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social engineering

In-depth coverage of social engineering tactics used by attackers, including pretexting, baiting, tailgating, and spear phishing. Articles explain how these manipulation techniques exploit human psychology and provide actionable defenses organizations can deploy to protect their people and data.

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phishing meaning

Phishing Meaning: What It Really Is and Why It Works

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — making it the most reported cybercrime category for the fifth consecutive year. Despite billions spent on email filters and endpoint detection, phishing still works. And it works devastatingly well. If you've ever

Carl B. Johnson Aug 02, 2026 5 min read
phishing meaning

Phishing Meaning: What It Really Is and Why It Works

In 2023, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center received over 298,000 phishing complaints — making it the most reported cybercrime for the fifth consecutive year. Yet when I ask business owners what phishing actually means, most give me a vague answer about "fake emails." That incomplete

Carl B. Johnson Jul 24, 2026 5 min read
phish

How One Phish Can Sink Your Entire Organization

A Single Phish Email Cost One Company $100 Million In 2024, MGM Resorts confirmed that a social engineering attack — which started with a single phone call and a phish-style credential theft scheme — contributed to losses exceeding $100 million. The threat actors behind the Scattered Spider group didn't need

Carl B. Johnson Jul 23, 2026 5 min read
group online svindel

Group Online Svindel: How Fraud Rings Target You

In 2023, the FBI's IC3 received over 880,000 cybercrime complaints with losses exceeding $12.5 billion — and a growing share of those losses trace back to organized fraud rings, not lone hackers. Group online svindel — the coordinated, scalable online fraud committed by organized threat actor groups — is

Carl B. Johnson May 06, 2026 5 min read
phishing awareness training

Phishing Awareness Training: What Actually Works in 2026

A 3-Minute Email Cost One Company $37 Million In 2024, a finance employee at a multinational firm joined a deepfake video call with what appeared to be the company's CFO and several colleagues. Every person on that call was AI-generated. The employee transferred $25.6 million (approximately HK$

Carl B. Johnson Apr 15, 2026 5 min read
FBI Gmail

FBI Gmail Warning: What Every Organization Must Do Now

The FBI Gmail Alert That Changed the Threat Landscape In late 2024, the FBI issued a stark public service announcement: sophisticated phishing campaigns were actively targeting Gmail's 1.8 billion users, and the attacks were so convincing that even security-savvy professionals were falling for them. By 2025, the

Carl B. Johnson Apr 11, 2026 5 min read
cybersecurity training

How to Train Employees on Cybersecurity in 2026

The Breach That Started With a Single Click In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider social-engineered their way past help desk staff with a ten-minute phone call. The attackers didn't exploit some exotic zero-day. They exploited a human being

Carl B. Johnson Mar 30, 2026 5 min read
phish

How One Phish Can Cost Your Company Millions

A Single Phish Email Took Down a $13 Billion Pipeline In May 2021, a single compromised password — likely harvested through a phish — shut down Colonial Pipeline and triggered fuel shortages across the U.S. East Coast. The company paid a $4.4 million ransom within hours. That's the

Carl B. Johnson Jan 26, 2026 7 min read