Discover resources and strategies for building effective security awareness training programs. Posts cover curriculum design, engagement techniques, compliance requirements, and methods for measuring training impact to reduce human-related security incidents across organizations.
posts
The Personal Phone That Took Down a Hospital Network In 2023, a nurse at a mid-sized hospital plugged a personal phone into a workstation USB port to charge it. That phone was already compromised with malware from a sideloaded app. Within 72 hours, threat actors had lateral movement across the
In 2023, a single compromised employee phone gave threat actors a foothold inside MGM Resorts' network. The attackers used social engineering — a phone call to the help desk — and within hours, they had enough access to deploy ransomware that cost the company over $100 million. The device that started
82% of Phishing Sites Now Target Mobile Devices In late 2024, a wave of toll-road smishing texts hit millions of Americans. The messages claimed unpaid tolls from agencies like E-ZPass and SunPass, directing victims to pixel-perfect payment pages optimized for mobile screens. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center
In January 2022, the FBI issued a public warning that the cybercriminal group FIN7 had been mailing malicious USB drives — disguised as gift cards and COVID-19 guidelines — directly to U.S. companies. The drives contained ransomware. Employees plugged them in. Networks fell. That campaign wasn't some edge case
The Server Room Door Was Unlocked In 2019, a penetration tester hired by the state of Iowa walked into the Dallas County Courthouse after hours. He accessed restricted areas, took photos of sensitive systems, and demonstrated just how easy it was to bypass physical controls. The exercise ended with him
In 2019, a penetration tester hired by the state of Iowa walked into a locked courthouse after hours simply by following an employee through a secured door. He was arrested — despite being under contract to test exactly that vulnerability. The incident made national headlines and exposed an uncomfortable truth: a
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
The Sticky Note That Cost a Hospital $1.2 Million A few years ago, I walked into a client's office for a security assessment and found a sticky note on a monitor in the billing department. It had a username, a password, and the name of their patient
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
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
