QR codes were designed to make accessing information fast, simple, and convenient. Today, they're everywhere—restaurants, parking meters, payments, advertisements, event tickets, authentication systems, and even cybersecurity workflows. Unfortunately, attackers noticed that convenience too. In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike dive into QR Code Nightmares: where QR codes came from, why they've become so widely used, and how the same technology can be abused to hide malicious destinations, redirect users to convincing phishing pages, or trick someone into trusting a link they can't actually see. Unlike a traditional link, a QR code asks you to scan first and find out where you're going second—which creates some interesting security problems as QR codes become increasingly common. We also look at the other side of the story: QR codes aren't inherently dangerous. They're an incredibly useful technology. The challenge is understanding when—and where—you should trust one. 💬 Do you check where a QR code is taking you before opening the link? New episodes of Cyber Sitrep release every Wednesday at 1 PM Mountain Time. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode. #CyberSitrep #Cybersecurity #QRCodeSecurity Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you.

How many subscriptions, tools, platforms, and services is your organization actually paying for? In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike dive into the growing problem of technology and subscription sprawl. As organizations adopt new cloud services, cybersecurity tools, SaaS platforms, and other technologies, it becomes surprisingly easy to lose track of what you're paying for—and whether you're even still using it. A few subscriptions might not seem like much individually, but over time they can turn into duplicate tools, forgotten licenses, unused services, and recurring expenses that quietly continue hitting the budget. Keeping an accurate inventory of your technology stack isn't just about saving money, either. Knowing what you have, who owns it, why it's there, and whether it's still needed can make managing the entire environment easier. 💬 How well does your organization keep track of its technology stack and recurring subscriptions? New episodes of Cyber Sitrep release every Wednesday at 1 PM Mountain Time. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode. #CyberSitrep #Cybersecurity #SaaSManagement Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you.

Collecting artifacts is one thing. Keeping track of them is another nightmare entirely. In Part 2 of our Artifacts discussion, Eric and Mike dive into Artifact Management Hell—the challenge of organizing, maintaining, validating, and finding the evidence organizations collect for cybersecurity and compliance. When artifacts are scattered across SharePoint, OneDrive, Jira, Confluence, email, spreadsheets, and countless folders, simply answering “Where is the current version?” can become a project of its own. How do you know which artifact is current? Who owns it? When was it last reviewed? Is it still valid? And when audit time arrives, can anyone actually find it? We discuss why artifact management can quickly become its own problem and why simply collecting more evidence doesn't necessarily make an organization more prepared. 💬 How does your organization keep its cybersecurity and compliance artifacts organized? New episodes of Cyber Sitrep release every Wednesday at 1 PM Mountain Time. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode. #CyberSitrep #Cybersecurity #Compliance Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you.

Modern organizations depend on layers of technology built over years—or even decades. But what happens when that foundation starts to crumble? In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike discuss the growing problem of aging architecture, legacy systems, technical debt, and infrastructure that organizations continue piling new technology on top of instead of addressing at the foundation. As environments become more complex, maintaining old systems doesn't just become an IT headache. It can increase operational risk, create security gaps, make modernization harder, and leave teams spending more time keeping fragile systems alive than actually moving forward. At what point does maintaining the old environment become more expensive—and more dangerous—than rebuilding it? Let us know in the comments: How much legacy technology is your organization still supporting? New episodes of Cyber Sitrep release every Wednesday at 1 PM Mountain Time. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode. #CyberSitrep #Cybersecurity #TechnicalDebt Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you.

RAID can provide redundancy, improve performance, and help keep systems running when a drive fails—but RAID is not a backup, and relying on it as one can put your data at serious risk. In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike dive into the hidden perils of RAID and discuss what RAID actually does, where it can help, and some of the misconceptions surrounding redundant storage. From drive failures and degraded arrays to rebuilds and the possibility of losing more than one drive, RAID introduces its own set of risks that aren't always obvious until something goes wrong. We discuss why redundancy shouldn't be confused with data protection and why having multiple drives doesn't automatically mean your data is safe. The conversation also explores different RAID configurations, the tradeoffs between performance, capacity, and redundancy, and why understanding your storage architecture matters—whether you're managing enterprise infrastructure, a home lab, a NAS, or simply trying to protect important data. The big takeaway? RAID can help keep your systems running. A backup helps you recover when things go wrong. You probably want both. Tune in as Eric and Mike break down RAID, storage failures, backups, and what you should consider before trusting your data to an array. 💬 How are you protecting your data? Are you using RAID, backups, or both? Let us know in the comments. 🎙️ New episodes of Cyber Sitrep release every Wednesday at 1 PM Mountain Time. Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode! #CyberSecurity #DataStorage #CyberSitrep Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you.

AI is moving fast. Really fast. And with seemingly everyone trying to build the next great AI model, things are starting to get a little... interesting.In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike dive into some of the latest AI shenanigans happening across the industry. We look beyond the biggest names in AI and discuss some of the alternative models entering the space, what makes them different, and why some have generated controversy.One of the biggest questions is: How are these models actually being trained?As competition heats up, concerns have emerged around AI models potentially learning from the outputs of larger, established models. That opens up some fascinating questions about model distillation, training data, intellectual property, and where the line falls between building on existing technology and taking shortcuts to catch up.Eric and Mike also discuss the broader AI landscape, some of the strange things these systems can do, and just how difficult it has become to keep up with technology that seems to change every week.Is this simply part of AI's rapid evolution, or are some of these AI shenanigans signs of bigger issues ahead?Tune in and join the conversation!🎙️ New episodes of Cyber Sitrep release every Wednesday at 1 PM Mountain Time.Subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next episode!💬 What do you think? Have you experimented with any alternative AI models? Does how an AI was trained affect whether you'd use it? Let us know in the comments.#ArtificialIntelligence #CyberSecurity #CyberSitrep Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you.

Phishing attacks aren't what they used to be. Gone are the days when every phishing email was filled with obvious spelling mistakes, strange formatting, and suspicious requests. Today's attacks are becoming increasingly convincing, using better social engineering, impersonation, and even AI to make malicious messages harder to distinguish from legitimate communication. In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike discuss why cybersecurity training is needed now more than ever. As attackers improve their techniques, organizations can't rely solely on technology to protect them. Employees remain an important part of an organization's security, and effective training can help people recognize phishing, social engineering, and other threats before a simple click turns into a much larger incident. We discuss how the threat landscape has changed, why traditional security awareness training may no longer be enough, and why keeping employees educated and prepared needs to remain a key part of any cybersecurity program. The attacks are getting better. Our training needs to get better with them. 🎙️ Cyber Sitrep – Episode #48 Training: Needed Now More Than Ever 📅 New episodes every Wednesday at 1:00 PM MST Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you. #CyberSitrep #cybersecurity #securityawareness #phishing #cybertraining

FIPS. If you're working toward CMMC compliance, you've probably heard the term countless times—but what does it actually mean, and do you really need it? In this episode of Cyber Sitrep, Eric and Mike break down the differences between FIPS 140-2 and FIPS 140-3, explain where these standards fit into the CMMC ecosystem, and discuss when FIPS-validated cryptography is required versus where confusion often arises. Whether you're preparing for a CMMC assessment, implementing NIST SP 800-171 controls, or simply trying to understand why everyone keeps talking about FIPS, this episode helps separate fact from fiction. If you've ever found yourself asking... "To FIPS or not to FIPS?" ...this episode is for you. 🎙️ Cyber Sitrep – Episode #47 Title: To FIPS or Not to FIPS? 📅 New episodes every Wednesday at 1:00 PM MST Links: Corvus website: https://www.corvus-tech.net/ Digital Beachhead website: https://digitalbeachhead.com/ The Cyber Sitrep brings you all the latest cybersecurity news, commentary, and threat intelligence. Focused on small to midsize businesses who we feel have been left behind. Hosted by Eric from Corvus Technologies and Mike from Digital Beachhead who bring their unique perspective based on their military and cybersecurity experience. If you want to understand more about how cybersecurity is important to your organization, enjoy funny tales or just want to learn more about the field of cybersecurity this is the podcast for you. #CyberSitrep #cybersecurity #cmmc2 #fips #compliance