Understand how ransomware attacks work and what steps you can take to prevent, detect, and recover from them. Our ransomware protection articles cover backup strategies, network segmentation, incident response planning, and the latest defenses against evolving ransomware variants.
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The Breach That Started With a Single Stolen Password In May 2021, a single compromised password shut down fuel distribution across the Eastern United States. The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack disrupted gas supplies for days and cost the company a $4.4 million ransom payment. The root cause? A legacy
In January 2022, the International Committee of the Red Cross disclosed that a sophisticated cyberattack compromised the personal data of more than 515,000 vulnerable people — including refugees, detainees, and missing persons. The attackers exploited an unpatched vulnerability in a single system. One missed update. Half a million of the
In May 2021, a single compromised password shut down the Colonial Pipeline and triggered fuel shortages across the U.S. East Coast. The attackers used a legacy VPN account with no multi-factor authentication — a textbook example of what happens when an organization trusts its perimeter instead of verifying every access
When Colonial Pipeline shut down 5,500 miles of fuel infrastructure in May 2021 due to a single compromised password, it wasn't a failure of technology. It was a failure of framework. The company lacked the layered defenses, detection capabilities, and response plans that the NIST Cybersecurity Framework
The Industry That Loses More Per Breach Than Any Other In 2021, a single ransomware attack against CNA Financial reportedly led to a $40 million ransom payment — one of the largest ever disclosed. That incident wasn't an anomaly. It was a signal. Cybersecurity for financial services isn'
Why Threat Actors Love Targeting Law Firms In February 2021, the law firm Jones Day confirmed that hackers had stolen confidential client data through a vulnerability in Accellion's file-transfer appliance. Sensitive case documents, including those related to major corporate litigation, ended up on the Clop ransomware gang'
In March 2021, a single compromised password led to the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack that shut down fuel delivery across the U.S. East Coast. The account didn't even have multi-factor authentication enabled. That's not a sophisticated nation-state exploit — that's a basic cyber hygiene
When Colonial Pipeline paid $4.4 million in ransom in May 2021, investigators traced the initial compromise back to a single compromised VPN credential — one that didn't have multi-factor authentication enabled. That's not a sophisticated nation-state exploit. That's a basic hygiene failure. And it
Colonial Pipeline. JBS Foods. SolarWinds. The first half of 2021 has delivered a masterclass in what happens when cyber security fails at scale. Colonial paid $4.4 million in ransom. JBS paid $11 million. And the SolarWinds fallout — which compromised nine federal agencies and over 100 private companies — is still
Colonial Pipeline. SolarWinds. The Microsoft Exchange Server hack. We're barely halfway through 2021, and the breach headlines already read like a disaster film. Each one of these incidents started with something preventable — a compromised password, an unpatched system, a single employee who clicked the wrong link. The cybersecurity
