Cybersecurity Awareness Month Tips and Events

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and NRTC is once again participating as a Cybersecurity Champion for this program led by the National Cybersecurity Alliance. In addition to sharing cybersecurity tips on social media throughout the month, NRTC is helping spread awareness by speaking on the topic at industry events and hosting a webinar on October 29th, “CISO Insights to BEAD and E-ACAM Cybersecurity Requirements”. Make sure you attend if you have applied for, or been awarded, broadband funding.

NRTC Director of Product Management, Scott Watts, was a featured speaker this week at Georgia’s Rural Telephone & Broadband Association (GTBA) Fall Forum and presented on “Navigating NIST Compliance to Elevate Your Cybersecurity Posture”. Scott gave an overview of the current cyber threat landscape for the industry and touched on the significant shortage of cybersecurity professionals.

The majority of the presentation covered the steps to build a cyber-resilient program that aligns with the NIST 2.0 cybersecurity framework, which includes:

1. Identify: Understanding your risk and regulations, identifying threats, and aligning technology assets to business processes.
2. Protect: Implementing key protection elements such as multi-factor authentication, backups, email protection, security awareness, and vulnerability management.
3. Detect: Developing detection mechanisms based on threat profiles and ensuring 24/7 coverage.
4. Respond: Preparing and practicing an incident response plan, including third parties and service providers.
5. Recover: Maintaining good backups and practicing recovery plans to ensure critical data can be rapidly restored.

Scott wrapped up the presentation with a Q&A session, a reminder about the importance of continuous monitoring, and a few final words of advice like finding a good partner to help navigate the cybersecurity landscape and building a program with layers of protection.

To learn more about how NRTC can help you elevate your cybersecurity posture contact membersuccess@nrtc.coop for more information. You can also see NRTC at the NTCA CyberShare Summit in Louisville, October 27-29 and the CalCom Fall Conference & Expo in Sacramento, November 14-16.