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Cybersecurity Basics

Foundational cybersecurity knowledge for beginners and anyone looking to strengthen core security habits. Posts cover essential topics like strong password creation, software updates, recognizing social engineering attacks, securing home networks, and understanding common threat types.

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Phishing Attacks

What Is a Phishing Attack? A Real-World Breakdown

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 complaints about phishing — making it the most reported cybercrime category for the fifth year running. That's not a number on a slide deck. That's hundreds of thousands of real organizations bleeding money,

Carl B. Johnson Feb 16, 2020 7 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
Phishing

What Is Phishing? The Attack Behind 80% of Breaches

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — making it the most reported cybercrime for the fifth consecutive year. Yet every week, I still talk to business owners who think phishing is just "those obvious Nigerian prince emails." It'

Carl B. Johnson Jul 04, 2019 7 min read
Phishing Links

What Is a Phishing Link? How to Spot and Stop Them

Last year, a finance director at a mid-sized logistics company clicked a link in what looked like a DocuSign notification. Fourteen seconds later, a threat actor had her Microsoft 365 credentials. Within two hours, the attacker had redirected a $380,000 wire transfer to an overseas account. The link she

Carl B. Johnson Apr 01, 2019 7 min read
What Is Cybersecurity

What Is Cybersecurity? A Practitioner's Real-World Guide

The Question Everyone Asks After the Breach In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider social-engineered its way past the help desk with a single phone call. The attackers didn't exploit some exotic zero-day vulnerability. They called IT, pretended to

Carl B. Johnson Feb 22, 2019 7 min read
Define Cyber

Define Cyber: What It Really Means in 2026

A Two-Billion-Dollar Word Nobody Can Explain In 2023, the SEC adopted new cybersecurity disclosure rules requiring every public company to report material cyber incidents within four business days. Boards scrambled. Legal teams panicked. And a surprising number of executives asked the same question behind closed doors: what does "cyber&

Carl B. Johnson Feb 02, 2019 6 min read