Time to Get Ready for Cybersecurity Awareness Month

With Cybersecurity Awareness Month starting in October, many public-sector agencies are getting ready. In fact, local governments, college cyber teams and other groups have announced plans to use out-of-the-box social media assets and other training materials to raise cybersecurity awareness.

To get a wider idea of what's happening for Cybersecurity Awareness Month this year, one can start by looking at a few examples. Aurora, Ill., and Tyrrell County Schools in North Carolina are both using KnowBe4’s Internet Security Awareness Course as a means of conducting outreach to their communities. The course, which they link on their websites, is for all ages, and topics include social engineering, password protection, mobile devices, phishing and social media safety. The course will be live for the month.

“This is the one that we suggest our customers feel free to share with family members,” Chief Marketing Officer Cindy Zhou told Government Technology.

Zhou also said that the company’s multiple resource kits can be mixed and matched for social media outreach, in-house training and basic handouts, among other things, and that the KnowBe4 training courses are produced by a “world-class courseware team.”

The 2025 kit features a retro, 8-bit-style arcade villain theme and has seen the “most engagement yet,” Zhou said, noting its the seventh theme the company has picked for the month. It is available in multiple languages and includes four trading cards, training modules, digital signage, posters and a weekly planner.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month began in 2004 as a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the nonprofit National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA). NCA offers a high-quality 2025 toolkit and recognizes those who use it as Cybersecurity Awareness Month Champions. Aurora has incorporated its free webinar, “Think You’re Hiding on the Internet?” into its planned outreach. Likewise, Austin Community College used the 2024 NCA media assets on its website, and the college’s information security team offered the “Spring Cleaning Your Online Life” webinar as outreach.

KnowBe4 will have a toolkit webinar, “Level Up Your Strategies for Cybersecurity Awareness Month,” at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Sept. 17, and the NCA webinar, “How to Get Involved in Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025,” is available online. The kits require email sign-up and come in zip files.

“We definitely think that any of our customers can benefit from this,” Zhou said, referring to Tyrrell County Schools and Winter Park, Fla., which have developed programming based on previous kits. “I think that it really is about just creating a general awareness and understanding that this is an important topic. Cybersecurity is everyone’s responsibility.”