Trust and the enticing consultancy offer

What happened

In the cybersecurity industry, trust is the invisible currency. Every practitioner carries the implicit trust not to abuse privileged access or knowledge of vulnerabilities in each employment or engagement.

Firstly, the profile was remarkably sparse — there was none of the usual clutter that accumulates in a social media profile. The individual claimed to work as a consultant, but their employer had no footprint and only one employee.

The profile didn’t pass the “smell” test, and it looked fake. The figure is low enough to be plausible and high enough to be tempting, but at the same time suspiciously high for an initial consultation without prior qualification.