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Security Awareness

Develop a strong security mindset with articles focused on security awareness principles, social engineering defense, safe browsing habits, password hygiene, and recognizing manipulation tactics used by attackers targeting human vulnerabilities.

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Shadow IT

What Is Shadow IT? The Hidden Risk Draining Your Budget

The Breach That Started With a Spreadsheet App In 2023, a midsize healthcare company discovered that an employee had been syncing patient records to an unauthorized cloud storage service for over eight months. The service had no encryption, no access controls, and no audit logging. By the time the security

Carl B. Johnson Oct 27, 2020 7 min read
Cyber Hygiene

Cyber Hygiene Definition: What It Really Means in 2026

A Single Reused Password Cost One Company Everything In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast. The entry point? A single compromised password on a legacy VPN account that lacked multi-factor authentication. That's not a sophisticated nation-state exploit. That&

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 6 min read
Cyber Hygiene Checklist

Cyber Hygiene Checklist: 12 Steps That Actually Work

In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider social-engineered an IT help desk with a ten-minute phone call. No zero-day exploit. No nation-state tooling. Just sloppy basics. That breach — and hundreds like it every year — could have been prevented with a disciplined

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 7 min read
Board-Level Cybersecurity Awareness

Board-Level Cybersecurity Awareness: A Survival Guide

The SEC Just Made Ignorance Expensive In July 2023, the SEC finalized rules requiring public companies to disclose material cybersecurity incidents within four business days — and to describe their board's oversight of cyber risk annually. That single regulatory move turned board-level cybersecurity awareness from a nice-to-have into a

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 6 min read
Cybersecurity Due Diligence

Cybersecurity Due Diligence: What Most Companies Miss

The $350 Million Wake-Up Call Nobody Expected When Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017, a previously undisclosed breach affecting 3 billion accounts forced the deal price down by $350 million. That single failure of cybersecurity due diligence became the most expensive cautionary tale in M&A history — and it permanently

Carl B. Johnson Jun 25, 2020 7 min read
Cybersecurity Glossary

Cybersecurity Glossary for Beginners: 40+ Terms

When the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast in 2021, news anchors stumbled over terms like "ransomware," "threat actor," and "zero trust." Millions of people realized they didn't have the vocabulary to understand the

Carl B. Johnson May 11, 2020 8 min read
Cybersecurity Terms Explained

Cybersecurity Terms Explained: A Practical Guide

When the Colonial Pipeline attack shut down fuel distribution across the Eastern United States in 2021, news anchors stumbled over words like "ransomware," "threat actor," and "zero trust." Millions of people realized they didn't speak the language of cybersecurity — and that ignorance

Carl B. Johnson May 08, 2020 7 min read