Tag

Security Awareness Training

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

Ransomware Prevention

How to Prevent Ransomware: A Practical 2025 Guide

In February 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the United States — was hit by the ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group. The attack disrupted pharmacies, hospitals, and insurance claims across the entire country for weeks. UnitedHealth Group, the parent company, eventually disclosed that the breach affected roughly

Carl B. Johnson Aug 11, 2025 6 min read
Ransomware Recovery Steps

Ransomware Recovery Steps: A Battle-Tested Playbook

The Attack That Cost a Hospital $67 Million In May 2024, Ascension Healthcare disclosed a ransomware attack that disrupted operations across 140 hospitals. Ambulances were diverted. Clinicians reverted to paper charts. The financial impact reportedly reached $1.8 billion in total losses for the fiscal year, with the cyber incident

Carl B. Johnson Aug 11, 2025 7 min read
Ransomware Examples

Ransomware Examples 2025: Real Attacks Shaping Defenses

Ransomware Isn't Slowing Down — It's Shapeshifting In February 2024, Change Healthcare suffered what became one of the most devastating ransomware attacks in U.S. history. The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group crippled the nation's largest health care payment processor, disrupting pharmacies, hospitals, and insurance claims

Carl B. Johnson Jul 19, 2025 7 min read
Ransomware Protection

Ransomware Protection Tips That Actually Work in 2025

The Breach That Changed a Hospital System Overnight In February 2024, Change Healthcare — a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group — was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted prescription processing and claims payments for weeks across the U.S. healthcare system. UnitedHealth's CEO later confirmed the company paid a $22

Carl B. Johnson Jul 15, 2025 7 min read
Data Breach Prevention

Data Breach Prevention: 9 Steps That Actually Work

In May 2024, Ticketmaster disclosed a breach that exposed personal data on over 560 million customers. The attack vector? Compromised credentials at a third-party cloud provider. No zero-day exploit. No nation-state wizardry. Just stolen login details and a lack of proper access controls. Data breach prevention doesn't start

Carl B. Johnson Jul 15, 2025 7 min read
Data Breach Response Plan

Data Breach Response Plan: What Actually Works in 2025

In May 2023, MOVEit Transfer suffered a mass exploitation that ultimately affected over 2,700 organizations and exposed data on roughly 95 million individuals. Some of those organizations had a tested data breach response plan ready to execute. Most didn't. The difference between the two groups wasn'

Carl B. Johnson Jul 15, 2025 7 min read
Data Breach Notification Requirements

Data Breach Notification Requirements: A 2025 Guide

In May 2023, T-Mobile agreed to a $350 million settlement after a data breach exposed the personal information of roughly 76 million people. A significant chunk of that cost wasn't the breach itself — it was the fallout from notification failures, regulatory scrutiny, and class-action lawsuits that followed. If

Carl B. Johnson Jun 15, 2025 8 min read
Password Security Best Practices

Password Security Best Practices That Actually Work

The Breach That Started With a Single Reused Password In January 2024, a credential stuffing attack hit genetic testing giant 23andMe, ultimately exposing the personal data of approximately 6.9 million users. The root cause wasn't some exotic zero-day exploit. It was customers reusing passwords they'd

Carl B. Johnson Jun 15, 2025 7 min read
Strong Passwords

How to Create a Strong Password That Actually Stops Hackers

The 23-Character Password That Still Got Cracked In 2024, a security researcher at Hive Systems demonstrated that a 12-character password using only lowercase letters could be brute-forced in about three weeks with modern GPU hardware. Bump that up to a complex 12-character mix of upper, lower, numbers, and symbols? Still

Carl B. Johnson Jun 15, 2025 7 min read
Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-Factor Authentication Setup: A Practical Guide

The Breach That Started With a Single Stolen Password In January 2024, a threat actor used stolen credentials to access a Snowflake customer environment — no malware, no exploit, just a username and password harvested months earlier. The fallout hit Ticketmaster and AT&T, exposing hundreds of millions of records.

Carl B. Johnson Jun 15, 2025 8 min read