This year’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month highlights the Core 4 habits: strong passwords, MFA, scam awareness, and software updates. Put another way: protect your passwords, protect your accounts, protect against social engineering, and protect against exploitable vulnerabilities. One of the most effective things one can do along these lines is to address exposed personal data, becauseContinue reading "Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2025: Complete Your Defenses With Personal Data Removal "

  Welcome to The Optery Dispatch — a newsletter delivering the latest insights on threat intelligence and proactive cybersecurity strategy. In Issue #4, published August 26, 2025, we cover: New Joint CISA/FBI/CNMF Advisory Is Latest Confirmation that Attackers Use Commercial Data Brokers to Target Organizations Advisory follows a string of evidence showing attackers leveraging data brokers forContinue reading "Data Brokers Used to Target Orgs, Social Engineering is #1 Attack Vector"

Advisory follows a string of evidence showing attackers leveraging data brokers for recon and social engineering The joint CISA/FBI/CNMF updated advisory on Scattered Spider acknowledges what several analysts have previously noted: the threat group is using commercial data brokers as part of their reconnaissance toolkit and as fuel for social engineering. In its July 29,Continue reading "New Joint CISA/FBI/CNMF Advisory Is Latest Confirmation that Attackers Use Commercial Data Brokers to Target Organizations"

  Welcome to The Optery Dispatch — a newsletter delivering the latest insights on threat intelligence and proactive cybersecurity strategy. In Issue #3, published July 24, 2025, we cover: Scattered Spider’s Use of Data Brokers Reconnaissance, Targeting, Threats One of today’s most dangerous threat groups is using data brokers to build detailed victim profiles, impersonate employees, andContinue reading "Scattered Spider, Social Engineering, and Ransomware"

Update: A new joint CISA/FBI/CNMF advisory has confirmed that Scattered Spider uses commercial data brokers. Read more here. The hacker collective known as Scattered Spider is once again dominating headlines with a wave of high-profile cyberattacks that span multiple industries. According to threat intelligence sources, the group has pursued a sector-by-sector strategy, recently hitting retailContinue reading "Scattered Spider’s Use of Data Brokers: Reconnaissance, Targeting, and Threats"