Global Security Week – September 5^th 2005

London, England, June 1^st 2005: security awareness specialist IsecT Ltd. has proposed the week leading up to September 11th annually as Global Security Week. By aligning various public and private initiatives around this specific week every year, we can improve security awareness for the common good.

Against a backdrop of global terrorism and organized crime, security in general (and information security in particular) has become a vitally-important sociological and business issue. Commercial and governmental organizations are investing heavily in technical security controls but the security problems caused by people remain largely unaddressed.

Whilst responsible businesses and individuals employ a wide range of security measures, the global Internet community suffers as a result of those irresponsible businesses and home users who remain largely unaware of security. Hackers and spammers frequently take control of insecure Internet-connected systems, for example, to use as platforms for their attacks. Raising the general level of security awareness is the only feasible means of addressing this issue.

Information security awareness is just as important for the general public as it is for information security and other IT professionals. We need to educate our friends, family members and even work colleagues to pay more attention to information security.

Let’s all do our bit for security - support Global Security Week.

The lack of global coordination is an a key reason why a succession of well-meaning public computer security awareness initiatives to date have had little if any impact.  A number of ‘security weeks’ have taken place at various times throughout the year … wouldn’t it make sense for us all in the security industry to agree amongst ourselves on a common diary? 

We are proposing the week leading up to September 11^th as an obvious candidate for Global Security Week. On this basis, Global Security Weeks over the next five years will start on:

September 5^th 2005
September 4^th 2006
September 3^rd 2007
September 8^th 2008
September 7^th 2009

If you agree with this proposal, we have around three months lead time to organize ourselves this year or, if that’s not enough, we have fifteen months to plan and organize for 2006. Anyone with good ideas for security awareness events is very welcome to share their ideas with the global community through the campaign website GlobalSecurityWeek.com.

Please get in touch if you represent or can at least get in contact with industry bodies, government departments and others who might be persuaded to align their own efforts around the Global Security Week – the week leading up to September 11^th. Let’s see what we can achieve by all pulling together on this.

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