Welcome to The Spoonful newsletter!

Mythos is still making waves across the industry, a layoff cuts 250 from a managed security company, two cybersecurity "defenders" turned out to be anything but, and we've been over here doing quite a lot too, which includes hosting meetups in NYC and DC, building a NEW, REVAMPED CYBER MARKETING SALARY DATABASE (view here), and...

... Welcoming Jen VanAntwerp as our new Head of Community & Growth! (We are a little bit obsessed, and anyone who knows Jen knows why! 🥹)

The industry is moving fast, and honestly...so are we! 😄 Grab your Spoonful. ❤️

Our annual benchmarking of the ROI of RSAC is underway. Did you participate in RSAC 2026 Conference as an official sponsor (or did you do something offsite/guerrilla/with a big banner pulled by a plane across the sky?) Fill in the survey to get a DISCOUNT to CyberMarketingCon and access to the ROI of RSAC Benchmarking Report 30 days in advance.

Trending News 📰

Do you have cool news from your company? Send it to us! Email media@cybersecuritymarketingsociety.com

A layoff, warnings of an AI-fueled patch wave, and a pair of incident responders headed to prison for running the ransomware they were supposed to fight:

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned at a JPMorgan financial services event on May 5 that a 6-to-12-month window exists to patch tens of thousands of AI-uncovered vulnerabilities before Chinese AI models close the gap, calling it "a moment of danger." Amodei predicted a coming surge in ransomware against banks, schools, and hospitals; separately, Anthropic used the event to unveil 10 banking AI agents and a Microsoft Office integration. (CNBC)
  
  
• Britain's NCSC told organizations to prepare for a sustained "patch wave," warning that AI is shrinking the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation and that defenders should expect more frequent, more urgent rollouts. (The Record)
  
  
• 💔 Arctic Wolf cut 250 jobs on May 6, with reductions spanning sales, product development, and marketing, as the company shifts investment toward its Aurora Superintelligence Platform and agentic SOC. The cuts represent under 10% of a workforce that numbered more than 2,600 in late 2024. (The Register) If you or another marketer has been affected and would like to stay in cyber, please join our community.

• Gartner published the first-ever Magic Quadrant for Cyberthreat Intelligence Technologies on May 4, evaluating 18 vendors; CrowdStrike, Recorded Future, and Group-IB were among the Leaders in the inaugural report. Gartner cited growing enterprise demand for structured threat intelligence programs as the catalyst for standing up the new category. (BusinessWire)

• Ryan Goldberg, a former Sygnia incident responder, and Kevin Martin, a former DigitalMint ransomware negotiator, were each sentenced to four years for running ALPHV/BlackCat extortion attacks against companies they were paid to defend, netting $1.2 million in one successful hit between April and December 2023. (The Record)

• Spotify launched "Verified" badges to distinguish human artists from AI acts, weighing signals such as live performance dates and social-media activity: a trust-layer move worth watching for marketers navigating AI-generated content in any platform's catalog. (BBC)
  • There's a lot of fraud on Spotify! Listen to a very cool Darknet Diaries episode on it here.  

The Most Expensive Mistake in Content Syndication Is Also the Most Common

By CyberEdge Group

A few weeks back, we hosted a panel moderated by CyberEdge Group with marketers from Google Cloud, BlueVoyant, and ISC2 to talk about content syndication strategies that actually work. One theme came through louder than anything else:

Stop sending single-touch leads to your SDRs.

It sounds obvious. But it keeps happening. A vendor promises hot leads. You forward them to sales. The prospects don't remember downloading anything. Your SDRs lose trust in marketing. And content syndication gets labeled as "doesn't work."

The panelists were unanimous: single-touch leads are top-of-funnel. Full stop. They belong in your nurture sequences, not your BDR queue. As Christina Kazle of ISC2 put it, “content syndication is only as good as the ecosystem you build around it.”

What does that ecosystem look like? The teams seeing real results are layering email nurture with retargeting ads, feeding syndication contacts into LinkedIn paid media, and using lead scoring that requires multiple actions before an MQL is ever triggered. They're also shifting budget from single-touch to multi-touch and BANT programs, where prospects have engaged with content multiple times and shown genuine buying signals.

Another practical takeaway: if you're running ABM-aligned syndication campaigns, include domain names in your target account list. Company names alone create matching problems. ("Children's Hospital" could mean 51 different organizations.)

The full panel webinar is worth watching, especially if you're building the case internally for why content syndication deserves a second look or a smarter approach.

Watch the replay here!

Reminder: Members of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society are entitled to 10% bonus leads with their first-ever content syndication campaign with CyberEdge Group!

Partner Corner

Meet Chatter: the answer to B2B content’s freshness problem.  

The cybersecurity industry moves quickly, and generic AI has no idea where to start. Chatter surfaces what’s being published right now—industry news, competitor coverage—filtered to your brand’s keywords, audience, and competitive context. When a story is worth building on, it generates a structured topic outline with a defined angle, target persona, and enough specificity to know what format it should arrive in.

Plus, Society members are eligible for a 50% discount for the first 3 months using the coupon code LaunchCMS50 (expires 9/30/26).

Find something worth saying. Join Chatter now at chatteragent.ai

Elevating cybersecurity brands with design and strategy

Miscreants is a creative agency dedicated solely to the cybersecurity sector, offering a full range of services. They collaborate with progressive cyber companies that recognize strategic design and brand positioning as a crucial competitive edge in a crowded market.

Check them out here!

From the Community 💌

What the Community is up to this week!

Big news over here!!!!!!!! Jen VanAntwerp has officially joined us as our Head of Community & Growth! If you’ve been around this space for a while, you already know Jen brings the kind of energy, perspective, and community-first thinking that aligns with the Society's mission to help cybersecurity marketers be successful, however we can!

ICYMI: Beautiful Booth Award Winners

Congrats to all winners & honorary mentions! All booths are beautiful. These are the ones that won awards for it!

Where We’re Meeting Next:

Upcoming events, webinars, and meetups across the community.

🚨🚨🚨 May 15: LAST DAY to Apply to Speak at CyberMarketingCon + Summits

May 21: London Meetup of the Cybersecurity Marketing Society (In-Person) 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
May 20: Margaritas & Mocktails Marketing Mixer (Virtual) 2:30 p.m. PT / 5:30 p.m. ET

May 26: SEO and GEO: Strategy + Live Q&A (Virtual) 2 - 3 p.m. ET

May 31: CyberMarketing Leaders Dinner @ Gartner SRM, Sponsored by ViB (In-Person) 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. ET
June 11: Event-a-Palooza | Rapid Pitch Cybersecurity Event Showcase (Virtual) 2 p.m. ET

June 17: CybersecurityMarketing & GTM Atlanta Meetup (In-Person) 5:30 - 8:30 p.m ET

June 30:  SEO and GEO: Strategy + Live Q&A (Virtual) 2 - 3 p.m. ET

July 28: SEO and GEO: Strategy + Live Q&A (Virtual) 2 - 3 p.m. ET
August 25: SEO and GEO: Strategy + Live Q&A (Virtual) 2 - 3 p.m. ET

Aug 27: Martini & Mocktail Mingle (Virtual) 2:30 p.m. PT / 5:30 p.m. ET

Sept 10: Event-a-Palooza | Rapid Pitch Cybersecurity Event Showcase (Virtual) 2 p.m. ET

Sept 17: CybersecurityMarketing & GTM Atlanta Meetup (In-Person) 5:30 - 8:30 p.m ET

Sep 22: SEO and GEO: Strategy + Live Q&A (Virtual) 2 - 3 p.m. ET
Nov 15: CyberMarketingCon 2026 (In-person and Virtual)

Check out the monthly member & non-member events calendar! It’s packed with exciting networking opportunities and recurring meetups designed just for you.

Marketing Mastery

Cyber Marketing Power Moves: Resources to Stay on Top

400+ AI Marketing Skills in One Place
A directory of 400+ ready-to-use marketing skills for ChatGPT, Claude, and more, built to speed up content, workflows, and everyday execution.
Explore the directory

CISO MindMap 2026 Is Out
A refreshed breakdown of what CISOs do, from strategy to operations. Useful for understanding your buyer, shaping messaging, and building more relevant content.
Explore the mindmap

What It Feels Like to Be a CISO
An interactive text-based thriller game that puts you in the CISO seat and all the decisions and trade-offs security leaders face! Provides useful context for understanding how your buyers think. Plus, it is really fun!
Try it out 👇

Just for laughs: Meme of the Week... 😂

Thank you, Michael Yehoshua, for the meme! Makes us feel a little bit better.

That’s it for this edition! Thanks for reading!

Don't forget: you're the best! 💪

Have a great Thursday!

❤️ Gianna & Maria (& Jen!)

PS: This newsletter is made by humans. We might not reply, but we read all your responses.

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