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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

Phishing Prevention

How to Avoid Phishing Attacks: A Practical Guide

In March 2022, the threat actor group Lapsus$ breached Okta by compromising a single employee's credentials through a social engineering attack. One phished account. That's all it took to put thousands of downstream customers at risk. If you're wondering how to avoid phishing attacks,

Carl B. Johnson May 25, 2022 8 min read
Smishing Attacks

Smishing Attack Examples: Real Texts That Stole Millions

In February 2022, the FBI warned that Americans lost over $68 million to smishing and vishing scams in a single year — and that number only counted what victims actually reported to the FBI's IC3. The real figure is almost certainly multiples higher. I've spent the last

Carl B. Johnson Apr 22, 2022 8 min read
Vishing Scam Awareness

Vishing Scam Awareness: Stop Voice Phishing Cold

In July 2020, a teenager and two accomplices called Twitter employees, posed as IT staff, and convinced them to hand over internal credentials. Within hours, they'd hijacked 130 high-profile accounts — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — and ran a Bitcoin scam that netted over $100,000 in

Carl B. Johnson Apr 21, 2022 7 min read
Social Engineering Attacks

Social Engineering Attacks: How They Actually Work

The Phone Call That Cost One Company $100 Million In 2019, a UK-based energy company's CEO received a phone call from what he believed was his boss — the head of the parent company in Germany. The voice was perfect. The accent, the tone, the speech patterns — all spot

Carl B. Johnson Apr 21, 2022 7 min read
Social Engineering

How to Spot Social Engineering Before It Costs You

In March 2022, the Lapsus$ threat actor group breached Okta by socially engineering a third-party support contractor. No malware. No zero-day exploit. Just a human being who got manipulated. The breach potentially affected hundreds of Okta's enterprise customers, and it started with the simplest attack vector there is

Carl B. Johnson Apr 04, 2022 7 min read
Pretexting Attacks

Pretexting Attack Examples: Real Scams That Fool Smart People

In 2020, a teenager convinced a Twitter employee he was a co-worker from the IT department. That single phone call led to the compromise of 130 high-profile accounts — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — and a Bitcoin scam that netted over $100,000 in hours. The attack wasn'

Carl B. Johnson Apr 04, 2022 7 min read
Employee Cybersecurity Training

Employee Cybersecurity Training: What Actually Works

In March 2022, Lapsus$ — a threat actor group largely composed of teenagers — breached Okta, Microsoft, Samsung, and Nvidia in rapid succession. Their primary weapon wasn't a sophisticated zero-day exploit. It was employee cybersecurity training failures: stolen credentials, SIM swapping, and social engineering attacks that targeted the humans sitting

Carl B. Johnson Apr 04, 2022 7 min read
Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: What Actually Works

Last October, while organizations across the country were hanging "Think Before You Click" posters in their break rooms, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center was logging over 847,000 complaints representing nearly $7 billion in losses for 2021. That's roughly a 7% increase in

Carl B. Johnson Mar 21, 2022 7 min read