Stu Sjouwerman

Chief Executive Officer & President

Stu Sjouwerman (pronounced “shower-man”) is the founder and CEO of KnowBe4, Inc., which hosts the world’s most popular integrated security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, with over 54,000 organization customers and more than 50 million users. A serial entrepreneur and data security expert with 30 years in the IT industry, Stu was the co-founder of Inc. 500 company Sunbelt Software, a multiple award-winning anti-malware software company that was acquired in 2010.

Books

Cyberheist E-Book

Find all of Stu's books on Amazon

Basic training in avoiding phishing is no longer sufficient

Dec 8, 2017 9:53:34 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

Databreaches.net has forums and one of their posts really got our attention. It was an official notification from the legal department of Boise Cascade Company in Utah about a phishing ...

This ransomware asks victims to name their own price to get their files back

Dec 8, 2017 9:30:00 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

Attackers behind this form of file-encrypting malware - which has similarities with Locky - think that if the victim can set their own price, they're more likely to pay. A form of ...

48 Servers Of North Carolina County Held Hostage by LockCrypt Ransomware

Dec 7, 2017 6:33:03 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

A hacker’s 1 p.m. deadline to pay $23,000 passed Wednesday, and Mecklenburg County has not decided whether to pay the ransom for a cyber-attack that “paralyzed” the county. County manager ...

Cyber Warfare in 140 Characters: Social Media Weaponized

Dec 6, 2017 3:00:50 PM By Stu Sjouwerman

David Patriakos's new book about cyber warfare is a fascinating read. From the back cover: "Modern warfare is a war of narratives, where bullets are fired both physically and virtually. ...

KnowBe4 Prevents Customer From Becoming Social Engineering Victim Of Duke Energy Vendor’s Hack

Dec 6, 2017 1:39:03 PM By Stu Sjouwerman

A customer just sent us this: "Stu, the company who processes payments for Duke Energy’s walk in payments was hacked and as a result about 375,000 bank accounts may have been stolen. "We ...

Which of Your Employees Are Most Likely to Expose Your Company to a Cyber Attack?

Dec 6, 2017 7:02:01 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

Kon Leong at Harvard Business Review wrote an excellent article about the problem of employees exposing your organization to cyberthreats through human error. Here is a short qoute:

Phishing Schemes Are Using Encrypted Sites To Seem Legit

Dec 6, 2017 6:39:41 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

WIRED wrote: "A MASSIVE EFFORT to encrypt web traffic over the last few years has made green padlocks and "https" addresses increasingly common; more than half the web now uses internet ...

Mailsploit Bypasses DMARC And Lets Attackers Send Spoofed Phishing Emails on Over 33 Email Clients

Dec 5, 2017 10:56:55 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

Our friends at Bleepingcomputer reported on something that should cause anyone concern. German security researcher Sabri Haddouche has discovered a set of vulnerabilities that he ...

CyberheistNews Vol 7 #47 Your Cybercrime Insurance Policy May Not Cover You for Social Engineering Fraud

Dec 5, 2017 9:58:32 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

KnowBe4 Wins Frost & Sullivan Cyber Security Awareness Training Platform Customer Value Leadership Award

Dec 5, 2017 7:57:33 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

I'm extremely pleased to tell you we have won a prestigious award. Frost & Sullivan is a global research and consulting firm and they recently announced that we received their 2017 ...

Scam Of The Week: Phishers Target PayPal Users With Fake “Failed Transaction” Emails

Dec 4, 2017 2:59:18 PM By Stu Sjouwerman

Scammers are pushing out fake PayPal emails that use the premise of an unverified transaction to phish for customers’ personal and financial information. With the end-of-the-year holidays ...

Your Cybercrime Insurance Policy May Not Cover You For Social Engineering Fraud

Dec 3, 2017 8:44:18 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

I have talked about this potentially extremely expensive and very disappointing "CEO fraud" or "Business Email Compromise" problem many times before. Your cybercrime policy may not ...

Phishing campaigns and malware infections are both up more than 40% since Q2 ‘17

Dec 3, 2017 7:28:13 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

The NTT Security Global Threat Intelligence Center (GTIC) 2017 Q3 Threat Intelligence Report provides a glimpse inside the research conducted by NTT Security researchers over the last ...

Google Kicks Harmful Apps Out Of Google Play And Offers 5 Steps Against Social Engineering

Dec 3, 2017 6:56:40 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

You're always better off getting apps from reputable stores like Google Play than you are from potentially dodgy, at best unknown, third-party sites. But even Google Play isn't immune ...

If Willie Sutton were working today, he'd be stealing cryptocurrency, not wasting time on banks

Dec 2, 2017 11:36:50 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

Because that's where the money is. Criminals have been installing cryptocurrency miners on victim machines that turn them into sources of money. These operate without the users' ...

Proposed New Legislation: "Security Awareness Training For Your Users Or Go To Jail"?

Dec 2, 2017 11:10:20 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

OK, it may be hyberbole, but since 91% of data breaches are caused by successful spear phishing attacks, it's not entirely crazy to say: "security awareness training your users or go to ...

New CyberThreat Survey Confirms: Biggest Security Obstacle Is Low User Security Awareness

Dec 2, 2017 10:16:06 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

The CyberEdge Group is an award-winning research firm that serves information security vendors and service providers. They recently surveyed 1,100 qualified IT security decision makers ...

Here is your KnowBe4 Holiday Shopping Cybersecurity Video!

Dec 1, 2017 5:32:36 PM By Stu Sjouwerman

UK Shipping firm Clarksons falls victim to hybrid ransomware / data theft extortion

Nov 29, 2017 4:06:33 PM By Stu Sjouwerman

Shipping company Clarksons has fallen victim to a major ransomware attack that could result in the exposure of private data, the company warned today. The statement continued: "Our ...

77% of the FTSE 100 Have Compromised Credentials - What is your Stolen-password percentage?

Nov 29, 2017 11:06:44 AM By Stu Sjouwerman

IT security vendor Anomali, released a new report showing the volume of stolen credentials of FTSE 100 employees tripled In 2017, and a whopping 77% of the FTSE 100 were exposed with an ...

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