Things Matt Wrote

Every year for the past twelve years, my family takes a week-long vacation at a beach along the Atlantic ocean. Each trip sees me carry along a computer, a bag of books, and a project list. This year was no exception with the to-do list including a few articles to write, working on a new website for a side project, and updating my CV. As with all the other years, none of that got done. One thing that did get done, however, was the publishing of my weekly newsletter “Threats Without Borders”.

For the past 31 weeks, I have published a Substack newsletter highlighting the best news and opinion pieces I read over the preceding week concerning cyber and financial crime. CyFicrime as I have coined it. I'm a voracious reader and easily spend 20 hours a week just reading articles, blogs, and documents published on the Internet. The easiest way to share my knowledge is with a newsletter delivered through email. I joke with my colleagues that I read the entire Internet so they don't have to.

The newsletter has evolved. It was published for the first twenty-four weeks under the generic “Matt’s Newsletter” because, well, I just wasn’t witty enough to come up with anything else. Then the phrase “Threats Without Borders” came to me as an apt descriptive for cybercrime. The Internet allows criminal threat-actors to victimize others anywhere in the world. Regardless of physical location or geopolitical nationality. Your countries physical border is benign and irrelevant! The name was changed and I think it's been well received.

My goal from the start has been to publish a newsletter every week for 52 weeks. So far so good. And I even delivered during vacation.

I have an updated goal; grow the newsletter to 1000 subscribers by the end of 2021. This is easily obtainable. If you are reading this on the write.as blog – please consider checking the newsletter out and subscribing. If you casually browse to the substack site to read the newsletter – please subscribe. And if you already subscribe, please share it with a colleague. I'm not asking you to share your religion or opinion as to what is the best bear. (obligatory The Office joke)

Read Threats Without Borders at cyficrime.substack.com