Phishing is an email-borne malicious technique aimed at learning the sensitive credentials of users or spreading malware. This practice has been on the list of the top cyber threats to individuals and businesses for years. According to the latest Phishing Activity Trends Report by APWG, the total number of phishing attacks identified in Q1 2024 exceeded 963,000.

Earlier this month, I was thrilled to join forces with the team at Dark Reading for a webinar on the future of AI in security operations. Titled CISO Perspectives: How to make AI an accelerator, not a blocker, the webinar allowed me to take a deep dive into the future role of AI in security with some of the most knowledgeable CISOs on the subject, Mandy Andress of Elastic and Matt Hillary of Drata.

As I sit in the 2024 Seattle Convene conference this week and listen to speaker after speaker talk about their successful security awareness training programs, one thing is perfectly clear. They all prefer carrots and fewer sticks. A question human risk managers frequently ask me is what role negative consequences should play in a successful security awareness training program?

Thirty-four percent of state and local government entities were hit by ransomware in 2024, a new report from Sophos has found. While this is a decrease compared to the attack rate in 2023, the mean cost of recovery for these entities has more than doubled to $2.83 million. Seventy-two percent of ransom demands made to state and local government organizations in 2024 were for $1 million or more, with 37% of demands for $5 million or more.

The momentous rise of AI continues, and more and more customers are demanding concrete results from these early implementations. The time has come for tech companies to prove what AI can do beyond adding conversational chat agents to website sidebars. Fortunately, it’s easy to see how cloud data protection has already benefited from advancements in AI and ML. Headline-grabbing large-language models are also making protecting data in the cloud easier to manage across organizations. ‍

In an economy where securing data can mean the difference between success and failure, implementing proven data exfiltration prevention strategies is more critical than ever. According to a study conducted by IBM, a data breach can cost global organizations an average of nearly $5 million per incident. In addition to the financial ramifications, data theft can lead to lower customer trust, a loss of future revenue, and even potential lawsuits.