October is a month of cooling temperatures, falling leaves, and pumpkin flavored everything. More importantly, it is also a month dedicated to looking at best practices in cybersecurity that will protect our data and the systems we depend on from the evolving threats directed at them. [Tweet "October: falling leaves, pumpkin flavored everything and cybersecurity awareness. #GovEventsBlog "]

From a year's worth of headlines about breaches in the public and private sector we know the threat is real and quantifiable.

• The annual cost of cybercrime to the global economy is over $100 billion dollars and affects 556 million victims per year.
• The average length of time that a cyber-attack goes undetected is six months.
• The average cost of a successful cyber-attack on an organization is rising year-over-year and is currently around $15 million.

October has been designated Cybersecurity Awareness Month by the White House, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is heading up the awareness campaign. Working with public sector organizations and private companies, DHS is encouraging the technology industry to use the month for training and education within their workforce and the public at large. [Tweet "DHS is heading up the October cybersecurity awareness campaign. #GovEventsBlog"]The Department has broken the month into themed weeks to make the daunting task of securing our nation's systems a bit easier to swallow.  This year's themes are:

• General Cybersecurity Awareness: 5 Years of Stop.Think.Connect.™
• Creating a Culture of Cybersecurity at Work
• Connected Communities: Staying Protected While Always Connected
• Your Evolving Digital Life
• Building the Next Generation of Cyber Professionals

The DHS website references keystone events nationwide addressing these themes. Next week, we'll provide a list of some key events for the federal IT and management audience.