Archive for 2025

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Outpost24 Strengthens Global Brand Leadership with Appointment of Liz Drysdale as Chief Marketing Officer

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2025 by itnerd

Outpost24, a leader in exposure management and identity security, today announced the appointment of Liz Drysdale as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Liz brings over 25 years of international marketing experience, including a decade in cybersecurity, to drive Outpost24’s next phase of growth and global brand expansion.

Recognized by The Enterprise World Magazine as one of the “Most Influential Business Leaders to Watch in 2024,” Liz has a proven track record of building and scaling high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams. Her deep specialization lies in ensuring marketing functions are strategically aligned with sales and product engineering to accelerate business growth across global markets. Prior to joining Outpost24, she held senior leadership roles at market-defining cybersecurity pioneers, including SentinelOne, BeyondTrust, and CyberArk, where she drove successful go-to-market strategies for complex security portfolios.

At Outpost24, Liz will lead global marketing strategy, focusing on scaling brand impact and expanding market reach to reinforce the company’s position as a trusted partner in exposure management and identity security. Her mission involves overseeing all aspects of brand strategy, demand generation, product and channel marketing, specifically by translating Outpost24’s advanced technical capabilities into compelling value propositions that ensure customers and partners can effectively operationalize modern risk reduction practices.

Liz’s appointment follows several key executive hires, including a new Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Chief Corporate Development Officer (CCDO), reinforcing Outpost24’s commitment to advancing its technology leadership, operational excellence, and strategic growth.

Backed by a dynamic executive team and a strong European presence, Outpost24 continues to solidify its position as a trusted partner for thousands of customers worldwide seeking to operationalize modern Exposure Management and Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) practices.

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Review: 2025 Ford Expedition King Ranch – Part 2

Posted in Products with tags on October 15, 2025 by itnerd

Interior wise, the Ford Expedition King Ranch is something else. Let me walk you through it and you will see why that is very quickly.

Let’s start with what the driver has to work with. And I will get this out of the way very quickly. Yes the steering wheel is oval. It was done to enhance the visibility of the driver when it comes the the upper screen of the two screens that this vehicle comes with. But this shape works as your hands are basically in a 10 and 2 position. Turning the wheel is a non issue as well. In fact, if you try this wheel out, you’ll find that you won’t be thinking about it after 15 minutes into your test drive. The driver display which is the upper screen is 24″. Meanwhile the lower display is 13.2″. Back to the steering wheel for a bit.It’s wrapped in Mesa Del Rio leather with Kingsville Stitching. Not to mention that it is heated.

The transmission is controlled by this knob on the left that has a manual mode. Said manual mode is controlled by the plus and minus buttons to the left of that knob. There’s a volume knob in the middle. And then various buttons to the right. For the record, that’s real wood and aluminum. And this is one of the few places that you will see shiny hard plastic. The fact that there is a minimal amount of shiny hard plastic earns Ford some bonus points as I truly feel that shiny hard plastic is massively overused in cars these days and is also impossible to keep clean.

There’s a cluster to the lower left that has the buttons for the different 4 wheel drive modes as opening and closing the rear hatch and the parking brake.

Now let’s move to the centre console. There’s two cupholders on the right that will hold Venti sized Starbucks coffee cups with ease. To the left, you have the control for trailer functions, a wireless charger on the right side, as well as a USB-A and USB-C port. You will notice an up and down arrow in the middle. Press the up arrow and you get this:

It slides the entire centre console and that does a bunch of things:

  1. It moves the cupholders further back for second row passengers.
  2. It creates extra storage space for front seat occupants.
  3. It offers a semi secure space to put a bag or purse into that you can close by moving the centre console forward. And it’s only accessible when the car is on. My wife used this to put her purse into when we went on a hike in Owen Sound on the weekend.

The armrest has a rather deep storage area with a tray to hold change for parking or a pen or two.

The second row passengers have a pair of cupholders. Above those cupholders is a slot that you can put an iPad into.

The doors have pretty deep pockets in them. A water bottle will easily fit into them.

This specific trim level comes with captain’s chairs in the second row that are heated and have Del Rio Leather. They move forward and back and easily flip down. More on the flip down part in a bit. I didn’t take a picture of the front seats, but they have the same leather and are heated and cooled and are power adjustable.

There’s a pair of USB-C ports on the back of each front seat.

Between the captain’s chairs are HVAC controls for the second row passengers along with a 110V AC outlet. For the record, this vehicle has three zones for climate control.

Above you is an insanely massive sunroof.

The third row actually fits adults. I acted as the designated driver for pub night and was able to bring five people back to the respective homes with no complaints. You have to duck your head to get back there. But once you’re back there, you’re good. The seats also split 40-20-24 to allow you maximum flexibility when it comes to cargo.

The liftgate is actually in a clamshell configuration. Again, giving you the maximum amount of flexibility when it comes to cargo. Plus you can sit on the lower part as well.

Storage space behind the third row is decent but not huge. However there’s some buttons on the left side of the cargo area that can help you with that.

These buttons can help you to flip down both the third and second row. Plus there’s a lighting button on the top in case you need some extra light. And there’s a storage area there as well as some tie downs to keep you cargo from rolling around.

Flipping down the seats opens up all sorts of room for your cargo. Given that this SUV is huge, that’s a lot of cargo space that you have access to.

On the right side of the cargo area you get two USB-C ports, a 12V outlet along with a 110V outlet.

This interior is impressive. I can’t find any area where I could criticize Ford for anything. It’s truly impressive and it’s a highlight of this vehicle. But let’s see if Ford is so lucky when it comes to the tech. That’s the next part of this review and I will have a fair amount to say about the tech that the Expedition rolls up with.

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Windows 10 Support Ends TODAY

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

As of today, Microsoft’s has ended Windows 10 support. And according to Roger Grimes, CISO Advisor at cybersecurity company KnowBe4, that could leave users vulnerable to cyberattacks.

“Windows 10 was released over 10 years ago, so it doesn’t surprise me that Microsoft is finally sunsetting it. Competitors like Apple and Linux often only support the latest versions for a few years, so ten years of support is extraordinary. With that said, there are tens of millions of Windows 10 users (there are also hundreds of thousands to millions of even earlier Windows users out there), and Microsoft can’t simply abandon them.

But what does support look like when Microsoft no longer provides support? If history is any indicator, in the past Microsoft was forced to release a few critical patches that were being widely exploited in the world, but the practical reality is that any Windows 10 user needs to move to a newer version or use something else. If they can’t and there are very valid reasons why a customer MUST continue to use Windows 10 and must accept the risk. That’s life. But those Windows 10 users should isolate Windows 10 computers off the network and Internet if they can, or significantly isolate them using other domain isolation techniques (e.g., firewalls, IPSEC, etc.) and enable aggressive security monitoring. A Windows 10 computer is a high-risk computer and needs to be treated like it.”

Now updating to Windows 11 is the clear answer to this dealing with Windows 10’s demise. But that’s not always easy as it is entirely possible that you have to replace hardware, or some piece of software that you rely upon might break and not have an easy path to update. Assuming that an update path exists.

But there’s another option if you must run Windows 10. You can extend its lifespan with the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program by paying Microsoft. More details can be found here. Interestingly EU customers don’t have to pay for this. At least for the first year. That’s the benefit of living in a jurisdiction that takes cybersecurity more seriously than we do. Having said that, this is a viable option if you must run Windows 10 beyond today.

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October Patch Tuesday Commentary From Fortra

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

By Tyler Reguly, Associate Director, Security R&D, Fortra

Today is a record setting day, one that should likely concern everyone in a few different ways. Today, Microsoft addressed, via direct and third-party CVE assignments, 196 CVEs. Since Microsoft moved away from security bulletins and toward security guidance in 2017, the record CVEs in a single month was 161 in January of this year. Today, however, Microsoft beat that record with a more than 20% increase.

Why should everyone be concerned? First, that is a lot of vulnerabilities to address and there’s definitely a few oddball issues this month that we don’t normally see. Today, for example, I learned about a new OS called IGEL OS. According to CVE-2025-47827, this vulnerability allows for a Secure Boot bypass. Similarly, there’s a vulnerability in the Trusted Computing Groups TPM2.0 reference implementation defined by CVE-2025-2884, which could lead to information disclosure. Not only are these issues we don’t normally see in a Patch Tuesday drop, but they are also issues that were disclosed months ago. The IGEL OS issue was disclosed in May, while the TPM2.0 issue was disclosed in June. Yet, Microsoft is just getting out patches for these issues now. If you’re a CISO, you might want your teams to ask your Microsoft TAMS why it took so long to get out updates.

One of the updates that I find more interesting this month is the fix for a set of privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the Agere Modem Driver that ships with Windows. These attacks, one of which has already seen active exploitation, can work even if the modem is not being used and will elevate the attacker’s access to administrator privileges. The fix, however, caught my attention because Microsoft is simply removing the driver, ltmdm64.sys, from the system. This driver removal addresses both CVE-2025-24990 and CVE-2025-24052.

CISOs this month may want to ask their teams if they are using Azure’s Confidential Computing (ACC) AMD-based clusters, due to the AMD processor vulnerability assigned CVE-2025-0033. Updates for this are currently in development, so there is no resolution process available right now. Instead, customers need to monitor their Azure Service Health Alerts to watch for notifications letting them know that they need to remove their ACC resources. If your teams are using ACC, you’ll want to check in regularly to ensure that they are paying attention for that reboot notification, so that you will ultimately know when this publicly disclosed vulnerability is resolved.

CISOs may also want to question their Microsoft contacts on the three Copilot vulnerabilities that were resolved this month. This is a time when an executive summary would be very useful, but unfortunately Microsoft did not include one for any of these three issues. Instead, all we know is that there were three spoofing issues, two within M365 Copilot Business Chat (CVE-2025-59286 and CVE-2025-59272) and one within M365 Word Copilot (CVE-2025-59252). I would want to ask three questions:

  1. What was the issue?
  2. What were the risks associated by the issue?
  3. Are there any ways that I can tell if my organization was impacted by the issue?

Unfortunately, Microsoft does not address this and simply lets us know that they have fully mitigated the issue and that there is no action that we need to take. With all the implementations of AI within organizations, I would think that CISOs would like a little more than, “There was a risk, we fixed it,” if they want to sleep better at night.

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New Report Warns of Healthcare Cybersecurity Crisis in Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

The Canadian Cybersecurity Network (CCN) today released its Pulse Check – National Cybersecurity in Healthcare Report at INCYBER Forum in Montreal. The report issues a stark warning: cyberattacks targeting Canada’s healthcare system are accelerating, threatening care delivery, patient trust, and the resilience of Canada’s most critical sector.

Patients nationwide are already feeling the effects of rising cyberattacks and ransomware incidents. From surgeries in Ontario abruptly cancelled, to Toronto’s SickKids Hospital facing delays in vital treatment, to Newfoundland and Labrador’s province-wide breach costing $16 million and delaying thousands of procedures, these aren’t isolated events, but signs of a growing national crisis. With a single click, a cyberattack can cancel a surgery, derail critical treatment plans, and put lives at risk. Globally, the threat is just as severe, with healthcare systems in the U.S. and U.K. suffering mass breaches and service shutdowns.

5 Key Findings of the Report

  • Embed cybersecurity into every digital health initiative — from conception to deployment.
  • Invest in people by building cybersecurity capacity across clinicians, administrators, and IT teams.
  • Prioritize awareness through national, human-centered cybersecurity training for all healthcare workers.
  • Adopt secure-by-design funding models that reward resilience, not just connectivity.
  • Share threat intelligence nationally so every breach teaches, and no hospital stands alone.

The message is clear: healthcare cybersecurity is a matter of patient safety, public confidence, and national resilience. The report calls for immediate investment in staff awareness and training, stronger leadership engagement, and more resilient systems to ensure Canada’s healthcare can withstand the rising tide of cyber threats and protect continuity of care.

Download The Pulse Check – National Cybersecurity in Healthcare Report for free here. 

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Quorum Cyber Named CyberSecurity Breakthrough’s Managed Security Service Provider of the Year 2025

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

Quorum Cyber has won the Managed Security Service Provider of the Year award at this year’s CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards. 

Now in its ninth year, the annual CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards recognize and celebrate the world’s most innovative information security companies, products and people. This year, they received thousands of nominations from established companies and start-ups in the information security and cyber security sectors around the world, making competition in every category extremely fierce.

This latest award closely follows several other accolades for Quorum Cyber this year, including being named Security MSSP of the Year in the Microsoft Security Excellence Awards 2025, winning the Cybersecurity Company of the Year award at the 2025 Scottish Cyber Awards, and being named a finalist in the Cyber Security Team of the Year category at the UK’s National Cyber Awards.

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Salesforce Has News From Dreamforce

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

As we kick off the first day of Dreamforce, the world’s largest technology event, Salesforce is unveiling big headlines that will be relevant for Canadian business leaders.

At a time where enterprise AI adoption is accelerating, new data from IDC and Salesforce shows that 67% of Canadian and American CEOs believe implementing AI agents is critical to staying competitive. These advances in agentic AI give Canadian leaders a way to outpace competitors and tackle challenges like low productivity and ongoing trade tensions.

News highlights: 

  • Agentforce 360: Salesforce has launched the Agentic Enterprise with an integrated platform that enables businesses to deploy agents that are grounded in governed, trusted data; work across teams and workflows; collaborate with humans and other agents directly in Slack.

Brands Canadians use daily are already seeing major transformation – from Reddit cutting resolution times from 8.9 minutes to 1.4 minutes (84% reduction) to OpenTable resolving 70% of diner and restaurant inquiries autonomously. 

  • OpenAI Partnership: Salesforce is coming to ChatGPT for the first time, starting with Sales and Commerce. Sales reps can ask ChatGPT to share a customer’s sales records and visualizations of their latest earnings reports. With Commerce, vendors can complete purchases, embed product catalogs, and turn natural language inquiries into sales directly within ChatGPT.
  • Anthropic Partnership: Claude will be a foundational model to power AI agents and applications within the Agentforce 360 Platform, ensuring highly regulated industries can use Claude securely. Claude will also run in Slack, with future plans for Salesforce apps to run in Claude.

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Harvard Has Apparently Been Pwned Via The Oracle Vulnerability

Posted in Commentary with tags , on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

Remember this Oracle vulnerability that is far from trivial? It now has its first confirmed victim outside of Oracle. And unfortunately for Oracle, it’s Harvard. Yes. That Harvard.

The cybercrime group Cl0p is now seemingly reaping the harvest after it successfully exploited a critical zero-day bug in Oracle’s E-Business Suite (EBS). Hundreds of companies and organizations – all Oracle clients – were allegedly compromised.

One of them is apparently Harvard University, which uses EBS for various administrative functions. Now, Cl0P, essentially a digital organized crime ring, has claimed it had stolen data from the prestigious school.

And:

According to Cybernews researchers, Cl0p has shared 1.4TB of data on its leak site. This data originates from Harvard’s servers hosted by Oracle.

The published data includes logs and reports from Harvard’s internal payment system as well as source code for various internal tools. Cybernews research team has analyzed the data and says it includes references that strongly suggest that it was indeed taken from OBS systems.

Anders Askasen, VP of Product Marketing, Radiant Logic had this to say:

     “The Harvard breach tied to the Oracle EBS exploitation highlights a recurring truth: complexity is the adversary of security. When identity and data silos persist, visibility evaporates, and the ability to trace who has access to what becomes guesswork. Systems like Oracle EBS sit at the heart of enterprise operations — rich in sensitive HR and financial data, yet notoriously hard to govern across hybrid infrastructures. Resilience begins with a unified identity data foundation and continuous observability that enable organizations to detect exposures in real time, contain and act with precision, and restore confidence through verifiable facts rather than assumptions”


Will Baxter, Field CISO, Team Cymru follows with this comment:

“This threat highlights the importance of egress filtering and monitoring where files are downloaded from. This operation appears to have exploited the vulnerability weeks ahead of patch release, indicating early access or a brokered exploit. Detecting these campaigns early depends on correlating outbound anomalies, C2 beaconing, and shared infrastructure across sectors. The only scalable defense is collective intelligence — connecting enterprise telemetry with trusted partners before the stolen data surfaces publicly.”

Gunter Ollmann, CTO, Cobalt adds this comment:

“This campaign underscores the growing sophistication of financially motivated groups exploiting enterprise software supply chains. The attackers didn’t rely on a single exploit—they combined zero-day vulnerabilities with custom malware to maximize access before detection. It’s another reminder that penetration testing can’t stop at application edges; enterprises must stress-test complex ERP systems as part of their attack surface. Increasingly, the focus must shift toward offensive security services that continuously test not just applications, but also the effectiveness of defense-in-depth systems and SOC teams. Regular, adversarial testing provides the real-world validation organizations need to ensure their layered defenses perform as intended when it matters most.”

Sucks to be Harvard. And it sucks even more to be Oracle who’s senior management have to be reconsidering their life choices at this point. Because they know that there will be more fallout, and the lawsuits that follow that fallout.

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Starburst Announces Winners of the 2025 Data Visionary Awards

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

Starburst, the data platform for apps and AI, recognized the winners of the 2025 Data Visionary Awards at a celebration event held alongside AI & Datanova 2025 Thursday evening. The awards honor customers and partners who are harnessing data and AI to deliver transformative results, accelerate innovation, and shape the future of their industries.

The awards celebrate achievements across six customer categories and four partner categories, recognizing visionaries whose leadership and execution are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with Starburst.

Customer Award Winners

●      AI & Data Visionary Award: S&P Global Market Intelligence – Enterprise Solutions Technology Team

The Enterprise Solutions Technology team at S&P Global Market Intelligence is recognized for its bold vision and execution in building a modern, AI-ready data foundation leveraging Starburst. By embracing a federated, governed architecture, the team has accelerated innovation, reduced time-to-market, and set a new standard for responsible AI adoption.

●        Executive AI & Data Visionary Award Winner: Anna Nicanorova, CTO, Annalect

Anna is recognized for her leadership in driving Annalect’s enterprise-wide data vision and AI transformation. By championing Starburst, she has accelerated insights, strengthened decision-making, and delivered measurable business impact across Annalect’s global operations.

●        Data AI Award Winner: Asurion
Asurion is recognized for building a modern, AI-ready data foundation with Starburst, including Iceberg lakehouses, federated access, and strong governance. This approach positions Asurion for scalable AI adoption, future RAG use cases, and accelerated enterprise insights.

●        Impact Through AI Award Winner: Arity

Arity is recognized for harnessing Starburst to power data-driven insights that improve transportation safety and efficiency. By applying AI to vast mobility datasets, Arity helps businesses and communities reduce risk, optimize operations, and make faster, more informed decisions, thereby delivering measurable impact across the transportation ecosystem.

●        Data Pathfinder Award Winner: Periyasamy Sivakumar (Siva), Head of Data Engineering, OCBC
Siva is recognized for his leadership in driving Starburst adoption and data modernization at OCBC. Through hands-on influence and advocacy, he has delivered results in a complex, regulated environment and inspired peers across the organization.

●        Data Disruptor Award Winner: PSEG Long Island

PSEG Long Island is recognized for its bold, fast-moving approach to transforming data and analytics. By leveraging Starburst to modernize access to critical data and accelerate insights, PSEG Long Island demonstrated how a forward-thinking organization can disrupt traditional practices and drive meaningful impact.

Partner Award Winners

●        Starburst Partner: Data Visionary Award Winner:  Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS)
AWS is recognized for advancing cloud-native AI and data solutions that empower enterprises to unlock transformative insights and accelerate business value with Starburst.

●        Starburst Partner: Data Trailblazer Award Winner: Dell Technologies
Dell is celebrated for helping joint customers modernize their data architectures with Starburst, delivering integrated, high-performance solutions that bring the power of governed, federated analytics to enterprises at scale, and enabling organizations to accelerate their AI and data-driven initiatives.

●        Integration & Ecosystem Impact Award Winner: Alteryx
Alteryx is honored for delivering seamless integration and technical innovation that extend the value of Starburst, enabling organizations to achieve new levels of interoperability and business impact.

●        Managed Service Excellence Award Winner: Kubrick
Kubrick is recognized for outstanding implementation expertise, customer satisfaction, and the ability to drive transformative outcomes through high-impact Starburst deployments.

Attend AI + Datanova Virtual featuring Trino Day, a two-day virtual event, October 22–23, 2025. Register here

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Approov Turbocharges Global Security: Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing Halves Latency for Next-Gen Mobile Attestation

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 14, 2025 by itnerd

Approov today announced significant strategic expansion of its global network infrastructure, positioning its unique cloud-based mobile app and device attestation platform as the essential defense against rapidly evolving AI-based API threats. This expansion includes the deployment of Cloudflare’s Argo Smart Routing technology across its multi-cloud network, which is supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Approov’s architecture represents a major shift in mobile security, moving away from conventional, on-device approaches like Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) and code obfuscation that are increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated hacking tools and AI-driven reverse engineering.

The Next Generation of Mobile Security: Cloud-Based Attestation

The core of Approov’s next-generation platform is its approach to security-by-design: moving all sensitive secrets, such as API keys, out of the mobile application and into a secure, cloud-based enclave. Security is then managed through a rigorous, real-time app and device attestation process performed entirely in the cloud.

Approov’s cloud platform verifies that all API requests originate from a genuine, untampered mobile app running on a secure device. This model drastically reduces API attacks from bots, scripts, and cloned apps by over 95%, creating a safer digital ecosystem for major organizations in finance, retail, healthcare, and connected cars.

High Performance for a Mission-Critical Platform

To ensure this mission-critical security is delivered without compromising the user experience, Approov recognizes the absolute need for a high-performance, robust, and resilient network infrastructure. The platform must deliver attestation tokens over an encrypted channel with the lowest possible latency, regardless of a mobile app’s operating location.

To meet this demand, Approov has made two key infrastructure enhancements:

1.    Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing Integration: Approov has integrated Cloudflare’s Argo Smart Routing™ across its network. This technology continuously optimizes the routing of attestation traffic by dynamically selecting the fastest and most reliable network paths. By enabling Argo Smart Routing, Approov reduces Internet latency on average by more than 30% and connection errors by 27%, significantly enhancing performance for end-users globally. The integration also includes Cloudflare’s enterprise-level Layer 4/7 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection.

2.    Expanded Global Attestation Fabric: Approov continues to grow its multi-region, multi-cloud fabric with new points of presence in U.S. East, Hong Kong, and Taipei, Taiwan, complementing existing locations in Dublin, U.S. West (San Jose), Sao Paulo, and Singapore. The multi-cloud deployment on AWS and Google Cloud is designed with automatic cross-cloud failover for maximum resiliency under the most extreme threats.

These strategic investments ensure that Approov will continue to deliver the fastest, most efficient, and most secure mobile app protection, allowing enterprises to fully trust the source of every mobile API request.

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