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
Your Employee Clicked It—And Now You’re Holding the Bag
(Unless You’ve Got the Evidence to Prove You Tried to Stop Them) Let me set the scene. Your business is running smoothly. Sales are coming in. Operations are humming. Then your operations manager walks in, looking pale. “Hey… something weird ...
Your Employees Are Walking Around with the Whole Vault—Are You Okay with That?
When you think about security—real security—you picture layers. You picture barriers. You picture systems designed to keep the most valuable things locked down while still letting day-to-day business run smoothly. Think about the last time you went to a bank. ...
Hackers Are Cashing In—And You’re Their Next Jackpot
Cybercrime isn’t just a nuisance anymore. It’s an industry. And business is booming. Two of the largest ransomware payouts last year were over $70 million. Let that sink in. That’s not just hitting the jackpot—it’s bigger than winning the lottery. ...
Smishing: The Cyber Scam That’s Hitting Your Phone Right Now
My phone goes off. A text from a number I don’t recognize: “I’ll be late for lunch.” I pause. Do I respond? Who is this? Maybe it’s a coworker. A friend. A client. But here’s the truth: It’s not. It’s ...
Risk Is Unavoidable—Recklessness Is a Choice. Are You Gambling Your Future?
Have you ever jumped out of an airplane? For most people, the answer is hell no. But for the few who do, there’s one thing they always have to do first: Sign a waiver. That waiver says, Hey, you know ...
Is Your Business Lucky—Or Just One Disaster Away From Chaos?
It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, which means it’s time to ask: What makes you lucky? Do you have a lucky charm? A rabbit’s foot? A four-leaf clover pressed in an old book? Maybe you cross your fingers and hope for ...
Culture Is Your Greatest Security Tool—Or Your Biggest Risk
Company culture drives everything. It’s what gets people fired up to do their best work. It’s what keeps employees engaged, loyal, and pushing toward the company’s goals. It’s also what keeps them from clicking on that “urgent” email from the ...
Your “Computer Guy” Can’t Even Fix Your Printer—But He Can Save Your Business?
Most businesses don’t have a real incident response plan. They have an IT guy. And because that IT guy has bailed them out of printer issues (most of the time—printers are the bane of IT careers), email glitches, and Wi-Fi ...
You Have Data Hackers Want—Even If You Don’t Realize It
I hear it all the time. “We don’t have any critical data. If something happened, we’d just buy new computers and move on. We don’t need all this security stuff.” Every time I hear it, I think to myself, you ...
Your MSP Is Your Most Underutilized Employee—Here’s How to Fix That
Have you ever hired someone with huge potential, only to watch them fall short? Maybe they had the skills, the experience, the drive—on paper, they were perfect. But once they got started, they never quite made the leap. You kept ...
My Run-In with a Cyber Insurance Agent: What I Learned About Getting Paid
I spend a ton of time in green rooms. You know, those backstage holding pens where you sit before going on stage. The other day, I was getting ready to give a talk on cyber insurance, and guess who was ...
The ROI of Cybersecurity: How Much Will It Cost You to Ignore It?
I know what you’re thinking. “What’s the ROI on all this cybersecurity stuff?” Let’s be honest: the ROI could be zero. If you’re investing in the wrong things… If you’re not gathering evidence of the security measures you’ve put in ...
