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Ransomware

How Ransomware Spreads: 5 Attack Vectors You Must Block

A Single Click Cost One Hospital $67 Million In September 2020, Universal Health Services — one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S. — got hit by the Ryuk ransomware strain. The attack shut down systems across 400 facilities. Patients were diverted. Records went analog. The final damage? An estimated

Carl B. Johnson Mar 12, 2021 7 min read
Ransomware Protection Tips

Ransomware Protection Tips That Actually Work in 2021

A Hospital Paid $17 Million. Your Organization Could Be Next. In September 2020, Universal Health Services got hit with Ryuk ransomware across 400 facilities. The damage? An estimated $67 million in recovery costs and lost revenue. A few months earlier, Garmin paid a reported $10 million ransom to get its

Carl B. Johnson Feb 24, 2021 7 min read
Data Breach Prevention

Data Breach Prevention: 9 Steps That Actually Work

In December 2020, SolarWinds disclosed that threat actors had compromised its Orion software platform, ultimately breaching at least nine U.S. federal agencies and over 100 private companies. The attack went undetected for months. It wasn't a zero-day exploit that got them in — it was a compromised build

Carl B. Johnson Feb 24, 2021 7 min read
Data Breach

What Causes a Data Breach: 7 Real Threats in 2021

In July 2020, Twitter disclosed that attackers had compromised 130 high-profile accounts — including those of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — through a social engineering attack targeting employees with access to internal tools. The breach didn't involve some exotic zero-day exploit. It started with phone calls to Twitter

Carl B. Johnson Jan 20, 2021 7 min read
Data Breach Response Plan

Data Breach Response Plan: What Actually Works

When SolarWinds disclosed in December 2020 that threat actors had compromised their Orion software update mechanism — infiltrating roughly 18,000 customer networks including multiple U.S. government agencies — the breach didn't just expose data. It exposed how many organizations had no real data breach response plan in place.

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 8 min read
Data Breach Reporting

How to Report a Data Breach: A Step-by-Step Guide

The Clock Starts Ticking the Moment You Discover a Breach In December 2020, FireEye disclosed it had been breached by a sophisticated threat actor — a revelation that quickly unraveled into the massive SolarWinds supply chain compromise affecting 18,000 organizations including multiple U.S. government agencies. The question every security

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 7 min read
Cost of a Data Breach

Cost of a Data Breach: What 2021 Trends Tell Us

The Cost of a Data Breach Is Already Staggering — And the Trajectory Is Alarming In 2020, the average cost of a data breach hit $3.86 million globally, according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute's annual Cost of a Data Breach Report. That number has been climbing steadily

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 6 min read
Data Breach Notification Requirements

Data Breach Notification Requirements: A 2021 Guide

The SolarWinds Breach Just Made Notification a National Crisis In December 2020, FireEye disclosed that a sophisticated threat actor had compromised SolarWinds Orion software, giving attackers access to roughly 18,000 organizations — including the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security, and Fortune 500 companies. Weeks later, we'

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 8 min read
Password Security

Password Security Best Practices That Actually Work

The Breach That Started With a Single Reused Password In December 2020, the SolarWinds breach dominated every security headline on the planet. But while the world fixated on nation-state threat actors and supply chain attacks, I kept thinking about a detail that emerged early: a SolarWinds intern had reportedly set

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 7 min read