Tag

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

What Is Spoofing? The Attack Behind Most Breaches

In July 2020, attackers spoofed internal Twitter tools to hijack 130 high-profile accounts — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — and ran a Bitcoin scam that netted over $100,000 in hours. The attack didn't rely on some exotic zero-day exploit. It relied on spoofing: making something fake

Carl B. Johnson Aug 08, 2021 7 min read
Phishing Attack

Phishing Attack Anatomy: How Breaches Actually Start

In May 2021, a single phishing attack against Colonial Pipeline's legacy VPN account triggered the largest fuel supply disruption in U.S. history. One compromised credential. No multi-factor authentication. Five days of chaos across the Eastern Seaboard. That's what a phishing attack looks like when it

Carl B. Johnson Jul 13, 2021 7 min read
Phishing News

Phishing News: The Attacks Dominating 2021 So Far

2021's Phishing Landscape Is Unlike Anything We've Seen Before In March, Microsoft reported that a massive phishing campaign had targeted over 10,000 organizations since January 2021, using sophisticated OAuth token theft to bypass multi-factor authentication. That single campaign should have been a wake-up call. Instead,

Carl B. Johnson Jul 13, 2021 7 min read
Phishing Scams

Phishing Scams: What's Actually Working in 2021

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported $4.2 billion in losses from cybercrime in 2020 — and phishing scams were the number one reported attack type, with 241,342 complaints. That's not a typo. Nearly a quarter of a million people filed formal complaints about phishing

Carl B. Johnson Jul 13, 2021 7 min read
Is It Legit

Removed App: Is It Legit or a Security Risk?

When "Removed" Shows Up, Your Instincts Are Right to Question It Last month, I received three separate emails from readers asking the same question: they'd encountered an app, service, or website branded as "Removed" and wanted to know — removed is it legit? The fact

Carl B. Johnson Jul 13, 2021 7 min read
Phishing

Define Phishing: What It Really Looks Like in 2021

In March 2021, a single phishing email led to the compromise of over 30,000 U.S. organizations through the Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities. The attackers didn't need a sophisticated zero-day to get their initial foothold — they needed someone to click. If you're trying to define

Carl B. Johnson Jul 01, 2021 7 min read
Computer Virus Prevention

Computer Virus Prevention: 9 Steps That Actually Work

In May 2021, a single compromised password shut down Colonial Pipeline — the largest fuel pipeline in the United States. Gasoline shortages spread across the Southeast. The company paid a $4.4 million ransom in Bitcoin. The root cause wasn't some exotic zero-day exploit. It was a legacy VPN

Carl B. Johnson Jul 01, 2021 7 min read
Security of Cyberspace

Security of Cyberspace: What Actually Works in 2021

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in May 2021 shut down fuel delivery across the U.S. East Coast for nearly a week. Gas stations ran dry. Panic buying erupted. A single compromised password — reportedly linked to an inactive VPN account without multi-factor authentication — brought critical infrastructure to its knees. If

Carl B. Johnson Jun 03, 2021 6 min read
IT Security

IT Security in 2021: What Most Organizations Get Wrong

Colonial Pipeline. SolarWinds. Microsoft Exchange. We're barely halfway through 2021 and the breach headlines are relentless. But here's what frustrates me most: the majority of these incidents didn't exploit exotic zero-day vulnerabilities. They exploited basic IT security gaps that organizations have known about for

Carl B. Johnson Jun 01, 2021 7 min read
Computer Security Security

Computer Security Security: Layers That Actually Work

The Colonial Pipeline Just Proved Your Security Needs Security On May 7, 2021, a single compromised password shut down 5,500 miles of fuel pipeline. Colonial Pipeline paid a $4.4 million ransom within hours. The attack didn't exploit some exotic zero-day. It walked through a legacy VPN

Carl B. Johnson Jun 01, 2021 6 min read