October and Hacktoberfest may have ended, but we’re still sharing our contributors and insight into our work as the Arachne Digital team.
In our Meet the Arachne Digital Team series, Learn more about our cyber threat intel open-source work and the folks who make it run.
This week, we’re highlighting Vic, who supports our work via community management.
I’m Vic, and I use they/them pronouns.
I support Arachne Digital through community management. For me, this means examining our open-source and community virtual spaces and working to make them more inviting and engaging for potential collaborators while also figuring out how we fit and add value to the larger open-source ecosystems.
The transparency, collaborative nature, and ability to learn and grow in a local, regional, or global community.
I was first inspired to work with open-source in 2015 by exploring Meetup groups when I was new to Austin. There, I stumbled upon Open Austin, a local volunteer-run civic tech organization. The group’s focus on transparency in government, civic engagement, and an open, friendly environment focused on tech and design intrigued me as a communicator and designer. I kept showing up, new to things like GitHub, data-oriented work, and coding, and eventually found friends and support to explore the space further.
Overall, I was happy to find people interested in probing questions about local issues that mirrored global ones and working collaboratively to build solutions. These spaces connected me to work opportunities and people worldwide. Nine years later, I’m happy to have still found community in spaces like Open Austin and now Arachne Digital.
I’m much newer to cyber security and threat intelligence.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, though, I was intrigued to see Russian messages about a Trump presidency somehow showing up on my website’s backend analytics. As an online person, I have had more concerns about cyber safety at the forefront of my mind.
More recently, I’ve been hearing concerns and raised bans around the popular app TikoTok and the rise of things like deepfakes, misinformation, fake news, and more, which has piqued my interest.
Starting work with the Arachne team has helped me better understand and have a more formal introduction to the space and its growing importance as we continue to rely upon and build more tech using data from almost everywhere and everyone.
I’m an artist and enjoy creating poetry and making digital art in any form it takes. When I’m not online, you might find me doing tarot readings or interpreting dreams at a local fantasy tavern or queer community space. On Wednesday night I join the local social bike riding group, Bat City Biking. I enjoy going into various spaces to connect with a diverse range of people virtually and online to discuss converging topics of interest and build community locally and globally to support collective dreams.
You can find me on Linkedin or contact me vic[at]arachne[dot]digital
We recently hosted our first virtual event, which you can find a recording of on YouTube! Hear Vic, Kade, and our special guest, Stephen from DISARM, speak about open source and cybersecurity. Watch it here.
An excellent start to contributing is browsing the Arachne Digital GitHub repository.
There you can:
Together, we can contribute to a more secure and collaborative future.
“Arachne Digital’s team works closely with us in integrating our tool, Speculo, with their data. Speculo is designed to help organisations get a full picture of their cyber risk with reliable analytics and a streamlined risk assessment process. The integration of Arachne Digital’s threat intelligence into Speculo provides evidence-based insights into cyber risks, making the tool more relevant to our customers. Arachne facilitated multiple face-to-face meetings and video calls, provided technical resources, comprehensive documentation, and example reports. This collaboration ensured that we could seamlessly integrate and utilize their data, significantly enriching the value we deliver to our clients.
Arachne Digital’s commitment to excellence and their proactive approach in supporting our needs have made them an indispensable partner. We highly recommend their services to any organisation looking to strengthen their threat intelligence capabilities.”
Arachne Digital is proud to partner with the DISARM Foundation as the inaugural member of their Partner Programme, launched at the beginning of 2024.
This partnership is crucial in supporting the DISARM Foundation’s mission to maintain and enhance the DISARM Framework, ensuring it remains a free and continuously updated resource in the fight against disinformation.
Through our collaboration, Arachne Digital provides valuable feedback, promotes the integration of the framework into our operations, and encourages wider adoption within the defender community. This partnership highlights our commitment to combating evolving threats and fostering a secure digital environment.