Guard Street

Here is a question worth sitting with. If an attacker got into your network tomorrow, how far could they go?

Most security testing only checks whether someone can break in from the outside. That is useful, but it misses the bigger risk. These days attackers often get inside the easy way, through a phishing email, a stolen password, or a compromised vendor. No firewall gets touched.

The real damage happens after that first foothold. Can they jump from one machine to the next? Reach your most sensitive systems? Get to your backups? Internal pe*******on testing answers those questions by simulating an attacker who is already inside, then showing you exactly how far they could get.

Think of it this way. External testing asks if someone can get in. Internal testing asks what happens once they do. Both matter, and the second one is usually the one that hurts.

Want to know your real blast radius? Guard Street can help. Reach us at guardstreet.com/connect

Dozens of the world's most recognizable brands were breached last year, including names like Adidas, Google, and Qantas. The surprising part? There was no malware and no fancy exploit. Attackers simply called employees, posed as IT support, and talked their way into the company's systems.

It lines up with a pattern that has held for years. Verizon's latest Data Breach Investigations Report found that about 60% of breaches involve a human element. The technology is rarely the weak point. People are.

The good news is that the human side is also the easiest to strengthen. Three quick moves:

Verify unexpected requests through a second channel before acting.

Use phishing-resistant MFA, like an app or hardware key instead of text codes.

Audit which apps and vendors can reach your data, and cut what you do not use.

Staying ahead is less about buying tools and more about hardening the human layer attackers rely on. That is what Guard Street does with mid-market teams every day. If you would like a clear-eyed look at where you stand, let's talk: guardstreet.com/connect

How often do you test your business's cyber defenses? If the answer is once a year, there's a gap worth knowing about.

A pe*******on test only shows how secure you were on the day it ran. But your business changes all year long, and new threats show up every week. That clean report from January may not hold up by spring.

Testing more than once a year keeps your defenses honest and catches small problems before they become big ones.

Swipe through to see why regular testing matters, and reach out anytime if you'd like to talk through what a good schedule looks like for your business.

The company that gets breached usually isn’t where the attacker got in.

It’s the vendor. Payroll. The marketing tool. The small SaaS app one department signed up for last year without telling IT. We see this pattern with mid-market businesses all the time.

New post up on the five things mid-market companies get wrong about vendor risk, plus what to do about it. Worth a read if you’ve ever wondered whether your business is exposed through somebody else’s security gaps.

https://guardstreet.com/what-mid-market-businesses-get-wrong-about-vendor-risk/

There’s a cyber risk happening right now that doesn’t involve hacking your network at all.

It involves your employees. Using helpful AI tools. Without malicious intent.
It’s called Shadow AI, and it’s the focus of our latest podcast episode.

What we get into:
→ The Thanksgiving board meeting that got hijacked by instructions hidden in white text.
→ How an AI agent deleted an entire company’s database in 9 seconds.
→ Why banning AI tools can make the problem worse, not better.
→ What actually works instead.

If your team is using AI (and they are, whether you’ve approved it or not), this one’s worth a listen.

https://guardstreet.com/shadow-ai-explained-cybersecurity-risks-ai-tools-business-protection-guard-street-podcast/

Our CEO never turns down a good tasting event with the Greater O’Hare Association. 😉 Had a great night. Relaxed atmosphere, great conversations, and even better company. Already looking forward to the next one.

Cheers to everyone who made it such a memorable evening! 🍷🍻

Your enterprise client just asked for a Letter of Attestation. The deal is moving and you need to know what that means.

We wrote a plain-language breakdown of what it is, what it includes, and what to expect from the process.

Link: https://guardstreet.com/what-is-a-letter-of-attestation-and-why-does-your-business-need-one/

Think your team would spot a phishing email? Most people do - until they don’t.

Today’s phishing attacks are sophisticated, personalized, and built to bypass spam filters. Swipe through to see what most businesses get wrong.

Guard Street | guardstreet.com/connect

A major supply chain attack just hit the AI development world, and it has implications for any business using AI-powered tools.

LiteLLM, a widely used open-source library that connects applications to AI services like OpenAI and Google, was compromised last week. Two malicious versions were uploaded to a public software repository and downloaded by developers globally before the attack was caught. The malware was designed to steal cloud credentials, API keys, and other sensitive access data from every system it touched.

It was only discovered because a bug in the attackers’ own code crashed a researcher’s computer. Without that mistake, it could have gone unnoticed for weeks.

We put together a full breakdown of what happened, why it matters, and what organizations should be thinking about. Read the full post on our blog:

https://guardstreet.com/the-litellm-compromise-what-the-biggest-ai-supply-chain-attack-of-2026-means-for-your-business/

Russian military hackers just got caught hijacking 18,000 home and office routers across 120 countries. The FBI and partners from 15 nations had to step in to shut it down.

The scary part: they did not need to install anything. They just changed the router’s settings so that all internet traffic from every device on the network ran through servers they controlled. Passwords, emails, login tokens. All collected silently.
Most people never update their router, never change the default password, and have no idea what it is actually doing. That is what makes this kind of attack so effective.

We put together a full breakdown with practical steps you can take to protect your home and business network. Worth a read:

https://guardstreet.com/russian-military-hackers-just-hijacked-18000-routers-is-yours-one-of-them/