Phishing awareness articles teach readers to identify and avoid phishing attacks across email, SMS, voice calls, and social media. Content includes real-world phishing examples, red flags to watch for, reporting procedures, and tips for running phishing simulation campaigns.
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A Single Ransomware Attack Shut Down Patient Care for 28 Days In early 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the United States — was hit by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group. The breach disrupted claims processing for thousands of providers nationwide. UnitedHealth Group later confirmed approximately
The Breach That Cost a Children's Charity Everything In 2023, Save the Children Federation confirmed it was hit by the BianLian ransomware group, which claimed to have stolen nearly 7 GB of data including financial records, personal information, and medical data. A global nonprofit with significant resources still
The Sector Threat Actors Love to Target In September 2023, the Minneapolis Public Schools district saw 300,000 files dumped on the dark web after refusing to pay a $1 million ransom. Student psychological evaluations, sexual assault reports, Social Security numbers — all publicly exposed. That breach wasn't an
The Misconfigured Bucket That Exposed 540 Million Records In 2019, researchers at UpGuard discovered that Facebook app developers had stored hundreds of millions of user records in Amazon S3 buckets with public access enabled. No hacking. No zero-day exploit. Just a misconfiguration checkbox that nobody reviewed. That single oversight sits
In 2023, a single compromised employee phone gave threat actors a foothold inside MGM Resorts' network. The attackers used social engineering — a phone call to the help desk — and within hours, they had enough access to deploy ransomware that cost the company over $100 million. The device that started
82% of Phishing Sites Now Target Mobile Devices In late 2024, a wave of toll-road smishing texts hit millions of Americans. The messages claimed unpaid tolls from agencies like E-ZPass and SunPass, directing victims to pixel-perfect payment pages optimized for mobile screens. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center
A 45-Minute Training Video Never Stopped a Breach In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a social engineering attack that started with a phone call to the help desk. The attacker didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability. They exploited a human. And I guarantee every employee
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&
The CEO Who Clicked the Link In 2024, the SEC charged SolarWinds' CISO with fraud for misleading investors about the company's cybersecurity posture. That case sent a clear message: cybersecurity accountability now sits in the executive suite, not just the IT department. If you're a
The CEO Who Wired $47 Million to a Threat Actor In 2016, Austrian aerospace manufacturer FACC fired its CEO after the company lost €42 million (roughly $47 million) in a business email compromise attack. A threat actor impersonated the CEO via email and convinced a finance employee to wire funds
