The cybersecurity news industry has a dirty little secret: much of what you read about data breaches, vulnerabilities, and digital threats isn’t written by humans anymore. It’s churned out by algorithms, optimized for Google’s crawlers rather than human understanding, and often wrong in ways that could leave readers dangerously misinformed.
Into this wilderness of synthetic content and affiliate-driven reviews, a small team of privacy advocates decided to build something almost quaint: a news site where actual humans research, test, and write every piece of content.
The Underdogs Enter the Ring
When Alex Lekander launched CyberInsider in March 2024, he wasn’t just starting another tech blog. He was picking a fight with an entire ecosystem that seems to have abandoned journalism for content farming. The timing seemed suicidal – competitors like Cybernews had already deployed SEO armies to dominate search results, while The Hacker News commanded 50 million annual readers with its rapid-fire coverage.
But Lekander had spent seven years running RestorePrivacy.com, watching the gradual decay of tech journalism. He’d seen review sites transform into affiliate marketing machines, where the “best VPN” mysteriously always happened to be the one paying the highest commission. He’d watched legitimate security news get buried under waves of AI-generated dreck that looked convincing enough to fool Google but could send readers straight into harm’s way.
“We don’t use AI content,” reads CyberInsider’s manifesto – a statement that shouldn’t need to exist but absolutely does in 2025.
“Following the Money”
To understand why CyberInsider’s approach matters, you need to follow the money flowing through cybersecurity media. Take Cybernews, launched in 2019 with backing from Nord Security (the company behind NordVPN). For years, the site didn’t clearly disclose this relationship, leading to Reddit investigations where users pieced together the ownership puzzle like amateur detectives.
Or consider how most “review” sites operate. They don’t actually buy the products they recommend. Instead, they swallos marketing materials, slap on affiliate links, and call it journalism. When every positive review generates a commission, is it any wonder that every VPN suddenly becomes “military-grade” and “unhackable”?
CyberInsider took the radical step of actually purchasing the products they review. With their own money. No vendor freebies, no special reviewer accounts, no cozy relationships with PR departments. When they test 15 different VPN services, that’s 15 subscriptions coming out of company’s operating budget – an investment most sites wouldn’t dream of making.
The Human Advantage
CyberInsider in action draws parallel to old-school newsrooms – the kind where journalists actually picked up phones and verified sources. Senior editor Amar Ćemanović, a trained engineer, spent three weeks testing a single antivirus product, documenting every quirk and failure. Bill Mann, with his 30 years covering tech, translated Ćemanović’s findings into prose that your grandmother could understand.
This human touch shows in their coverage of complex vulnerabilities. When the “Stealth-ooth” Bluetooth attack emerged, other sites rushed out articles filled with technical jargon and worst-case scenarios. CyberInsider took an extra day to test affected devices, consult with security researchers, and produce a guide that actually helped readers understand their real risk level.
Compare this to the AI-generated content flooding the space. There are “security guides” out there that recommend enabling outdated protocols, mixing up encryption standards, or suggesting users disable critical protections. These aren’t just harmless errors – they’re digital malpractice that could leave readers more vulnerable than before they sought help.
Building Trust, One Reader at a Time
While The Hacker News broadcasts to its 926,000 Twitter followers and BleepingComputer serves its 840,000 forum members, CyberInsider is building something more intimate. Their weekly newsletter doesn’t just aggregate links – it’s written by actual humans who explain why each story matters. Their comment sections feature real conversations with the authors, not the toxic waste dumps that pass for discourse on larger sites.
This approach is working. Despite launching just over a year ago, CyberInsider recently hit 484,000 monthly visitors and surpassed 10,000 Twitter followers. These metrics represent readers who chose depth over speed, analysis over alarmism.
Competitive Field
CyberInsider’s competitors each occupy their own kingdom in the cybersecurity media plain. The Hacker News reigns as the speed demon, publishing breaking news within minutes of disclosure. With 50 million annual readers, it’s become the Reuters of infosec – essential for professionals who need to know what happened right now.
BleepingComputer evolved from a help forum into a trusted news source, maintaining that community DNA. When ransomware victims need decryption tools, they turn to Bleeping. When mainstream media needs to cite a cybersecurity source, they quote Lawrence Abrams’s team. Their partnership with Europol’s NoMoreRansom project gives them institutional credibility few can match.
Cybernews represents the venture-backed future – or perhaps the dystopia, depending on your perspective. With Nord Security’s funding, they’ve built a SEO powerhouse that dominates search results for keywords like “best VPN” and “antivirus reviews.” They’ve diversified into tools like password generators and data breach checkers, creating a one-stop shop for security-conscious consumers.
Against these Goliaths, CyberInsider looks almost deliberately small. No corporate backing, no SEO content farms, no affiliate commission optimization. Just a team of experts writing for humans instead of algorithms.
This isn’t just inside baseball for media nerds. As cyber threats grow more sophisticated (think AI-powered phishing, supply chain attacks, state-sponsored ransomware), the quality of security journalism becomes a matter of public safety. When readers can’t distinguish between legitimate security advice and SEO-optimized nonsense, they make decisions that could compromise their digital lives.
What Should We Look Forward To?
CyberInsider plans to expand – hiring more writers, producing video content, growing their YouTube channel. But Lekander insists they’ll maintain their standards: every new hire must commit to the same principles of independence and human-driven journalism.
The challenge will be resisting the gravitational pull of easy money. Those affiliate commissions, sponsored content deals, and AI-supported writing tools offer tempting shortcuts to profitability. One compromise leads to another, and soon you’re just another content farm with delusions of journalism.
But maybe, just maybe, there’s still room for a different model. One where trust matters more than traffic, where accuracy trumps speed, where human expertise hasn’t been devaluated. In an industry racing for speed, CyberInsider is betting that some readers still value the climb.
As cyber threats evolve and multiply, we need more than just fast headlines and affiliate-driven recommendations. We need journalists who prioritize understanding the technology, test the products, verify the claims, and explain the implications. We need humans, not bots, standing guard at the intersection of technology and security.
CyberInsider’s future remains uncertain – David doesn’t always beat Goliath, after all. But in a niche increasingly dominated by artificial intelligence and corporate influence, their stubborn insistence on human journalism feels less like nostalgia and more like necessity.