SAIC Continues Commitment to Online Public Safety

Online Threats Are Growing

Threats online are year-round, around the clock and growing.

SAIC, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) have worked for the last two years to help computer users to get smart about staying safe online.

Stop.Think.Connect.™ Campaign Raises Awareness

The latest nationwide campaign “Stop.Think.Connect.™” is a “first-ever unified public awareness message to help all digital citizens stay safer and more secure online,” NCSA said in a press release. SAIC is committed to this initiative because of its vital importance to the global cyber ecosystem. Unsecured computers are not only a risk to themselves, but are an increasing threat to their cyber neighbors due to the viral nature of threats today. Small but necessary precautions offer valuable protection against common attacks.

According to the NCSA, this campaign is supported by an “unprecedented coalition of government, industry and nonprofit organizations.” In addition to the APWG and SAIC, other companies supporting the campaign include Costco, Microsoft, McAfee, Symantec, Wal-Mart, and many others.

The Stop.Think.Connect. message was developed based on research conducted by Heart + Mind Strategies. The survey examined the ways that people operate online, their perceptions of cybersecurity and what would inspire behavior change. The research finding can be found at the Stop. Think. Connect. web site.

“SAIC is proud to support the Stop.Think.Connect. campaign in collaboration with the NCSA and APWG,” said John Havermann, an SAIC vice president and director, Cyber Programs. “As members of the NCSA Board of Directors and APWG Steering Committee, SAIC strongly advocates the online safety awareness initiative within and outside the educational continuum. We are very serious about our corporate responsibility to assist in safeguarding the nation’s critical infrastructures – the digital citizenry of the United States being the most critical of all.” Havermann is also treasurer of the NCSA Board of Directors.

SAIC’s Role

With extensive thought leadership, Havermann said, SAIC has worked mostly in the background to assist NCSA and APWG in developing and promoting the Stop.Think.Connect. campaign and other programs, especially educational programs. The company assisted NCSA and APWG in the founding of an as-yet unnamed nonprofit corporation that will maintain the intellectual property developed through NCSA and APWG’s research and other efforts. In addition to brainpower, the company has also contributed financially to the organizations and the campaign.

According to Havermann, Costco included the Stop.Think.Connect. campaign message in its monthly newsletter, “The Costco Connection,” mailed to its millions of members. Facebook created and launched an online Stop. Think. Connect. quiz and reached 35 million in the Facebook community with targeted advertising. AT&T included it in all of their paper-based bills sent out in October. “Since SAIC doesn’t have a constituency like those,” Havermann said, “We’ve had to be a bit more creative.”

SAIC is a champion of the Securing Our eCity Model City initiative, a project based in San Diego to develop a community-based approach, including local government, law enforcement, K-12 school and university systems, and the business community to be more secure by “baking” security into their systems from the get-go, rather than trying to nail it on after the fact. The largest part of SAIC’s role has been education, particularly through the San Diego Mayor’s Cup cybersecurity challenge and the national CyberPatriot competition. Those challenges are supported by SAIC’s patented CyberNEXS cybersecurity education and training platform.

“We’ve had fantastic buy-in from San Diego to address cybersecurity as a community,” Havermann said, “And that’s led to the senior leaders in the state of Maryland to buy into this secure electronic framework.” Maryland will begin talks to implement it throughout its government, and SAIC will be working with NCSA in those efforts, Havermann said.