Covers cybersecurity training programs, techniques, and best practices designed to equip employees and individuals with the skills to recognize and respond to cyber threats. Topics include security awareness curricula, simulation exercises, and measuring training effectiveness.
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The Phone Call That Cost MGM Resorts $100 Million In September 2023, a threat actor called MGM Resorts' IT help desk, impersonated an employee found on LinkedIn, and convinced a technician to reset credentials. That single vishing call — a voice phishing attack — triggered a ransomware event that shut down
In 2024, 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 when I ask executives to give me a phishing definition, most of them still say something like "those fake emails from
The Threat Already Inside Your Building In January 2024, a U.S. Navy engineer was sentenced to nearly 16 years in federal prison for attempting to sell nuclear submarine secrets to a foreign government. He'd been doing it for over a year before anyone noticed. The insider threat
A Marketing Team's Slack Alternative Cost Their Company $2.1 Million I once consulted for a mid-sized healthcare firm that suffered a data breach because three employees in the marketing department decided to use an unsanctioned project management tool. They uploaded patient-adjacent data to a platform with zero
In 2024, 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 when I ask executives to give me a phishing definition, most of them describe something from 2009: a Nigerian prince email with
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost roughly $100 million after a social engineering phone call lasting just ten minutes gave a threat actor access to internal systems. The attackers didn't exploit some exotic zero-day vulnerability. They manipulated a help desk employee. If your cyber security definition starts and stops
A USB Drive in the Parking Lot Changed Everything In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security ran a test. They scattered USB drives in the parking lots of government buildings and private contractors. Forty-eight percent of the people who picked them up plugged them into a work computer. Nearly all
The Credential Theft Problem Nobody Takes Seriously Enough In January 2024, a massive credential dump called "Naz.API" exposed over 70 million unique email addresses and passwords harvested from stealer malware and credential-stuffing operations. Most of those credentials worked because the victims reused passwords across multiple services. I&
In 2019, a Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $100 million from Google and Facebook — using nothing more than a series of fake email messages. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, sent invoices from spoofed email addresses, and two of the most sophisticated tech companies on
In 2023, a small accounting firm in Ohio discovered that a browser toolbar one employee installed — what looked like a harmless coupon finder — had been silently logging keystrokes and exfiltrating client tax records for eleven months. The toolbar was adware on the surface. Underneath, it was spyware. And the firm
