Using Google Alerts
Keeping on top of Information Security news is good for building your knowledge, awareness, and understanding of both the industry and the professional community.
Google Alerts is just one way to harness the powerful stream of information that is published about Cybersecurity, Malware, and more.
Go to https://www.google.com/alerts
Enter a term you want to receive alerts about. For instance, malware.
Note: you do NOT need to have a Gmail address to use Google Alerts
Embrace Boolean!
If you want to get fancy, you can do more than just search for a single term. If you are unfamiliar with how to do this, read “How to Do a Boolean Search in Google.”
NOTE: The Boolean term NOT doesn’t work well in Google. So, you use a dash (-) symbol before the term you want to exclude. See below.
Use quotation marks to search an exact term like “information security” if you want to keep those words together. The best way to figure out which search terms to use is by checking the results to see if you are getting the kind of hits you are looking for.
Click the down arrow next to “Show options”
Decide how often, in which language, and other specifics to add to your search term.
Click “Create Alert”
Click on the round cog icon above the trash can icon
Here, you can change the time of day you receive the email Google Alert and also change if you receive news as it happens or a digest which compiles many stories together.
If you made any changes, Click Save
NOTE: You will not receive an email immediately. It will be delivered at the time you set it to arrive. See image above for clarification. HOWEVER, if you want to see your results now, just click on the search term in your “My alerts” section.
When you start receiving emails, they will look like this:
Notice that the email has an “unsubscribe” link
You can either unsubscribe to stop the alerts from coming, or make edits to further tune the alert. Look for the “see more results” and “edit the alert” links at the end of each topic section in the email.
If you need further assistance, check out this help page on Google just about Alerts. https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en
