National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month! Led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Cybersecurity Awareness Month is an effort to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity and provide resources to help individuals and organizations strengthen their cybersecurity. This year’s theme, “Securing the Next 250,” recognizes the nation’s 250th anniversary and focuses on building a secure digital future for America’s next era. The campaign encourages individuals, organizations, and communities to proactively strengthen America’s digital defenses, emphasizing that resilience starts now and every action counts.

Learn about NCSAM

Cybersecurity Awareness Month Webinars

Join REN-ISAC throughout October for a series of webinars featuring cybersecurity experts and topics relevant to the research and education community. Explore the 2026 webinar series below.

 


Speaker: Megha Moncy (Security Analyst, Security Services at Indiana University)
Time : 12:00 PM ET (16:00 UTC)

Higher education environments face unique challenges, from decentralized IT and research-driven workflows to legacy systems and limited security resources- that can make traditional security controls difficult to sustainThis session explores why well-intentioned security controls often fail to scale in universities and how institutions can design practical, sustainable approaches that align with the way higher education actually operates.


Register for When Security Controls Don’t Scale


Speakers: Amy Braswell (TIAA Deputy CISO and Sr Managing Director); Kapil Pruthi (TIAA Managing Director and Sr Exec Cybersecurity Engineering)
Time : 12:00 PM ET (16:00 UTC)


Join Amy Braswell (TIAA Deputy CISO and Sr Managing Director) and Kapil Pruthi (TIAA Managing Director and Sr Exec Cybersecurity Engineering) for a discussion on how to plan, prepare, and use Frontier AI models. Brought to you by our partners at TIAA. The webinar is open for members only.


Speaker: Mike Stanfield (Principal Security Analyst, REN-ISAC)
Time : 12:00 PM ET (16:00 UTC)

Following Anthropic’s Mythos Preview announcement in April, many groups have created various secure code analysis tools based on the methodology shared by Anthropic. Unfortunately, most of these tools require the use of the state-of-the-art frontier LLMs, putting them out of reach for many organizations, either due to budget or governance. We are releasing a new tool - the Repository Vulnerability Hunter, or rvh for short - that uses open weight models to find vulnerabilities in source code. We will discuss the methodology and show how we can scan repositories using a single laptop or a GPU cluster, all from the same tool.


Register for Repository Vulnerability Hunter


Speaker: Stanley Field (Cybersecurity State Coordinator, CISA)
Time : 12:00 PM ET (16:00 UTC)


Join Stanley Field, Cybersecurity State Coordinator with CISA, for a special Cybersecurity Awareness Month briefing on today's cyber threats and practical defenses. Learn how to recognize phishing attempts, avoid malware and ransomware, protect against SIM swapping and fraudulent websites, and strengthen your security through MFA, strong passwords, and cybersecurity best practices. Gain valuable insights into current financial sector threats and how CISA helps protect critical infrastructure and communities.


Register for CISA Cybersecurity Awareness