Cybersecurity Can Be Terrifyingly Scary

Cybersecurity Can Be Terrifyingly Scary

It’s October and for many folks that means there is only one type of movie to watch. That’s right, horror! Even scaredy cats like a good spooky movie near Halloween whether it’s Scream, Nightmare on Elm Street, Paranormal Activity, or a classic like Halloween. But very few scary movies are realistic. People are always making decisions that don’t make sense. The monsters always walk when they should run. Sometimes it’s too goofy to be scary. But what if we took some horror movies and made them realistic? What if we added in the scariest, realistic threat in the world today: cybercriminals. 

Imagine how the stories would go…

CyberScream! – Did you ever wonder how Ghostface always got his hands on the phone numbers of his victims? Well, it turns out that he did it through the DARK WEB. That’s right, Ghostface isn’t just a knife-wielding maniac, he’s a cybercriminal, and he’s coming after your digital presence next. The only way to stop him is with dark web monitoring, which will tell you your data has been breached before he gets a chance to use it.

Nightmare on Breach Street – You know what they say. If you’re breached in your dreams, you’ll be breached in real life. Freddy Krueger’s newest victim had a dream where an email that seemed like it came from his boss actually led him to a website where his personal identifiable information (PII) was stolen. But when he awakened, he had actually fallen for the phishing scam! Now he’ll need to teach Freddy’s next target to use the SLAM method while asleep, so they don’t receive the same fate he did.

Cybercriminal Activity – A newfound footage adventure starts when strange things start occurring in Katie’s home. Doors opening and closing on their own. Lights turning on and off seemingly by themselves. The AC kicking on in the middle of winter and dropping your home temperature to below freezing! Katie thinks a ghost may have hitched a ride from the abandoned factory she explored last month, but what she doesn’t know is that malware also hitched a ride from the public Wi-Fi she used at a fast-food restaurant last week. Now to rid herself of the tech evils, she’ll need a computer consultant and a VPN!

HalloScreen – Michael Myers isn’t coming after Jamie Lee Curtis this time. Now he wants the PII left exposed on the desk. Good cybersecurity extends outside of the digital realm. If you don’t start shredding unused documents, locking your office doors, and keeping papers containing sensitive information in a safe place, Michael will be outside your window, slowly (but menacingly) walking in to cause a data breach.

While you’re unlikely to see any of these flicks on the silver screen anytime soon, the lessons you learned from them will come in handy in your everyday life. Just keep an eye out for a man in a Captain Kirk mask (aka Michael Myers) while you’re doing it😉

Happy Halloween and Happy Cybersecurity Awareness Month!