New York: Mass SMS Scam via Hijacked Alert Service
On November 10th, hackers exploited a legitimate mass texting service to send hundreds of thousands of scam messages — including to New York State’s official alert subscribers. This incident, which leveraged public trust in emergency messaging channels, marks an evolution in SMS phishing (“smishing”) scams and raises pressing concerns for individuals and organizations alike. What […]
MSPs: Are You Prepared to Be AI Compliance Officers?
The integration of artificial intelligence into business operations has brought sweeping changes, creating opportunities and compliance challenges. As organizations scramble to harness AI’s potential, a corresponding demand has emerged for specialized oversight that bridges legal, technical, and ethical gaps. This demand is fueling the rise of a new professional: the AI Compliance Officer. Their task […]
MSP as Compliance Coach: Educating Clients to Prevent Regulatory Mistakes Before They Happen
Managed service providers are more than just technical troubleshooters — they’re essential compliance coaches, guiding clients through complex requirements and helping them avoid costly mistakes before they happen. Here’s how smart MSPs can position themselves as compliance coaches, using technology and education to drive measurable client success (and how tools like Blacksmith make that journey […]
Free, Open Source Risk Assessment Tool for MSPs and vCISOs
We Just Released a Free Risk Assessment Tool! We’ve been talking with a lot of our partners lately, and a couple of things keep coming up: risk assessments and sales enablement. MSPs want a simple tool to evaluate client risk and show value early in the conversation without getting buried in complexity or licensing costs. […]
It Takes More Than Policies — Building a Resilient Compliance Culture
Most organizations have compliance policies. Yet with compliance and risk constantly changing these days, policies alone don’t create a culture that can withstand regulatory scrutiny, reputation shocks, or evolving threats. To deliver true business resilience, compliance must be lived by every team, championed daily by leadership, and woven into the operational fabric of every department. […]
The Rise of DragonForce — How Ransomware Cartels Reshape Cybercrime
DragonForce has quickly transformed from the shadows of obscurity into one of the most watched ransomware cartels of 2025, marking a significant evolution in both the scale and style of cyber extortion. First identified by security researchers in 2023, DragonForce initially operated as a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) enterprise, rapidly gaining notoriety in 2024 with high-profile attacks […]
Nine States Team Up for Data Privacy — A New Era of Cross-State Enforcement
With the absence of a comprehensive federal data privacy law in the U.S., states have been stepping up individually to protect their residents’ information. Now, nine states have formed a collaborative regulatory force, sharing resources and enforcement strategies to address the challenges posed by digital data crossing jurisdictional lines. This historic partnership aims to harmonize […]
How to Make Security Awareness Stick With Your Clients (Without Scare Tactics)
Every October, inboxes fill with ghostly warnings, skeleton memes, and stats about lurking cyber threats — because Halloween is peak season for “scary” security marketing. Vendors and MSPs have leaned on puns and percentages for years, hoping to rattle clients into paying attention. Yet research shows that fear-based tactics, while momentarily grabbing attention, rarely create […]
What is Couch to Compliance?
This is a bit of a teaser introduction to our brand-new Couch to Compliance program. (If you’re a partner or you’ve been on a Blacksmith demo, you might have already seen some emails about it. 😎) Couch to Compliance is all about making the leap from the sidelines into the action, turning the complex world […]
What Is Decision Debt — and Why It Matters for Compliance and MSPs
In the fast-moving tech economy, every organization faces pressure to evolve quickly. But when leaders hesitate, delay, or defer critical choices, they accumulate something rarely tracked on any report: decision debt. Like technical debt in code, decision debt silently compounds interest until progress, compliance, and culture are all burdened by its weight. What Is Decision […]