Carl B. Johnson
Author

Carl B. Johnson

vCISO and compliance expert.

https://carlbjohnson.com

posts

Phishing Emails

How Phishing Emails Work: The Psychology Behind the Click

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — making it the most reported cybercrime category for the fifth consecutive year. But here's what the raw numbers don't tell you: every single one of those incidents started with a

Carl B. Johnson May 06, 2026 5 min read
group online svindel

Group Online Svindel: How Fraud Rings Target You

In 2023, the FBI's IC3 received over 880,000 cybercrime complaints with losses exceeding $12.5 billion — and a growing share of those losses trace back to organized fraud rings, not lone hackers. Group online svindel — the coordinated, scalable online fraud committed by organized threat actor groups — is

Carl B. Johnson May 06, 2026 5 min read
Fake Email

Fake Email: How to Spot One Before It Costs You

In 2019, a Lithuanian national named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $100 million from Google and Facebook using nothing more than a series of fake email messages. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, sent invoices from a lookalike domain, and two of the most technologically sophisticated companies on

Carl B. Johnson May 06, 2026 5 min read
Phish Food

Phish Food: What Employees Click and Why It Works

Your Employees Are Hungry — And Threat Actors Are Cooking In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) logged over 298,000 phishing complaints — more than any other cybercrime category for the fifth year running. That's nearly 817 reported phishing attacks per day. And those are

Carl B. Johnson May 05, 2026 5 min read
Cyber Security

Cyber Security in 2026: What Actually Stops Breaches

A $9.5 Billion Problem That Keeps Getting Worse The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported $12.5 billion in cybercrime losses in 2023 — a figure that's only climbed since. If you're searching for answers about cyber security, you're asking the

Carl B. Johnson May 05, 2026 5 min read
Phishing Attack Examples

Phishing Attack Examples: Real Incidents That Cost Millions

A Single Email That Cost $100 Million In 2019, Toyota Boshoku Corporation lost $37 million after an employee followed wire transfer instructions in a fraudulent email. Facebook and Google collectively lost over $100 million to a Lithuanian threat actor who sent fake invoices posing as a hardware vendor. These aren&

Carl B. Johnson May 05, 2026 5 min read
Shadow IT Risks

Shadow IT Risks: The Threats Hiding in Your Network

In 2023, a midsize healthcare company discovered that an employee had been syncing patient records to a personal Dropbox account for over two years. No malicious intent — just convenience. The result was a HIPAA violation, a six-figure settlement, and a brutal lesson in shadow IT risks that the organization'

Carl B. Johnson May 04, 2026 5 min read
Third Party Risk Management

Third Party Vendor Cybersecurity Risk: A Practical Guide

The Breach That Didn't Start With You In 2023, the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability gave threat actors a master key to thousands of organizations — not through their own systems, but through a single third-party file transfer tool. Over 2,600 organizations and 77 million individuals were impacted, according to

Carl B. Johnson May 04, 2026 6 min read
Mobile Phishing Attacks

Mobile Phishing Attacks: Why Your Phone Is Now Target #1

Your Employees' Phones Are Under Siege In March 2024, MGM Resorts was still reeling from one of the most expensive social engineering attacks in corporate history — one that started with a phone call, not an email. That incident cost the company over $100 million. And it's not

Carl B. Johnson May 04, 2026 6 min read
Cybersecurity Best Practices

Cybersecurity Best Practices for Employees in 2026

One Click Cost MGM Resorts $100 Million In September 2023, a threat actor called Scattered Spider called MGM Resorts' IT help desk, impersonated an employee found on LinkedIn, and gained access to the company's entire network. The result: over $100 million in losses, days of disrupted operations,

Carl B. Johnson May 03, 2026 6 min read