Actionable cybersecurity tips for individuals and organizations looking to strengthen their digital defenses. Topics range from password management and multi-factor authentication to device security, safe browsing habits, and incident response planning.
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In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — more than any other cybercrime category. That number has only climbed since. I've investigated breaches at organizations of every size, and the entry point is almost always the same: one employee who
A single employee at MGM Resorts answered a phone call from someone pretending to be a coworker. That one social engineering attack in September 2023 led to roughly $100 million in losses, a crippled reservation system, and slot machines going dark across Las Vegas. The attacker didn't exploit
In 2024, the average cost of a data breach hit $4.88 million according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report. That number keeps climbing. And after two decades in this field, I can tell you that most of those breaches didn't involve some sophisticated
In 2023, the FBI's IC3 received over 880,000 cybercrime complaints with losses exceeding $12.5 billion — and a massive chunk of those victims were everyday people sitting at home computers. Not Fortune 500 companies. Not government agencies. Regular people who thought their home setup was too small
The Breach That Started With a Single Password In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor social-engineered a help desk employee with a ten-minute phone call. The attackers didn't exploit some exotic zero-day vulnerability. They used basic social engineering — information scraped from LinkedIn
The Text Message That Cost One Company $15 Million In 2022, threat actors hit Twilio with an SMS-based social engineering attack that compromised employee credentials and exposed data for over 160 customers. The attack didn't involve a sophisticated zero-day exploit. It started with a text message pretending to
Last March, a finance director at a mid-size logistics company wired $2.1 million to a threat actor who had spoofed the CEO's email address. The message looked perfect — right tone, right signature, right sense of urgency. The only thing wrong was the reply-to domain, off by a
In March 2024, a finance director at a mid-size manufacturer in Ohio wired $2.3 million to a threat actor who impersonated the company's CEO — all because of a single phishing email. The message looked perfect: right logo, right tone, right email signature. It even referenced an actual
The Email That Cost MGM Resorts $100 Million In September 2023, a single social engineering attack — starting with a phone call but rooted in the same deception principles as phishing emails — led to a breach at MGM Resorts that cost the company over $100 million. The threat actors behind the
In January 2025, a finance director at a mid-sized manufacturing firm received an email from what appeared to be the company's CEO. The domain was off by one character. The request was urgent — wire $220,000 to a new vendor before end of day. She complied. The money
