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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89% of Employees Think They'd Spot a Phish. The Data Says Otherwise. I ran a phishing simulation for a mid-size law firm last year. Before the test, we surveyed staff — 89% said they were confident they could identify a phishing email. Then we sent three simulated phishes over
Most Security Quizzes Are a Waste of Everyone's Time I recently reviewed the cybersecurity training program at a mid-size financial services firm that had been breached through a credential theft phishing email. They had a training program. They had quizzes. Every employee passed with flying colors — 95% average
The Email That Cost One Company $37 Million In 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — a sophisticated form of phishing — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses. That's not a typo. Billions. And it all starts with a
That Gmail Account Access Warning Might Be Real — Or It Might Be the Attack Itself In early 2024, a sophisticated phishing campaign targeted Gmail users with emails that looked exactly like legitimate Google security alerts. The messages warned of suspicious sign-in activity and directed users to a pixel-perfect fake login
10,000 Malicious Domains and Counting In early 2025, the FBI issued a stark public warning about a massive smishing campaign — fraudulent SMS text messages — targeting Americans across all 50 states. The FBI warning on smishing texts wasn't routine. It described a coordinated operation leveraging more than 10,
In March 2024, MGM Resorts was still tallying the damage from a social engineering attack that started with a single phone call to their help desk. The total cost exceeded $100 million. The attacker didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability or crack military-grade encryption. They impersonated an employee found
In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider used a spear phishing phone call to trick a help desk employee into resetting credentials. One call. One employee. One hundred million dollars. That's not a bulk spam campaign — that's
When the FBI Tells You to Pay Attention, Pay Attention In late 2024, the FBI issued a stark public service announcement warning that threat actors are leveraging generative AI to craft highly convincing phishing campaigns — and Gmail's 1.8 billion users sit squarely in the crosshairs. The FBI
In March 2024, a finance director at a mid-size manufacturer in Ohio received an email from what appeared to be the company CEO. The message asked for an urgent wire transfer to close a confidential acquisition. The email looked flawless — correct logo, matching font, even a convincing signature block. She
Your Inbox Is a Buffet — And Threat Actors Are Cooking In March 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that phishing was the number one crime type by victim count for the fifth year running, with over 298,000 complaints in a single year. Every one of
