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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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'
The Blackbaud Breach Should Have Been a Wake-Up Call In May 2020, a ransomware attack hit Blackbaud — one of the largest cloud computing providers serving nonprofits, hospitals, and universities. The breach exposed donor records, financial data, and Social Security numbers belonging to millions of people across hundreds of organizations. Blackbaud
A Single Checkbox Left Unchecked Cost Capital One $80 Million In 2019, a former AWS employee exploited a misconfigured web application firewall to access over 100 million Capital One customer records. The breach led to an FTC investigation, an $80 million fine from the OCC, and a $190 million class-action
The Misconfiguration That Exposed 3.8 Billion Records In June 2021, researchers discovered an unsecured Elasticsearch instance containing 3.8 billion records — names, emails, phone numbers, and social media profiles compiled from scraped and breached data. It sat wide open on the internet. No password. No access controls. Just a
In April 2021, the FBI's IC3 reported a sharp rise in mobile-focused phishing attacks — schemes specifically designed to exploit the smaller screens and always-on nature of smartphones. I've watched organizations pour millions into securing their perimeters while ignoring the devices employees actually use the most. The
A Single Employee's Phone Just Cost This Company Everything In August 2021, T-Mobile confirmed a massive data breach affecting over 50 million people. While the full attack chain was complex, the reality is that personal devices connecting to corporate environments create attack surfaces that most IT teams drastically
In April 2021, the FBI's IC3 reported that losses from internet crime topped $4.2 billion in 2020 — and a growing share of those incidents started on a mobile device. Not a server. Not a laptop in a locked office. A phone sitting in someone's pocket
Your Employees' Phones Are the Weakest Link Right Now In September 2021, Lookout reported that mobile phishing attacks had surged 161% since 2020. That's not a typo. The device your employees carry everywhere — the one they check 96 times a day — has become the primary attack surface
A USB Drive in a Parking Lot Changed Everything In 2020, a Tesla employee was approached by a Russian national who offered him $1 million to plant malware inside the company's Nevada Gigafactory. The FBI arrested the threat actor before the attack succeeded, but the plan hinged on
In September 2019, a Chinese national named Yujing Zhang walked past security at Mar-a-Lago carrying a thumb drive loaded with malware. She told the front desk she was there to use the pool. That's tailgating — and it nearly compromised one of the most secured private facilities in the
