Pumpkin Spice, Old Passwords and Remember MySpace?

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is here. Let’s make it useful.It’s everyone’s favorite time of year again!

No, not pumpkin spice latte season. It’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Get ready for tips, tricks and “five things you must do immediately or face eternal doom” from every company you’ve ever given your email address to. Including, apparently, that store where you bought one candle in 2014.

We work in cybersecurity. We know the inbox is about to get crowded.

We also know it can be hard to separate useful advice from the noise, especially after weeks of Washington trying to get its arms around AI, its risks and predictions of human demise.

So let’s bring this down to something manageable: the little glass box in your hand.

We put our whole lives in there

Your phone is your bank, boarding pass, office, family photo album and the reason you know someone is standing at your front door. It holds your conversations, tracks your whereabouts and remembers the passwords you don’t.

We ask a lot of it. Occasionally, we should check what we’ve connected it to.

Remember Myspace? The profile song. The Top 8. The friendships tested by the Top 8.

You moved on. Did you ever close your account?

What about the fitness app from three resolutions ago? The shopping account you created for free shipping? The old email address still attached to something important?

Our digital lives keep growing, even when we stop paying attention.

Faster attacks make old problems matter more

AI agents don’t need to invent new ways to hack the internet to overwhelm its defenses. They can speed-run techniques humans already use.

Automating those techniques makes familiar weaknesses, such as exposed systems and outdated software, easier to pursue at scale. A problem that’s been sitting quietly for years can become an opportunity for an attacker.

That’s why this month’s familiar advice still matters. CISA’s 2026 theme, “Securing the Next 250,” starts with four basic actions:

Avoid and report phishing scams.
Use strong, unique passwords.
Use multifactor authentication and a password manager.
Keep software updated.

Yes, you’ve heard them before. Be honest: have you done them?

Give your digital life a fall cleanup

Start with your email. It’s where password-reset links arrive, which makes it especially important to protect. Give it a unique password, turn on multifactor authentication and check that your recovery information is current.

Then work through a few things you’ve probably been meaning to get around to.

Close accounts you no longer use. Search your inbox for “welcome” or “thanks for signing up.” Check your password manager. Visit each service directly, save anything you want to keep and follow its account-deletion process. Removing the app from your phone doesn’t necessarily delete the account.

Check who still has access. Review connected apps and permissions. Does that photo-editing app still need your location? Are there old devices signed into your accounts? Remove access you no longer need.

Let the update happen. Pick a time when you can spare your phone or laptop and install the updates. “Remind me tomorrow” has had a good run.

Make a family plan for suspicious requests. If someone texts asking for money (including my teenage step-daughter) a password or a verification code, check through a number or channel you already know. Agree on this before anyone gets the urgent “Mom, I lost my phone” message.

You don’t have to finish everything tonight. Start with your email, then tackle a few unused accounts while you’re waiting for that update.

The office could use a cleanup, too

Companies accumulate the same clutter, with more people and systems involved. Former employees’ accounts. Forgotten applications. Temporary access that became permanent. Software everyone assumed someone else was updating.

At Securin, we help organizations find those exposures, determine which ones attackers can actually use and verify that fixes close the attack path.

For a business, that means checking whether its defenses work against real attacks. For the rest of us, it can start with checking what we still have connected and whether we need it.

Enjoy the latte, install the update, and see whether your Myspace account is still out there.

Your profile song deserves a dignified retirement.