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The National Public Data Breach of 2024: How to Shield Your Data from Dark Web Hackers
Every day, there’s another screaming headline about “the biggest data breach in history.” This time, however, it really may be “the big one.” In August 2024, a dark web hacker dumped 2.7 billion data records—including Social Security numbers—on a dark web forum. This information allegedly came from a background-checking service called National Public Data. Each…
The Future of Remote Work: Cybersecurity for the New Normal in 2024
After the freedom people experienced from remote work during the pandemic, the “return to office mandates” many companies are trotting out are flopping. Hard. Recent mutinies against the RTOs imposed by Amazon and Dell are great examples. When employees were given the ultimatum “return to office full time, or lose out on the eligibility for…
The CrowdStrike Outage: A Wake Up Call for Cybersecurity
On July 19, 2024, Cybersecurity software company CrowdStrike made history. They were responsible for the world’s most significant global computer outage. It’s as bad as it sounds—with millions of computers they’d sworn to protect suddenly in a “blue screen of death reboot loop.” The net effects hit some of the world’s most critical organizations—including airlines,…
How Cyber Risk Insurers Decide What to Charge You
Will my company need to spend more on its cyber risk insurance or not? Every company shopping for cyber risk insurance wonders about this, especially given the security risks of AI and major global outages that come out of the blue, like the recent CrowdStrike outage that snarled global business for days. With the additional…
Insuring Yourself Against a CrowdStrike Style Outage
By now, you’ve probably read the headlines about the CrowdStrike outage, billed as the largest global outage event in history. Causing 8.5 million Microsoft-enabled machines to lapse into an infinite “blue screen of death” loop, this horrific system crash affected nearly 25,000 international flights, disabled emergency call centers, blocked customer logins for banks, delayed stock…
Small Business Cybersecurity Guide: Tips from Top Consultants
If you’ve been putting off cybersecurity investments for your small company, the time to invest is now. There’s never been a more critical time to address your small business cybersecurity. Consider these facts: The average cost for a data breach for a US company in 2024 is $4.45 million—IBM 60 % of companies lack a…
Four Social Engineering Hacks You Need to Prevent in 2024
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) reports over 963,000 unique phishing sites worldwide were detected in the first quarter of 2024, collectively sending out billions of spam emails a day. Is this number scary? You bet. But it’s the growing sophistication of these social engineering attempts that’s more frightening, yet. Social engineering, as it is often…
Updating Your Bank’s Security Training for the Age of AI
How much could AI-driven models like Copilot for M365, Google Gemini, or Apple Intelligence improve the productivity at your bank? The jury is still out on that one, but initial experiments place the overall AI-driven productivity gains for the US economy at between 8 and 36 percent, according to a recent release from the Federal…
AI Readiness for Banks: Preparing Your Cybersecurity for the Advances to Come
Community banks and credit unions have a time-honored reputation for being cautious about new technologies. Rightly so. The security risks from developing tech can be enormous for financial institutions. Perhaps that’s why I get such shocked reactions from our banking clients when I advise them to jump into new generative AI tools like Microsoft Copilot…
AI Readiness 101: Seven things your company needs before it invests in AI
As the buzz around AI grows, I’ve had the good fortune of speaking at tech events all around the country. Everyone is full of excitement and questions about AI and AI readiness. With the massive productivity gains predicted with AI platforms like Copilot for Microsoft 365 (M365), there’s good reason for optimism. Yet, the more…