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-- INSIGHTS
The Human Side of Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity incidents are rarely just technical. They are shaped by employee decisions, security culture, phishing and social engineering, AI use, and the way organizations respond to risk.
HumanSecIQ Insights examines those factors through practical guidance, analysis, and real-world cybersecurity incidents.
LATEST
Latest Insights
Insights, guidance, and practical perspectives on human risk, security culture, and AI governance.
Co-op Cyber Incident 2025: Third-Party Access and the Decision to Disconnect
The third UK retailer hit in a two-week wave detected its intruders in hours, cut its own network before the ransomware could fire, and never paid a penny. It still lost the data of all 6.5 million members and £206 million in sales. This is what the good outcome costs. Case type: Social engineering / attempted ransomware / data theft Identified: Apr 22, 2025 Disclosed: Apr 30, 2025 Attribution: Scattered Spider affiliates / DragonForce RaaS Every breach in this serie
Marks & Spencer Cyber Incident 2025: Help Desk Social Engineering and Identity Risk
The first and hardest-hit target of the UK retail wave. A few minutes of impersonation at an outsourced service desk, weeks of quiet access, every domain password reportedly harvested, and then the encryptor. M&S never said whether it paid. Its accounts said statutory profit fell from $509 million to $4.4 million. Case type: Social engineering / ransomware Identified: Apr 19–21, 2025 Disclosed: Apr 22, 2025 Attribution: Scattered Spider (reported) / DragonForce ransomware
Harrods Cyber Incident 2025: When Identity Defenses Actually Work
The third target of the UK retail wave cut its own internet access, kept trading, and said almost nothing. The wave broke against it. Months later, 430,000 customer records left anyway, through a supplier Harrods has never named. Both halves are the story Case type: Attempted intrusion / third-party data breach Identified: Late Apr 2025; Sept 2025 Disclosed: May 1, 2025; Sept 26, 2025 Attribution: Wave linked to Scattered Spider / DragonForce; Sept actor unnamed By the
HUMAN RISK
SECURITY CULTURE
AI GOVERNANCE
Marks & Spencer Cyber Incident 2025: Help Desk Social Engineering and Identity Risk
The first and hardest-hit target of the UK retail wave. A few minutes of impersonation at an outsourced service desk, weeks of quiet access, every domain password reportedly harvested, and then the encryptor. M&S never said whether it paid. Its accounts said statutory profit fell from $509 million to $4.4 million. Case type: Social engineering / ransomware Identified: Apr 19–21, 2025 Disclosed: Apr 22, 2025 Attribution: Scattered Spider (reported) / DragonForce ransomware
Rebecca Guy
Jun 17, 20255 min read
Harrods Cyber Incident 2025: When Identity Defenses Actually Work
The third target of the UK retail wave cut its own internet access, kept trading, and said almost nothing. The wave broke against it. Months later, 430,000 customer records left anyway, through a supplier Harrods has never named. Both halves are the story Case type: Attempted intrusion / third-party data breach Identified: Late Apr 2025; Sept 2025 Disclosed: May 1, 2025; Sept 26, 2025 Attribution: Wave linked to Scattered Spider / DragonForce; Sept actor unnamed By the
Rebecca Guy
Jun 3, 20255 min read
CDK Global Cyberattack 2024: Vendor Concentration and Industry-Wide Disruption
One software company went down and roughly 15,000 car dealerships went back to pen and paper in the middle of quarter-end. A restoration that got knocked down mid-recovery, a reported $25 million ransom, and over a billion dollars in dealer losses that the ransom did nothing to prevent. Case type: Ransomware / SaaS supply chain outage Identified: Jun 18, 2024 Disclosed: Jun 19, 2024 Attribution: BlackSuit (Royal / Conti lineage) On the morning of June 19, 2024, thousan
Rebecca Guy
Jul 23, 20245 min read
MOVEit Transfer Breach 2023: Third-Party Risk at Scale
No one at 2,700 organizations clicked anything. Over a single holiday weekend, a zero-day in a trusted file-transfer product let a ransomware crew steal data at industrial scale, from companies, agencies, and universities, many of which had never heard of MOVEit until it took their data. Case type: Supply chain / zero-day exploitation Identified: May 28–30, 2023 Disclosed: May 31, 2023 Attribution: Clop (TA505 / FIN11) Organizations spend enormous effort securing thei
Rebecca Guy
Jan 9, 20245 min read
Caesars Entertainment Breach 2023: Social Engineering, Vendor Risk, and Extortion
Three weeks before MGM went dark, the same attackers called a help desk that worked for Caesars, and walked away with the loyalty database. No outage, no headlines at first, a negotiated ransom, and zero guarantees the data was ever deleted. Case type: Social engineering / vendor compromise / extortion Identified: Sept 7, 2023 Disclosed: Sept 14, 2023 Attribution: Scattered Spider (UNC3944) On August 18, 2023, attackers associated with Scattered Spider targeted the help desk
Rebecca Guy
Sep 23, 20234 min read
LastPass Breach 2022: Credential Security, Access, and Vendor Risk
What began as a compromised developer environment became a second-stage intrusion into cloud backup storage. The LastPass breach shows how credentials, privileged access, third-party software, and interconnected systems can turn one compromise into broader organizational risk.
Rebecca Guy
Jan 12, 20235 min read
Next Steps
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