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Computers have become an indispensable part of our everyday lives. Whether at work or during leisure time, information technology often facilitates our daily lives. Every day and at any time, we surf the internet and provide various institutions with our personal data. Cyberattacks too are becoming more frequent and often cause great damage, not only to the individual user, but also to entire companies and institutions. It is of great importance to protect those sensitive data from being stolen and misused.
What is IT security awareness?
Sadly, a strong IT infrastructure no longer suffices to successfully fend off cyberattacks. When it comes to security, the “human factor” also plays a central role and IT security is only as good as the people operating the systems. It is therefore just as important to sensitise the individual user besides taking infrastructural precautions. IT security awareness is precisely about raising awareness for IT security and its risks.
How can we raise awareness?
Besides technology, the individual is a major factor affecting IT security. Any security concept of a company can only be implemented successfully if the employees know the security concept, understand it and comply with it themselves. Therefore, a large number of companies now provide security awareness training for their employees. Employees are trained on various topics related to information security. The contents range from safe handling of e-mails and safe surfing on the net to the explanation of concepts such as social engineering as well as concrete examples of cyberattacks. The understanding of security is strengthened and the concrete risks of dealing with technology are explained in detail.
We too want to raise awareness!
As the central IT facility of RWTH Aachen University, the security of your data is very important to us. We are always working on improving our security concepts to offer you more security. In the future, we would also like to boost the use our social media channels to increase general IT security awareness. Among other things, we would like to introduce you to some IT security notions, familiar practices in the event of data theft and give you some interesting insights into our work.
You are interested in the topic and you would like to help us raise more awareness for IT security? You can find an overview of all the articles on this topic that have been published on this blog so far under the tag IT security.
Responsible for the content of this article is Stéphanie Bauens.
