October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Tom from Overlake pointed out that October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.  This ties in with the 6th grade study of good password practices and also compliments the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that students have read through and committed to.  The goals of our AUP are to:

• ensure that our digital community stays emotionally safe, and
• keep computer running smoothly so that faculty and students can work effectively.

Tools to keep your personal computers safe

McAfee offers a great resource called “Site Advisor.”  This tool allows you to learn about website security “bill of health.” You can use this service free of charge…check out any website that you frequent.  As an example, check out the billingsmiddleschool.org bill of health (we’re clean!).

StaySafeOnline.org provides this list of websites that will run a security check on your home computer to look for viruses and firmware:

• http://daol.aol.com/security/computer-checkup
• http://www.auditmypc.com
• http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
• http://shop.ca.com/STContent/Resources/Resources.aspx
• http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm?s_cid=sah
• http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
• http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
• http://www.pandasecurity.com/activescan/index/?track=1&Lang=en-US&IdPais=63
• http://www.symantec.com/securitycheck
• http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month