Galactic Research: Articles & Insights
Threat Thursday: June 18th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. Every Thursday we break down the cybersecurity stories that matter most for protecting your organization, with each item split into what happened, what it could mean for you, and what to ...
AI Security
OpenClaw's Marketplace Got Stuffed With Malware. Here's Why That Was Always Going to Happen.
What a Malware-Filled AI Agent Marketplace Tells Us About How the Industry Keeps Making the Same Mistake I've spent the better part of my career watching organizations adopt new technology faster than they can secure it, and documenting what happens ...
The Deepfake Was Convincing. So Was My Backpack.
Why Social Engineering Still Works, Why AI is Making it Sharper, and the One Habit that Stops it In early 2024, an employee at Arup, a global engineering firm, joined a video call with several colleagues, including someone who appeared ...
The Invisible Workforce
The Shadow AI Running Inside Your Clients' Environments and How MSPs Can Get Ahead of It It's Monday morning. A client's controller is on the phone. She spent Friday afternoon cleaning up the vendor list inside their accounting platform's new ...
Threat Intelligence
Threat Thursday: June 18th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. Every Thursday we break down the cybersecurity stories that matter most for protecting your organization, with each item split into what happened, what it could mean for you, and what to ...
Threat Thursday: June 11th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. This week's stories share one theme: the gap between a vulnerability becoming public and a working exploit existing is collapsing toward hours, and the coordinated disclosure process meant to give defenders ...
Threat Thursday: June 4th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic's weekly threat intelligence roundup. This week's stories have a clear pattern: attackers didn't find obscure entry points or novel techniques but instead went after the things you were already using and already trusting. As always, ...
Strategy & Leadership
Building Trust in Executive Relationships: Lessons from King Lear
A Framework for Establishing the Kind of Trust that Survives Budget Season Imagine the curtain going up and a group of players act out the opening scenes of Shakespeare's King Lear, just for you. An aging king sits in his ...
Your Jokes Were Funny. They Still Didn't Renew.
How MSPs Build the Kind of Client Rapport That Survives a Budget Review You walked out of the meeting feeling good. The handshake was firm, the small talk landed, and you even got a laugh with the printer joke. You ...
Value That Converts: Why Your vCSO Pitch Keeps Getting Pushed to IT
You walked out of that meeting feeling like a closer. Your credentials were on point. You covered the whole stack: EDR, SIEM, MDR, quarterly risk assessments, tabletop exercises, NIST alignment. Your vCSO offering was solid. You even had a phased ...
Security Education
Vulnerabilities Are Now the #1 Way In. The Window to Fix Them Is Closing.
Most of the time, I didn't break into a network so much as let myself in through something with a fix already out (just not installed yet): the VPN concentrator three versions behind, the firewall with a known vulnerability fixed ...
Your OSINT Reality Check: Here’s What an Attacker Is Finding in 30 Minutes or Less
Today’s connected, AI-driven digital ecosystem has made it easier than ever to build a professional brand, network with peers, and share ideas with a wider audience. It’s opened doors for businesses that simply didn't exist before: new customers, new partnerships, ...
Part 2: Threat Actors Don't Pick You. You Just Happen to Be There.
In Part 1, we established that Handala didn't pick Stryker off a strategic target list and then figure out how to break in. They found access, recognized the value, and used it. That's still a deliberate, damaging attack—it just means ...
All Articles
CEOs Are About to Get Wrecked (Unless We Step Up)
Last night, I went to a different kind of event. Usually, I’m surrounded by the people who write code, deploy firewalls, and clean up the digital blood after a ransomware attack. The folks who actually know how a single missed ...
Well, That Didn’t Last Long: Why Your Cyber Strategy Can’t Be Based on Headlines
Not even a full week. That’s how long we had between a glimmer of good news and a fresh slap of reality. Just a few days ago, security analysts were celebrating. Ransomware payments, they said, were down. A win! Maybe ...
Guilty Until Proven Secure: Why Compliance Is Your Only Defense
You know the drill. You’re the CEO of a growing business. You’ve hired a sharp IT provider. You’ve got antivirus. Backups. Firewalls. Maybe even cyber insurance. You sleep at night thinking you’ve checked the right boxes. But here’s the twist: ...
How Your Phone is Selling You Out—and What to Do About It
Let’s talk about your phone. No, not the $1,000 mini-computer you use to doom-scroll LinkedIn while pretending to listen in meetings. I’m talking about the single most dangerous piece of technology in your environment—because it’s the one that’s most personal, ...
Half-Done Is Worse Than Never Started: What Your Marketing Team Can Learn From Your Dev Team
Let me let you in on a secret that’s helped us have the most successful quarter in our company’s history—and no, it didn’t come from a flashy tool or another overpriced consultant. It came from our software developers. Yeah. The ...
Your Data Was Stolen. And No One Noticed.
The ransomware headlines are dying down. And that’s exactly why you should be worried. Because while you’ve been breathing a little easier, thinking the cyber threats are fading… the game has already changed. And the attackers? They’re getting smarter, quieter, ...
If You’ve Said It Once… You Haven’t Said It Enough
Ever wonder if your team is actually hearing you? I mean really hearing you—not nodding while they check Slack, not pretending they didn’t just mute you on Zoom. I had this conversation yesterday with a group of CEOs running businesses ...
“Does This Really Apply to Us?” The Compliance Loophole That’s Going to Cost You Millions
Let’s talk about the biggest lie CFOs keep telling themselves: “This compliance stuff doesn’t really apply to us.” I hear it all the time. “We’re too small.” “We don’t handle credit cards.” “We’re under the threshold.” “We only have 47 ...
Don’t You Already DO This for Me? The One Assumption That Could End Your Business
Last week, I had dinner with the CFO of a 100-person logistics company. Not FedEx-scale, but a solid growing company. Their business? Making sure their clients’ packages show up on time, every time. (Unlike my recent experiences with FedEx.) The ...
You Might Be Lucky… But That Won’t Stop the Lawsuit
Let’s talk about luck for a minute. You might think you’re lucky. Or unlucky. Or maybe you don’t believe in luck at all. Here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter. When your client calls to tell you their private information is ...
Your P&L Just Got Smarter (And It Didn’t Go to B-School)
Let me tell you a secret your finance team doesn’t want you to know: ChatGPT might be better at reading your financials than they are. Yep. I said it. Let’s set the stage. Imagine having a hyper-intelligent, never-sleeps, doesn’t-bill-by-the-hour finance ...
If Your IT Support Sucks at the Basics, What’s Happening Behind the Curtain?
Let’s start with a simple truth: it shouldn’t take eight tries to fix your email. If it does? You’ve got a problem. And it’s not just a “my computer is slow” kind of problem. It’s a “how many holes are ...
