Computer Security News and Insights
The Hiring Manager Who Ignored Every Applicant's Diploma A few years ago, I sat in on a hiring panel for a mid-level SOC analyst position. The hiring manager tossed a stack of resumes on the table and said, "I don't care what school any of
A Single Click Cost One Hospital System $67 Million In 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the U.S. — was hit by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group. The attack disrupted claims processing for thousands of providers nationwide. UnitedHealth Group, its parent company, reported costs exceeding
The $350 Million Checkbox That Wasn't Checked When Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017, two massive data breaches — affecting all three billion Yahoo accounts — knocked $350 million off the purchase price. The breaches had happened years earlier, but inadequate cybersecurity due diligence meant the full scope wasn't
The Sticky Note That Cost a Hospital $3 Million A nurse left a sticky note with login credentials on her monitor. A visitor photographed it. Within 48 hours, a threat actor had accessed patient records for over 10,000 individuals. The resulting HIPAA settlement wasn't pretty. I'
The Virus That Cost a Hospital $65 Million In 2017, the WannaCry ransomware tore through the UK's National Health Service, locking down systems at over 80 organizations and forcing hospitals to divert ambulances. The estimated cost exceeded £92 million. The root cause? Unpatched Windows machines running a known
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor social-engineered a help desk employee with a ten-minute phone call. The attacker didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability. They exploited a gap in employee policy — specifically, the identity verification process for password resets. A strong cybersecurity
In January 2024, security researchers at Checkmarx uncovered a massive man in the middle attack campaign targeting the Python Package Index (PyPI), where threat actors intercepted developer credentials and injected malicious code into software supply chains. The attack went undetected for months. This wasn't some exotic nation-state operation
In early 2024, Ivanti disclosed critical vulnerabilities in its Connect Secure VPN that were already being actively exploited by threat actors — including nation-state groups. CISA issued an emergency directive ordering federal agencies to disconnect affected devices within 48 hours. If that doesn't make you rethink your VPN best
700,000 Openings and Counting — Why Jobs in Computer Security Are Exploding The U.S. had roughly 700,000 unfilled cybersecurity positions in 2024, according to CyberSeek, a project supported by NIST and CompTIA. That number hasn't shrunk. If anything, the demand for jobs in computer security has
A consultant nearly lost his entire Google account — not to a sloppy spam email, but to an AI-generated voice call that sounded exactly like Google support, complete with a follow-up email from what appeared to be an official Google domain. That's the new reality. Gmail users warned about
