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CISO Global Blog

Lessons from the Field, Part III: Why Backups Alone Won’t Save You

James Keiser, Director of Secured Managed Services West “Backups fail in practice, not in theory.” Key Takeaways Backups fail when they aren’t secured, tested, or built for real attacks. Attackers often compromise backups before triggering ransomware. Backups are recovery tools, not a complete security strategy. True resilience means restoring stems in hours, not
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CMMC 2.0 Preparation: Top Four Strategic Actions to Take Now

Randy Griffith, Senior Security Consultant “We offer a range of services to help your DIB organization prepare for your assessment based on your specific maturity level, whether you are just getting started and want to see what you need or are almost ready to schedule your CMMC 2.0 assessment.” Key Takeaways There’s a famous saying: you only get one chance to make a good first impression. Though not quite
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Labyrinths and Footguns: Cybersecurity in the Age of the Cloud

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Consulting “It’s important to realize that not only does the cloud not solve all your old cybersecurity problems, it can introduce its own new ones.” Key Takeaways The Cloud is Not Magic The biggest mistake an organization with either a nascent new or existing large cloud footprint can make
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Scorched Earth: Wiper Attacks are the New Face of Cyber War

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Consulting Sure, they would vastly prefer targeting organizations in the opponent’s supply chain (which is why new requirements like CMMC are absolutely crucial), but every organization that is affiliated with or operates in the adversary’s territory becomes a target no matter how large or small. Key Takeaways Wiper Attacks: When
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Shadow AI: Your Employees Are Already Using It, Now What?

Gary Perkins, Chief Information Security Officer A blanket “no AI” policy is not the answer for most organizations. Prohibiting something people find genuinely useful just drives it further underground. Here is something worth considering for a moment: right now, employees across your organization are using AI tools you did not approve, did not provision, and have
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Beyond the Checklist: How a vCISO Strengthens Your Path to CMMC Certification

Samuel P. Morthland, CHECKLIGHT® Product Manager We work directly with your leadership team to design, implement, and sustain a CMMC-aligned security program that goes beyond checklists and stands up to real-world scrutiny. Preparing for CMMC certification is often approached as a checklist—identify the controls, document the evidence, and pass the assessment. But organizations that treat it
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When Trusted Tools Turn Against You

Fernando Gomez, SOC Security Analyst The Notepad++ incident is a reminder that the tools we use to build our businesses can also be used to break them. In the world of cybersecurity, we often talk about the “perimeter.” We build walls and lock doors, but what happens when the intruder hitches a ride on a
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How Effective Policies and Procedures Can Keep Your Organization Secure

Hunter Barrat, Strategy & Risk Project Manager and Technical Writer We also undergo the annual continuous monitoring process, so we understand these challenges and can help you work through them. Many organizations lack effective security-related policies and procedures (P&Ps). But if your organization creates, stores, or transmits sensitive or regulated data, you don’t have a choice, especially if you need to show compliance for your industry-specific audits. Assessors won’t be satisfied with informal processes or institutional knowledge; as the saying goes, “If it is not
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Closing the Gap Between Detection and Response

Chase Barrett, SOC Solutions Architect In cybersecurity, speed is not a luxury. It is the difference between interruption and impact. Most cybersecurity failures do not start with a lack of alerts, but rather with what happens after the alert fires. It’s very common to get alerts like: At that moment, the clock is running and
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Why Maintaining an Up-to-Date Compliance Process is Critical in an Era of Rapidly Changing Cyber Risks

Lou Morentin, VP of Compliance and Privacy An outdated compliance program does not just fail to reduce risk, it actively hides it. Compliance has always lagged attackers. That is not a controversial statement, it is simply how the system works. Threat actors adapt in weeks or days. Most compliance programs still operate on annual or semi-annual cycles and that gap is where risk
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A Day in the Life of MXDR: From Alert to Action

Fernando Gomez, SOC Security Analyst What surprises new customers most is not how many alerts exist, but how few are black and white. Most people imagine a Security Operations Center as a wall of blinking alerts and analysts frantically reacting to every red notification. That image is understandable and mostly wrong. In a modern Managed
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Why Vendor Fatigue is the Silent Threat to Mid-Market Companies

Joe Knight, Senior Account Executive Vendor fatigue doesn’t happen overnight. It builds slowly until one day you realize your security stack has become a security problem. The good news? You don’t have to live with it. Let’s be honest… if you’re running IT or security for a mid-sized company, you’ve probably got way too many vendors on your plate right now. You know
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CMMC: From Ignored Compliance to Mandatory Enforcement

Baan Alsinawi, Stratregy and Risk Managing Director Protecting sensitive data does require investment, and that mindset hasn’t been universal. Now, it isn’t an option. It’s time to move from debate to execution. Compliance isn’t optional anymore… it’s essential and required. With the Department of Defense’s (DoD) CMMC Final DFARS rule[1] published on September 10, 2025,
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Cybersecurity Predictions for 2026

Gary Perkins, Chief Information Security Officer Ultimately, my prediction for cybersecurity in 2026 is that we will continue to see more of the same, just a lot faster. Threat actors will keep using the methods that work because there is no incentive to change what already delivers results. While we don’t have a crystal ball
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The Top 5 Cyber Threats That Targeted Small Businesses in 2025

Jim Montagne, Senior Account Director & Business Development As we look back at 2025 and onward, there are five cyber threats that stand out as the most pressing for small businesses. No single solution eliminates cyber risk. The most effective strategy for small businesses is to combine multiple layers of defense. Endpoint security, email filtering,
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The Future of Mid-Market Cybersecurity

Mark Crauwels, Account Executive The question is no longer whether to invest in cybersecurity, but how to do it in a way that is sustainable, effective, and resilient. Mid-market companies sit in a unique position in the business world. They are large enough to handle complex operations but not large enough to field the expansive
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Antivirus Was Never Enough: The Challenge for Small Businesses

Samuel Morthland, Product Manager CHECKLIGHT® The question is no longer whether your business will face an attempt, but whether you are prepared to detect and respond before damage is done. For years, traditional antivirus software was the default layer of defense against malicious files. If a piece of code matched a known virus signature, the
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MDR vs. MXDR vs. EDR: Breaking Down the Cybersecurity Alphabet Soup

Thomas Coffey, VP of Security For many companies, the choice comes down to resources. Running your own SOC requires significant investment in staff, training, and technology. Cybersecurity has always been filled with acronyms, and the list keeps growing. If you’ve ever felt like the terminology sounds more like alphabet soup than a clear roadmap, you’re
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Cybersecurity ROI: How to Align Your Cyber Spend with Business Value

Kyle Young, Chief Operating Officer (COO) Even with solid controls in place, no organization is immune to attack. The goal isn’t perfection. It is consistency, visibility, and response readiness. Cybersecurity spending has ballooned over the last decade. Budget requests come with urgency, fear, and often with technical jargon that can feel more emotional than rational.
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Impending Chaos: One in Twenty Small Businesses Will Suffer Financial Loss

Rob Hegedus, Program Director, CHECKLIGHT® The most underserved cyber insurance market is the small and medium-sized businesses, emphasis on the small. There are roughly 33 million small business in the United States, and according to the insurance industry, there are only 4.3 million cyber insurance policies issued to small businesses… So what options do they
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Don’t Be the Next $1.6M Headline: Why SMBs Can’t Afford to Ignore Cybersecurity

Ryan Greyslak, Director of Secured Managed Services West There’s a significant gap between what many SMBs think they’re doing to protect themselves and what it actually takes. Good intentions are not enough. Hope is not a strategy. Small and midsize businesses, or SMBs, have long believed that they can avoid becoming targets. “We’re not big
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Security is a Team Sport: Why Education and Awareness Matter

Joe Balestrieri, Account Executive at CISO Global Phishing campaigns are often misunderstood. They are not about catching employees doing something wrong. Instead, they are a safe environment to practice the right behaviors. I grew up playing lacrosse, and one lesson I learned early is that a team succeeds or fails together. It doesn’t matter how
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We’re in This Together: A Village Approach to Cybersecurity Partnerships

Tiffany Gray, Senior Account Director Strong partnerships are built on trust. It comes from doing the work, being consistent, and delivering value over time. Cybersecurity is not a solo act; it has never been. No single tool, platform, or individual can protect a business alone. Success comes from collaboration, shared responsibility, and from a village approach.
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Why a Security Architecture Document Is Your Cyber Blueprint for Success

Andrea Madore, PMP, Strategy & Risk Project Manager If this is your first time creating a security architecture document and you lack the resources or expertise to do so, or if your initial review uncovers gaps in your security that you need help closing, we can help. Imagine this: You’re planning to construct a skyscraper,
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Bridging the Gap: Aligning IT and Cybersecurity for Better Business

Ryan Greyslak, Director of Secured Managed Services West When your IT and cybersecurity partner is the same firm, that roadmap is more than theoretical. It’s built into how your systems are managed day-to-day, ensuring strategy and operations always align. While cybersecurity is not just a technology problem, it’s clear that IT and cybersecurity cannot operate
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What Great IT Looks Like

Brian Yelm, Managing Director Technology should never be an afterthought. It should accelerate efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage. When most people think of IT, they imagine someone racing in to fix what’s broken, a downed Wi-Fi network, a crashed server, or a printer that won’t cooperate. While that’s a common perception, it’s not what great
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When Trust Becomes a Liability: The Salesloft Drift Breach and the Hidden Risk of SaaS Integrations

Gary Perkins, Chief Information Security Officer This was not a brute-force intrusion, the attackers persuaded or tricked systems into granting long-lived access, then quietly exploited that trust. In early August 2025, a sophisticated supply-chain cyberattack targeting Salesloft’s Drift application came to light. Salesloft, a sales engagement platform widely used to streamline communication and customer relationship
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Future of AI: What’s Next, What to Watch Out For

CISO Global AI Division There’s a lot of noise right now about what AI will become. Everyone has a prediction. The hype will fade. It always does. But something useful will remain. In security, AI’s future is probably less about autonomous decision-making and more about augmentation. Triage assistance. Predictive analytics. Smarter correlation across
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Buying AI Tools? How to Cut Through Buzzwords

CISO Global AI Division Buzzwords can’t protect you from liability. If you buy something because it sounds smart but can’t perform, that’s on you. Buying AI Tools? How to Cut Through Buzzwords The AI label is slapped on just about everything now. It’s the security equivalent of a juice cleanse. Sounds impressive, but often not
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DEF CON 2025

Ferdinand Mudjialim, Pentester Attending DEF CON this year with the CISO Global team was a blast as always, despite the searingly hot Las Vegas weather. Luckily, with the recent exodus to the Las Vegas Convention Center, it’s easy to forget that there’s an outside world in the first place. DEF CON is one of
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Role of AI in Incident Response: Hype vs. Value (Part 2)

CISO Global AI Division AI also struggles with cost vs. benefit trade-offs. It can flag a spike in activity, but it can’t tell you whether it’s worth taking a system offline in the middle of payroll processing. In the first part on this topic, we looked at where AI genuinely helps in incident response and
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Role of AI in Incident Response: Hype vs. Value (Part 1)

CISO Global AI Division AI won’t save you. But it might give your humans enough lift to keep up. Vendors love to pitch AI as the future of incident response. Faster. Smarter. Hands-free. But look past the slogans and you’ll find a much more grounded story. Here’s what AI is actually good at in IR:
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Ethical AI in Cybersecurity

CISO Global AI Division Let’s get something straight: using AI isn’t ethically neutral There’s an ethical blind spot developing in cybersecurity. Everyone wants to use AI, but few stop to ask how and whether they should. That needs to change. Start with data. Are you feeding these models confidential incident reports? Internal communications? Case notes?
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Why Governance and Compliance Are Essential for Businesses in Regulated Industries

Lou Morentin, VP of Compliance & Privacy Effective governance and compliance frameworks empower organizations to manage staff with clarity and consistency. As regulations grow more complex, governance and compliance are not optional but foundational pillars of a resilient, trustworthy, and well-managed organization. For businesses operating in regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, energy, and cybersecurity,
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This analysis will self-destruct…

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Consulting For as much catastrophe over AI’s potential for autonomous attacks, for right now the reality is more nuanced. Insights from the Crowdstrike 1H 2025 Threat Report https://go.crowdstrike.com/rs/281-OBQ-266/images/Threat-Hunt-Report-2025.pdf Here’s some very likely fragile temporal analysis of the data contained in Crowdstrike’s Threat Report: For as much catastrophe over AI’s potential
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Humans Still Matter: Why AI Doesn’t Replace Analysts

CISO Global AI Division Every demo promises that the AI is smarter, faster, and more reliable than humans. There’s a recurring fantasy in cybersecurity circles, the vision of an analyst-free SOC. AI will handle it all, they say. No more alert fatigue, no more ticket queues, no more “click fatigue.” Just intelligent systems that detect,
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The Unsung Heroes of Cybersecurity Success

Brandon Bonicard, Client Success Manager Cybersecurity is a business built on trust. Every client is different. That is where the Client Success Manager comes in. When most people think of cybersecurity firms, they imagine analysts monitoring threats, engineers hardening systems, and specialists responding to breaches. What often gets overlooked is the person quietly ensuring that
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AI Maturity Curve: Where Most Security Teams Actually Are

CISO Global AI Division Real maturity doesn’t come until AI is integrated into the operational fabric AI Maturity Curve: Where Most Security Teams Actually Are There’s no shortage of vendors promising plug-and-play AI for cybersecurity. Dashboards light up. Detections appear smarter. The marketing says you’re now using “AI-driven defense.” But beneath the surface, most security
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Automation vs. AI: Dispelling Myths and Misconceptions

CISO Global AI Division [AI] should be capable of learning, generalizing, or spotting patterns beyond what’s been explicitly coded It’s everywhere. Every security tool now supposedly has “AI” baked in, whether it’s a firewall, SIEM, email filter, or endpoint agent. It’s the badge of innovation. If your product doesn’t have it, or if your team
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Before the Breach: Why You Need an IR Retainer Like a Golfer Needs a Caddie

Joe Knight, Senior Account Executive An incident response retainer isn’t just a contract, it’s a relationship. It sets expectations, defines access methods, outlines pricing, and ensures your team and your IR partner are already speaking the same language. Partnership Over Products You don’t call in a caddie after the damage is done, you bring them
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Cybersecurity in 2025: The Perfect Storm (Part 3)

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Architecture CISO Global experts analyzed 15 leading cybersecurity vendor reports to distill the most critical insights, trends, and takeaways. Strategic Response Framework In parts 1 and 2, we analyzed the converging cybersecurity threats of 2025. Now, let’s focus on practical solutions to address these critical challenges. With attack breakout times
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Cybersecurity in 2025: The Perfect Storm (Part 2)

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Consulting CISO Global experts analyzed 15 leading cybersecurity vendor reports to distill the most critical insights, trends, and takeaways. In Part 1, we examined the acceleration of cyberattacks, the persistence of ransomware, and the evolving tactics of threat actors. Now, let’s explore three critical dimensions of today’s threat landscape: AI’s
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2025: Spotting the Nefarious

Sam Lewis, Senior Security Consultant AI can be entertaining and powerful, but it can also be exploited. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in computing was first predicted in the 1930s and formally born in 1951. That early AI program was created to play checkers (of all games) and could complete a full match “at a reasonable speed”
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Cybersecurity in 2025: The Perfect Storm (Part 1)

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Consulting CISO Global experts analyzed 15 leading cybersecurity vendor reports to distill the most critical insights, trends, and takeaways. Every year, cybersecurity vendors publish threat intelligence reports that promise to uncover the latest attack trends and guide defenders. These reports are often backed by billions of telemetry events, real-world incident
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Lessons from the SOC: Fix the Basics Before Chasing Buzzwords

Fernando Gomez Threat actors are persistent, creative, and sometimes well-resourced. It’s not a matter of if someone gets in, it’s whether you detect them before they cause damage. From inside a Security Operations Center (SOC), patterns emerge. Analysts sit at the crossroads of alerts, incidents, and consequences. Across industries and tech stacks, we keep seeing the same core problems
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ARGO: See the Risk. Command the Business

Tigran Safari, Client Success Manager & Mark Crauwels, Account Executive Cyber Signals Are Everywhere Trapped in silos. Drowning in noise. Valuable insights are lost in a flood of disconnected systems. Critical information rarely reaches leadership in a form that begs action. That’s Where ARGO Comes In Built by CISO Global, ARGO is the business tool
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What to Look for When Selecting Your MSSP

Gary Perkins, Chief Information Security Officer, CISO Global I’ve been in the security business, and specifically cybersecurity, for the majority of my adult life. Throughout my career, I’ve noticed trends of decision-making that organizations often follow, both good and detrimental for their security posture. Of these trends, I’ve found that choosing the right Managed Security
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Cyber-Debt: The Hidden Cost of Neglected Security

Chris Clements, VP of Solutions Architecture at CISO Global Debt, with very few exceptions, is a liability. It causes stress, amplifies risks, and can spiral into perilous predicaments. Companies employ accountants to mitigate financial debt risks, but they often overlook a similar and equally dangerous risk: accumulating “Cyber-Debt.” Understanding Cyber-Debt You may be familiar with
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Understanding AI Maturity: Where Are You Today, and Where Do You Want to Be?

CISO Global AI Division By rating your present AI Maturity level and your desired future state, you can create a focused action plan to move forward confidently and securely. AI adoption doesn’t have to be overwhelming, it just requires a clear, intentional approach. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a transformative force across industries, offering businesses
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Risk and Exposure in Cybersecurity

Senior Account Director at CISO Global While cybersecurity risk and exposure may be unavoidable in our present threat environment, proactive measures can significantly reduce the likelihood and impact of cyber attacks. Understanding these risks and implementing strong security controls ensures safer digital environments for individuals and organizations alike. In cybersecurity, risk refers to the potential
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