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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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Securing Cloud Applications

Securing Cloud Applications: A Practical Guide for 2026

The Misconfiguration That Exposed 100 Million Records In 2019, a former Amazon Web Services employee exploited a misconfigured web application firewall to breach Capital One's cloud infrastructure. The result: over 100 million customer records exposed, a $190 million class-action settlement, and an $80 million fine from the OCC.

Carl B. Johnson Sep 10, 2019 7 min read
Shadow IT Risks

Shadow IT Risks: The Hidden Threat Draining Your Budget

One Unapproved App Cost a Hospital Network $3 Million In 2023, a regional hospital system discovered that a department had been using an unapproved file-sharing tool to exchange patient records for over a year. The tool had no encryption, no access controls, and no audit trail. When an attacker exploited

Carl B. Johnson Sep 10, 2019 8 min read
Shadow IT

What Is Shadow IT? The Hidden Risk You Can't Ignore

Your Employees Already Built a Second IT Department In 2023, a Gartner survey found that 41% of employees acquired, modified, or created technology outside of IT's visibility. By now, that number has only grown. If you're asking what is shadow IT, the short answer is this:

Carl B. Johnson Sep 08, 2019 7 min read
Cyber Hygiene

Cyber Hygiene Definition: What It Really Means in 2026

A Preventable Breach That Started With One Reused Password In 2024, the breach at Change Healthcare disrupted pharmacy operations across the United States for weeks. The root cause? A compromised credential on a system that lacked multi-factor authentication. That single gap — a basic cyber hygiene failure — led to one of

Carl B. Johnson Aug 20, 2019 6 min read
Cyber Hygiene

What Is Cyber Hygiene? The Daily Habits That Stop Breaches

A Stolen Password, a $4.88 Million Problem In 2024, IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report pegged the global average breach cost at $4.88 million — the highest figure ever recorded. The root cause in most of those incidents wasn't a sophisticated zero-day exploit. It

Carl B. Johnson Aug 20, 2019 7 min read
Cybersecurity for Executives

Cybersecurity for Executives: What the C-Suite Gets Wrong

The CEO Who Clicked the Link In 2024, the SEC charged SolarWinds' CISO with fraud and internal control failures tied to the massive breach that compromised federal agencies and Fortune 500 companies. That case sent shockwaves through every boardroom in America — not because of the technical details, but because

Carl B. Johnson Aug 20, 2019 7 min read
Third Party Risk Management

Third Party Vendor Cybersecurity Risk: A Practical Guide

The Breach That Didn't Start With You In 2023, the MOVEit Transfer vulnerability didn't just hit one company. It cascaded through thousands of organizations that relied on a single file-transfer vendor. Government agencies, banks, healthcare systems, and universities all found themselves exposed — not because of anything

Carl B. Johnson Aug 14, 2019 7 min read
Dark Web Monitoring

Dark Web Monitoring for Businesses: A Practical Guide

In April 2024, a credentials dump containing over 26 billion records — dubbed the "Mother of All Breaches" — surfaced on dark web forums. LinkedIn, Twitter, Dropbox, Adobe, and hundreds of other platforms were represented. Within weeks, threat actors were using those credentials in automated stuffing attacks against small and

Carl B. Johnson Aug 14, 2019 7 min read