Galactic Research: Articles & Insights
Part 2: The Security Controls Behind a Safe AI Deployment
From the Map to the Hike: The Five Controls and the Client Conversations Behind Them This is Part 2 in a series that covers your AI enablement plan. Part 1 is here if you want the full map. The Little ...
AI Security
Part 2: The Security Controls Behind a Safe AI Deployment
From the Map to the Hike: The Five Controls and the Client Conversations Behind Them This is Part 2 in a series that covers your AI enablement plan. Part 1 is here if you want the full map. The Little ...
Ten of Eleven AI Coding Agents Failed a Decades-Old Attack
What GuardFall Tells Us About Where AI Security Controls Need to Live Picture a security guard stationed at the entrance of a building. Their job is to check IDs. They're good at it, fast and consistent, and the building's occupants ...
Perfect AI Guardrails Are Impossible. That's Not an Excuse for Ignoring Them.
What a NIST Mathematician Proved, Why the Internet Got it Wrong, and What Your AI Security Program Should Look Like Years ago, running an MSSP, I had a vendor pitch us a next-gen firewall on a single promise: one hundred ...
Threat Intelligence
Threat Thursday: July 16th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic’s threat intelligence roundup. Every Thursday, we cover the cybersecurity stories that matter most for protecting organizations from emerging threats. Each item breaks down into what happened, what it could mean for your organization, and what ...
Threat Thursday: July 9th, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic’s weekly threat intelligence roundup. Every Thursday we cover the cybersecurity stories that matter most for protecting organizations from emerging threats, and we break each one down into what happened, what it could mean for your ...
Threat Thursday: July 2nd, 2026
Welcome to Threat Thursday, Galactic’s weekly threat intelligence roundup. Every Thursday, we cover the cybersecurity stories that matter most for protecting organizations from emerging threats. Each item is broken down into what happened, what it could mean for your organization, ...
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 ...
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 ...
All Articles
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, ...
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 ...
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 ...
Part 1: Threat Actors Don't Pick You. You Just Happen to Be There.
There's this idea that floats around—usually in boardrooms and in forums—that advanced threat actors operate like surgeons. They pick a target, they plan it out, they execute. Super deliberate. Undeniably cinematic. It implies that a breach is something that happens ...
One Misconfigured AI Agent Can Impact Every Client You Manage
When One Action Hits Every Client, Governance Decides the Outcome Imagine a hypothetical that’s taught in law school every semester: A delivery driver abandons his route to join a drum circle for three days. On his way back, he causes ...
The Clients You're Ignoring Are the Ones Who Will Sue You
I said something on stage at XChange last week that made a lot of people in the room uncomfortable. "Your smallest clients are your biggest risk." Not your enterprise accounts. Not the ones with complex environments and demanding SLAs. The ...
Part 2: Incident Response: Panic Is Not a Phase, It’s a Symptom
Turning Incidents Into Improvement Instead of Repetition When an incident finally ends, most organizations do the same thing: they exhale. Systems are back online. Alerts stop firing. Customers stop calling. Leadership announces that things are “under control.” Usually right before ...
Part 1: Incident Response: Panic is Not a Phase, It's a Symptom
Why Incident Response Fails Before the Incident Starts Most organizations think they’re “doing incident response” because they bought a tool. Or three. Maybe they even survived an incident once or twice, so clearly they’re fine now. That’s not incident response. ...
They Already Have an IT Department. Good. That’s Why You Should Call.
Last night I was at dinner with the CEO of an MSP. Good operator. Growing. Adding clients. Doing the work. We were walking around his town before dinner talking about the usual founder stuff. Processes. How to get people to ...
AI, Cyber Liability, and the Evidence Your Insurance Carrier Will Demand
You trust your IT team. Or your outsourced IT company to completely run and secure your systems. You should. That is their job. But here is the question no one asks until it is too late. How do you know ...
Agentic AI at the Edge: Opportunity, Autonomy & the Coming Legal Minefield
You’ve probably heard executives gush about autonomous AI agents, the shiny new productivity booster that can automate workflows faster than you can say “zero-trust.” But what they don’t hype is how agentic AI turns your cybersecurity playbook into an existential ...
Notepad++ Compromise: What you need to know
The recent Notepad++ compromise should make you pause for a moment because the Chrysalis backdoor is exactly the type of malware those of in the industry lose sleep over. Rapid7’s write-up on the Chrysalis backdoor is not alarming because it ...
