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.
posts
In 2024, a finance team at a mid-size logistics company wired $25 million to a threat actor who impersonated their CFO on a deepfake video call. Every person on that call had passed their company's annual security training. Every single one. That's the gap between checking
That Gmail Account Access Warning Might Be Real — Or a Trap Last month, a mid-sized accounting firm in Texas lost access to every client file they had. It started with a single employee who received what looked like a legitimate Gmail account access warning — a notification claiming someone in another
The Email That Cost One Company $37 Million In 2024, a single phishing email led to a business email compromise attack against Orion SA, a Luxembourg-based metals trading company, resulting in a $60 million wire transfer to threat actor-controlled accounts. The company later recovered roughly $23 million. The email looked
The Policy Everyone Signs and Nobody Reads In 2023, a single employee at a major casino operator plugged a personal USB device into a workstation. That device carried malware. Within hours, threat actors had lateral movement across the network. The resulting breach cost over $100 million in damages, downtime, and
The Textbook Got It Wrong In 2023, MGM Resorts lost roughly $100 million after a threat actor social-engineered their IT help desk with a single phone call. The attackers didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability. They didn't write custom malware. They just talked their way in. If
The IRS Never Calls Like That — But the Number Said Otherwise In 2019, the Department of Justice announced the takedown of a massive India-based call center scam that defrauded U.S. victims out of hundreds of millions of dollars. The callers impersonated IRS agents, and their secret weapon was simple:
A Single Text Message Cost This Company $15 Million In 2022, Twilio disclosed that a coordinated smishing campaign tricked employees into entering credentials on a fake login page. Attackers used those credentials to access internal systems and compromise data for over 100 customers. The whole thing started with a text
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. Despite billions spent on security technology, a single deceptive email still remains the most reliable way for a threat actor to breach an
A Single Email Cost This Company $37 Million In 2016, FACC, an Austrian aerospace parts manufacturer, lost €42 million (roughly $47 million at the time) after attackers impersonated the CEO and convinced a finance employee to wire funds to accounts controlled by threat actors. The employee believed they were following
The $20 Million Breach That Started on a Home Wi-Fi Network In 2024, a healthcare company disclosed a breach that exposed 11 million patient records. The root cause? A remote employee connected to an unsecured home network, clicked a phishing link, and handed over VPN credentials to a threat actor.
