It's testing time for Facebook employees!

October is “Hacktober” month to Facebook. You must be wondering what is Hacktober? October is National Cyber Security Awareness month and Facebook takes this month very seriously. During this month, Facebook plays a game of “trick or treat” to test how prepared employees are in defending cyber attacks.

They will be sent phishing emails or rogue authentication pushes and USB sticks are left around with fake malware to check who falls for the trick. Those who fail will be given training and the ones who don’t get fooled will be rewarded with Hacktober schwag: stickers, hats, magnet, and shirts.

The director of security at Facebook, Aanchal Gupta said that the firm will give training about cybersecurity to the employees once in a while. Post-training session, a survey of the participants was conducted and the result was that the attendees were not satisfied with the training or they did not retain much of what was in it.  

“Because it was just something they heard once, and they’re like ‘OK, this is a checkbox requirement. I’m going to do it, [and then] forget about it,” she said at the 2018 Borderless Cyber conference on Oct 4. “So, we switched gears and we came up with this idea of Hacktober.”

There are more activities like fireside chats with experts outside, a hands-on lock-picking class, and tours of the company’s global security operations center.

That is not the end of the story, the firm started Hacktober Facebook group. Employees here can give feedback, post questions, or talk about current security threats.