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Cybersecurity Awareness

Articles on cybersecurity awareness cover the foundational knowledge individuals and organizations need to recognize and respond to digital threats. Topics include safe browsing habits, password hygiene, social engineering tactics, and building a security-first culture across teams.

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Spoofing

Spoofing Attacks: How Hackers Impersonate You

A CFO, a Spoofed Email, and a $37 Million Wire Transfer In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) continued reporting staggering losses from business email compromise — a category where spoofing is the engine that makes the scam work. Threat actors forge sender addresses, manipulate caller IDs,

Carl B. Johnson Jun 18, 2019 8 min read
Spoofing

Spoof Attacks: How Threat Actors Trick Your Defenses

The CEO Email That Cost a Company $47 Million In 2015, Ubiquiti Networks disclosed that attackers impersonating company executives via spoofed emails tricked employees into wiring $46.7 million to overseas accounts. The emails looked legitimate. The sender addresses appeared correct. No malware was involved. The entire attack hinged on

Carl B. Johnson Jun 18, 2019 7 min read
Phishing Email

Phishing Email Tactics in 2026: What Actually Works

Last year, a finance director at a mid-size logistics company wired $1.2 million to a threat actor who sent a single phishing email impersonating the CEO. The email contained no malware, no suspicious attachments, and no misspelled words. It simply asked for an urgent wire transfer, referenced a real

Carl B. Johnson Jun 12, 2019 7 min read
Phishing

Phishing Attacks in 2026: How to Spot and Stop Them

A Single Phishing Email Cost This Company $100 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that phishing — often misspelled as "phising" — remained the most reported cybercrime category, with hundreds of thousands of complaints filed in a single year. But the raw numbers don&

Carl B. Johnson Jun 12, 2019 7 min read
Phishing Scams

What Is a Phishing Scam? A Security Pro's Real Guide

The $4.88 Million Email That Looked Completely Normal In 2023, a finance employee at a midsize manufacturing firm received an email from what appeared to be the CEO. It referenced a real acquisition the company was working on. It used the CEO's actual email signature. The employee

Carl B. Johnson Jun 12, 2019 7 min read
Spoofing

What Is Spoofing? The Attack Behind Most Breaches

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 complaints related to phishing and spoofing — making it the number one reported cybercrime category for the fifth year running. That wasn't a fluke. Spoofing is the backbone of almost every major social engineering campaign

Carl B. Johnson Apr 01, 2019 7 min read
Group Online Svindel

Group Online Svindel: How Organized Fraud Rings Work

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported over $12.5 billion in losses from internet crime — a staggering 22% increase from the year before. Behind many of these losses weren't lone hackers in basements. They were organized groups running coordinated group online svindel

Carl B. Johnson Apr 01, 2019 7 min read
Security of Cyberspace

Security of Cyberspace: What Actually Works in 2026

In February 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the United States — suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted pharmacy operations, delayed insurance claims, and exposed the protected health information of roughly 100 million people. One set of stolen credentials. No multi-factor authentication on a critical system.

Carl B. Johnson Feb 25, 2019 6 min read
Security for System Administrators

Security for System Administrators: A 2026 Field Guide

The Breach That Started With a Single Unpatched Server In 2023, the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability (CVE-2023-34362) let the Cl0p ransomware gang compromise thousands of organizations worldwide — including federal agencies and major financial institutions. The root cause wasn't exotic malware or a sophisticated zero-day chain. It was a known

Carl B. Johnson Feb 25, 2019 7 min read
IT Security

IT Security in 2026: What Actually Works Now

In February 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health IT companies in the United States — suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted insurance claims processing for thousands of hospitals and pharmacies nationwide. UnitedHealth Group, its parent company, later disclosed that the breach affected roughly 100 million individuals. The root cause?

Carl B. Johnson Feb 22, 2019 7 min read