Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025:Prioritizing Identity to Safeguard Critical Infrastructure

Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025 builds on a focus on identity as the key to safeguarding critical infrastructure, emphasising government entities and small and medium-sized businesses that keep communities running. This October marks the 22nd anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an initiative guided by the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s banner of “Building a Cyber Strong America.” The piece notes that more than 70 per cent of breaches involve the misuse of identities, underscoring why identity security must be the top priority. It explains that attackers are increasingly logging in rather than hacking in, using valid credentials to gain persistence, lateral movement and data exfiltration.

To close the identity gap, it advocates steps such as least privilege at scale, continuous monitoring of identity behaviour, securing non-human identities, phishing‑resistant authentication, and automated lifecycle management, all framed as essential to make identity protection a board‑level concern. According to Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.