ObscureIQ | About
About ObscureIQ

An intelligence function that started with erasure.

A protective intelligence company for high-risk people and organizations, built where investigation and privacy practice meet.

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ObscureIQ · About Origin · Method · People · Network · Conduct Referral. The firm does not advertise.
Our Story

Two disciplines, held together on purpose.

Protective intelligence is the work of identifying what can be used against a person, reducing that exposure, watching for escalation, and saying plainly what deserves action.

Most privacy firms come out of cybersecurity. Most intelligence work happens behind closed doors. ObscureIQ began with the conviction that the two belong in the same room. Investigators understand what makes a person findable. Privacy practitioners understand how to make them less so. Kept together, each discipline corrects the other, and the work is more honest for it.

The firm grew out of work the founders were already doing: one on threat actor identification and open source investigation, the other on the structure of the data broker economy. The first clients were referrals from people who knew that work and needed both halves of it. That has remained the pattern: the firm does not market, it is found.

What changed is not the capability but the name for it. Every service we have sold, from footprint reduction to narrative analysis, is one capability expressed at a different point in the same pipeline. The brand now names the capability rather than the products built on it.

The firm at a glanceRef. FR-03
Category
Protective intelligence, for the client
The cycle
Discovery · Reduction · Monitoring · Investigation · Judgment
Metric
The Threat Surface Index, method stated with every score
Reference index
CODEX, 8,600+ data collecting entities
Published
100+ Command Briefs and counting
Licensing
Attribution performed under private investigator license
Channel
Referral. The firm does not advertise.
Competitors sell software with analysts attached.
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Visual intelligence series · Film 01 of 08Silent · 1:05 · LoopsRef. VF-01
Read the transcript and frame timing
00:00–00:05
Two disciplines grew up separately.
00:05–00:11
One reduces exposure. One watches for threats.
00:11–00:17
Both matter. But risk grows in the gap.
00:17–00:23
A record comes down. Then returns.
00:23–00:29
Attention can turn into intent.
00:29–00:33
No one owns the seam.
00:33–00:39
ObscureIQ connects both functions.
00:39–00:51
What we remove changes what we watch. What we watch changes what we do.
00:51–00:56
Protective intelligence requires more than effective services. It requires minding the gap between them.
00:56–01:05
Hard to find. Hard to hurt.
Why ObscureIQ

The threat has converged, but the defense has not.

The people who intend harm do not distinguish between digital exposure and physical access. They move freely across public records, social platforms, breach data, online narratives, and the physical world. The industries built to stop them remain divided across cybersecurity, executive protection, and privacy.

01

Threats rarely fit in one box

An adversary can assemble publicly available information, weaponize online narratives, exploit legal filings, target family members, coordinate harassment, and create real-world risk without ever breaching a network.

02

The risk is in the pattern

An address in a filing, a hostile post, or a visible family routine may be unremarkable on its own. The risk changes when those signals begin appearing together around the same person, suggesting deliberate targeting rather than passive interest.

03

Protection has to start earlier

By the time a threat becomes visible in the physical world, much of the work behind it has already happened online. Effective protection begins by understanding what is exposed, limiting what can be used, and watching for signs that ordinary information is being assembled with intent.

We take responsibility for the connective work between those disciplines: understanding when exposure, online activity, family risk, and organizational threats are beginning to form one picture. The risk does not become less real because discussing it is uncomfortable.

Our Team

Technology gathers. Analysts decide.

Our infrastructure collects and tracks public information continuously. Our analysts connect that information to a client's specific risk, determine whether a pattern warrants attention, and recommend what should happen next. Technology creates scale. Human judgment turns it into protection.

Founder · CEO

Colby Scullion

Intelligence · OSINT

Colby leads the intelligence side of the firm. His work focuses on identifying threat actors, mapping digital footprints, and producing investigative reports clients and counsel can act on.

He runs BlackBear Recon, the firm's digital reconnaissance practice. His open source work has been published in industry case studies, including verification work in the aftermath of the New Year's Day Cybertruck incident. Background in intelligent automation and OSINT tradecraft.

Co-founder · Managing Partner

Jeff Jockisch

Privacy · Data broker research

Jeff leads the privacy and research side of the firm. He is one of the recognized experts on the commercial surveillance economy and the data broker industry that powers it.

He built CODEX, the firm's index of the entities collecting consumer data. He has provided expert testimony to legislative bodies, is a LinkedIn Top Voice in privacy, and writes the Tactical Privacy Wire on data exposure and decay. Background in data science, knowledge graphs, and the marketing and ad technology industries he later turned his attention against.

Named analysts, not a queue

Every client is assigned a named analyst, and the analyst who scopes the work is the analyst who executes it. Senior practitioners stay close to every case. Analyst names are shared with clients at intake rather than published here.

Depth, not headcount

There is a deliberate limit on how many clients the team can carry. Nothing reaches a client that an analyst has not read, which is a promise about capacity as much as about quality.

Leadership and advisory board
Our Network

A response network built for threats that cross boundaries.

When a threat reaches beyond what we deliver directly, we work within the client's broader response team. Depending on the situation that may include cybersecurity, executive protection, physical security, legal counsel, communications advisors, investigators, law enforcement, or specialists from our formal partner network.

We provide the intelligence that helps a client determine which capabilities are needed, and that lets each team act from the same understanding of the threat rather than from its own fragment of it.

That network includes a small number of named strategic partners, across communications, institutional security, defense and intelligence, international investigations, and cybersecurity. Each is a standing arrangement rather than a referral, so the handoff happens inside a live matter rather than after it.

We do not replace cybersecurity or executive protection teams. We give them the context they cannot generate from inside a single function.

How We Work

How we work. Who we take.

01

By referral, not by marketing

Almost every client comes to us through an introduction from someone who has worked with us before: counsel, security professionals, family offices, prior clients.

02

Every client starts with a confidential call

Before any scope or commitment, a private call to understand the situation, the exposure, and whether we are the right firm for the matter. You control what happens next.

03

Some matters are declined

Not every matter is a fit. We turn down work where the goals are unrealistic, where it would conflict with our values, or where another firm is better suited. That decision is made before scope or pricing.

04

Working through counsel is available

Work performed under counsel direction may be covered by attorney client privilege, depending on how the engagement is structured. We can introduce qualified outside counsel where none is in place.

05

Confidentiality is the default, not the upgrade

No resale of work product, and no case study without explicit consent. Encrypted channels. Internal systems reviewed and hardened on an ongoing basis.

06

Infrastructure underneath, practitioners in front

Internal indexes, pipelines, and monitoring stacks carry the parts of the work that do not require judgment. Analysts carry the parts that do.

07

Claims are stated the way findings are

Attributed, with confidence stated and scope noted. If something is unconfirmed, we say unconfirmed.

Next Step

The first step is a call.

A confidential call with us establishes your baseline exposure, your risk profile, and whether we are the right fit. It is confidential by default, and privileged where counsel directs the work.

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Counsel
Introductions on request
Handling
Confidential by default. Privileged structures via counsel.