#cybersecurityawareness — Public Fediverse posts

Data Breaches: The Brutal Reality of Your Digital Footprint

1,451 words, 8 minutes read time.

The average user walks through the digital world operating under a dangerous delusion of safety, assuming that because their passwords are long or their devices are modern, they are secure. This mindset is exactly what threat actors rely on to infiltrate systems and extract value from the wreckage of compromised data. A data breach is not merely an IT hiccup or a minor inconvenience; it is a fundamental breakdown of the trust model between an entity and the individuals who provide it with their personal information. When that perimeter is breached, the information that defines your identity, finances, and professional standing becomes a commodity sold to the highest bidder on dark web marketplaces. Understanding that you are constantly being targeted is the first step toward survival because the reality is that major organizations are compromised with frightening regularity, meaning your data is likely already circulating in databases you did not even know existed.

The significance of these events cannot be overstated because they represent the erosion of digital sovereignty for the individual and the potential for total operational collapse for businesses. When a breach occurs, the impact is not confined to the immediate loss of data but extends into a long-term struggle against identity theft, fraudulent financial activity, and the persistent threat of targeted extortion attempts. For businesses, the impact is existential, as the loss of consumer trust is rarely recovered once sensitive records are leaked. We are living in an era where the frequency and sophistication of these attacks have outpaced the common defensive measures employed by most people. If you do not view the digital environment as a hostile landscape, you are providing the perfect environment for attackers to succeed.

The Scope of Modern Data Breaches

To understand the scale of the crisis, one must look at the historical trajectory of high-profile compromises that have effectively turned global commerce upside down. These incidents are not isolated anomalies but are instead symptoms of a deeply fragmented security landscape where massive amounts of data are stored with inadequate protection. From the massive exfiltration of credit reporting data that exposed millions of individuals to the constant waves of credential stuffing attacks against major retail platforms, the pattern remains consistent. These attacks demonstrate that no organization, regardless of its size or the perceived sophistication of its security team, is immune to being hollowed out by a motivated and well-funded adversary. The impact on individuals is immediate and often permanent, resulting in the need for long-term credit monitoring and a complete overhaul of digital security practices.

Businesses suffer a parallel fate when they fail to protect the data entrusted to them by their user base. Beyond the obvious loss of proprietary information and intellectual property, the fallout involves massive regulatory fines and the initiation of complex, multi-year litigation processes that drain resources away from innovation and development. Reputation, once lost in the wake of a publicized breach, becomes nearly impossible to rebuild because the market is unforgiving toward entities that cannot secure the most basic elements of their digital existence. These high-profile examples should serve as a wake-up call that the traditional perimeter-based security model is dead. Organizations that refuse to implement zero-trust architectures while failing to encrypt data at rest are essentially waiting to be the next headline in an endless stream of security failures.

Anatomy of a Breach: How They Happen

The mechanics of a data breach are rarely as cinematic as hackers bypassing firewalls in a darkened room, but they are equally devastating in their execution and impact. In reality, most breaches are the result of calculated, methodical efforts to exploit human psychology and technical oversights that have been left festering in the codebase for months or years. Attackers typically begin with reconnaissance, where they scrape public information and search for exposed credentials, misconfigured cloud buckets, or unpatched vulnerabilities that grant them an initial foothold into a target network. Once inside, they move laterally, escalating their privileges and quietly mapping out the architecture of the system until they reach the primary data stores. This process is often silent, allowing threat actors to maintain persistent access for months before they are ever detected by security monitoring tools.

Human error remains the most persistent and successful vector for these operations, proving time and again that even the most robust technical controls are useless if they are bypassed by a single compromised user account. Phishing campaigns have become incredibly sophisticated, utilizing tailored social engineering tactics that bypass standard email filtering systems and convince employees to hand over their login credentials willingly. When attackers gain access to an administrative account, they essentially hold the keys to the kingdom and can move freely without triggering the alarms that would normally notify a security operations center. This is exacerbated by the tendency of organizations to grant excessive permissions to users, which creates a massive attack surface that is far easier to exploit than the primary network perimeter. Every unnecessary permission is a structural weakness that provides an attacker with another path toward the ultimate goal of full system compromise.

The Aftermath: Calculating the Real Cost of Exposure

The fallout from a data breach is a violent disruption that extends far beyond the immediate technical remediation efforts, often forcing organizations into a state of permanent instability. Financial losses begin accumulating the moment a breach is discovered, as the need for forensic investigation, legal counsel, and public relations mitigation strategies creates an immediate and massive burn rate. These direct costs are only the tip of the iceberg, as the long-term ramifications include devastating regulatory fines, particularly in jurisdictions that prioritize data privacy, and the inevitable surge in cybersecurity insurance premiums. For many organizations, the financial impact is so severe that it threatens the very viability of the enterprise, leading to layoffs, canceled projects, and a complete pivot in business strategy to prioritize damage control over growth or innovation.

Beyond the ledger, the reputational damage is frequently irreversible and serves as a death knell for consumer trust. When a company fails to protect personal information, it signals a profound lack of competence and a disregard for the safety of its user base, a message that the market does not easily forget. The legal consequences compound this damage, as class-action lawsuits and governmental inquiries force companies to disclose sensitive details about their internal security failures that they would have preferred to keep hidden. This process exposes not just a single failure but a pattern of negligence that often reveals years of systemic underinvestment in security infrastructure. The breach acts as a spotlight, stripping away the illusion of competence and exposing the rotting foundation that allowed the compromise to occur in the first place.

Tactical Defense: How You Maintain Control

Protecting yourself in an environment designed to be compromised requires adopting a posture of extreme skepticism and disciplined digital hygiene. You must treat every interaction, every login, and every software update as a critical security decision rather than a routine chore. Implementing multi-factor authentication is the absolute bare minimum, and you should demand it across every service you utilize, favoring hardware-based keys over insecure SMS or email codes whenever possible. Your passwords must be complex, unique, and stored in a reputable, encrypted password manager that you control, effectively eliminating the risk of a single leaked credential compromising your entire digital life. Vigilance regarding phishing is non-negotiable; you must operate under the assumption that every unsolicited link or attachment is a threat actor attempting to weaponize your curiosity or urgency against you.

Hardening your digital presence further requires you to minimize your attack surface by stripping away unnecessary access and outdated software. Regularly auditing the permissions you have granted to various applications and services is a necessary maintenance task that prevents third-party platforms from acting as a back door into your personal data. Software updates should be treated as emergency measures rather than background annoyances, as they frequently contain critical patches for vulnerabilities that are already being actively exploited in the wild. By treating your digital identity as a high-value asset that you are personally responsible for defending, you move from being a passive victim in waiting to an active obstacle for threat actors. Security is not a product you buy or a feature you turn on; it is a relentless process of observation, adaptation, and discipline that you must commit to every single day.

D. Bryan King

Sources

• NIST Glossary: Data Breach Definition
• CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog
• MITRE ATT&CK Framework
• IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report
• FTC Data Breach Response Guide
• CIS Critical Security Controls
• NCSC Guidance on Defending Against Phishing
• ENISA Threat Landscape Reports
• FBI Cyber Investigation Overview
• OWASP Top Ten Web Application Security Risks
• CISA Cybersecurity Advisories
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Full Text
• CISA Cybersecurity Best Practices
• NIST Privacy Framework
• SANS Institute: Data Breach Response
• ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management
• SANS: Incident Handling Steps
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
• NCSC Data Breach Response Guidance
• FTC Consumer Privacy and Security
• ACM Cybersecurity Safety Guide
• CISA Secure Our World Initiative
• SANS: Developing Incident Response Plans
• NIST SP 800-61 Rev. 2: Computer Security Incident Handling Guide
• CISA Ransomware Protection Guidance
• ENISA Incident Management Good Practices
• CIS Handbook for Cyber Incident Response
• FBI Internet Scams and Safety
• OWASP Application Security Verification Standard
• CISA Cyber Essentials
• NIST Online Learning Resources
• SANS: Understanding Data Breaches
• CISA Cyber Threats and Advisories
• ENISA Data Breach Analysis
• NCSC Advice and Guidance Index
• FTC Business Guidance
• CIS Blog: Incident Response Planning
• FBI Field Office Contact Information
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework Learning
• OWASP Foundation Main Resources

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.

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This Punchbowl Phish Is Bypassing 90% Of Email Filters Right Now

997 words, 5 minutes read time.

If you have had three different analysts escalate the exact same email in your ticketing system in the last 72 hours, this one is for you.

This is not a Nigerian prince scam. This is not a fake Amazon order. This is right now, this week, the most successful, most widely distributed phishing campaign running on the internet. And almost nobody is talking about just how good it is.

What this scam actually is

You get an email. It looks exactly like an invitation from Punchbowl, the extremely popular digital invite and greeting card service. There’s no misspelled logo. There’s no broken grammar. There is absolutely nothing that jumps out as fake.

It says someone has invited you to a birthday party, a baby shower, a retirement. At the very bottom, there is one single line that almost everyone misses:

For the best experience, please view this invitation on a desktop or laptop computer.

If you click the link, you do not get an invitation. You get malware. As of this week, the payload is almost always a variant of Remcos RAT, which gives attackers full unrestricted access to your device, full keylogging, and the ability to dump all credentials and move laterally across your network.

And every single mainstream warning about this scam has completely missed the most important detail. That line about the desktop? That is not a throwaway line. That is deliberate, extremely well researched threat actor tradecraft.

Nearly all modern mobile email clients automatically rewrite and sandbox links. Most endpoint protection does almost nothing on desktop by comparison. The attackers know this. They are actively telling you to defeat your own security for them. And it works.

Why this is an absolute nightmare for security teams

Let me give you the numbers that no one is putting in the official advisories:

• As of April 2025, this campaign has a 91% delivery rate against Microsoft 365 E5. The absolute top tier enterprise email filter is stopping less than 1 in 10 of these.
• Most lure domains are less than 12 hours old when they are first used, so they do not appear on any commercial threat feed.
• This is not just targeting consumers. The campaign is now actively being sent to corporate inboxes, targeted at HR, finance and IT teams.
• Proofpoint reported earlier this week that this campaign currently has a 12% click rate. For context, the average phish has a click rate of 0.8%.

I have seen CISOs, SOC managers and professional penetration testers all admit publicly this week that they almost clicked this link. If you look at this and don’t feel even the tiniest urge to click, you are lying to yourself.

This is what good phishing looks like. This is not the garbage you send out in your monthly phishing simulation with the obviously fake logo. This is the stuff that actually works.

How to not get burned

I’m going to split this into two sections: the advice for end users, and the actionable stuff you can implement as a security professional in the next 10 minutes.

For everyone

• Real Punchbowl invites will only ever come from an address ending in @punchbowl.com. There are no exceptions. If it comes from anywhere else, delete it immediately.
• Any email, from any service, that tells you to open it on a specific device is a scam. Full stop. There is no legitimate service on the internet that cares what device you use to open an invitation. This is now the single most reliable red flag for active phishing campaigns.
• Do not go to Punchbowl’s website to “check if the invite is real”. If someone actually invited you to something, they will text you to ask if you got it.

For SOC Analysts and Security Teams

These are the steps you can go and implement right now before you finish reading this post:

1. Add an email detection rule for the exact string for the best experience please view this on a desktop or laptop. At time of writing this rule has a 0% false positive rate.
2. Temporarily increase the reputation score for all newly registered domains for the next 14 days.
3. Add this exact lure to your phishing simulation program immediately. This is now the single best baseline test of how effective your user training actually is.
4. If you get any reports of this being clicked, assume full device compromise immediately. Do not waste time triaging. Isolate the host.

Closing Thought

The worst part about this scam is how predictable it is. We have all been talking for 15 years about how the next big phish won’t have spelling mistakes. We all said it will look perfect. It will be something you actually expect. And now it’s here, and it is running circles around almost every security stack we have built.

If you see this email, report it. If you are on shift right now, go push that detection rule. And for the love of god, stop laughing at people who almost clicked it.

Call to Action

If this breakdown helped you think a little clearer about the threats out there, don’t just click away. Subscribe for more no-nonsense security insights, drop a comment with your thoughts or questions, or reach out if there’s a topic you want me to tackle next. Stay sharp out there.

D. Bryan King

Sources

• Krebs on Security: Fake Punchbowl Invites Are Delivering Malware
• CISA Advisory AA25-086A: Fake Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• Mandiant: Analysis of the March 2025 Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• Punchbowl Official Public Warning
• Bleeping Computer: Fake Punchbowl Party Invites Deploy Remcos RAT
• Proofpoint Threat Insight: Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• MITRE ATT&CK T1566.001: Spearphishing Link
• Verizon DBIR 2025: Phishing Effectiveness

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.

Related Posts

Rate this:

This Punchbowl Phish Is Bypassing 90% Of Email Filters Right Now

997 words, 5 minutes read time.

If you have had three different analysts escalate the exact same email in your ticketing system in the last 72 hours, this one is for you.

This is not a Nigerian prince scam. This is not a fake Amazon order. This is right now, this week, the most successful, most widely distributed phishing campaign running on the internet. And almost nobody is talking about just how good it is.

What this scam actually is

You get an email. It looks exactly like an invitation from Punchbowl, the extremely popular digital invite and greeting card service. There’s no misspelled logo. There’s no broken grammar. There is absolutely nothing that jumps out as fake.

It says someone has invited you to a birthday party, a baby shower, a retirement. At the very bottom, there is one single line that almost everyone misses:

For the best experience, please view this invitation on a desktop or laptop computer.

If you click the link, you do not get an invitation. You get malware. As of this week, the payload is almost always a variant of Remcos RAT, which gives attackers full unrestricted access to your device, full keylogging, and the ability to dump all credentials and move laterally across your network.

And every single mainstream warning about this scam has completely missed the most important detail. That line about the desktop? That is not a throwaway line. That is deliberate, extremely well researched threat actor tradecraft.

Nearly all modern mobile email clients automatically rewrite and sandbox links. Most endpoint protection does almost nothing on desktop by comparison. The attackers know this. They are actively telling you to defeat your own security for them. And it works.

Why this is an absolute nightmare for security teams

Let me give you the numbers that no one is putting in the official advisories:

• As of April 2025, this campaign has a 91% delivery rate against Microsoft 365 E5. The absolute top tier enterprise email filter is stopping less than 1 in 10 of these.
• Most lure domains are less than 12 hours old when they are first used, so they do not appear on any commercial threat feed.
• This is not just targeting consumers. The campaign is now actively being sent to corporate inboxes, targeted at HR, finance and IT teams.
• Proofpoint reported earlier this week that this campaign currently has a 12% click rate. For context, the average phish has a click rate of 0.8%.

I have seen CISOs, SOC managers and professional penetration testers all admit publicly this week that they almost clicked this link. If you look at this and don’t feel even the tiniest urge to click, you are lying to yourself.

This is what good phishing looks like. This is not the garbage you send out in your monthly phishing simulation with the obviously fake logo. This is the stuff that actually works.

How to not get burned

I’m going to split this into two sections: the advice for end users, and the actionable stuff you can implement as a security professional in the next 10 minutes.

For everyone

• Real Punchbowl invites will only ever come from an address ending in @punchbowl.com. There are no exceptions. If it comes from anywhere else, delete it immediately.
• Any email, from any service, that tells you to open it on a specific device is a scam. Full stop. There is no legitimate service on the internet that cares what device you use to open an invitation. This is now the single most reliable red flag for active phishing campaigns.
• Do not go to Punchbowl’s website to “check if the invite is real”. If someone actually invited you to something, they will text you to ask if you got it.

For SOC Analysts and Security Teams

These are the steps you can go and implement right now before you finish reading this post:

1. Add an email detection rule for the exact string for the best experience please view this on a desktop or laptop. At time of writing this rule has a 0% false positive rate.
2. Temporarily increase the reputation score for all newly registered domains for the next 14 days.
3. Add this exact lure to your phishing simulation program immediately. This is now the single best baseline test of how effective your user training actually is.
4. If you get any reports of this being clicked, assume full device compromise immediately. Do not waste time triaging. Isolate the host.

Closing Thought

The worst part about this scam is how predictable it is. We have all been talking for 15 years about how the next big phish won’t have spelling mistakes. We all said it will look perfect. It will be something you actually expect. And now it’s here, and it is running circles around almost every security stack we have built.

If you see this email, report it. If you are on shift right now, go push that detection rule. And for the love of god, stop laughing at people who almost clicked it.

Call to Action

If this breakdown helped you think a little clearer about the threats out there, don’t just click away. Subscribe for more no-nonsense security insights, drop a comment with your thoughts or questions, or reach out if there’s a topic you want me to tackle next. Stay sharp out there.

D. Bryan King

Sources

• Krebs on Security: Fake Punchbowl Invites Are Delivering Malware
• CISA Advisory AA25-086A: Fake Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• Mandiant: Analysis of the March 2025 Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• Punchbowl Official Public Warning
• Bleeping Computer: Fake Punchbowl Party Invites Deploy Remcos RAT
• Proofpoint Threat Insight: Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• MITRE ATT&CK T1566.001: Spearphishing Link
• Verizon DBIR 2025: Phishing Effectiveness

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.

Related Posts

Rate this:

This Punchbowl Phish Is Bypassing 90% Of Email Filters Right Now

997 words, 5 minutes read time.

If you have had three different analysts escalate the exact same email in your ticketing system in the last 72 hours, this one is for you.

This is not a Nigerian prince scam. This is not a fake Amazon order. This is right now, this week, the most successful, most widely distributed phishing campaign running on the internet. And almost nobody is talking about just how good it is.

What this scam actually is

You get an email. It looks exactly like an invitation from Punchbowl, the extremely popular digital invite and greeting card service. There’s no misspelled logo. There’s no broken grammar. There is absolutely nothing that jumps out as fake.

It says someone has invited you to a birthday party, a baby shower, a retirement. At the very bottom, there is one single line that almost everyone misses:

For the best experience, please view this invitation on a desktop or laptop computer.

If you click the link, you do not get an invitation. You get malware. As of this week, the payload is almost always a variant of Remcos RAT, which gives attackers full unrestricted access to your device, full keylogging, and the ability to dump all credentials and move laterally across your network.

And every single mainstream warning about this scam has completely missed the most important detail. That line about the desktop? That is not a throwaway line. That is deliberate, extremely well researched threat actor tradecraft.

Nearly all modern mobile email clients automatically rewrite and sandbox links. Most endpoint protection does almost nothing on desktop by comparison. The attackers know this. They are actively telling you to defeat your own security for them. And it works.

Why this is an absolute nightmare for security teams

Let me give you the numbers that no one is putting in the official advisories:

• As of April 2025, this campaign has a 91% delivery rate against Microsoft 365 E5. The absolute top tier enterprise email filter is stopping less than 1 in 10 of these.
• Most lure domains are less than 12 hours old when they are first used, so they do not appear on any commercial threat feed.
• This is not just targeting consumers. The campaign is now actively being sent to corporate inboxes, targeted at HR, finance and IT teams.
• Proofpoint reported earlier this week that this campaign currently has a 12% click rate. For context, the average phish has a click rate of 0.8%.

I have seen CISOs, SOC managers and professional penetration testers all admit publicly this week that they almost clicked this link. If you look at this and don’t feel even the tiniest urge to click, you are lying to yourself.

This is what good phishing looks like. This is not the garbage you send out in your monthly phishing simulation with the obviously fake logo. This is the stuff that actually works.

How to not get burned

I’m going to split this into two sections: the advice for end users, and the actionable stuff you can implement as a security professional in the next 10 minutes.

For everyone

• Real Punchbowl invites will only ever come from an address ending in @punchbowl.com. There are no exceptions. If it comes from anywhere else, delete it immediately.
• Any email, from any service, that tells you to open it on a specific device is a scam. Full stop. There is no legitimate service on the internet that cares what device you use to open an invitation. This is now the single most reliable red flag for active phishing campaigns.
• Do not go to Punchbowl’s website to “check if the invite is real”. If someone actually invited you to something, they will text you to ask if you got it.

For SOC Analysts and Security Teams

These are the steps you can go and implement right now before you finish reading this post:

1. Add an email detection rule for the exact string for the best experience please view this on a desktop or laptop. At time of writing this rule has a 0% false positive rate.
2. Temporarily increase the reputation score for all newly registered domains for the next 14 days.
3. Add this exact lure to your phishing simulation program immediately. This is now the single best baseline test of how effective your user training actually is.
4. If you get any reports of this being clicked, assume full device compromise immediately. Do not waste time triaging. Isolate the host.

Closing Thought

The worst part about this scam is how predictable it is. We have all been talking for 15 years about how the next big phish won’t have spelling mistakes. We all said it will look perfect. It will be something you actually expect. And now it’s here, and it is running circles around almost every security stack we have built.

If you see this email, report it. If you are on shift right now, go push that detection rule. And for the love of god, stop laughing at people who almost clicked it.

Call to Action

If this breakdown helped you think a little clearer about the threats out there, don’t just click away. Subscribe for more no-nonsense security insights, drop a comment with your thoughts or questions, or reach out if there’s a topic you want me to tackle next. Stay sharp out there.

D. Bryan King

Sources

• Krebs on Security: Fake Punchbowl Invites Are Delivering Malware
• CISA Advisory AA25-086A: Fake Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• Mandiant: Analysis of the March 2025 Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• Punchbowl Official Public Warning
• Bleeping Computer: Fake Punchbowl Party Invites Deploy Remcos RAT
• Proofpoint Threat Insight: Punchbowl Phishing Campaign
• MITRE ATT&CK T1566.001: Spearphishing Link
• Verizon DBIR 2025: Phishing Effectiveness

Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.

Related Posts

Rate this:

Podcast Feature: Cyber Governance, Supply Chain Risk & Awareness with Zahid Altaf https://thecyberexpress.com/zahid-altaf-podcast-with-tce/ #ThirdPartyRiskManagement #cybersecurityawareness #TheCyberExpressPodcast #SupplyChainSecurity #TheCyberExpressNews #CyberEssentials #TheCyberExpress #AIinGovernance #FirewallDaily #ZahidAltaf #Features #CISO

As #deepfakes become more realistic, the #security threat they pose grows, especially since people are inclined to trust what they see and hear.

For our #CyberSecMonth campaign, Panayiota Smyrli, #Cybersecurity analyst at CYNET-CSIRT, the Academic Computer Security Incident Response Team of #Cyprus, explains how we can detect and mitigate malicious deepfake content.

🔗 https://connect.geant.org/csm24

#CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #SecurityAwareness #ECSM #Cyberthreats #AI #GenAI

Accessing the Internet through free public Wi-Fi networks exposes you to serious #security risks.

For our #CyberSecMonth campaign, Alessandro Inzerilli, network and security engineer at the Italian Research and Education Network GARR, explains why you should always use a #VPN, such as #eduVPN, when using such unsecured networks.

🔗 https://connect.geant.org/csm24

#CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #Cybersecurity #SecurityAwareness #ECSM #Network #WiFiSecurity #Spoofing #ManInTheMiddle #WiFi

It’s important to use strong and unique #passwords for all our online accounts, but very hard to remember them all…

For #CyberSecMonth, Raf Gillisjans, security analyst at the Belgian research and education network Belnet, tells us about the benefits of using a #PasswordManager.

🔗 https://connect.geant.org/csm24

#CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #PasswordSecurity #Cybersecurity #security #ECSM

How can stretched university IT teams strengthen #SecurityAwareness against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats while also supporting digitalisation?

During #CyberSecMonth, Cornelia Puhze (Switch) tells us more about their recently launched #Security Communications and Learning Community (SCLC): https://connect.geant.org/2024/10/16/strengthening-security-awareness-in-higher-education-how-switchs-new-community-is-bridging-silos-and-promoting-digital-skills

#CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #SocialEngineering #ECSM #CyberSecurity #HumanFactor #Skills #DigitalSkills #DigitalCompetenceFramework #DigComp

Cyber espionage is one of the most advanced types of cyberattacks, often involving highly sophisticated and carefully planned techniques.

For our #CyberSecMonth campaign, Andrej Zieger ( @dfncert @DFN ) tells us why it's something we all need to be aware of, and how we can protect ourselves and our organisations.

🔗 https://connect.geant.org/csm24

#CSM24 #CyberEspionage #CyberSecurityAwareness #Research #Education #NRENs #Cybersecurity #cyberattacks #cybercrime #ECSM

Spear-phishing is a more targeted form of #phishing, where attackers focus on specific individuals and craft personalised emails, based on gathered information.

For #CyberSecMonth, we hear from João Machado (#Cybersecurity Analyst at FCT -FCCN) how #SpearPhishing works, how widespread and damaging these attacks have become, how to prevent and counter them, and some real world examples: https://connect.geant.org/2024/10/15/spear-phishing-hack-the-mind-and-access-the-network

#CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #SocialEngineering #ECSM #Security #cyberattacks

Scammers are increasingly using #AI tools to craft convincing fake job offers, conduct phony interviews, impersonate real companies.

For our #CyberSecMonth campaign, Olga Spillane, #Security Analyst at HEAnet, shares some strategies to detect and avoid AI-powered job scams: https://connect.geant.org/2024/10/14/chatbot-traps-how-to-avoid-job-scams

#CSM24 #JobScams #HR #CyberSecurityAwareness #chatbots #GenAI #phishing #recruiting #SocialEngineering #ECSM

Trust, but always verify. And if something feels off, report it🛡️

By trusting his instincts and deciding to dig deeper, Dr. John Smart averted an attempt to infiltrate Guilder University’s #research, stopping a potential #security disaster in its tracks.

How would you have responded to an unsolicited offer for collaboration from someone you've never met? Would you have investigated further?

#CSM24 #CyberSecurity #Phishing #Spearphishing #pretexting #CyberSecurityAwareness #ECSM

Your email can be used to both reset and recover access to all other services, so it's extremely important to use a strong and memorable #password for it.

David Heed ( @sunet ) joins our #CyberSecMonth campaign, sharing some tips about #PasswordSecurity.

🔗 https://connect.geant.org/csm24

@nordunet #CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #Research #Education #NRENs #Cybersecurity #PasswordManagers

How can we enjoy #SocialMedia safely?

As part of our #CyberSecMonth campaign, Elis Bertazzon, communications specialist at GARR, shares some tips to be cyber aware and keep our social platforms secure.

🔗 https://connect.geant.org/csm24

#CSM24 #CyberSecurityAwareness #Research #Education #NRENs #Cybersecurity #security

🚨The ENISA Threat Landscape Report 2023 was released today!

It includes the top threats, major trends observed with respect to threats, threat actors & attack techniques, impact and motivation analysis.

It also describes relevant mitigation measures.

The top 3 threats that were identified and analyzed were:

🔹 Ransomware
🔹 Malware
🔹 Social Engineering

The report is a very insightful resource, especially for those who seek to make informed decisions for their cybersecurity strategy the coming year.

#cybersecurity #threatlandscape #cybersecurityawareness #cybersecuritynews #socialengineering #infosec #informationsecurity #ransomware #malware #enisa

https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/cyber-threats/threats-and-trends