Beyond October: Keep Practising Cyber Security Awareness

Throughout October, Prventi’s Cyber Security Awareness Month campaign has explored a practical question: how can familiar security concepts help us recognise a threat and choose a safer next step?

Prventi’s four cyber security awareness games—ThreatGrid, Threatle, Hackman and ThreatConnex—gave learners different ways to practise recognising, recalling and connecting security terms, each alongside a practical weekly theme.

Pause, inspect and verify

Pause when a message is unexpected, inspect it and verify through a known route. ThreatGrid focused on recognition, introducing terms linked to phishing, delivery scams and safe browsing.

Protect your accounts

Give important accounts unique passwords, use an approved password manager and enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever available. Threatle brought recall into focus alongside passwords, credential reuse and MFA.

Verify unusual requests

Stop and verify an unusual request through a trusted channel. A familiar voice is not proof of identity. Hackman paired active recall with a simulated breach sequence, alongside the weekly focus on bank scams and AI-enabled impersonation.

Connect the warning signs

Look at how the clues fit together. Home-network examples showed how a default router password, an overdue update and connected devices can form a pattern that deserves attention. ThreatConnex asked learners to connect related concepts.

Practise beyond October

These different formats share a learning approach: encounter a concept, practise recalling it, read the explanation and return to it. Short, repeated practice can support recall. See Soderstrom, Kerr and Bjork’s research on the role of retrieval practice and spacing in learning (Psychological Science, 2016). Knowing a definition alone does not guarantee a safer response; practical actions and clear reporting routes remain essential.

Cyber Security Awareness Month provides a starting point. Keep revisiting the concepts, checking unusual requests and reporting concerns early.

Keep learning with Prventi.