Campaign aims to spread IA awareness

  • Published
  • 31st Fighter Wing Public Affairs
AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy --  Team Aviano kicked off its Information Assurance Awareness Campaign as part of U.S. Air Forces in Europe's effort to educate servicemembers and their families on secure computer practices both at work and home.

From Sept. 1 to Oct. 31, the campaign includes weekly news articles, Armed Forces Network commercials and information assurance awareness aids distributed to organizational IA officers.

"Education is a critical component to successful mission accomplishment," said Tech. Sgt. Scott Sheldon, 31st Fighter Wing Information Assurance NCO in charge. "Every job performed by Team Aviano uses computers and networks to some degree. By educating our users on secure and safe computing practices, we make ourselves 'hard targets' for our adversaries and those who would take advantage of us in the cyberspace domain."

Password security, social media, networking and Webmail threats, online shopping safety, e-mail scams, password protection, free home use anti-virus, default password and phishing will be highlighted during the annual campaign.

"The IA campaign is set up to provide continued education to Air Force personnel and their families on the value of information assurance and information protection to safeguard our Air Force information assets," said Tech. Sgt. Philip Maize, USAFE Communication Directorate certification accreditation manager. "We are expanding this to the families this year because the Air Force assets are in our homes. Educating the family on how to protect their personal information and computers at home helps provide an extra layer of protection for our Air Force systems."

Some work tasks people perform from home include working on enlisted and officer performance reports and awards, and accessing Webmail to attach and send work to a government system. These also include anyone who works from home, burns their items to CD and brings it into work. With the opening of social networking sites on government workstations, there is also an increased potential for malicious threats to attach to these workstations.

"Remain vigilant when using information systems either owned by the Air Force or personally," Sergeant Sheldon said. "Safeguard passwords and personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, bank statements and more. Beware of e-mail scams and phishing attempts."

According to Sergeant Maize, taking that extra step to help protect information and who has the need to know is key in daily communication.

"Users must ensure they're monitoring and being aware of what they're sending out and what's going through from (them) to the world," said Sergeant Maize. "As technology increases, people must keep reminding themselves to check and double check before they hit the send button at work and at home."

Sergeant Sheldon said IA awareness is critical to Team Aviano because every function from operations to maintenance to support relies on information assurance concepts in the performance of the mission.

"When a breakdown in data availability, integrity, confidentiality, or non-repudiation occurs the overall mission suffers as well," he said. "(With this campaign), our goal is to reach as many personnel as possible to educate them on secure computing practices."

Question regarding IA policy and procedures can be directed to organizational information assurance officers or the IA office at 632-4134.

(U.S. Air Forces in Europe Public Affairs and Tech. Sgt. Francesca Popp contributed to this story.)