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Featuring Tiffani Tolbert, BCU Security Operations Senior Manager (0:47), on what cybersecurity awareness month is and key parts to the 2025 theme, Marlene Koskotas, BCU Senior Investigator Level II, and Nickie Christianson, BCU Account Protection Senior Manager (8:37), on the role AI plays in cybersecurity and account protection, and the importance of evolving with technology.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and a 2025 theme, Secure Our World, is more than a slogan — it’s a call to action for every person, family, and organization that touches the internet. Securing our world means taking everyday steps that reduce risk at scale: preventing account takeovers, slowing the spread of scams, protecting vulnerable people, and adopting tools and habits that make digital deception harder to pull off. Security isn’t only for experts; it’s a set of practical behaviors anyone can adopt that, when multiplied across millions of users, make the whole ecosystem safer.
At the center of that effort are three core actions: enable multi-factor authentication (MFA), protect your accounts, and report suspicious activity. MFA dramatically reduces the chance a stolen password alone will hand an attacker with access to your email, bank, or social accounts. Wherever possible, choose authenticator apps, passkeys, or biometrics over SMS-based codes. Protecting accounts also means using unique, strong passwords or passphrases, keeping software and devices up to date, and favoring phishing-resistant authentication methods; one-time passwords (OTPs) are increasingly old-school as attackers get better at bypassing them.
Reporting suspicious emails, texts, pop-ups, or financial requests is often overlooked, but it’s one of the single most effective things you can do. Filing a report stops scams faster, gives defenders the data they need to block fraud networks, and prevents the same trick from victimizing someone else. Never assume someone else will report what you’ve seen; breaking the chain starts with you. If you see an unexpected request for payment or a message asking you to log in through a link, pause, verify by calling a known number, and report the incident to the service provider or your organization’s security team.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping both sides of this fight: it powers convincing synthetic content and automated social-engineering campaigns while also enabling detection systems that spot anomalies, deepfakes, and large-scale deception. Use AI-driven security features when they’re available, but pair them with healthy skepticism — polished, urgent, or emotionally manipulative messages are red flags even if they look authentic. Human judgment combined with detection tools is the most effective defense against rising digital deception. Stay vigilant out there!
Account takeover often serves as the gateway for broader scams: credential stuffing, automated login attempts, fake pop-ups, fraudulent wire transfer requests, and cryptocurrency kiosk cash-outs are common examples. These threats hit some groups harder than others. Older adults and those unfamiliar with emerging tech are frequent targets for social-engineering attacks that now sometimes include biometric and behavioral data exploitation. The lesson is to learn and adapt — fraudsters evolve fast, and your security habits must evolve too.
Practical steps for safer spending and holiday-season readiness are straightforward: verify high-value payment requests by calling a trusted number, never log in from links in unsolicited messages, set up transaction alerts on your cards and accounts, and have short conversations with older relatives about common scam red flags. If something feels too good to be true, it probably is; pause, verify, and, when in doubt, refuse to act immediately.
Security favors small, consistent actions. Turn on MFA today, replace SMS OTPs with passkeys or authenticator apps when available, and report any suspicious messages you receive. These simple moves help secure individual accounts and, collectively, make the internet a safer place. Secure our world starts with you.
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