This article at a glance: 

• Your data is likely already on the dark web. For most people and most businesses, this is a current risk. 

• Finding it takes about 10 minutes if you know where to look. That speed advantage belongs to attackers too. 

• Seeing your own SSN, your spouse’s name, and a Buy Now button next to your identity on a screen changes how you think about this. 

• Knowing your data is out there doesn’t mean you’ve been compromised, and it doesn’t mean you’re helpless. MFA and layered protections meaningfully reduce risk even when a password is already exposed. 

• Ongoing monitoring tells you when new exposure appears, not just what was already there. It tracks attacker trends, not just company names. 

Introduction 

Imagine sitting in a training session with your coworkers. The presenter asks if anyone is willing to share their email address for a demonstration. A colleague raises their hand. The presenter types the address into a search on the dark web, live on the screen. 

The results come back in under a minute. Not just the email address. The social security number, the spouse’s name, and the financial account history. And next to all of it, a button that says Buy Now. 

That happened in a real PSS dark web training session. Craig Schuemann, our CISO and CIO, runs this demo for employee groups regularly, and that moment on the screen, the Buy Now button next to someone’s real identity, is the moment that changes how a room full of people thinks about their own exposure.  

“Here’s your social security number. Oh yeah, this is your wife’s name, right? The last four of your social is this, right?”  — Craig Schuemann, CISO & CIO, Point Solutions Security 

What Logging Into the Dark Web Actually Looks Like 

The phrase ‘the dark web’ gets used as a scare device more often than it gets explained. So before getting to what PSS finds, it’s worth taking a minute to describe what the process is. 

Accessing the dark web requires a VPN and some basic setup. Contrary to what you see in movies, it’s not a locked vault that only sophisticated hackers can enter. It’s a network of sites and forums, some of which function essentially like marketplaces, selling stolen credentials the same way you’d buy something from any online store. The setup takes a few minutes. The search, if the data is out there, takes less time than that. 

Craig notes that the process isn’t nearly as cumbersome or scary as it sounds: 

Within ten minutes, we could find a lot. If your information’s out there, we could probably find it.”  — Craig Schuemann 

Ten minutes. That’s the speed advantage attackers have when your credentials have already been exposed in a breach somewhere. They’re not waiting for the right moment or building toward something elaborate. They log in, they search, and if you’re there, they find you. The same way Craig does in a training room, just without the part where they show you what they found. 

Five Dollars to Buy Your Identity: What We Actually Find 

If you were in a room with your coworkers while someone searched the dark web for your information, live, on a screen at the front of the room, are you confident nothing would come up? 

“One of my favorite things that we do is a dark web class. We’ll do a training where we walk through and log into the dark web, and look for people’s credentials.”  — Craig Schuemann, CISO & CIO, Point Solutions Security 

Your email address goes in, then your name. Imagine that what comes back isn’t just the password from a data breach three years ago. It’s a package: credentials, personal identifiers, financial data, and account history, all assembled and listed for purchase. 

The cost to buy someone’s complete identity package on the dark web is around five dollars. That number, more than almost anything else in a PSS training session, is the one that lands differently than any statistic or threat briefing could. 

“We’ll show them how easy it is for an ethical hacker to go through and find people’s data, and how cheap it is to buy someone’s livelihood — it’s five bucks to buy your identity. And that is kind of a holy moment. It’s five dollars. It takes just a few minutes to find your information if you know where you’re going.”  — Craig Schuemann 

The Buy Now button is the detail that sticks. A literal button on a marketplace next to a listing that contains your social security number and your spouse’s name and your financial history. Someone could click it right now. 

“Seeing it pop up on the screen and being like, oh, there’s literally a button to click Buy Now on it, is something that helps people understand the risk is already present. I should respond to it now, as opposed to waiting for something else to happen.”  — Craig Schuemann 

Why This Isn’t a Scare Tactic  

There’s an important distinction between showing someone real, specific facts about their own exposure and manufacturing dread to sell them something.  

You don’t need to imagine what’s out there. You can see it, in plain terms, specific to your own information, without the theatrical framing most vendors use. The demo works because it’s unglamorous and specific, not because it’s designed to frighten. The Buy Now button doesn’t need embellishment. The five dollars doesn’t need amplification. The facts are what they are. 

I always say we’re not fear-based sellers. We give clients the truth and figure out together what risk they’re willing to take. The dark web is not a boogeyman. It’s a network with marketplaces on it, and your data may already be one of the products listed. 

If Your Data’s Already Out There, Does It Even Matter? 

This is the objection Craig hears in training rooms regularly: ‘My information is probably going to get stolen from one of these companies anyway. So why should I care?’. 

Yes, data exposure is increasingly common. Large breaches at companies you’ve given your information to (such as retailers, insurers, healthcare providers, banks) have put enormous volumes of credential data on the dark web. For a lot of people, some version of their information is already there. Acknowledging that helps you move to what simple steps you can take to protect yourself. 

Yes, someone may try to move the handle. The question is whether the door is locked, and whether there’s an extra gate on the other side of it. That’s what multi-factor authentication is: a second layer that makes a stolen password alone insufficient. The attacker has the key. But they still can’t get through the gate. 

Knowing your data is already out there isn’t a reason to give up. It’s the reason to make sure that exposure doesn’t automatically translate into access. MFA, unique passwords per account, and credential hygiene are not complicated. They work, and they matter most precisely when a password has already been compromised. 

Knowing your data is exposed is also not the same as confirming your organization has been breached. What a dark web scan shows is what’s been exposed and what’s available for purchase, not necessarily that someone has already used it to get into your systems. The distinction matters, and if you need a precise answer to where your organization stands, that’s a conversation worth having with a security team directly. 

What This Means Beyond Personal Accounts 

Personal identity exposure is the visceral entry point for this conversation. But the business risk extends further, and it changes the nature of the monitoring question. 

When we log into the dark web, we’re not just searching for names and email addresses. We’re embedded in the hacker forums and communities where attackers operate, tracking what credential sets are being traded, what attack tools are gaining traction, and which industries and technologies are seeing elevated targeting at any given time. 

The difference between a one-time dark web scan and ongoing monitoring is the difference between a snapshot and a live feed. A scan tells you what was exposed up to today. Monitoring tells you when something new appears, whether it’s a fresh credential set, a newly listed data package, or a breach that happened last week that included your employees’ accounts. Attackers don’t take a break after the initial listing; the threat evolves. The monitoring needs to match that pace. 

Dark web monitoring is included across all three tiers of PSS’s Cyber as a Service program, delivered through Dark Wing Duck, PSS’s proprietary monitoring tool that consolidates coverage across dark web assessment platforms into a single view. For organizations that want to understand what’s already out there before committing to ongoing monitoring, a standalone dark web scan is the starting point. If you’re evaluating whether CaaS is the right fit and want to understand what dark web monitoring is included across each tier, that breakdown is covered in the Cyber as a Service overview. 

Your Information Is Already There. The Question Is What You Do Next 

Most people assume a cyberattack or an identity theft is something that happens to other companies or other people; a future hypothetical they’ll deal with when it becomes real. 

The training-room demo Craig runs is effective because it collapses that distance. Seeing your information on a screen shows you the risk is already present, and you should act before something happens. 

The response doesn’t have to be complicated. Turn on MFA, stop reusing passwords, and find out what’s already out there with a dark web scan. And then, consider whether a one-time snapshot is enough, or whether ongoing visibility into what’s happening is worth having. 

Run a Dark Web Scan on Your Company — Curious what’s already out there? We’ll show you exactly what we find, in plain terms — no scare tactics, just the facts about your exposure. 

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