentication (MFA): Enable MFA on any online account that supports it, especially email, social media, and financial accounts, to harden security.
- Recognize and report phishing: Be wary of unsolicited messages that request personal information and report and delete suspicious email messages and phishing attempts.
- Update software: Regularly check for software updates and automate updates, when possible, to keep security patches and software versions current on connected devices.
Empowering, Educating SMBs
The simple message, Secure Our World, has inspired vibrant discussions, content development, and thought leadership across the financial services ecosystem. Following are examples of public and private-sector efforts to promote awareness of cybersecurity and empower the merchant community to model the way to secure transactions online.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provided links to educational tools and resources, noting that the FCC does not officially endorse non-FCC products or services:
What Small Business Owners Need to Know About Cybersecurity, Entrepreneur Magazine
3 Biggest Cybersecurity Threats Facing Small Businesses Right Now, Entrepreneur Magazine
Microsoft Cybersecurity Tips and Technology for Small Businesses
FICO and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Assessment of Cyber Security Risk Report
U.S. Government Resources
The U.S. government shared resources designed to help small and midsize businesses reduce risk of cybersecurity threats:
NIST Small Business Cybersecurity Corner
FTC Cybersecurity for Small Business
National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) Small & Medium Sized Business Resources
SCORE
SCORE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and a resource partner of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), offered advice on protecting small businesses from cyber threats in a July 2024 blog post.
FIDO Alliance
The FIDO Alliance, which stands for Fast ID Online, has launched passkey, a phishing-resistant solution designed to replace passwords, now supported by Apple, Google, PayPal, Microsoft, and other leading technology platforms. Read FIDO’s take on the scariest cyber threats in its October 2024, blog post.
PCI SSC
The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), a global forum for developing, enhancing, storing, and implementing security standards for protecting account data, has released a series of articles and resources in support of Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
Business-Centric Security
The Electronic Transactions Association and its member companies actively collaborate with policymakers, global standards bodies, and technology leaders to protect financial infrastructures. Recognizing that security is the bedrock of financial services, ETA supports the payments industry’s commitment to provide merchants with secure approaches to payments acceptance and identity and data management.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month reminds merchants to be vigilant, especially during the upcoming holiday season, when cyber threats typically escalate in size and scope. Concerted efforts by federal agencies, service providers, and payments industry leaders will empower merchants to securely accept online payments. protect customers and deflect cyber threats for years to come.
About ETA
The Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) is the world’s leading advocacy and trade association for the payments industry. Our members span the breadth of significant payments and fintech companies, from the largest incumbent players to the emerging disruptors in the U.S. and in more than a dozen countries around the world. ETA members make commerce possible by processing approximately $56.75 trillion annually in purchases and P2P payments worldwide and deploying payments innovation to merchants and consumers.
ETAs membership spans the breadth of the payments industry to include independent sales organizations (ISOs), payments networks, financial institutions, transaction processors, mobile payments products and services, payments technologies, and software providers (ISV) and hardware suppliers. For more information, visit electran.org.