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Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026: theme and 4 simple steps

Tech · By SpikeToday · · Updated

A projected quilt made of the most common passwords, such as 123456789, password and iloveyou, in many colours
"Security Blanket", a quilt made of common passwords, shown at a National Cyber Security Awareness Month event. Image: National Science Foundation, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) runs it with the US cyber agency CISA, and the 2026 NCA theme is "Don't Make It Easy for Them". CISA's own theme is "Securing the Next 250", tied to America's 250th anniversary. The message is the same: small habits, repeated, make life hard for scammers (NCA, CISA).

The four steps the NCA recommends

The four headings below are the NCA's. The advice under each one is our own, based on common security practice, not the NCA's wording.

  1. Use strong passwords and a password manager. Our advice: make each password long, random and different for every account. The quilt above is built from real, widely used passwords. If yours looks like one of those, change it. A password manager remembers them so you do not have to.
  2. Turn on multifactor authentication (MFA). Our advice: start with your email, bank and social accounts, and where you can, use an authenticator app or a passkey rather than a text message.
  3. Recognise and report scams. Our advice: be suspicious of messages that rush you, ask for a code or a payment, or send you a link you did not expect. Do not click: open the company's app or type its address yourself. In the US you can report scams at ReportFraud.ftc.gov; in India at the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
  4. Update your software. Our advice: turn on automatic updates for your phone, computer and apps. Updates fix the holes attackers use.

Updates: two dates this month

Quick extras

A speaker at a lectern in a lecture hall with a large screen showing a cybersecurity workshop title slide, with the audience in the foreground
A cybersecurity workshop in 2025, one of many events held for the month. Photo: Spc. Justin Yarborough, US Army Eighth Army, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

For schools and workplaces

The NCA offers a free toolkit to anyone who registers as a 2026 "Champion": a tip sheet, 8 printable posters, 16 social media graphics and 16 Instagram Story graphics (NCA). CISA publishes its own toolkit. A simple start: pick one of the four steps each week and ask everyone to do it together.

Sources

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