Computer Security News and Insights
In 2024, 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 write a single line of malicious code. They just talked their way in. That incident alone should end every debate about whether
The Phishing Email That Cost One Company $37 Million In 2024, a finance employee at a multinational firm in Hong Kong joined a video call with people who looked and sounded exactly like the company's CFO and other executives. Every face on that call was a deepfake. The
The Text Message That Cost One Company $15 Million In 2022, Twilio disclosed that a sophisticated smishing campaign tricked several employees into handing over their credentials via text messages impersonating the company's IT department. The attackers then used those stolen credentials to access internal systems and customer data.
In January 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center flagged business email compromise — much of it powered by man in the middle attack techniques — as responsible for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses during 2023 alone. That number isn't slowing down. I've investigated
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach hit $4.88 million globally, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report. That number keeps climbing. And yet, the root causes behind most breaches haven't changed much in the past decade. The same mistakes keep
The Clock Starts Ticking the Moment You Discover a Breach In March 2024, AT&T disclosed a massive data breach affecting approximately 73 million current and former customers — but the compromised data dated back years. The delay between compromise and discovery is common. What matters just as much is
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. Yet most of the phishing prevention tips circulating online read like they were written in 2009. "Don't click suspicious
A Single Email Cost This Company $47 Million In 2016, Austrian aerospace manufacturer FACC fired its CEO after a whaling attack tricked an employee into wiring €42 million to a threat actor's account. The attacker impersonated the CEO via email, requested an urgent fund transfer for a fake
In 2019, PricewaterhouseCoopers launched a gamified cybersecurity exercise called Game of Threats — a real-time digital board game that pitted executives against simulated threat actors. The result? Decision-makers who'd never engaged with security training before were suddenly competing to outmaneuver ransomware campaigns and credential theft attacks. Engagement didn'
We're barely halfway through 2026 and the breach disclosures are already piling up. From healthcare systems crippled by ransomware to credential theft campaigns that bypassed legacy MFA, the data breach examples of 2026 reinforce a pattern I've tracked for over a decade: organizations keep making the
