In the latest installment of our Privacy Protectors Spotlight series, we are excited to feature world-renowned privacy and security expert Ray Heffer. Ray is a cybersecurity veteran with 30 years of experience across areas such as secure cloud architecture, penetration testing, strategic advisory roles, privacy engineering, and open-source intelligence (OSINT) threat mitigation. He currently serves as Field CISO and strategic security advisor at Veeam, where he leads cybersecurity initiatives and fosters alignment between executive leadership and technical teams.
Ray is also the Founder of PsySecure and the creator of the Open-Source Intelligence Defense & Security Framework (ODSF), a landmark contribution to the field that offers security teams a structured way to combat reconnaissance-driven threats at scale.
Widely respected for translating high-level strategy into effective implementation, Ray is a recognized thought leader who engages regularly with CISOs and boards across the globe. He is a frequent keynote speaker at major industry events. His presentations combine technical insight with practical relevance, making them impactful across executive, technical, and public audiences—and reinforcing his standing as a leading voice in cybersecurity.
With deep expertise in frameworks like NIST, MITRE, and Zero Trust, and a strong command of global privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, Ray brings both technical depth and policy fluency to every challenge. His recent achievements include winning the SANS OSINT Summit CTF (2024) and ranking in the top 1% of TryHackMe.
Ray’s career reflects a consistent focus on reducing real-world risk—whether by guiding enterprise-wide security transformations, shaping security-aware organizational culture, or building and operationalizing the ODSF to counter reconnaissance-based threats.
Heffer is leading a new front in cyber defense, one focused not on what happens after an attack, but what makes it possible in the first place.
Background
Born in the United Kingdom and now based in the United States, Ray Heffer’s lifelong fascination with technology began on a Commodore 64. What started as childhood experimentation grew into a passion for bulletin boards, the demo scene, and eventually penetration testing.
In college in the early 1990s, Heffer uncovered a critical flaw in Novell NetWare that allowed access to the campus-wide system. This caught the attention of his programming tutor, who taught him about cracking and virus writing.
His professional career kicked off shortly after, with a focus on Linux security, penetration testing, and honeypots, at an Internet Service Provider. These formative years immersed him in threat actor tactics, from the underground warez scene to the rise of botnets.
After ten years at VMware as Field CISO and Principal Architect, Ray led Secure DevOps initiatives that wove privacy engineering into the fabric of enterprise-scale deployments. His work centered on helping large organizations build secure, compliant systems capable of operating across tightly regulated industries and jurisdictions.
Over his 30-year career, Ray has become recognized as an expert in secure cloud architecture and privacy. He’s worked with major clients worldwide—including in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the Middle East—as well as with global teams at VMware and Amazon Web Services.
Ray has earned multiple respected certifications over the years, including (ISC)² Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), and a rare dual VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX), holding VCDX #122.
Defending Against OSINT Exploitation at Scale
Some of the most damaging cybersecurity threats don’t trip alarms or trigger alerts. They begin quietly, with open-source intelligence (OSINT). Before an email is clicked, a system breached, or a password cracked, attackers are gathering publicly available information: personal data and infrastructure details.
Ray Heffer has spent decades watching attackers exploit this kind of exposure. He’s seen threat actors harvest LinkedIn profiles to craft believable impersonation attacks. He’s seen exposed contact info and breach data used in phishing and credential-stuffing campaigns. And he’s seen how even small fragments of exposed data—an address, a company press release, a profile photo—can be pieced together to devastating effect.
In response to the growing threat of adversaries weaponizing public information to target an organization’s people, Heffer developed a formalized framework that enables organizations to recognize, quantify, and reduce OSINT-based risk—treating digital exposure as a concrete and manageable security surface. His work powers a growing movement to start countering attacks at the reconnaissance phase rather than waiting until adversaries are already inside the perimeter.
In an era where OSINT is weaponized at scale—fueling impersonation, social engineering, and breach attempts—Ray’s work provides organizations with a much-needed blueprint for defense.
“The risks posed by OSINT-driven attacks must be considered business critical. An expanded digital footprint (the sum of an organization’s online exposure) can expose employee names, emails, technology stack, and even sensitive data such as employee photo ID, essentially providing a roadmap for threat actors. A large footprint can also lead to the exposure of usernames and email addresses, by tying them back to data breaches, which threat actors leverage in brute-force or credential stuffing attacks, especially since almost half of users reuse passwords across accounts.” -Ray Heffer, PsySecure – OSINT Defense & Security Framework | Worlds First OSINT Risk Management Framework
ODSF: A Controls-Based Framework for OSINT Defense
Ray’s Open-Source Intelligence Defense & Security Framework (ODSF) is the world’s first comprehensive, controls-based model for combating OSINT-driven threats. Developed to address the growing sophistication of adversaries who weaponize public data, it provides a structured path for organizations to shift from reactive defense to proactive risk reduction—starting at the beginning of the cyber kill chain.
The ODSF is organized into five focus areas:
1. Digital Footprint Reduction
Minimize the public exposure of sensitive or critical information related to the organization and its people. This includes controlling what appears in search results, social media platforms, and public databases. Key tactics include removing records from data broker and people search sites, minimizing over-disclosure on social media, auditing web-facing infrastructure for exposed metadata, and reducing public content that may reveal sensitive information.
2. Social Engineering Defense
Prepare defenses for the human element and build organizational resilience against OSINT-leveraged attacks. This includes targeted security awareness training that focuses on OSINT threats, and establishing protocols to verify requests for sensitive information. Teams are trained to recognize and respond to increasingly sophisticated social engineering tactics.
3. Technology Exposure Management
Control and harden the organization’s technical attack surface that is discoverable via OSINT tools. This includes managing publicly visible infrastructure details, minimizing DNS records, filtering enumeration-prone services, and obscuring technology stack disclosures that adversaries might use during reconnaissance.
4. Executive Protection
Apply special safeguards for high-profile individuals such as executives and board members who face elevated OSINT targeting and personal risk. These measures include personal privacy protection, travel security, and reputation management, addressing both digital and physical security considerations.
5. Continuous Monitoring and Response
Establish ongoing surveillance of public data for emerging threats or leaks, and enable rapid response. This includes monitoring for data breaches, leaked credentials, and threat intelligence related to your organization. Organizations set up repeatable processes for detection, assessment, and mitigation of OSINT-based risks, integrating regular OSINT threat reviews into their security operations.
Each focus area breaks down into subcategories and specific controls—with 159 total in the framework—alongside implementation guidance and tool suggestions. The ODSF aligns with established standards like NIST CSF, ISO 27001, MITRE ATT&CK, and Zero Trust, and fills a critical gap in enterprise defense strategies by treating open-source intelligence exposure as a primary attack vector.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, the framework is designed for collaborative evolution. While most organizations aim to reduce their attack surface, the ODSF gives security teams a blueprint to do so systematically.
“Maintaining a defensive posture with ODSF is not a one-time exercise, but an ongoing effort of assessment, reduction, monitoring, and adaptation. Organizations are therefore advised to treat OSINT risk management as a continuous process, changing the organizational mindset. By integrating ODSF into an organization’s security strategy, they can reduce OSINT-based risks to reputation, finances, and most importantly, the people.” -Ray Heffer, PsySecure – OSINT Defense & Security Framework | Worlds First OSINT Risk Management Framework
PsySecure: Operationalizing the Framework
Through his company PsySecure, Ray Heffer is putting the ODSF into action. The company is currently building PsySecure Unity, the first platform designed to systematically defend against OSINT-based threats by enabling organizations to implement the framework in a measurable, repeatable way.
Unity is built on the principle that cybersecurity should start where attackers do: at reconnaissance. When released, it will provide organizations with the tools to identify, track, and reduce their public exposure. The platform is designed to deliver all 159 ODSF security controls across five key focus areas, along with real-time scoring of OSINT risk, executive protection features, and continuous monitoring of publicly available data.
With enterprise-grade architecture built for scale, compliance, and integration, Unity aims to help organizations detect vulnerabilities early, shift security efforts left, and demonstrate clear ROI from proactive OSINT defense.
Ray’s Podcast and Articles
For those looking to improve their privacy and security, Ray Heffer offers a wealth of knowledge through his podcast and blog. The Lockdown, his privacy-focused podcast, speaks directly to technically literate listeners looking to refine their defensive posture.
Each episode explores real-world tactics and tools that can be used to reduce digital exposure, enhance privacy, and protect against threats. Topics include browser fingerprinting, password vaults, secure communications, and metadata hygiene, with an emphasis on practical application. The podcast is an excellent resource for security practitioners, privacy professionals, and serious enthusiasts looking to sharpen their tools and mindset.
“People have this ‘Oh I’ve got nothing to hide, I don’t care about privacy.’ But my response is always ‘Oh, but you have a lot to protect, your identity being one of those things, so why shouldn’t you care?’” -Ray Heffer, PsySecure – Episode 009: Data Broker Sites and a Conversation with Lawrence Gentilello from Optery
Ray’s blog at PsySecure.com is also a deeply practical resource for CISOs, IT teams, and technically fluent readers who want to apply strong privacy and security principles in concrete ways. His posts range from step-by-step walkthroughs for configuring tools like pfSense, Firefox, and Tor over VPN, to thought pieces on the responsibilities of modern CISOs and the underlying foundations of digital privacy. Ray’s articles are designed to help readers who already value security implement it at a more advanced level. Across both platforms, Ray reinforces the same philosophy: minimize what can be known, and you minimize what can be exploited.
“The fact is that our data is being collected. Even the data we willingly hand over, perhaps for an online order, will invariably end up in a data breach at some point in time. I don’t want my personal information in the wrong hands, with scammers or identity thieves. If it’s being collected, then you must assume it will eventually be exposed. Like security, achieving privacy online is a fine balance. If you go too far then it results in what we are trying to do, an impossible task. Not enough, and you may think why bother at all? We want to block ads, block malware, and make it more difficult for websites to track our behaviors. It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than that, for most of us anyway.” -Ray Heffer, PsySecure – Why I Prefer Firefox for Better Online Security
“The “nothing to hide” argument is flawed because it fundamentally misunderstands the essence and importance of privacy. Privacy is not merely about concealing any wrongdoing; it is a core component of human dignity and autonomy. This argument assumes that privacy is only of concern to those who have something to hide, ignoring the fact that privacy rights enable individuals to control their personal information and protect themselves from potential abuses of power. It neglects the complexity of how personal data can be misused, irrespective of one’s innocence, such as for surveillance, identity theft, or unwarranted profiling. In a society where every action can be monitored, scrutinized, or taken out of context, individuals may self-censor or alter their behavior, not out of guilt, but out of fear.” -Ray Heffer, PsySecure – The Foundations of Digital Privacy – Beyond VPN
Conclusion
Ray Heffer is redefining what it means to practice proactive cybersecurity. Through the creation of the Open-Source Intelligence Defense & Security Framework (ODSF), he has transformed OSINT exposure from an overlooked vulnerability into a measurable and manageable risk surface. Through PsySecure’s Unity platform, he is operationalizing that vision at scale. And through his podcast, public speaking, and blog, he continues to educate and equip a global audience of privacy-minded professionals with the mindset, strategies, and tools to take back control of their data, their exposure, and their security.
At Optery, we’re greatly inspired by Ray’s work and are honored to spotlight him for his outstanding contributions to privacy protection.
Follow Ray Heffer and explore his work:
- Blog: PsySecure – Security & Privacy
- Podcast: The Lockdown – Practical Privacy + Security
- LinkedIn: Ray Heffer on LinkedIn
- Website: PsySecure.com
Stay tuned for more features in our Privacy Protectors Spotlight series and follow Optery’s blog for further insights on safeguarding your personal information.