Essential Guide to Defensive OSINT

VanishID - Essential Guide to Defensive OSINT

This e-book explains what OSINT is, how the threat landscape has evolved, and what your security team can do to turn publicly available intelligence from a liability into a strategic advantage.

Your executives need to be seen. Your company needs to be found. But the same public presence that drives business growth is the very thing attackers exploit to breach it.

This is the Visibility Paradox — and it’s the defining challenge for security leaders in 2026.

Every LinkedIn profile, press release, conference bio, and data broker listing creates a trail of open-source intelligence — OSINT — that threat actors use to craft targeted attacks against your people. The paradox is simple: you have to be out there to be effective, but you shouldn’t be findable the way an attacker would find you.

The threat is accelerating. AI has made social engineering cheaper, faster, and devastatingly more convincing. A single deepfake video call cost one global engineering firm $25.6 million in 2024. Vishing attacks surged 442% in a single year. And 87% of security leaders reported an increase in AI-powered social engineering attempts in 2025.

The OSINT that fuels these attacks is hiding in plain sight. The good news? You can find it before attackers do — and neutralize it

Andrew is a digital marketing strategist specializing in demand generation and customer acquisition for B2B SaaS and cybersecurity companies. He focuses on understanding customer pain points in executive protection and digital footprint management. Prior to VanishID, Andrew led digital marketing at various startups and enterprises, building full-funnel campaigns and launching websites across cybersecurity, cloud simulation, and healthcare sectors. He holds a BA in Communication and Minor in Psychology from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Copyright © 2019 – 2026 Picnic Corporation (dba VanishID)