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 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that stolen credentials were involved in 77% of attacks against web applications. Let me restate that: more than three out of four web app breaches started with a compromised password. Despite billions spent on perimeter defenses, password security best practices remain the
In 2023, a single reused password led to the MGM Resorts breach that cost the company over $100 million in damages. The threat actor didn't exploit a zero-day vulnerability or write custom malware. They called the help desk, social-engineered their way in, and leveraged weak credentials to move
The FBI Says Phishing Scams Are the #1 Cybercrime — And It's Not Even Close In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 298,000 complaints about phishing scams — more than any other cybercrime category. That number has topped the charts for five consecutive
A Bank's Customers Were Logging In — Just Not to the Real Bank In 2017, attackers hijacked DNS records for a major Brazilian bank, redirecting all of its online customers to perfectly cloned phishing sites for roughly five hours. Every login, every transaction, every credential — harvested in real time.
The 10-Billion-Password Wake-Up Call In July 2024, a file called "RockYou2024" appeared on a popular hacking forum containing nearly 10 billion unique plaintext passwords compiled from decades of data breaches. It was the largest credential compilation ever leaked. Within weeks, threat actors were running those passwords against corporate
The Hospital That Lost 133 Days to Ransomware In 2024, Change Healthcare suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted claims processing for thousands of hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics across the United States. UnitedHealth Group, its parent company, disclosed costs exceeding $870 million in the first quarter alone. Patient care was delayed.
One Reused Password Cost This Company $10 Million In 2024, the Snowflake customer breach wave compromised over 165 organizations — including Ticketmaster and AT&T — because attackers used stolen credentials harvested from infostealer malware. The common thread? Employees reusing passwords across personal and corporate accounts with no password manager in
A Single Misconfigured S3 Bucket Cost Capital One $80 Million Back in 2019, a former AWS employee exploited a misconfigured web application firewall to access over 100 million Capital One customer records. The bank ultimately paid an $80 million fine to the OCC. That breach didn't happen because
A Six-Figure Salary With No Degree — and a $80K Debt With One I recently spoke with two cybersecurity analysts at the same company. One had an online computer security degree and $78,000 in student loans. The other had no degree, a handful of certifications, and a home lab built
The Breach That Exposed 147 Million People — And a Broken Response When Equifax disclosed its 2017 breach, the technical failure got the headlines. But the real catastrophe was the response. Weeks of delay, a phishing-prone notification website, and executives who dumped stock before the public announcement. The company eventually paid
