A whole month, subject, in which the rest of the world does what this court does all year: makes lists, holds meetings about the lists, and tells everyone else to be careful. We have never felt less alone. We have ordered bunting.
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The 2026 theme is Don't Make It Easy For Them, and it asks for five ordinary habits rather than heroism: long unique passwords, a password manager to hold them, a second factor everywhere it is offered, software kept updated, and a hard stare at any message that turns up unexpectedly demanding something urgently.
The crown has read this and agrees with all five, which is unusual. It has then spent the month making everything difficult for its own household, which is not unusual in the least. This court has never once found the easy way to do a thing, and does not intend to start now.
Free material for your October
Everything here is free, made for exactly this, and safe in front of a room of nine-year-olds or a room of auditors. Nothing to sign and nobody to ask.
- The phishing wanted notice. A charge sheet against the email that says URGENT. Four charges, every one a real indicator.
- The verdicts upon the passwords of the realm. Six went to the paddock. Two came back with a neigh.
- The decree upon two-factor authentication. A thief with a stolen password, defeated by a door. The one that matches this year's theme exactly.
- Ten cybersecurity memes. One painting, one line. "The temporary firewall rule has been temporary since 2019."
- Do I really need two-factor authentication? Four minutes in the court's own awareness month, where the gate password reaches four hundred characters and the second factor is the only thing that works.
- The Ten Royal Decrees. The fifth is the one October is about: "Enable the second factor, that the thief may weep at thy gate."
Every poster comes in colour and in black and white, at A4 and US Letter, with a slide deck that has genuine presenter notes in it. The Royal Calendar keeps the rest of the year: backup day, password day, the scam season, and what the court does about each.
The terms of issue
Free to use unaltered: at work, in a classroom, in a newsletter, on any noticeboard that will have them. Not for resale. The credit is already printed on the thing, so there is nothing for you to add.
That is the whole treaty. The crown's lawyers are disappointed by its brevity and have been informed that the matter is closed.
Requests, questions and corrections reach the court at [email protected].
Why the court enjoys this month so much
Because for four weeks a year, everybody else does it too.
This court is extremely good at October. It keeps the trumpets on a standing account. It has a proclamation for every occasion and several for occasions that never happened, it can produce bunting at four hours' notice, and it has forty years of stories about things going wrong, which it tells at feasts, at length, to the people who were there.
For eleven months of the year this is considered a great deal of noise about very little. Then October arrives, the far lands hold their own ceremonies and print their own notices and make their own announcements, and the court feels, briefly, entirely normal. For four weeks a year, everybody else also believes that a poster is a control.
Dame Maud does not observe the month. Dame Maud observes Tuesdays, which is how the kingdom came to pass an audit forty-one controls out of forty-one. The trumpets have composed a march about it. She was not consulted.
Sire, I have read the five habits and I regret to report that they are correct, achievable, and free. I have nothing. I shall be in the buttery.
Here is the difficulty with an awareness month, and the crown says this as its most enthusiastic participant: awareness is not the hard part. Everybody is aware. The Squire is aware. The Squire is the most aware man in the kingdom and he has the password written on his arm, because the thing he was asked to do was impossible and the thing he did instead was not.
Don't make it easy for them, subject. That is the instruction and it is a good one, and them is the thieves. The trap, which this court walked straight into, is making it difficult for the Squire instead: four hundred characters at the gate, nine minutes to say aloud, and nobody stopped but the household. The second factor takes about a minute and stops a thief who already has your password. That is the entire counsel available here, and you may have it for nothing.
The crown is a Champion, which cost nothing
The month is run by the National Cybersecurity Alliance, who are real, and who publish a free toolkit each year at staysafeonline.org: posters, tip sheets and graphics considerably more sensible than anything here.
If you are putting an October campaign together and you want something that will actually get read, take theirs for the substance and ours for the bit that makes somebody stop scrolling.
The month runs the length of October. The court will observe it fully, get several things wrong, and be extremely proud. Come back in November and we shall tell you what happened, once the Chancellor has found a suitable afternoon to discuss it.