Cyber security resources

Every article on the site, grouped by topic. Each one answers a single question completely, so you are not stitching an answer together from four half-pages.

39 resources across 7 topics

Cyber Security Basics Threats Explained Defenses and Tools Protect Yourself Cyber Security for Business Compliance and Regulation Careers and Certifications

Cyber Security Basics

3 resources

Beginner

What Is Cyber Security? The Plain-English Guide

Every definition of cyber security you have read is technically right and practically useless. Here is what the field actually does, what it is up against, and what any of it means for you.

13 min read

Beginner

Cyber Security Basics: The Beginner's Starting Point

The hard part of starting is not that any one idea is difficult. It is that nobody tells you which of the hundred things you have read is the one to do first.

20 min read

Beginner

Cyber Security Terms: 92 Definitions in Plain English

Most cyber security writing assumes you already have the vocabulary. This is the vocabulary, grouped by what each word does rather than by first letter, so the words arrive in an order that makes sense.

31 min read

Threats Explained

14 resources

Beginner

Cyber Security Threats: The 12 That Actually Cause Breaches

Every list of cyber threats has twenty entries and no sense of proportion. These are the twelve that account for nearly all real breaches, in the order the evidence ranks them, with the mechanism of each drawn out.

13 min read

Beginner

Business Email Compromise: How It Works and How to Stop It

Business email compromise is the fraud that arrives with no malware, no link and no obvious lie: a real invoice from a real supplier, with the bank details changed. It is the second most expensive crime reported to the FBI.

18 min read

Beginner

Credential Stuffing: How the Attack Works and How to Stop It

Credential stuffing does not guess your password. It already has one, taken from a site you forgot you signed up for, and it is trying that exact password everywhere else you might have used it.

12 min read

Beginner

Insider Threat: Definition, Types, Examples and Controls

An insider threat is not a kind of person you can pick out of a room. It is a piece of access doing something it was never meant to do, and most of the time nobody involved meant any harm at all.

16 min read

Beginner

What Is a Data Breach? How They Happen and How to Check

A data breach is an event about data, not about damage, and the two get confused constantly. Here is what the word actually covers, how one unfolds, and where to look to find out whether your information is already in one.

19 min read

Beginner

What Is a DDoS Attack? How It Works and How to Stop It

A DDoS attack does not break into anything. It buries a website in traffic until nobody else can reach it, and the defense has to sit upstream of the thing being buried.

15 min read

Beginner

What Is a Man-in-the-Middle Attack? Types and Signs

The version everyone pictures, a stranger reading your email over the cafe Wi-Fi, mostly stopped working. The idea underneath it moved to the login page, where it works better than ever.

11 min read

Beginner

What Is a Zero Day? Vulnerabilities, Exploits, Attacks

Zero day is three different things wearing one name, and the difference decides what you can do about it. Here is what the clock is counting, how many are really out there, and what protects a system that has no patch available.

14 min read

Beginner

What Is Malware? Types, Signs and How to Remove It

Malware is not one attack, it is the whole category, which is why the word feels vague right up until something on your machine starts behaving oddly. Here is what it covers, how it arrives, and what actually gets it off.

18 min read

Beginner

What Is Phishing? How It Works and How to Spot It

Phishing is the attack everyone has seen and most people still fall for, because the good ones do not look like the bad ones. Here is how it works, what gives it away, and what to do when you have already clicked.

10 min read

Beginner

What Is Ransomware? How It Works and How to Stop It

The ransom note is the last thing that happens, not the first. By the time it appears the attackers have usually been inside for days, taken a copy of everything worth taking, and deleted the backups. The week before the note is where this is won or lost.

16 min read

Beginner

What Is Social Engineering? How These Attacks Work

Social engineering is the attack that never touches your software, because it does not have to. It asks a person, politely and plausibly, and the person says yes.

15 min read

Intermediate

What Is a Supply Chain Attack? Examples and Defenses

A supply chain attack does not start with you. It starts with a company you bought something from, and it arrives signed, expected and trusted.

17 min read

Intermediate

What Is SQL Injection? How It Works and How to Stop It

SQL injection turns a form field into an instruction the database obeys. It is one of the oldest flaws on the web, second on the latest list of the most dangerous software weaknesses, and one of the very few problems in security with a complete fix.

18 min read

Defenses and Tools

11 resources

Beginner

How to Create a Strong Password That Actually Holds Up

Most password advice is a decade out of date. The rules that replaced it are shorter, easier to follow, and written down in a federal standard you can check.

14 min read

Beginner

Two-Factor Authentication: How 2FA Works and Which to Use

A password is one secret, and secrets travel. Two-factor authentication adds a second proof that whoever stole the first one does not have, and which kind of second factor you pick matters more than anyone tells you.

14 min read

Beginner

What Is a Firewall? How It Works and What It Misses

A firewall decides which network traffic gets through and which does not. That is a narrower job than most people assume, and knowing exactly where the line falls is what tells you which other defenses you still need.

14 min read

Beginner

What Is a Password Manager? How It Works and the Catch

A password manager is an encrypted vault that invents a different password for every account and types it for you. The reason to use one is arithmetic, and the reasons not to are worth hearing before you commit.

20 min read

Beginner

What Is Encryption? How It Works and the Two Types

Encryption is running on almost everything you touch, and the only decision that ever matters is who holds the key. Here is how it works, what the two types are for, and where it quietly stops protecting you.

13 min read

Intermediate

What Is a SOC? Inside a Security Operations Center

A security operations center is the team that answers the alert, not the software that raised it. The distinction decides almost everything about what one costs and whether yours works.

14 min read

Intermediate

What Is EDR? Endpoint Detection and Response Explained

An EDR agent watches every process that starts on a laptop or a server, keeps the record, and can cut the machine off the network. The part nobody sells you is that someone still has to read what it finds.

16 min read

Intermediate

What Is Penetration Testing? The Phases, Types and Limits

A penetration test is an authorized attack on your own systems, run by someone you pay to succeed. What varies enormously is the scope, the skill and what you get back, which is why three quotes for the same request arrive at three prices.

13 min read

Intermediate

What Is SIEM? How Log Data Becomes a Security Alert

Every system you run is already writing down what it did. A SIEM is the product that reads all of it at once and tells you which three lines out of nine million belong together.

15 min read

Intermediate

What Is Vulnerability Scanning? Types and How It Works

A vulnerability scan tells you what is wrong with your systems in a few hours. Working out which of the four hundred findings an attacker would actually use is the part that decides whether the scan was worth running.

16 min read

Intermediate

What Is Zero Trust? The Principles, Pillars and Limits

Zero trust is a set of design principles, not a category of software, and the distance between those two things is where most security budgets go wrong. Here is what the model actually says, who defines it, and what it does not solve.

12 min read

Protect Yourself

4 resources

Beginner

What to Do After a Data Breach: A Step-by-Step Plan

A breach notice tells you something happened and very little about what to do. The right response depends on exactly what was exposed, and most of it takes an hour.

11 min read

Beginner

How to Freeze Your Credit at All 3 Bureaus for Free

A freeze stops anyone opening a new credit account in your name, costs nothing, and does not touch your credit score. The catch is that you have to do it three times.

13 min read

Beginner

How to Know If You Have Been Hacked: Signs and Checks

Most of the signs people worry about have innocent explanations, and the ones that matter are sitting in a settings page nobody opens. Here is what to look at, in what order, and what each answer actually proves.

13 min read

Beginner

How to Spot a Phishing Email: 7 Red Flags to Check

A message is open in front of you and something about it is off. This is the check that settles it, in the order that settles it fastest, and it works on a phone.

13 min read

Cyber Security for Business

3 resources

Beginner

Cyber Security for Small Business: Costs and Priorities

A small business does not need a security program. It needs a short list of things done properly, in a particular order, with a clear view of what each one costs before the money is committed.

17 min read

Intermediate

Incident Response Plan: How to Build One and Test It

Most incident response plans are written for an auditor and opened for the first time at two in the morning on the night they are needed. The plan that works is the one the person on shift can follow without waking anyone to ask permission.

22 min read

Intermediate

What Is Managed Detection and Response? MDR vs MSSP

Buying managed detection and response is buying people, not software. The question that separates two quotes at the same price is which systems the provider can see, and what they are allowed to do at three in the morning without calling you first.

21 min read

Compliance and Regulation

2 resources

Intermediate

PCI DSS Compliance: 12 Requirements, Levels and SAQs

PCI DSS is twelve requirements written in plain language, wrapped in machinery that almost nobody explains: four merchant levels, ten questionnaires named after letters and acronyms, and an enforcement chain that runs through your bank rather than through Visa.

22 min read

Intermediate

What Is SOC 2 Compliance? Criteria, Types and Audits

SOC 2 is the report enterprise buyers ask for before they will hand you their data. It is an accountant's opinion on your controls, not a certificate, and understanding that difference is what tells you how much one is worth.

16 min read

Careers and Certifications

2 resources

Beginner

Cyber Security Certifications: What Employers Ask For

Every certification body ranks its own credential first. This is the same eight certifications laid out side by side, with what each one costs, what it demands before you can hold it, and which jobs actually ask for it.

12 min read

Beginner

How to Get into Cyber Security: The Honest Route

Getting into cyber security is a sequence of moves, and most of the advice online gets the order wrong by putting a certification first. Here is the route, with the part about entry level hiring that the ads leave out.

18 min read