Archive for October 15, 2026

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NETGEAR launches PR30SG

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

NETGEAR introduces the PR30SG, a Dual WAN Security Gateway with cloud-delivered security controlled from NETGEAR Insight. Insight, NETGEAR’s cloud-based management platform, already serves NETGEAR switches and access points. Now, small and midsize enterprises, distributed branch sites, and the managed service providers (MSPs) that support them, can run networking and security from a single console. Each PR30SG includes its first year of security, so sites are protected from the day they go live.

Networking and security have historically been bought separately: a router from one vendor, security from another, each with its own console and its own bill. For lean IT teams, that means they end up with a security stack they don’t have time to manage. For MSPs, it means more tools to reconcile at every customer site. NETGEAR has been closing that gap by building security into its routers and managing it all from Insight.

The PR30SG takes that approach to smaller sites at a lower price point, with the first year of security included. The same security layer is also available as a license for the PR60X, so existing PR60X sites can add it without replacing hardware or scheduling an onsite visit. “Lean IT teams and branch offices have usually had to choose between an inexpensive router and a security stack they don’t have the budget or staff to run,” said Iphie Chen, Director of Product Management Enterprise at NETGEAR. “The PR30SG gives them cloud-delivered security, managed in Insight alongside their switches and access points.”

One platform for every site

Managed through NETGEAR Insight, the PR30SG gives administrators one view of alerts, policies, traffic and device health across locations. New units can be provisioned remotely, so a business or MSP can bring a site online without sending a technician. For MSPs, Insight multi-tenant management lets technicians oversee multiple customer networks from a single dashboard. Insight also connects to the PSA and RMM tools MSPs already use, including ConnectWise, NinjaRMM, Datto and Autotask.

Key features include:

  • Cloud-delivered security, first year included: web filtering keeps users away from malicious and restricted sites, and intrusion detection flags suspicious network behavior in real time. The license, powered by NETGEAR Exium, also covers SASE cloud security, which enforces access controls and firewall policies before traffic reaches the local network.
  • Zero-touch provisioning through NETGEAR Insight: ship a PR30SG to a new office or client site, power it on, and it pulls its configuration from the cloud. No one has to travel to set it up.
  • Dual WAN failover and load balancing: if one internet connection drops, the PR30SG switches to the backup automatically to keep applications and sites online. Both links can also share traffic.
  • Dedicated 2.5G WAN port: when a site’s ISP moves to multi-gigabit service, the PR30SG keeps up without a hardware swap or truck roll.
  • Modern VPNs built in: WireGuard and OpenVPN are supported natively alongside IPSec site-to-site and client-to-site VPN, with no third-party software or extra hardware per site.
  • Fanless design: no fan and no noise, so the PR30SG fits on a reception desk or in a wiring closet.
  • NDAA-compliant hardware: built in line with Section 889 requirements, so the PR30SG can deploy in healthcare, finance, education and government-adjacent environments where component origin matters.
  • Support included: every unit includes 90 days of free 24/7 phone support plus limited lifetime 24/7 online chat support. An optional Overdrive plan adds a 2-hour response SLA. The PR30SG also carries a limited lifetime hardware warranty.

Connectivity Warehouse, a Dallas-area networking solutions provider serving offices, healthcare facilities, warehouses and multi-site organizations, tested the PR30SG during NETGEAR’s beta program.

Availability

The PR30SG is available at an MSRP of $349.99 from October 27, 2026 in North America and from November 5, 2026 in EMEA and APAC. The price includes NETGEAR Exium cloud security for the first year, NETGEAR Insight cloud management, and 90 days of free 24/7 phone support plus limited lifetime 24/7 online chat support. PR60X customers can add the same security layer with a new license; contact NETGEAR sales to purchase one.

NETGEAR will cover the PR30SG and its approach to network security for small and medium enterprises and MSPs in a live webinar, “The moat is full of phish: How modern security protects a business without walls,” on October 20. Register at https://netgear.zoom.us/webinar/register/4017897634093/WN_iKxpN8D9T7qWcwV1CKtoKQ.

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Hirudo Android RAT kills, replaces & runs banking apps

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

ThreatFabric has disclosed a new Android banking RAT called Hirudo that can replace legitimate banking apps with modified copies designed to manipulate their own security checks, including app-signing validation, Accessibility detection and Play Integrity responses.

Rather than simply stealing credentials or displaying overlays, Hirudo can make a compromised banking app appear trustworthy to itself and to controls that rely on signals generated on the device.

In response, mobile app security expert Ted Miracco, CEO of Approov, offers comments:

“Hirudo doesn’t break the bank’s defenses. The trojan deletes the genuine app, installs a copy signed with a public test key, and loads a hooking engine inside that app’s process. From then on that app asks Android who signed it and hears the right answer. It asks which accessibility services are running and hears none. Its Play Integrity request is routed through the attacker’s server and comes back clean.

“The conclusion is uncomfortable but simple: an app running on a phone you don’t control cannot be a witness in its own defense. Integrity signals have to be produced and judged somewhere the attacker can’t reach, tied to the session and to the specific payment, with revocation actually checked. ThreatFabric found the operators using a leaked keybox holding certificates Google had already revoked. A bank checking server-side would have caught that. A bank trusting the verdict on the handset could not.

“The uncomfortable part for the industry is that this engine isn’t bank-specific. It’s a reusable tool pointed at eight Indonesian apps today, with target lists in the code already naming five other countries.”

This is not a good development as I expect this to be repurposed to fit any use case. Which is bad for all of us.

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Cyberattack on federal contractor disrupts DOT services

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

A cyberattack on government contractor Senture disrupted the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) contact center, affecting telephone assistance for commercial truck drivers and operators using the agency’s new Motus registration system, according to Politico.

The FMCSA reported technical difficulties on October 6 and directed users to online support and chat services. The Department of Transportation confirmed that the attack brought down Senture’s network domain, including its phone capabilities.

The incident disrupted a service used to help trucking companies navigate federal registration requirements. DOT said FMCSA data was not compromised, and the incident remains under investigation. The attack’s cause and full scope have not been disclosed.

Seemant Sehgal, Founder & CEO, BreachLock:

“This attack is a reminder of how heavily federal services often depend on commercial vendors for the operational layer citizens actually interact with. When the help channel goes offline, the online self-service path is all that is left, even for questions that really need a real conversation. Federal agencies should proactively map which contractors operate the citizen-facing services, understand the dependencies underneath them, and stand up backup channels before the next incident takes a primary channel offline.”

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Steven Swift, Managing Director, Suzu Labs:

“FMCSA experienced a partial outage as a result of a cyberattack. Phones went down, but online ticketing and chat functions remained up. Reports are that the attack was against Senture, a government contracting firm who provides managed IT services. A source close to the incident claimed that the attack was “AI powered” because it was able to probe systems quickly. But simply probing systems quickly is not unique to AI, attackers have long used scripts to automate large portions of attacks. Simply seeing systems probed quickly is only an indicator of automation, not of AI. Its an easy mistake to make for personnel who aren’t familiar with how these sorts of incidents typically work.

“That said, it doesn’t rule it out either. But we can only go off of what’s been released publicly. And at this time, it looks like they’re blaming AI as a convenient scapegoat, rather than because of any reliable indicators. We used to see organizations claim that their routine cyberattacks were from “highly skilled or nation state actors” in an attempt to deflect blame away from why the attack happened at all. These days, we also see AI added to that list. Most attacks happen because best practices aren’t being followed. While yes, its possible to do everything right and still experience a successful cyberattack, almost all of the cyberattacks occur because organizations had gaps that they should have fixed but didn’t.

“We don’t yet have much detail on this. Its unclear how much FMCSA or Senture intends to release publicly. Its common for organizations to limit what public statements they make in response to a cyberattack. Even if we get more, I wouldn’t expect a lot of details to be made public.”

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John Carberry, Solution Sleuth, Xcape Inc.:

“A cyberattack disabling federal contractor Senture’s network domain directly disrupted commercial transportation compliance by knocking out telephone support for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) new Motus registration portal. While the Department of Transportation (DOT) confirmed that agency data was not compromised, the resulting outage demonstrates how third-party domain failures can swiftly paralyze frontline operations. Details are sparse for this specific incident, and without knowing the who and why of the DOT attack, forming a strong opinion is difficult at this time. However, considering that this incident comes on the heels of two other major attacks against the FBI and the Pentagon, it demonstrates a clear trend against federal entities and underscores the fragility of federal systems. For security leaders and agency executives, vendor risk management cannot end at data privacy checkboxes: agencies must enforce strict identity segmentation, mandate redundant communication pathways for mission-critical workflows, and contractually require verifiable business continuity plans that withstand complete contractor infrastructure outages.

“Critical Takeaways:

  • Operational disruption can cripple agency missions even when sensitive data remains uncompromised, proving that availability failures in the contractor supply chain are just as damaging as data breaches.
  • Viewed alongside recent security incidents at the FBI and the Pentagon, this attack reflects an escalating trend targeting federal infrastructure and highlights the systemic fragility of interconnected government dependencies.
  • Security leaders must architect layered defenses around third-party dependencies by enforcing strict network identity segmentation and establishing out-of-band operational fallbacks before a vendor domain collapses.

“When an entire contractor domain evaporates overnight, discovering that agency records are intact feels like finding your wallet inside a car that just got towed.”

This isn’t going to end well for anyone. I am calling it now.

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ServiceNow introduces the third generation of its employee-centric AI harness so the workforce can build and use the AI their jobs demand

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

ServiceNow today announced major advances to ServiceNow EmployeeWorks that give employees the ability to build the AI agents their jobs demand. These agents can complete daily tasks without human intervention and enable deep persona-based work across critical business functions. Additionally, ToolSmith, a new agentic developer environment for ServiceNow EmployeeWorks, takes complex tool-building from days to minutes, securely and at enterprise scale.

ServiceNow EmployeeWorks is powered by a third-generation employee-centric AI harness, which provides employees with intelligent context, trusted decision making, and robust enterprise actions to orchestrate AI safely.

While enterprise AI investment is rising, most employees still can’t build the AI their job needs. IT backlogs, developer constraints, vendor lock-in, and fragmented tools mean that the people closest to the work—the ones who understand the problems best—can’t build AI solutions that take secure actions. ServiceNow EmployeeWorks helps change that.

Productivity Assistants: AI assistants for contextual persona-based work

Productivity Assistants are specialized AI assistants for contextual, nuanced, or persona-based work. These assistants run on the third-generation employee-centric AI harness, which combines reasoning, memory, and tool interoperability, so assistants can own deep research, long-running tasks, and cross-system and agent work with durable memory.

Non-coding employees can easily build the Productivity Assistants they need with admin-defined guardrails. They can tailor behavior, content, tools, and access. Pre-built assistants are also available.

HR Service Delivery: Productivity Assistants will be available for different ServiceNow products, starting with HR Service Delivery, extending service directly to managers for HR, talent, growth, and hiring.

  • Talent Insights Assistant surfaces candidate fit, hiring, and organizational talent insights directly to managers, powered by integrations with Findem and Phenom.
  • HR Business Partner Assistant handles HR needs, including approvals, case management, and employee programs, conversationally. HRBP Assistant acts as a digital twin to help scale HR teams.
  • Manager Assistant equips managers with timely coaching, insights, and team-performance visibility, unlocking information and capabilities that normally sit behind HR people and process.

ServiceNow EmployeeWorks: Two foundational productivity assistants are available out of the box, with the option to build more.

  • Research Assistant investigates complex questions across internal and external sources in real time, delivering personalized answers based on role and access through a rich artifact, document, or deck.
  • Calendaring Assistant integrates directly with calendar systems, serving as a smart scheduler that can decipher complex calendars, resolve conflicts, reserve rooms, add conferencing links, and more. It goes beyond typical calendar booking solutions by orchestrating nuanced requests like scheduling quarterly one-on-ones with an entire team on days that minimize disruption to project work or finding the least hectic day to bring together a team for a full day workshop.

Productivity Routines: Employees build their own agents for proactive work

For work that’s predictable and repeatable, employees can now build and deploy Productivity Routines that run proactively in the background, helping eliminate the need to manually repeat the same tasks continuously. They execute the same steps every time and deliver finished outcomes without human intervention.

For example, a sales leader can build a Prospecting Agent that can scan their calendar for upcoming account meetings, research the account via internal and external resources, and assemble a tailored asset or pitch that marries the company’s value props to the problems and pains experienced by the prospect – all before they sign on for the day.

Employees don’t need to understand backend systems, API integrations, or data models. They describe what they want to automate, select the tools they need, and deploy. This democratizes AI, shifting the power to automate from IT and into the hands of the people who understand the work best, with governance built in.

ToolSmith: Developers vibe code enterprise-grade AI tools in minutes

ToolSmith is a new agentic developer environment that builds any automation for ServiceNow EmployeeWorks AI assistants. Developers describe what they want to accomplish in natural language, and ToolSmith handles the end-to-end build of the tool. ToolSmith is trained on over 75,000 APIs. It aligns on a plan with developers, implements integrations following the best practices, and builds tools for AI agents that are optimized for token efficiency and reliability. If something breaks, it can pull the relevant logs and propose a fix. Developers can then test and refine all through the same conversational experience.

ToolSmith also identifies what to build next. It scans through logs to identify opportunities to fix, improve, or invent the next best workflow. What used to take weeks, now takes minutes.

Conversations API: ServiceNow EmployeeWorks everywhere employees work

With the new Conversations API, organizations can bring ServiceNow EmployeeWorks capabilities – including Productivity Assistants, Productivity Routines, and ToolSmith – directly into the tools employees already use, including custom internal applications, kiosks, and other AI applications.

One unified platform, available across every channel, with no rearchitecting required.

Availability:

Productivity Assistants, Productivity Routines, the employee-centric harness, ToolSmith and Conversations API are all in controlled availability today.

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Burger King Japan Pwned

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

Burger King Japan today confirmed that it suffered a data breach that exposed about 11.18 million belonging to users. Which is of course bad. More info here: Burger King Japan Confirms Data Breach Exposing 11.18M User Records

Ensar Seker, CISO at cybersecurity company SOCRadar, provided the following comments:

“The risk extends beyond the initial breach. Names, dates of birth, email addresses and phone numbers can help criminals make fraudulent messages feel credible. An attacker could impersonate Burger King support, reference the breach and ask a customer to “secure” their account through a fake verification page. That is a plausible follow-on threat, rather than evidence that such a campaign has already occurred.

Even seemingly minor account details can strengthen the deception. Knowing whether someone used mobile ordering could help tailor a convincing message without knowing what they actually purchased. Customers should open the official app or website directly when checking security notices, and should never share passwords or verification codes with someone who contacts them.

For businesses, this reinforces why customer profile data deserves strong protection alongside credentials and payment information. Collecting less data, limiting access to member databases and detecting unusual bulk retrieval can reduce the impact of a compromise. Account recovery also needs protection: knowing a customer’s birthday or phone number should never be enough to establish their identity.”

I guess we see how the Japanese handle a breach like this. I for one can’t wait to see if there is a difference.

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ServiceNow advances its operational harness for enterprise AI with AI Passport and expanded governance capabilities

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

ServiceNow today announced a new AI Passport solution and significant advances in AI governance to help ensure AI agents are production-ready by combining runtime governance, platform integration, and comprehensive oversight, all inside ServiceNow’s operational AI harness. Specifically, AI Passport is a new authority layer that gives enterprises runtime control over what AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers are authorized to do at every point in a multi-agent workflow. ServiceNow also enables enterprises to discover what AI is running, control what AI agents do, and measure spend against outcomes with a broadened set of governance capabilities.

AI agents need more than a reasoning model to execute enterprise workflows securely. They need structure: which data or tools they can access, clear rules for what actions they’re allowed to do, and an auditable record of who authorized it. ServiceNow provides the operational foundation that helps enterprises make AI agents safe for production. AI Passport is a cryptographically signed credential that AI agents refer to at runtime, including environments such as NVIDIA OpenShell, to verify their authorized scope, grounded in enterprise business context for governed decisions. When an AI agent stays within its passport scope, it can operate freely. When it drifts, graduated responses can be enforced — redirecting, restricting, or reconnecting the AI agent with proper context — including kill switch capabilities at machine speed if termination is needed. ServiceNow’s Super Intelligence Control Tower keeps the full audit record behind actions, transforming AI agent execution into governed, auditable, and accountable work.

AI Passport: attested authority, enforceable at the edge

AI Passport is built on open specifications so that any governance product, identity provider, or enforcement point can issue and verify credentials for their own and third-party AI agents. Credentials are verifiable at every step in multi-agent workflows.

This represents a fundamental shift from reaction to prevention. Unlike audit trails, which show what happened after the fact, AI Passport helps prevent AI agents from acting outside their scope by authorizing what they can do at runtime. It brings ServiceNow’s ‘Shift Zero’ approach to life: secure by design, at inception. Each AI agent receives its own AI Passport, issued by the Super Intelligence Control Tower and grounded in the enterprise’s live business context through ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) policies, and workflow approvals. For third-party AI agents especially, this creates a verifiable permissions record rather than relying on the AI agent’s own ‘claims’ about its permissions.

The approach to AI Passport enables precision revocation and scoped delegation that narrows at each step for third-party agent governance, along with audit trails that include full compliance signatures. ServiceNow is also announcing NVIDIA as a design and launch partner, building a production-ready enforcement implementation using the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, which features NVIDIA OpenShell open-source secure runtime software and the NVIDIA Sentry security framework.

AI Passport: attested authority, enforceable at the edge

AI Passport is built on open specifications so that any governance product, identity provider, or enforcement point can issue and verify credentials for their own and third-party AI agents. Credentials are verifiable at every step in multi-agent workflows.

This represents a fundamental shift from reaction to prevention. Unlike audit trails, which show what happened after the fact, AI Passport helps prevent AI agents from acting outside their scope by authorizing what they can do at runtime. It brings ServiceNow’s ‘Shift Zero’ approach to life: secure by design, at inception. Each AI agent receives its own AI Passport, issued by the Super Intelligence Control Tower and grounded in the enterprise’s live business context through ServiceNow Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) policies, and workflow approvals. For third-party AI agents especially, this creates a verifiable permissions record rather than relying on the AI agent’s own ‘claims’ about its permissions.

The approach to AI Passport enables precision revocation and scoped delegation that narrows at each step for third-party agent governance, along with audit trails that include full compliance signatures. ServiceNow is also announcing NVIDIA as a design and launch partner, building a production-ready enforcement implementation using the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, which features NVIDIA OpenShell open-source secure runtime software and the NVIDIA Sentry security framework.

Unified discovery, visibility, and measurement

In addition to AI Passport, ServiceNow delivers end-to-end AI governance on one unified platform across discovery, visibility, control, measurement, and compliance. The new capabilities announced today build on ServiceNow’s autonomous remediation and kill switch capabilities that empower enterprises to act with speed.

The ServiceNow AI Platform runs on a single unified data model, which enables governance decisions to happen automatically across asset intelligence, identity security, and AI observability, eliminating manual handoffs between teams:

  • Shadow AI detection that finds unapproved AI agents running in the network
  • 400+ out-of-box connectors that will enable AI discovery across platforms and vendors
  • Access mapping that grounds authorization decisions in actual entitlements
  • Continuous enterprise AI observability that keeps track of AI agent traces and behavior

Beyond discovering what AI is running, enterprises need visibility into whether that AI is delivering value and operating within budget. ServiceNow is announcing:

  • Cost governance that tracks user, department, and runtime spending
  • Value intelligence that connects consumption, cost, quality, and realized user value so teams can optimize AI use, maintain budget commitments, and help prove business value
  • AI Cost Management as part of IT Asset Management (ITAM), which will integrate with the Super Intelligence Control Tower to bring frontier model, embedded SaaS AI, hyperscaler, and data center GPU costs into a single view, alert teams to potential budget overruns, and ground spend in business context
  • Policy enforcement that will manage alert-to-throttle-to-block graduated responses

AI control in highly regulated industries

For financial institutions, ungoverned assets and shadow AI multiply risk across compliance clocks. Regulators are shrinking incident notification windows far faster than manual, spreadsheet-driven programs can respond. ServiceNow’s 2026 Banking AI Maturity Index reveals that gap: while 100 percent of banks report using AI, only 24 percent have the governance to match it. Unmanaged service accounts, shadow AI agents, and unregistered devices remain exposed.

ServiceNow’s new Operational Resilience solution brings AI governance, risk, and security together in one place, with centralized data that helps financial institutions respond quickly. It gives CROs and CISOs the same real-time visibility and control. The Super Intelligence Control Tower senses ungoverned assets, identities, and AI agents across IT, OT, cloud, and third-party systems on one data model and unified platform. It is designed to treat a rogue AI agent like any other exposed asset: it finds it, flags it, and shuts it down, if needed. When an incident hits, banks can triage, contain, and revoke access inside the regulatory window, with auditable proof already in hand.

Availability

AI Passport, shadow AI detection, and AI Cost Management are expected to be available in Q4 2026. ServiceNow’s Operational Resilience solution for financial services is available today.

Attendees of NVIDIA GTC Berlin can also learn more about AI Passport, powered by the ServiceNow AI Platform and NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, by joining session SB61172.

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Bank Of America hires 1,000 contractors to patch software vulnerabilities exposed by AI

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

Bank of America hired 1,000 outside contractors to help remediate software vulnerabilities identified by advanced AI models, including Anthropic’s Mythos, according to CNBC.

CEO Brian Moynihan said the contractors were brought in during the second quarter and continue working alongside approximately 3,000 existing employees.

The bank accelerated remediation of vulnerabilities in its internal software and third-party vendor code as AI models became more capable of discovering security weaknesses. Moynihan said software remediation and anti-money-laundering compliance efforts together added more than $200 million in third-quarter expenses.

The bank did not disclose how many vulnerabilities were identified or patched.

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security:

“What do you call a thousand outside contractors helping Bank of America remediate software vulnerabilities? A good start.

“That’s an infosec joke, but it also shows one way AI may actually contribute to job growth in computer security. Finding more vulnerabilities creates more work for the people who have to fix them.

“My bigger concern is the idea that finding and remediating vulnerabilities is going to be an Easter egg hunt. Find all the eggs, put them in the basket, and you’re done. Software doesn’t work that way. It’s constantly evolving, changing, and getting patched. New vulnerabilities and attack paths keep emerging. We’re not going to find everything, fix everything, and then have everything be fine. This is ongoing work.”

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Jacob Krell, Senior Director: Secure AI Solutions & Cybersecurity, Suzu Labs:

“Bank of America’s 1,000 remediation contractors confirm what I have argued for a while now, the chokepoint has moved from finding vulnerabilities to fixing them. AI models like Anthropic’s Mythos can surface weaknesses faster than any bank can patch, so remediation capacity becomes the scarce resource, and Moynihan’s $200 million in added quarterly expenses puts a price tag on how scarce.

“Hiring that capacity this way creates its own exposure. A bank’s vulnerability inventory is effectively a targeting package, it maps exactly where the defenses are weak across internal software and third-party vendor code. Handing it to 1,000 outside contractors, roughly one contractor for every three existing security employees, distributes the bank’s most sensitive operational intelligence to people sitting outside its HR controls, monitoring, and enforcement chain. The bank can say the contractors follow the same security practices as employees, but without employee-grade endpoint logging and access oversight, the claim is unverifiable.

“I would want to know how long these contractors stay, what offboarding looks like, and who audits their access to live vulnerability data. The remediation backlog will shrink. Third-party risk like this outlasts every patch those 1,000 contractors ship.”

If AI created all this work, that’s not a good thing as all these bugs were out there. The real question is if the bad guys are using AI and for what for. Chances are that it was not anything good.

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Senators press Trump administration for independent AI testing after sandbox escape incidents

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

Sens. Maria Cantwell and Mike Rounds are urging the administration to expand the federal role in AI safety and security, citing incidents of frontier models escaping sandbox protections and breaching real organizations. Their letter calls for measurable standards, independent and third-party testing of models, and more aggressive use of defensive AI.

More info can be found here: Senators Cantwell and Rounds press Trump administration for coordinated AI cybersecurity response


Bri Frost, Director of Product Management, Cloud Range had this to say:

“AI capability is not AI readiness. An agent that can complete a task hasn’t earned the authority to act inside your business.

Autonomy should expand only when the evidence supports it. If you can’t demonstrate that you can control an agent’s actions, it isn’t ready for more authority.

The senators are right to demand independent testing. Vendors should not get to define the test, grade their own systems and ask everyone else to just take their word for it. But security leaders also cannot punt accountability to a vendor or sit on their hands while waiting for Washington to set the rules. Giving an agent credentials is a security decision, and the organization granting that access owns the consequences.

A completed task is only part of the result; the path taken matters, along with confidence that path and result is going to happen repeatedly in the same manner. Before deployment, gain that confidence by requiring evidence from realistic, contained testing environments that can not just the constant results of a completed task, but the repetitive decisions made on the path to accomplishment.

Test the whole system—model, tools, permissions and human oversight—and retest when those change.”

I’ve said this multiple times. AI is useful, but it needs to have the right protections in place. And sadly most companies don’t have that and it is going to cost them.

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Tracebit Launches Open Source Program

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

Tracebit has today launched its Open Source Program. This provides unlimited free canary credentials for maintainers to use across all their public open-source repositories.

Docker, ClickHouse, and Redis are the first participants, and program is open to maintainers of projects of every size.

Tracebit has established this because trusted development tools are in the cross hairs of threat actors, and security canaries can play a vital role in keeping open source projects safe. Placing canary credentials into a workflow’s build environment, alongside the places an attacker would look for real credentials acts as ‘bait’ for an attacker – any unexpected use is a signal of compromise.

To take part organizations need to sign up for Tracebit Community Edition and advise them they maintain open-source projects. Tracebit will then enable unlimited canary credentials for those repositories. In return, participants are required to display a “Protected by Tracebit” badge in their repository READMEs, helping other maintainers discover the program.

For more information see these two blogs live today: https://tracebit.com/blog/announcing-tracebit-open-source-program and https://tracebit.com/open-source-program

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Check Point Appoints Ashley Lukeeram as Canadian Leader

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 15, 2026 by itnerd

Check Point today announced the appointment of Ashley Lukeeram as Senior Area Vice President (SAVP), Canada. Lukeeram will lead Check Point in Canada, helping organizations across the private and publicsectors adopt AI securely and strengthening the country’s digital sovereignty.

AI transformation is accelerating and Canada has an opportunity to lead by making secure, trusted AI a foundation of its digital economy. For the consumers, enterprises and the public sector, this implies a need for stronger cyber awareness, faster responses to emerging threats and an enterprise-wide risk strategy built on an AI security defense plane.

That urgency is underscored by Canada’s increasingly intense cyber threat environment. Over the past six months, Check Point Research found that Canadian organizations experienced an average of 1,664 cyberattacks per week. Ransomware has had an especially significant impact, affecting 18.2% of Canadian organizations, more than double the 9.0% global average. The data points to a threat landscape where attackers are increasing pressure across industries, exploiting vulnerabilities and continuing to use the web as a primary delivery channel.

Lukeeram joins Check Point at this defining moment, bringing 25 years of cyber security leadership to the role. Over his career, he has built high-growth technology businesses and earned board-level trust with customers. He has led Canadian go-to-market strategy at Symantec, RSA and, more recently, Tenable. Lukeeram is active in Canada’s cyber security community and has contributed to national public sector conversations on policy, breach notification, cloud strategy and critical infrastructure resilience.

Lukeeram’s appointment comes as Check Point accelerates its investment in AI security. Earlier this year, the company launched its AI Defense Plane, a unified security framework that protects employees, AI applications, and autonomous agents across the enterprise. Additionally, it introduced the industry’s first AI Network Firewall, extending discovery, governance, and protection across networks, endpoints, cloud environments, applications, and APIs. Together, these capabilities give organizations centralized visibility and control over AI adoption to safeguard both internally developed and third-party AI systems.

In Canada, Check Point launched a dedicated Canada data region for its Web Application Firewall (WAF) in March 2026, keeping configurations, logs and security processing fully within the country for organizations with data residency, privacy and sovereignty requirements.

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