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Data Breach Prevention

Explores strategies and best practices for preventing data breaches in organizations of all sizes. Covers topics like access controls, encryption, network monitoring, incident response planning, and employee awareness to help reduce the risk of unauthorized data exposure.

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Cyber Hygiene

Cyber Hygiene Definition: What It Really Means in 2026

A Single Reused Password Cost One Company Everything In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast. The entry point? A single compromised password on a legacy VPN account that lacked multi-factor authentication. That's not a sophisticated nation-state exploit. That&

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 6 min read
Cyber Hygiene Checklist

Cyber Hygiene Checklist: 12 Steps That Actually Work

In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider social-engineered an IT help desk with a ten-minute phone call. No zero-day exploit. No nation-state tooling. Just sloppy basics. That breach — and hundreds like it every year — could have been prevented with a disciplined

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 7 min read
Board-Level Cybersecurity Awareness

Board-Level Cybersecurity Awareness: A Survival Guide

The SEC Just Made Ignorance Expensive In July 2023, the SEC finalized rules requiring public companies to disclose material cybersecurity incidents within four business days — and to describe their board's oversight of cyber risk annually. That single regulatory move turned board-level cybersecurity awareness from a nice-to-have into a

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 6 min read
Third Party Risk Management

Third Party Vendor Cybersecurity Risk: A Practical Guide

In 2023, a single compromised file transfer tool — MOVEit — cascaded into breaches affecting over 2,600 organizations and roughly 90 million individuals. The threat actor, the Cl0p ransomware group, didn't need to hack each victim directly. They exploited one vendor, and the dominoes fell. That's third

Carl B. Johnson Jul 27, 2020 7 min read
Vendor Risk Management

Vendor Risk Management Cybersecurity: A Practical Guide

The Breach That Didn't Start With You In 2023, the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability didn't just hit Progress Software. It cascaded through thousands of organizations — government agencies, banks, healthcare systems — because those organizations trusted a single vendor's file transfer tool. Over 2,600 organizations and

Carl B. Johnson Jul 19, 2020 8 min read
Cybersecurity Due Diligence

Cybersecurity Due Diligence: What Most Companies Miss

The $350 Million Wake-Up Call Nobody Expected When Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017, a previously undisclosed breach affecting 3 billion accounts forced the deal price down by $350 million. That single failure of cybersecurity due diligence became the most expensive cautionary tale in M&A history — and it permanently

Carl B. Johnson Jun 25, 2020 7 min read
Dark Web Monitoring

Dark Web Monitoring for Businesses: A Practical Guide

Your Employees' Passwords Are Already for Sale In March 2024, a single dark web marketplace listed over 10 billion stolen credentials. That's not a typo. The Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found that stolen credentials were involved in roughly 31% of all breaches over the past

Carl B. Johnson Jun 25, 2020 8 min read
Stolen Credentials Dark Web

Stolen Credentials Dark Web: How Your Logins End Up for Sale

In May 2024, the FBI and international partners seized BreachForums — one of the largest marketplaces where stolen credentials on the dark web were bought and sold in bulk. The forum had facilitated the sale of billions of compromised records, including credentials tied to U.S. government agencies, healthcare organizations, and

Carl B. Johnson Jun 25, 2020 7 min read