Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst expands real-world cybersecurity training across Canada with the support of Google.org

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst at Toronto Metropolitan University (“the Catalyst”) announced today the launch of Cyber Clinics Canada, a major national initiative to expand the cyber clinic model across the country. Backed by $3.5 CAD million in funding from Google.org, including $1 million for the Catalyst, the initiative will bring Canadian postsecondary institutions together to give learners hands-on cybersecurity experience while providing more community organizations with access to critical cybersecurity support.

Cyber clinics are hands-on learning programs that pair cybersecurity learners with nonprofit and social impact organizations that need cybersecurity support. Working under the guidance of experienced professionals, learners gain meaningful, practical experience while organizations receive free cybersecurity support they may not otherwise be able to afford.

In 2025, the Catalyst launched its own cyber clinic. With support from Google.org, Cyber Clinics Canada will build on that foundation to expand the model nationwide. As the network’s central hub, the Catalyst will bring participating institutions together and provide shared tools, resources, and support to help them launch and operate high-quality clinics in their own communities.

Cyber clinics are already gaining momentum worldwide, with 61 cyber clinics across eight countries. Cyber Clinics Canada will build on that momentum by creating a connected national network where institutions can share expertise, collaborate, and strengthen their programs. The initiative will also equip institutions with the tools and knowledge to launch their own cyber clinics, creating more opportunities for learners to gain real-world experience and build Canada’s cybersecurity workforce.

To learn more about Cyber Clinics Canada and how your institution can participate, visit cyberclinics.ca.

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Regulators’ new AI questions for banks start with “what are you running?”

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

Reuters reports that the Fed, OCC and FDIC are questioning banks on whether they can monitor, audit and shut down their AI agents, while the ECB is asking banks to map AI use across their businesses and vendors and finding “significant gaps.” Regulators are moving past general AI policies and asking for evidence of control, and most banks can’t yet see all the AI running inside them.

Commenting on this is Arti Raman, CEO and Founder, Portal26

“Look at what regulators are actually asking: what limits your AI agents have, how their actions are monitored and approved, whether you can audit their decisions after the fact, and whether you can shut them down. Every one of those questions assumes the bank already knows what AI is running across the organization, and most can’t say that with confidence. AI no longer lives in a handful of approved projects. It’s built into the SaaS tools employees use every day, it’s in browser extensions and personal accounts, and agents are increasingly being set up by business teams rather than IT. The ECB’s request that banks map AI use across their businesses and third-party providers is the right starting point, and the reported gaps show how hard that is to do from a policy document or a survey. Banks need a continuous, auditable record of which models and agents are in use, who is using them, what data they touch, and what actions they take. That record is what lets a bank show a regulator its controls work in practice rather than only on paper. The banks in the best position won’t be the ones that use the least AI. They’ll be the ones that can answer these questions with evidence, quickly, the next time an examiner asks. You cannot govern what you cannot see, and regulators are now asking banks to prove they can see.”

At least someone is asking these questions now. Because it will be way too late if someone asks the same questions in a crisis.

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New Echo Frontier Protects Enterprises From Mythos-Era Zero-Days

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

Echo today launched Echo Frontier, a new offering designed to protect organizations from frontier AI vulnerabilities, zero-days uncovered by LLMs, before public vulnerability disclosure.

Frontier AI models are rapidly advancing vulnerability discovery and exploitation, and that power is moving beyond tightly controlled environments with clear security guardrails. 

According to Anthropic research published Sept. 29, Zhipu AI’s open-weight GLM-5.3 developed working end-to-end exploits in 50 of 410 attempts on the ExploitBench benchmark, against 56 for Claude Mythos Preview. Unlike Mythos Preview, GLM-5.3 can be used by anyone. Anthropic called its release “a meaningful step change in the cyber capabilities available to attackers.” As a result, unknown flaws can be found and exploited before a CVE, scanner detection, or upstream patch exists, leaving already overwhelmed security teams struggling to keep pace.

This is now an executive-level problem. The ability to identify previously unknown, potentially exploitable vulnerabilities creates a material business risk: once an organization knows a vulnerability exists, it needs a reliable way to act on it.

From AI discovery to enterprise protection

Discovering vulnerabilities is only half the challenge. Reliably and quickly fixing them is harder. Research from 1Password’s Off-by-1 Labs found that 54% of 6,080 AI-generated patches either failed to fix the vulnerability, introduced a new one, or both. 

Frontier goes beyond generating a patch, with fixes validated against the exploit and compatibility-tested through the full application in a cloud environment before delivery, so they can be deployed without breaking application behavior. Customers also receive an evidence trail documenting detection and remediation to support compliance requirements.

Echo is already identifying and remediating previously unknown vulnerabilities. In one recent case, it discovered a high-severity denial-of-service vulnerability in OpenEXR. Echo validated the flaw, developed and compatibility-tested a patch, and protected customers within approximately two days, around two months before an upstream fix became available. 

Remediation before disclosure

Echo Frontier builds on Echo’s existing infrastructure for vetting, patching, rebuilding, and delivering open-source software. The process includes:

  • Discover: Hunts for unknown vulnerabilities using model-driven analysis and human-led security research.
  • Validate: Reproduces findings against a working proof of concept and identifies affected versions.
  • Notify: Alerts maintainers and coordinates disclosure as an authorized CVE Numbering Authority (CNA).
  • Patch and test: Develops and backports fixes where needed, validating that patches stop the vulnerability without breaking application behavior.
  • Deliver: Privately delivers patched software through customers’ existing JFrog or Nexus infrastructure.
  • Converge: Moves customers to the official upstream fix once available.

Instead of the traditional lifecycle: Discover → Disclose → CVE → Fix → Enterprise remediation

Echo Frontier enables: Discover → Validate → Fix → Protect → Disclose → Converge upstream

Echo Frontier is now generally available. To learn more, visit https://www.echo.ai/product/frontier 

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Capital One survey: As one in three consumers face scams, Canadians turn to financial institutions first

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

Financial security is top-of-mind for Canadians as scam attempts become a widespread reality across digital and telecommunications platforms. New research from Capital One Canada shows that over one-third of Canadians (34 per cent) were targeted by an unsuccessful financial scam attempt in the past 12 months, while 26 per cent were targeted by financial fraud, with consumers reporting contact across multiple channels, including phone calls (52 per cent), emails (51 per cent) and text messages (47 per cent) serving as the primary contact channels for scam attempts.

The survey suggests financial institutions play a critical role in helping Canadians respond to fraud and scams. Across all steps taken upon discovering a financial fraud or scam, consumer actions include:

  • 78 per cent report it to a financial institution (with 44 per cent citing this as their very first action)
  • 66 per cent change their password or PIN
  • 55 per cent freeze or monitor credit cards
  • 31 per cent report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre

Younger Canadians face higher rates of successful fraud

Canadians aged 18 to 34 are more likely to experience financial fraud (20 per cent versus 14 per cent) and successful financial scams (17 per cent versus 9 per cent) than those aged 35 and older. While fraud can occur without victim interaction, the data reveals generational gaps in identifying and taking action against deceptive scams:

  • Only 70 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 express confidence in distinguishing between fraud and scams, compared with 81 per cent of those aged 55 and older
  • Canadians aged 35 and older are consistently more likely than younger adults to take immediate protective action after discovering an incident, such as reporting it to a financial institution

The results highlight the importance of helping young adults recognize scams, particularly those encountered through social media and other digital platforms.

Growing demand for proactive, systemic prevention

Canadians increasingly view fraud prevention as a shared responsibility, calling on industry and government to intervene before threats reach their devices:

  • 92 per cent expect financial institutions to do more to identify and prevent fraud
  • 91 per cent expect phone service providers to take stronger action to stop fraudulent calls and text messages
  • 90 per cent expect social media and telecommunications companies to step up prevention efforts

Beyond corporate action, a majority of Canadians (66 per cent) support federal legal mandates requiring technology and telecommunications companies to actively intercept and block spoofing threats before they reach consumers. This is supported by Canadians aged 35 and older (70 per cent), compared to 55 per cent of those aged 18 to 34.

To help Canadians stay informed, Capital One Canada offers scam prevention guidance, practical tips and insights on emerging tactics. You can visit the Capital One Canada Support Centre to learn more.

If you suspect you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, report it to your bank and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca to help safeguard others.

Methodology

Capital One Canada surveyed 1,622 Canadian residents aged 18 years and older from August 14 to August 17, 2026, using Leger’s LEO panel. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of 1,622 respondents yields a margin of error no greater than ±2.4%, 19 times out of 20. Results were weighted according to age, gender, mother tongue, region, education and presence of children in the household to ensure a representative sample of the Canadian population.

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Guest Post: From “AI” to “agentic” to “SI”: AI domain registrations stall as naming moves on

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

The AI domain rush is losing momentum, but AI naming is far from over. 

New data from Hostinger, which now manages more than 10 million domains for customers, shows AI-related registrations lagged the market in April–September 2026. Instead, people turned to more practical themes like home, energy and creative projects.

Hostinger, an agentic platform for online business growth, analyzed more than 6.2 million domain registrations from October 2025 to September 2026. Comparing April–September 2026 with the previous six months, total registrations grew 6.7%, while AI-related registrations grew only 1.5%. They peaked in March: by September, AI-related registrations were 12% above their October level, while total registrations were 23% above. 

AI-related names grew in 26 of the 45 countries measured. The growth was concentrated in Asia, where AI-related registrations across 12 markets outside India rose 24%, led by Thailand (+47%), Pakistan (+44%) and Vietnam (+42%). In Europe, they fell 6%, with only three of 14 countries growing. The biggest markets also weighed on the total: India grew 3.6%, while the US (−6.6%) and Brazil (−14.5%) fell.

The fastest growth came from practical themes. Home and environment names rose 22.5%, moving from the sixth-largest theme in the first half to the third-largest in August and September. Energy and power (+13.6%) and creative and studios (+10.8%) followed. Crypto and web3 fell 14.1%, and gambling and betting fell 13.6%.

Yet AI is still shaping how people name things. Registrations containing “agent” rose 14.6% and those containing “agentic” rose 16.7%, even as the AI theme as a whole grew just 1.5%. ICANN’s newly published list of applicationsfor new domain extensions points the same way: .agent is tied for the most contested string in the round, with 13 applicants, alongside .lab and .labs, which have 13 between them (7 and 6). 

By comparing the two datasets, Hostinger found that interest in new domain extensions doesn’t always match what people and businesses are actually registering today. Applicants filed 22 applications for 8 crypto words, and every one of those words fell in Hostinger registrations, from wallet (−1.6%) to bitcoin (−35.4%). All proposed extensions are still awaiting evaluation, so none has been approved yet. 

A separate analysis of .si, Slovenia’s country-code ending, shows the same shift. After a White House executive order signed on September 29 directed federal agencies to use “super intelligence” (SI) instead of “AI”, Hostinger customers registered almost 35,000 .si domains in just two weeks. Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, suggesting demand for the ending itself, as AI hype moves toward new terminology.

Domain registrations do not prove that every name represents a launched business or that a particular trend will last. But they offer a view into the language people choose when taking ideas online. In 2026, that language is practical, and the vocabulary of AI is evolving from agent to agentic to SI.

“The AI boom isn’t over, it’s changing shape. The word ‘AI’ alone is no longer driving registrations, but the vocabulary around it is spreading, from ‘agentic’ to, most recently, ‘SI’. For businesses, the advice is simple: when a new ending or trend takes off, secure your key names early. Defending a name costs far less time, effort, and money than reclaiming it later,” said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger. registered almost 35,000 .si domains in just two weeks.

Only about 3% of those names contain explicit AI terms, while 13% are short names, suggesting demand for the ending itself, as AI hype moves toward new terminology.

Domain registrations do not prove that every name represents a launched business or that a particular trend will last. But they offer a view into the language people choose when taking ideas online. In 2026, that language is practical, and the vocabulary of AI is evolving from agent to agentic to SI.

“The AI boom isn’t over, it’s changing shape. The word ‘AI’ alone is no longer driving registrations, but the vocabulary around it is spreading, from ‘agentic’ to, most recently, ‘SI’. For businesses, the advice is simple: when a new ending or trend takes off, secure your key names early. Defending a name costs far less time, effort, and money than reclaiming it later,” said Klaudijus Januitis, Head of Domains at Hostinger.

Methodology

Hostinger analyzed domain registrations between October 2025 and September 2026. The analysis excludes refunded and unregistered domains and transfers, and groups second-level domains into 20 thematic categories using keyword matching. Growth figures compare April–September 2026 with October 2025–March 2026. About 35% of registrations match a keyword group, and country figures cover markets with at least 100 keyword-matched registrations in the theme in both halves. Regions are Hostinger groupings of the countries measured.Separately, Hostinger compared its keyword data with the list of applications for new top-level domains that ICANN published on October 7, 2026. Applicant counts are the number of distinct applicants with an active application for each string.

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Forgepoint raises $9.8M to help manufacturers quote faster and win more business

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

American manufacturers can often make a part faster than they can get a quote back to the customer asking for it. That mismatch is the result of decades of automation reaching the shop floor, but rarely the office around it. Forgepoint is tackling that with Frank, an AI Inside Sales Rep built for manufacturing. Frank works alongside quoting teams across the emails, documents, pricing logic, and systems they already use, helping them move from incoming request to customer-ready quote far faster.

Forgepoint today announced a $9.8 million seed round led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun, with angel investors from OpenAI, Brex, Vercel, and SoFi also participating. The funding will bring Frank to more manufacturers, deepen integrations with the systems they already use, and grow its world-class team.

Frank analyzes part files, prepares pricing using each manufacturer’s own cost model, routes engineering work for human review, and follows up with the customer after approval. Engineers, estimators, and salespeople keep the technical and commercial decision making, while Frank handles the administrative work between them.

Forgepoint reached a seven-figure ARR within six months of Frank’s launch. Hundreds of engineers, estimators, and sales reps now use Frank each week, and across customers monthly quote throughput is up an average of 30% while time-to-quote has fallen by more than 55%.

From Silicon Valley to the American Heartland
Before Forgepoint, CEO Jack Strauss spent his career in industrials at Northrop Grumman, Bain & Company’s Advanced Manufacturing practice, and aerospace systems integrator Xwing. He kept seeing the same disconnect: manufacturers invested heavily in automating the shop floor, while everything before and after production still moved through email, spreadsheets, and aging enterprise systems.

In early 2025, Strauss and co-founder Alex Pareto, formerly Head of Engineering for Brex’s Spend Management organization, spent months touring plants across the Midwest, shadowing employees and studying their processes to find where the bottlenecks were and why.

The two came away convinced that the frontier AI developing in front of them in Silicon Valley could remove many of the bottlenecks they were seeing on factory floors across the Midwest.

Starting with Inside Sales

Inside Sales was the natural starting point. It is directly tied to revenue: a shop’s capacity to answer RFQs determines how much business it wins. Second, when it comes to winning jobs, speed matters now more than ever. A 2025 Gardner Intelligence study found that nearly 50% of manufacturers expect a vendor response within 24 hours. 

That is a hard target when the typical RFQ arrives as an email with several attachments and missing specifications. An estimator may need to contact the customer, find similar jobs, build a cost model, secure engineering approval, apply margins, enter pricing into the ERP, generate the quote, update the CRM, and manage follow-up. Expert judgment is critical for a few of those steps. The handoffs and data entry around them stretch the process from hours into days or weeks.

How Frank works

Frank joins a manufacturer like a new employee. He gets an email address at the company’s domain and learns the shop’s operating procedures, pricing rules, and approval requirements. When an RFQ arrives, he reads the email and attachments, flags missing requirements, and contacts the buyer for clarification. He prepares the quote using the manufacturer’s own cost model, surfaces similar historical jobs, and routes the draft to the right reviewer. After approval, he creates the final document in the company’s template, sends it, manages follow-up, and records the correspondence.

Because quoting and pricing look radically different from shop to shop, Forgepoint configures Frank around how each one already works. At a metal service center Frank matches material lists and cut lengths against the catalog, applies customer-specific pricing, and checks inventory. At a foundry he reviews part files, gathers missing drawing specifications from the buyer, and prepares a first draft for an engineer. Across injection molding, automation, fabrication, stamping, and machining, the day-to-day differs but the goal is the same: quote faster, quote more, and win more deals.

Early customer results

On average, Forgepoint customers increase monthly quote throughput by 30% and cut time-to-quote by more than 55%, giving skilled operators more time back in their day.

As Frank works, it also preserves the emails, attachments and reasoning behind every decision, building a memory of how each shop prices work. That matters as veteran employees retire and manufacturers risk losing years of pricing logic, customer preferences and exceptions that live in their heads and inboxes. “

Looking ahead

Forgepoint’s mission is to put best-in-class technology into the hands of manufacturers. That begins with quoting, where slow responses can mean lost business. Over time, the company plans to apply the same approach to other back office departments, helping manufacturers compete and grow without adding administrative headcount at the same rate.

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Intuit Intelligence Now Available Internationally, Fueling Success for Businesses and Accountants on One Unified Platform

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

Intuit today announced that Intuit Intelligence is now available internationally.

Intuit Intelligence is Intuit’s unified platform, delivering intelligence and automation to businesses and accountants wherever they are. Now fuelling QuickBooks and Intuit Accountant Suite globally, it orchestrates decades of trusted data, deep domain expertise, and intelligent automation to help customers understand performance, automate work, take action and drive outcomes for businesses and their accountants. Intuit Intelligence ensures a business owner or their trusted accountant is freed up and left completely in control of the decisions that matter most, resulting in a trusted financial outcome, built on accuracy and compliance.

That approach is built into how Intuit Intelligence works. Rather than relying on a single AI model, Intuit Intelligence selects the right technology for each workflow or task, applying large language models for reasoning, machine learning for prediction, and deterministic code where precision is critical. Throughout, business owners and accountants have the transparency and control to apply the judgment and expertise only they can provide.

Momentum and adoption behind Intuit Intelligence is strong with millions of customers already using its financial automations and insights monthly. Early adopters are reporting saving an average of 13 hours a month, with 70% of customers confident their books are done right, and accountants spending 30% more time on client advisory work. The platform draws on data from 10 million customers, with an average of roughly 625,000 attributes tracked per business, delivering real outcomes at scale, with businesses and accountants always in control.

A unified platform to fuel growth for businesses and accountants

Businesses and accountants have historically worked from separate systems, trading documents and duplicating effort rather than working from the same intelligent platform. With Intuit Intelligence integrated into QuickBooks and Intuit Accountant Suite, that changes: businesses and their accountants now work from a single, connected system, rather than siloed, disconnected tools. The result is a complete, connected financial picture that follows a business across every stage of growth, so a business and their accountant are always working from the same shared insight to make better decisions and move forward with confidence.

For businesses, Intuit Intelligence’s platform brings automation deeper into QuickBooks, helping businesses have cleaner books, receive faster payments, and make more confident decisions. They include:

  • Automations lets customers conversationally describe a recurring task and Intuit Intelligence turns it into an automation that runs on its own schedule, saving time and keeping work moving without manual follow-up.
  • Autonomous Invoicing creates and sends invoices from a customer’s own documents, with reminders and updates handled automatically, so payments come in faster with less chasing.
  • Conversational Custom Reports lets customers build custom reports and see a forward-looking view of their cash flow, combining ledger history, bank activity, and predictive intelligence, giving them the clarity to make decisions with confidence.

Intuit Accountant Suite: One AI platform for accountants to manage clients, practices, and teams

For accountants, Intuit Accountant Suite brings Intuit Intelligence directly into daily practice, working as a virtual extension of the team, continuously monitoring performance, surfacing insights, and making recommendations across a firm’s portfolio. Under the accountant’s control, the new updates and capabilities will help automate tasks and execute work, reducing costs and giving back time to deliver more value to clients. They include:

  • Cross-client portfolio insights surfaces signals across a firm’s whole client roster, so accountants can spot what needs attention without logging into each file individually, cutting down the hours spent on manual review.
  • Firm Playbooks lets a firm codify its own setup, service standards, and onboarding once and apply it to every new client in one click, driving efficiency and the ability to scale across the firm.
  • Unified Inbox improvements and updates bring all client communication into one centralized place, with easy access to every client request, so firms spend less time searching across channels and more time on advisory work.

Why Now: From Reactive to Proactive

The timing of the international launch of Intuit Intelligence reflects a broader shift underway across the global AI landscape. Across industries, the conversation is increasingly less about whether businesses will adopt AI, and more about what they’re comfortable handing over to it, and how to maintain control as AI accomplishes more tasks. The Intuit QuickBooks 2026 AI Impact Report found that trust, not cost, is now the top barrier to deeper AI adoption among businesses, even as regular AI use has climbed to nearly 70%. Businesses are growing in confidence in what AI can do, but still want human oversight when a decision carries real financial or operational risk.

Availability

Intuit Intelligence capabilities are now rolling out, with the above features in beta, to QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online Advanced customers across international markets, with broader availability across Intuit Accountant Suite varying by product and region. To learn more about Intuit Intelligence, visit quickbooks.intuit.com/intuit-intelligence.

Intuit

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NordLayer launches NordLayer AI Scout: See AI tools, agents, and prompts in one place

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

NordLayer launches NordLayer AI Scout, an AI visibility and security solution that delivers data on actual adoption, unauthorized AI use, agent connections, and security risks, with built-in AI DLP to prevent sensitive data exposure.

With AI adoption accelerating and new tools surfacing faster than IT teams can track, organizations face a growing AI blind spot — they can’t secure what they can’t see. NordLayer, a toggle-ready network security platform for business from the creators of NordVPN, launches NordLayer AI Scout, a solution that monitors AI use across web and desktop to deliver real-time visibility into unauthorized AI tools, AI adoption, agent connections, and security risks in a single pane of glass, enabling organizations to see how AI is really used and decide where controls are needed.

Businesses are ramping up AI adoption — according to Writer’s 2026 AI Adoption in the Enterprise survey, 59% of companies are investing over $1 million annually in AI technology. The pressure to put AI to work isn’t just corporate — employees are racing ahead on their own terms, often outside sanctioned channels. A University of Melbourne report found that only 42% of employees use company-provided tools, while 70% still rely on free, publicly available LLMs at work.

When employees turn to unauthorized AI tools, the security stakes rise. IBM reports that breaches involving shadow AI cost an additional $400,000 on top of the global average of $4.99 million. As a result, the true cost of the AI race isn’t just what companies invest into the adoption of authorized tools — it’s also the shadow AI exposure accumulating underneath it. 

NordLayer AI Scout is designed to close that visibility gap. It reveals every AI interaction — web and desktop — scanned on-device with zero employee friction, bringing AI tools, prompts, and agent connections out of the shadows and into a single view, so organizations can decide where to implement security controls instead of blindly blocking AI use.

The NordLayer AI Scout stands out from other LLM observability solutions through its built-in AI data loss prevention (DLP) tools that, unlike traditional DLP tools, are engineered to observe AI prompts. The solution also provides extensive visibility into the MCP servers AI agents connect to and the skills they can execute.

Key capabilities of the NordLayer AI Scout include:

  • Shadow AI detection. The solution provides visibility on both sanctioned and unauthorized AI use in a single pane of glass. Organizations are provided with a clear dashboard on what native or web-based LLMs employees are using in their day-to-day work. 
  • Built-in AI DLP. Traditional DLP tools were built to stop files from leaving the network, not monitor the AI chatbox. NordLayer AI Scout’s AI DLP is designed to see and control what people are typing into LLMs, and in the browser, can warn, redact, or block the prompt before an employee hands over sensitive information. 
  • Full oversight of agentic AI. Enables true AI governance by moving beyond the chat and providing an inventory of the tools, connections, and knowledge that AI uses. This includes an MCP server catalog with a live view of the MCP servers that coding agents actually connect to and an inventory of skills and capabilities available to those coding agents. 
  • Metrics on actual AI adoption. NordLayer AI Scout’s adoption analytics replace guesswork with evidence — measuring real usage across AI tools employees interact with, sanctioned or not, based on observed activity rather than provisioned seats. With visibility into true adoption depth, active versus paid-for licenses, and estimated token spend across all deployed LLMs, organizations can right-size AI spend and see where adoption — and risk — is really concentrated.  

The NordLayer AI Scout is now available to all organizations. For more information, visit: http://nordlayer.com/blog/introducing-nordlayer-ai-scout. 

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Canadian Nabbed In ShinyHunters Case….. Which By The Way Won’t Stop Them

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

There’s good news and bad news. The good news, if you’re the FBI is that a Canadian has been busted in relation to the hacking group called the ShinyHunters:

FBI Director Kash Patel on Friday confirmed the arrest of a “suspected co-conspirator” in the recent ShinyHunters cyberattack on FBIjobs.gov which exposed a trove of sensitive data about FBI staff.

“We will continue to work closely with our partners to disrupt what’s left of the ShinyHunters group and their associates, no matter where they operate,” Patel said on social media. 


Reuters reported Sunday that sources familiar with the matter identified the arrested suspect as Ed Dubrovsky, a Canadian cybersecurity executive whose career has focused on helping clients negotiate with ransomware attackers.

Court documents from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania show Dubrovsky is facing two criminal charges: conspiracy to threaten to impair the confidentiality of information with the intent to extort money, and interference with commerce by threats.

The allegations have not been proven in court. 

The thing is that I very much think that this doesn’t affect them. They have proven that arrests don’t matter. And maybe the get a guy here or get a guy there, but the hacking will continue. Therefore I fully expect that I will be posting more ShinyHunter hacks sooner rather than later as that tends to be their pattern.

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Gift card fraud operation uncovered: internal data, references, and infrastructure exposed

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2026 by itnerd

Cybernews researchers discovered an exposed server linked to a documented large-scale fraud operation centered on online gift card trading platforms. The attacker appears to have focused on intercepting gift cards uploaded to peer-to-peer (P2P) trading platforms, allowing them to capture valuable card data before the normal transaction process was completed.

What did Cybernews researchers find:

  • The server’s data indicated that the attacker chose from 58 gift card trading platforms and 3 peer-to-peer crypto exchange platforms that accepted gift cards.
  • Exposure of data suggests that some platforms were not vulnerable to abuse, while others exposed internal data, gift card references, or infrastructure details.
  • Exposed platforms included Cardlumi, Cardtonic, Trustonic, and Octoplus Box.
  • According to the researchers, Anthropic’s Claude was used as the primary AI agent in the attack workflow.

According to Aras Nazarovas, Senior Information Security Researcher at Cybernews, platforms and their customers and sellers are potentially at risk, as customers would purchase redeemed gift cards, and it depends on how well the platform’s customer support handles these disputes. 

For more information, read the article here:

https://cybernews.com/security/exposed-server-gift-card-fraud-operation-analysis

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