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Cyber Hygiene

Covers the foundational daily habits and routine practices that keep your digital life secure. Topics include password management, software updates, secure browsing, account maintenance, and simple steps individuals and organizations can take to reduce their attack surface.

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Cyber Hygiene

What Is Cyber Hygiene? The Daily Habits That Stop Breaches

A Single Unpatched Laptop Cost One Hospital $3 Million In 2023, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services settled with a healthcare provider after a ransomware attack that started on one employee's unpatched workstation. The machine hadn't been updated in over 90 days. That

Carl B. Johnson Apr 02, 2026 5 min read
Cyber Hygiene

Cyber Hygiene Definition: What It Really Means in 2026

A Single Reused Password Cost One Company Everything In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast. The entry point? A single compromised password on a legacy VPN account that lacked multi-factor authentication. That's not a sophisticated nation-state exploit. That&

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 6 min read
Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: What Actually Works

Every October, Organizations Pretend to Care About Security Last October, a mid-sized healthcare company ran a poster campaign for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Inspirational quotes about passwords. A lunch-and-learn nobody attended. Two weeks later, a threat actor walked through their defenses using a single phishing email that an accounts payable clerk

Carl B. Johnson Dec 14, 2019 6 min read
Cyber Hygiene

Cyber Hygiene Definition: What It Really Means in 2026

A Preventable Breach That Started With One Reused Password In 2024, the breach at Change Healthcare disrupted pharmacy operations across the United States for weeks. The root cause? A compromised credential on a system that lacked multi-factor authentication. That single gap — a basic cyber hygiene failure — led to one of

Carl B. Johnson Aug 20, 2019 6 min read
Cyber Hygiene

What Is Cyber Hygiene? The Daily Habits That Stop Breaches

A Stolen Password, a $4.88 Million Problem In 2024, IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report pegged the global average breach cost at $4.88 million — the highest figure ever recorded. The root cause in most of those incidents wasn't a sophisticated zero-day exploit. It

Carl B. Johnson Aug 20, 2019 7 min read