How to Prepare for a Cyber Attack: A Leader’s Checklist
I spent years in public-sector and utility IT, where emergency preparedness isn’t a slide deck — it’s a way of operating. Storms, outages, equipment failures: you plan for them because they’re coming whether you plan or not. Cyber attacks belong in exactly that category. So when people ask how to prepare for a cyber attack, […]
Information Security Policy: How to Write One (+ Template)
Every audit, every compliance framework, every cyber insurance application asks the same first question: do you have an information security policy? And here’s what two decades around IT organizations has taught me — most companies technically do. It’s forty pages long, written in 2019, and nobody below the IT director has ever read it. That’s […]
What Is a CISO? Role, Salary, and How to Become One
Ask five people what is a CISO and you’ll get five answers: “the security boss,” “the person who says no,” “the one who gets fired after the breach.” All three contain a grain of truth, and none of them capture the job. The CISO has become one of the most consequential — and most misunderstood […]
Virtual CISO (vCISO): What It Is and When to Hire One
Somewhere between “our IT person handles security” and “we have a full executive security team” sits most of the business world — big enough to be a target, not big enough to justify a $250,000+ security executive. That gap is exactly what the virtual CISO model exists to fill. And in my years around mid-size […]
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management: A Practical Guide
Here’s an uncomfortable number: research has consistently found that only a small fraction of published vulnerabilities — mid-single digits, percent-wise — ever get exploited in the wild. Yet most security teams treat all 40,000 findings on the scan report as equally urgent, burn out chasing CVSS scores, and still miss the one flaw attackers actually […]
Vulnerability Management Lifecycle: 6 Stages Explained
Every organization I’ve worked with owns a vulnerability scanner. Far fewer own a working vulnerability management lifecycle — and the difference shows up the same way every time: a report with 40,000 findings that nobody reads, and an unpatched server that everyone assumed someone else was handling. Scanning is easy. Management is the hard part. […]
Mathematical Attacks in Cyber Security: Types & Examples
If you’re studying for Security+ or CISSP, sooner or later this question shows up: what are mathematical attacks in cyber security? The short version: they’re attacks aimed at the math behind encryption itself. Not the software around it. Not the person using it. The math. The short version is enough to pass the exam question. […]
Whaling Phishing: How Attackers Hunt Executives (2026)
Most phishing casts a wide net. Whaling phishing brings a harpoon. Instead of blasting thousands of inboxes with generic bait, whaling targets one specific, high-value person — a CEO, CFO, or senior executive — with a message researched and written just for them. The stakes match the targeting: a single successful whaling attack can move […]
What to Do If You Click on a Phishing Link: 7 Steps
You just realized you clicked on a phishing link. First: don’t panic — what you do in the next ten minutes matters far more than the click itself. However, do act now, because speed is your biggest advantage. Follow the seven steps below in order, then read on to understand what actually happens when you […]
10 Phishing Email Examples You Need to See (2026)
The fastest way to stop falling for phishing is to see it coming — and the fastest way to see it coming is to study real phishing email examples. Attackers reuse the same handful of psychological plays over and over: urgency, authority, curiosity, fear. Once you’ve seen each play annotated, you’ll recognize it instantly in […]