News Item

Promoting security in the digital world during the European Cybersecurity Month

This year’s campaign theme is social engineering, a prevalent cybersecurity threat in the digital landscape.

Published on September 30, 2024

October is the European Cybersecurity Month (ECSM), a month dedicated in sharing knowledge and raising awareness on navigating the digital world safely. The initiative is coordinated by the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and supported by the European Commission and the EU Member States and includes promotional events across Europe.

Under the ECSM umbrella theme ‘Social Engineering’, which continues for second year, ENISA will be promoting materials created by Member States on scams, AI & deepfakes, smishing, secure settings and materials for students.

In addition, ENISA is producing a series of mini-interviews with representatives from EU Member States, on the ways that their different cultures and mentalities influence the character of cybersecurity awareness campaigns and target-audience approach.

Social Engineering: What you need to know

This threat category encompasses a wide range of activities that attackers deploy when attempting to gain access to either information or services through exploiting human error or behaviour. The key characteristic of this method is the use of manipulation techniques to trick potential victims into mistakenly sharing sensitive or private information. Usually, users might be lured to open documents, files or e-mails, to visit websites or to grant access to systems or services. Social engineering can take place through various ways, including phishing, smishing, vishing, baiting and pretexting

The 2024 ENISA Threat Landscape report revealed that phishing, along with pretexting via email, remains one of the most important initiation vectors, meaning that they continue to be a primary cause of extended cybersecurity incidents. Findings indicate that, especially during the end of 2023 there was still a notable increase in social engineering incidents. According to the threat actor trends that the report highlights, both state-nexus actors and cybercrime actors use phishing to target identities and credentials.

2024 ECSM Awards

The ECSM Awards is an initiative which aims to reward successful and/or innovative promotional material produced by EU Member States. Award categories are the following: best video, best infographic, & best educational material. The ECSM awards concept is running for the third year.

In the course of October, the winning materials will be promoted through the ECSM social media channels, alongside the ECSM campaign.

Check out this year’s ECSM winners:

Best video: Belgium - Safeonweb's fairy tales : Tech Scam (episode 2) (youtube.com)

Best Infographic: Spain - Principales configuraciones del router | Ciudadanía | INCIBE

Best Teaching material: Greece - Τεχνητή Νοημοσύνη: Συμβουλές για γονείς – ΑΙ: Tips for parents | SaferInternet4kids

Stay tuned to the ECSM website and social media channels and find out more about the 2024 ECSM campaign!

Further Information

European Cybersecurity Month website

European Cybersecurity Month Awards 2024

Emerging technologies make it easier to phish

Contact

For press questions and interviews, please contact press (at) enisa.europa.eu