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Phishing Prevention

Delivers actionable advice on recognizing and preventing phishing attacks, including email phishing, spear phishing, smishing, and vishing. Covers detection techniques, employee training approaches, email security tools, and real-world phishing examples to strengthen your defenses.

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Ransomware Attack Prevention

Ransomware Attack Prevention: A Practical Guide

The Attack That Shut Down a Pipeline — and a Wake-Up Call for Everyone In February 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published an alert after a ransomware attack forced a natural gas compression facility to shut down for two full days. The threat actor got in through a

Carl B. Johnson Mar 31, 2021 6 min read
Ransomware Protection Tips

Ransomware Protection Tips That Actually Work in 2021

A Hospital Paid $17 Million. Your Organization Could Be Next. In September 2020, Universal Health Services got hit with Ryuk ransomware across 400 facilities. The damage? An estimated $67 million in recovery costs and lost revenue. A few months earlier, Garmin paid a reported $10 million ransom to get its

Carl B. Johnson Feb 24, 2021 7 min read
Data Breach Prevention

Data Breach Prevention: 9 Steps That Actually Work

In December 2020, SolarWinds disclosed that threat actors had compromised its Orion software platform, ultimately breaching at least nine U.S. federal agencies and over 100 private companies. The attack went undetected for months. It wasn't a zero-day exploit that got them in — it was a compromised build

Carl B. Johnson Feb 24, 2021 7 min read
Cost of a Data Breach

Cost of a Data Breach: What 2021 Trends Tell Us

The Cost of a Data Breach Is Already Staggering — And the Trajectory Is Alarming In 2020, the average cost of a data breach hit $3.86 million globally, according to IBM and the Ponemon Institute's annual Cost of a Data Breach Report. That number has been climbing steadily

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 6 min read
Password Manager Benefits

Password Manager Benefits: Why Pros Won't Work Without One

The Breach That Started With a Sticky Note In 2020, a senior employee at a Florida water treatment facility reportedly reused passwords across multiple systems — including the one controlling sodium hydroxide levels in the public water supply. That incident, disclosed in early February 2021, showed exactly how a single weak

Carl B. Johnson Jan 14, 2021 6 min read
Multi-Factor Authentication

MFA vs Two-Factor Authentication: What Actually Matters

In July 2020, a teenager orchestrated one of the most high-profile breaches in social media history — the Twitter hack that compromised accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple. The attack vector? Social engineering and credential theft that bypassed weak authentication controls. It was a brutal reminder that passwords

Carl B. Johnson Jan 11, 2021 6 min read
Password Hygiene Tips

Password Hygiene Tips That Actually Stop Breaches

In December 2020, SolarWinds disclosed a supply chain compromise that shook the entire cybersecurity industry. But while the world was focused on nation-state threat actors, Verizon's 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report had already confirmed something far more common and just as devastating: over 80% of hacking-related breaches involved

Carl B. Johnson Jan 03, 2021 7 min read
Cybersecurity Incident Response

Cybersecurity Incident Response: A Battle-Tested Guide

In July 2020, Twitter lost control of 130 high-profile accounts — including those of Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — in a social engineering attack that bypassed every technical control the company had. The attackers didn't use a zero-day exploit. They manipulated employees. And Twitter's cybersecurity incident

Carl B. Johnson Dec 20, 2020 7 min read