Tag

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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Cyber Incident Response Steps

Cyber Incident Response Steps That Actually Work

When SolarWinds disclosed in December 2020 that threat actors had compromised their Orion software update mechanism — affecting up to 18,000 organizations including multiple U.S. government agencies — it became the most significant supply chain attack in modern history. The organizations that responded effectively didn't improvise. They followed

Carl B. Johnson Dec 20, 2020 7 min read
Acceptable Use Policy

Acceptable Use Policy Cybersecurity: Your First Defense

The Policy Nobody Reads Until It's Too Late In 2023, a single employee at MGM Resorts called the help desk, and a threat actor used social engineering to gain access that led to a $100 million hit on operations. One phone call. No malware exploit. No zero-day vulnerability.

Carl B. Johnson Nov 08, 2020 6 min read
CISA Cybersecurity Guidelines

CISA Cybersecurity Guidelines: What They Mean for You

In January 2024, CISA issued Emergency Directive 24-01 after a nation-state threat actor compromised Microsoft's corporate email environment. Federal agencies scrambled to audit their own Microsoft tenants. The directive wasn't theoretical — it was an emergency response to a real breach affecting the backbone of government communications.

Carl B. Johnson Nov 04, 2020 7 min read
FTC Cybersecurity Requirements

FTC Cybersecurity Requirements for Businesses in 2026

The $5.8 Billion Wake-Up Call You Can't Afford to Ignore In 2023, the FTC finalized sweeping updates to the Safeguards Rule. By 2024, enforcement actions were landing on companies most people had never heard of — small mortgage brokers, auto dealers, online retailers. The message was clear: the

Carl B. Johnson Nov 04, 2020 7 min read
Shadow IT

What Is Shadow IT? The Hidden Risk Draining Your Budget

The Breach That Started With a Spreadsheet App In 2023, a midsize healthcare company discovered that an employee had been syncing patient records to an unauthorized cloud storage service for over eight months. The service had no encryption, no access controls, and no audit logging. By the time the security

Carl B. Johnson Oct 27, 2020 7 min read
SaaS Security Best Practices

SaaS Security Best Practices to Protect Your Stack

The SaaS Sprawl Nobody's Watching In 2023, a single misconfigured Salesforce Community site exposed sensitive health records from a government agency in Vermont. The data was public for months before anyone noticed. The application wasn't hacked in any traditional sense — it was simply left open because

Carl B. Johnson Oct 27, 2020 8 min read
Mobile Device Security Policy

Mobile Device Security Policy: What Yours Is Missing

A Single Lost Phone Cost This Company $3.3 Million In 2023, the healthcare provider Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital disclosed a data breach where a security guard used login credentials on a personal mobile device to access the records of over 400 patients. That incident triggered an OCR investigation, reputational

Carl B. Johnson Oct 27, 2020 7 min read
Shoulder Surfing Attack

Shoulder Surfing Attack: The Low-Tech Threat You Ignore

A former employee at a financial services firm in Chicago watched his coworker type her password every morning for two weeks. He memorized it character by character. After he was terminated for performance issues, he used those stolen credentials to access the company's client database from a public

Carl B. Johnson Oct 10, 2020 7 min read
Cybersecurity Culture

Cybersecurity Culture in the Workplace: A Practical Guide

The Breach That Started With a Single Slack Message In September 2022, a threat actor sent a series of social engineering messages to an Uber employee, eventually convincing them to approve a multi-factor authentication push notification. That single lapse gave the attacker access to internal systems, Slack channels, and admin

Carl B. Johnson Oct 10, 2020 7 min read
Cybersecurity Culture

Building a Cybersecurity Culture That Actually Works

A Fortune 500 Company Got Breached by a Phone Call In September 2023, a threat actor called MGM Resorts' IT help desk, impersonated an employee found on LinkedIn, and convinced a technician to reset credentials. The result? Over $100 million in losses, days of operational chaos, and a stock

Carl B. Johnson Oct 10, 2020 7 min read