Nacha Alliance Releases Scam Game and Ransomware Kit for Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance has released new and updated cybersecurity resources for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The release is dated 1 October 2026, per a Business Wire identifier linked to the release; the release’s own text also places it within ‘2026’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month.’

The Alliance is the membership organisation within Nacha, which governs the ACH Network. The release says its materials come from the Alliance’s Cybersecurity & Payments AI Project Team. The items are aimed at employees and at small and medium-sized businesses.

What the Nacha resources include

The first item is a new Hacker Hunt game. The release says it helps employees recognise common scam communications. The release gives no further detail on how the game is played.

The second item is an updated tabletop exercise kit. It is designed to help small and medium-sized businesses prepare for a ransomware attack.

Both items are aimed at the audiences the release names: employees, and small and medium-sized businesses. The game addresses staff who receive scam messages, and the kit addresses the business side of a ransomware attack.

Incident response planning
CISA’s page recommends that all organisations, including small ones, keep and use an incident response plan, and report incidents to CISA.

How the wider October campaign is organised

StaySafeOnline, the page for the month, uses the theme ‘Don’t Make It Easy for Them’. The page says the campaign has run every October since its launch in 2004, and it notes that CISA was created in 2018.

The page lists four recommended steps: use strong passwords and a password manager, turn on multifactor authentication, recognise and report scams, and update software. A free toolkit is available to registered 2026 Champions. It includes a tipsheet, eight printable posters, 16 social media graphics and 16 Instagram Story graphics.

The page names ransomware, identity theft, social engineering, data breaches and AI-assisted scams among the threats it covers. It lists a virtual kick-off event on 1 October 2026. CISA’s own page separately lists Cybersecurity Career Week, which runs from 19 to 24 October 2026.

What CISA and a local webinar say small businesses should do

CISA’s page says small and medium businesses supply and support critical infrastructure, so they should be secure enough to avoid incidents that could affect essential services. It recommends that all organisations, including small ones, use logging, back up and encrypt data, and obtain a .gov domain if eligible.

The same page recommends reporting incidents to CISA, keeping and using an incident response plan, and preparing for system disruptions. It also points to CISA’s no-cost cyber hygiene services and links to a resource titled Secure Your Business.

A separate listing on the SBA site describes a free online webinar on protecting small businesses from common cyber threats. It was hosted by the Staten Island Small Business Development Center and scheduled for 7 October 2026, from 10:00 to 11:15 a.m. EDT, online. The description covers how hackers target small businesses and basic steps to strengthen networks. The listing does not show a publication date.

The updated kit helps small and medium-sized businesses prepare for a ransomware attack.

What the sources do not show

None of the pages reports how many organisations have used the Nacha resources or what results they produced. The SBA listing has no publication date. CISA’s page does not name campaign partners and gives no start or end date for October itself.

For readers without a security team, the sources point to a common set of starting points: password managers, multifactor authentication, a practised response plan and free resources from government and industry. None of the pages says these steps prevent an attack. The Nacha release and the SBA listing both describe October 2026 resources rather than breaking news.

Photo: Rsparks3 · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons