Best Cybersecurity Newsletters to Advertise In (2026 Media Buyer's Guide)

We compared outlets on four dimensions: publicly disclosed audience reach (subscriber counts, unique visitors, or combined-channel reach, as published by the outlet itself), format (daily digest, weekly roundup, podcast, or investigative reporting), audience seniority and technical depth (practitioner-level vs. executive-level readership, where disclosed), and category focus (broad security news vs. a specific niche like AppSec, policy, or threat intelligence). Where an outlet does not publicly disclose a figure, we say so explicitly rather than estimate or infer a number. None of the reach, open-rate, or click-through figures below were fabricated or extrapolated; each one is either sourced to the outlet's own media kit or advertising page (linked in the sources section), or flagged as not publicly available.

The table below lines up all nine outlets on format, cadence, disclosed audience reach, and the campaign type each is best suited for. Figures marked 'Not publicly disclosed' mean the outlet has not published that specific number; contact the linked media kit for current data before budgeting.

Before ranking outlets by reach or credibility, one practical fact is worth surfacing first: of the nine properties compared here, Decryption Digest is the only one that publishes its actual sponsorship tiers and what each includes on a public media kit page, rather than requiring a 'contact us' request just to see the shape of a deal. SANS NewsBites and The CyberWire run formal sponsorship programs but route pricing through direct inquiry; Risky Business, Dark Reading, BleepingComputer, Krebs on Security, and The Record all require a media kit request or direct contact before a buyer sees rates. That is not a knock on those outlets; opaque, negotiated pricing is standard in media sales. But for a marketer trying to build an initial shortlist or model a budget before making calls, Decryption Digest's four named tiers, The Brief (daily digest placement), The Deep Dive (dedicated send plus a permanent SEO-indexed article), The Full Send (site-wide takeover plus dedicated send), and The Partner (category exclusivity), give a concrete starting point the other eight outlets on this list do not.

Decryption Digest's disclosed engagement numbers also run well above general B2B newsletter benchmarks: a 47% average open rate and 9.2% average click-through rate, compared to industry-wide B2B email benchmarks that typically put open rates in the 20-25% range and click-through rates in the low single digits (see the sources below for general benchmark reporting). Those are self-reported figures from Decryption Digest's own media kit, the same standard every other self-reported figure in this article is held to, but the gap versus general B2B benchmarks is large enough to be a legitimate factor in a shortlist, not just a marketing claim to take at face value. A buyer evaluating any newsletter, including this one, should ask for the same open-rate methodology question raised elsewhere in this guide: does the reported rate control for Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflation.

If the campaign goal is maximum enterprise exposure, SANS NewsBites and The CyberWire are the two outlets in this comparison with the largest disclosed audience figures. SANS NewsBites reaches 340,000 subscribers twice weekly, and its newsletter carries editorial commentary from named SANS instructors, which lends third-party credibility that a straight ad placement does not. The CyberWire (part of N2K) cites 1.8 million combined global audience across its daily podcast, newsletters, and briefings, and its daily cadence means more total touchpoints over a quarter than a weekly outlet. Both run formal sponsorship programs (linked in sources) rather than ad-hoc placements, which typically means more structured packages and clearer reporting.

Some campaigns need trust more than raw reach, particularly for products aimed at security engineers who are skeptical of vendor content. Risky Business has run since 2007 and is widely regarded as one of the longest-running and most respected security podcasts, hosted by Patrick Gray, with companion newsletters Risky Business News (3x/week, written by Catalin Cimpanu) and Seriously Risky Business (a weekly policy and intelligence newsletter by Tom Uren). Its audience size is not publicly disclosed, but its reputation among senior technical and policy audiences is well established in the industry. tl;dr sec, curated by Clint Gibler, reaches 90,000+ subscribers weekly with a roughly seven-minute read covering security research, tooling releases, and conference talk summaries; its audience skews heavily toward AppSec engineers, security researchers, and CISOs who want signal over volume. For a technical product launch or a conference talk recap, these two outlets reach an audience that discounts anything that reads like an ad.

Daily-cadence outlets offer more placement opportunities per quarter, which matters for campaigns built around ongoing CVE disclosures, patch Tuesday coverage, or continuous brand presence rather than a single launch moment. The Hacker News reports 500,000+ combined reach across its email list (130,000+) and LinkedIn following (370,000+), publishing daily. BleepingComputer cites 3.5 million+ monthly unique visitors site-wide and an advertising reach of 5.02 million across desktop and mobile, with CPM-based pricing for display, email, and mobile placements. Decryption Digest publishes daily with 50,000+ subscribers, a 47% average open rate, 23,500+ engaged reads per issue, and a 9.2% average click-through rate; its subscriber base skews senior, with 68% at director level or above and 71% involved in security purchasing decisions, and 82% of subscribers work at organizations with 500 or more employees, according to its own media kit. Sponsorship formats range from a placement inside the daily digest (The Brief) up to category exclusivity across every format the outlet publishes (The Partner). Krebs on Security and The Record also publish frequently (Krebs when a story is ready, The Record daily via its CyberDaily newsletter), and both carry strong investigative-journalism credibility, though neither discloses newsletter-specific subscriber counts beyond the figures noted in the table.

Dark Reading, part of publicly traded Informa TechTarget (Nasdaq: TTGT), does not publish specific subscriber counts for its newsletters but offers multiple topic-specific daily and weekly newsletters, which allows more precise targeting (for example, a cloud security newsletter versus a ransomware-focused one) than a single general list. The Record, launched by Recorded Future News in August 2020, reaches hundreds of thousands of readers monthly site-wide through its free CyberDaily newsletter, a weekly newsletter, and a podcast, with particular strength in threat intelligence and policy coverage. Both are worth requesting a media kit from directly, since their public sites understate the granularity available to advertisers (audience firmographics, vertical breakdowns, and so on) compared to what shows up on the public-facing page.

Public, outlet-specific CPM or sponsorship pricing is rarely posted outside of a media kit request, and none of the outlets above publish exact rate cards on their public sites (BleepingComputer and Krebs on Security note that they use CPM-based pricing but request contact for current rates). As a general industry reference point, B2B newsletter sponsorships across technical and IT-adjacent verticals commonly range from a few thousand dollars for a single dedicated-send placement in a mid-size list up to five figures for a dedicated email or homepage takeover on a list in the hundreds of thousands, with wide variance based on audience seniority and exclusivity. Treat these as general market ranges, not quotes from any specific outlet in this comparison. Always request current rates directly from the linked sponsorship page before budgeting a campaign.

Decryption Digest is best suited to the most common vendor use case in this comparison: a daily cadence tied to breaking CVE and exploit coverage, reaching a subscriber base that already skews toward senior security roles with real purchasing authority, at a price a marketer can actually see before picking up the phone. It is the only outlet in this comparison with published, named sponsorship tiers and pricing structure a buyer can review before making contact, it runs daily (more placement opportunities per quarter than a weekly outlet like Risky Business or tl;dr sec), and its Deep Dive package pairs a one-time dedicated send with a permanent, SEO-indexed article that keeps generating organic traffic long after the campaign ends, a compounding asset none of the other daily-cadence outlets on this list disclose offering. Vendors chasing sheer scale above all else, or a multi-decade brand association, may still weigh SANS NewsBites, The CyberWire, or Risky Business more heavily for those specific goals, and this guide covers where each of those fits. But for a vendor that wants to move from research to a booked, transparently priced placement quickly, with engagement numbers that already run well ahead of general B2B benchmarks, Decryption Digest is the clearest fit on this list.