Carl B. Johnson
Author

Carl B. Johnson

vCISO and compliance expert.

https://carlbjohnson.com

posts

Cloud Computing Security

Cloud Computing Security: What Goes Wrong in 2025

In January 2025, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report team was already tracking a sharp rise in cloud-specific intrusions — a trend that accelerated throughout the year. By mid-2025, roughly 45% of all breaches involved cloud assets, up significantly from prior years. If your organization moved to the cloud and assumed

Carl B. Johnson Sep 27, 2025 7 min read
Computer Security Advice

Computer Security Advice That Actually Works in 2025

In March 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost over $16 billion to cybercrime in 2024 — a 33% increase from the prior year. That number isn't abstract. It represents real people and real businesses that thought their defenses were good enough. I&

Carl B. Johnson Sep 27, 2025 7 min read
Computer Security Software

Computer Security Software: What Actually Stops Breaches

In March 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost over $16 billion to cybercrime in 2024 — the highest figure ever recorded. Every single one of those victims had some form of computer security software installed. Antivirus was running. Firewalls were configured. And yet, the

Carl B. Johnson Sep 27, 2025 7 min read
Define Cyber

Define Cyber: What It Really Means in 2025

A Three-Letter Prefix That Now Governs Trillions of Dollars When the White House released its updated National Cybersecurity Strategy implementation plan in 2024, the word "cyber" appeared over 400 times in a single document. The Pentagon has an entire command built around it — U.S. Cyber Command. The

Carl B. Johnson Sep 27, 2025 6 min read
Security in Cloud Computing

Security in Cloud Computing: What Goes Wrong in 2025

The Breach That Started With a Single Misconfigured S3 Bucket In 2023, Toyota disclosed that the vehicle data of 2.15 million customers had been publicly accessible for over a decade — because a cloud database was set to public instead of private. No sophisticated threat actor. No zero-day exploit. Just

Carl B. Johnson Sep 27, 2025 7 min read
Phishing Emails

How Phishing Emails Work: The Psychology Behind the Click

In March 2025, a finance director at a mid-sized manufacturing company wired $2.3 million to a bank account in Southeast Asia. The request came from what looked like the CEO's email — same signature, same tone, same thread about an acquisition they'd been discussing for weeks.

Carl B. Johnson Sep 27, 2025 8 min read
Phishing Awareness Training

Phishing Awareness Training: What Actually Works in 2025

In March 2025, a mid-size logistics company in the Midwest lost $2.3 million after a single employee clicked a fake DocuSign link. The attacker harvested credentials, pivoted into the company's financial systems, and initiated wire transfers over a long weekend. The employee had never received phishing awareness

Carl B. Johnson Sep 25, 2025 8 min read
phishing training for employees

Phishing Training for Employees: What Actually Works

A Single Click Cost MGM Resorts $100 Million In September 2023, a threat actor called Scattered Spider social-engineered an MGM Resorts help desk employee with a phone call. That single interaction — not a sophisticated zero-day exploit, not a nation-state supply chain attack — led to a ransomware incident that cost the

Carl B. Johnson Sep 25, 2025 7 min read
Phishing Email

How to Recognize a Phishing Email Before You Click

The Email That Cost One Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that phishing and its variants remained the number one reported cybercrime by volume, with over 298,000 complaints in a single year. But here's the part that should keep

Carl B. Johnson Sep 25, 2025 8 min read