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.
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The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack this month shut down fuel distribution across the eastern United States. A single compromised password led to one of the most disruptive cyberattacks in American history. If you think knowing how to computer virus prevent strategies is just IT housekeeping, that pipeline — and the gas
Colonial Pipeline just paid a $4.4 million ransom to a threat actor group called DarkSide. That attack — which shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast this month — has done more for cybersecurity hiring than any recruiting campaign ever could. Every board of directors in America is
Colonial Pipeline Just Showed Us What Happens Without a Real Computer Security Service On May 7, 2021, a single compromised password shut down the largest fuel pipeline in the United States. Colonial Pipeline went dark. Gas stations across the Southeast ran dry. The company paid a $4.4 million ransom
Capital One Lost 100 Million Records Because of One Misconfigured Firewall In 2019, a former cloud services employee exploited a misconfigured web application firewall to steal the personal data of over 100 million Capital One customers and applicants. The breach cost Capital One over $80 million in fines from the
A Pipeline Went Dark — Because One Person Clicked On May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline — the largest fuel pipeline in the United States — shut down operations after a ransomware attack. The disruption caused fuel shortages across the southeastern U.S. and triggered panic buying. While the full forensic details are still
Colonial Pipeline just shut down 5,500 miles of fuel infrastructure this week. One compromised password. That's all it took. While forensic details are still emerging, the early reporting points to a single set of stolen credentials — likely obtained through a social engineering attack on an employee. If
A Single Email Cost This Company $100 Million In 2019, a Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas pleaded guilty to stealing over $100 million from Google and Facebook using nothing more than phishing emails. He impersonated a legitimate hardware vendor, sent fake invoices, and both tech giants paid up — for years.
In March 2021, a single phishing email led to a credential theft incident at a mid-size manufacturing firm in Ohio. The attacker impersonated the CEO, asked the controller to update direct deposit information, and walked away with $1.7 million. The email had two typos, a slightly wrong domain, and
One Employee Missed the Red Flags — It Cost $2.3 Million In December 2020, a mid-sized manufacturing company in Ohio wired $2.3 million to what they believed was a long-standing supplier. The invoice looked perfect. The email address was off by a single character. Nobody caught it until the
In December 2020, the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce confirmed they'd been breached through a supply chain attack that started, in part, with carefully crafted phishing emails targeting key personnel. If federal agencies with dedicated security teams can get caught, your organization isn't immune
