Archive for the Commentary Category

Covenant Health network hack claimed by Qilin

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

Ransomware gang Qilin today took credit for a May 2025 cyber-attack against Covenant Health in Massachusetts. Qilin has claimed to have stolen confidential files and has posted images of what it says are documents stolen from the network to prove its claim. 

Paul Bischoff, Consumer Privacy Advocate at Comparitech,provided the following comment: 

“Qilin is a ransomware gang that began claiming responsibility for attacks on its data leak site in late 2022. Based in Russia, Qilin mainly targets victims through phishing emails to spread its ransomware. It launched in August 2022 and runs a ransomware-as-a-service business in which affiliates pay to use Qilin’s malware to launch attacks and collect ransoms.”

“Qilin has claimed responsibility for 38 confirmed ransomware attacks in 2025 to date, plus 261 unconfirmed claims that haven’t been acknowledged by the targeted organizations.”

“Ransomware attacks on US hospitals, clinics, and other care providers can cripple critical systems and endanger the health, privacy, and security of patients. Hospitals must pay a ransom or face extended downtime, data loss, and putting patients and staff at increased risk of fraud. Hospitals and clinics might have to resort to pen and paper, cancel appointments, and divert patients elsewhere until systems are restored.”

Qilin has been very busy as they’ve claimed responsibility for a number of high profile attacks. This illustrates that you have to have your house in order to stop this gang and others like Qilin from making your life miserable.

Saviynt Appoints Palo Alto Networks, Citrix Exec Steve Blacklock as Channel Chief

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

Saviynt today announced the appointment of Steve Blacklock as its Senior Vice President of Global Partners and Channel Chief. As Saviynt continues to invest as a partner first company, Blacklock will lead all aspects of Saviynt’s global partner organization, deepening strategic alliances, driving GTM through the partner and Saviynt sales teams, and spearheading development of new strategic partnerships that will drive transformational growth. 

Blacklock brings more than 30 years of experience in global alliances and business development across the technology sector, with a proven track record of forging high-impact partnerships that drive transformational outcomes. He joins Saviynt from Palo Alto Networks, where he served as Vice President of North American Partner Sales. During his tenure, he led go-to-market initiatives across GSIs, MSSPs, cloud providers, and value-added resellers, helping expand the company’s footprint through a robust partner ecosystem.

Prior to Palo Alto Networks, Blacklock held several executive leadership roles, including Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Icertis, where he led partnerships with Microsoft and SAP; Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances at Citrix, where he was pivotal in the company’s shift to cloud services and subscription models; and various senior roles at Cisco, including managing the billion-dollar HP partnership and as a part of the executive team that launched the VCE joint venture with EMC and VMware. Blacklock holds a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and currently resides in Pleasanton, California.

16 billion passwords leaked – how much is recycled data? 

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

After researchers recently uncovered a (seemingly) unprecedented aggregation of roughly 16 billion username–password pairs. However, there’s been some debate around how much of this is recycled data versus new. Similar to the Rockyou2024 password list and ALIENTXTBASE data dump, Specops Software analysts found that this 16 billion passwords leak isn’t as concerning as initial headlines suggested. Having said that, this is still a noteworthy password list and organizations should remain wary of the risk of breached credentials.  

This analysis looks at how this list was discovered, provides an investigation of how many of these credentials are actually new, and offers best practices for how organizations should respond. 

The full report can be found at this link: https://specopssoft.com/blog/16-billion-passwords-leaked/

Abstract Security Launches LakeVilla: Scalable, Searchable, and Cost-Efficient Cold Storage for Security Telemetry

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

Abstract Security, the leader in streaming-first security data operations, today announced the release of LakeVilla, a cloud-native cold storage solution built for long-term security telemetry retention that delivers compliance-ready, highly accessible storage at a fraction of SIEM costs—without compromising on performance or accessibility.

Fully integrated into the Abstract Security Platform, LakeVilla enables organizations to retain and replay years of security data—instantly searchable and seamlessly usable across detection, investigation, and compliance workflows. LakeVilla provides: 

  • Instant Searchability Without Rehydration: Data is always query-ready—no rehydration, no delays, no hidden fees. 
  • Replay on Demand for Deeper Insights: Replay archived data through live workflows to uncover missed threats and refine detection. 
  • Cost Savings at Enterprise Scale: Reduce storage costs by sending only frequently accessed, high-touch data to analytics engines—while routing the rest to LakeVilla for affordable, always-available retention. 
  • Seamless Integration with Abstract Pipelines: Removes redundant ingestion steps and ensures seamless data flow from real-time detection to long-term storage. 
  • Cloud-Native Flexibility and Vendor-Neutral Design: Supports AWS, Azure, and GCP cloud object storage—giving organizations the flexibility to store data where they already operate with built-in flexibility to migrate without hassle and avoid vendor lock-in. 

Why have a Lake House When You Can Have a Lake Villa! 

While data lake architectures are often bloated, costly, and slow to access, Abstract Security’s LakeVilla is different: purpose-built for security, optimized for speed, and seamlessly integrated with the tools teams already use. It’s not just a storage location—it’s an operational asset. 

Availability 

LakeVilla is available now for all Abstract Security customers in both hosted and private cloud deployments. To learn more, check out the LakeVilla blog. 

Galaxy Book4 Edge: The Next Chapter in Galaxy Book Series 

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

The Galaxy Book4 Edge received some great spec updates in the latest version of the Galaxy Book Edge Series, and it sets a new performance benchmark for Windows laptops. Built on the Snapdragon X Elite series platform and optimized for AI workloads, it brings meaningful improvements in speed, battery efficiency, and intelligence over previous models. 

This isn’t just a spec refresh. It’s a major evolution in the Galaxy Book lineup, designed to take advantage of what’s next in mobile computing. 

Here are three key features of the Galaxy Book4 Edge: 

  • Effortless performance, when and where you need it: With up to 4.2GHz boost clock, 12 high-performance cores, and a dedicated NPU delivering 45 trillion operations per second, this platform enables responsive multitasking and fast on-device AI processing. That means faster performance without reliance on cloud computing and better power efficiency under heavy workloads. 
  • All-day battery and next-gen connectivity: Up to 27 hours of video playback, Wi-Fi 7 support, and a fanless thermal design ensure sustained performance in a compact, ultra-slim chassis. The result is silent, mobile productivity with fewer interruptions and greater thermal stability. 
  • High-resolution AMOLED touchscreen displays: The 14-inch and 16-inch models feature 3K Dynamic AMOLED 2X touchscreens with anti-reflective coating and Vision Booster. This combination delivers vivid visuals, sharp contrast, and adaptive brightness that adjusts to ambient light for improved usability and reduced eye strain. 
  • Designed for Security and Seamless Productivity: Like all Galaxy Book devices, the Book4 Edge is protected by Samsung Knox, a defense-grade security platform built into the hardware and software. Knox helps safeguard sensitive data from the moment the device powers on—giving peace of mind for professionals and everyday users alike. 

The Galaxy Book4 Edge retains the polished design and ecosystem compatibility that defines the Galaxy Book line, while accommodating increased AI integration. Beyond that, we have additional products designed to help maximize workflows and productivity within the Galaxy Book5 series. From the Galaxy Book5 360 for the versatility of a convertible laptop to the Galaxy Book5 Pro for advanced B2B needs, Samsung’s broader computing lineup is built for seamless integration within the Galaxy ecosystem. 

These devices are available now at Samsung.com/ca, with the GB4 Edge starting at 1,349.99 CAD. 

Ericsson named a leader in IDC MarketScape: European Enterprise Private 5G Solutions 2025 Vendor Assessment

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

Ericsson today announced its recognition as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: European Enterprise Private 5G Solutions 2025 Vendor Assessment.

The IDC MarketScape assessment evaluates enterprise private 5G solution providers, focusing on their capabilities and strategic initiatives for delivering robust and scalable connectivity solutions. We believe Ericsson’s recognition reflects its commitment to innovation and excellence in meeting the diverse needs of industries across Europe and globally.

The IDC MarketScape report states: “The creation of a dedicated enterprise unit [in Ericsson] reflects a major strategic shift. This unit focuses specifically on private network solutions, enterprise mobility, and vertical-specific use cases, demonstrating Ericsson’s ambition to compete not only as a network vendor, but as a solution provider for digital enterprise infrastructure.”

Ericsson’s strategic transformation and creation of its enterprise unit is supported and bolstered by its professional services and streamlined partner ecosystem. This approach enables scalable enterprise deployments and seamless integration with broader digital transformation initiatives, making Ericsson a trusted partner for industries such as manufacturing, mining, ports, airports, and energy.

Full sourcing – IDC MarketScape: European Enterprise Private 5G Solutions 2025 Vendor Assessment, #EUR253555324, 20 JUN 2025

For more information on Ericsson’s Enterprise Private 5G solutions, please visit https://www.ericsson.com/en/portfolio/enterprise-wireless-solutions.

CData Expands Partnership With SAP

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

 CData Software today announced an expansion of its partnership with SAP focused on SAP Business Data Cloud–a  fully managed SaaS solution that unifies and governs all SAP data and seamlessly connects with third-party data. The collaboration aims to help customers connect to the data they care about most, by providing seamless, real-time access to the external data sources that modern enterprises depend on–without requiring data replication or custom code. 

Enabling Immediate, Self-Service Data Access

CData’s embeddable connectors provide direct, enterprise-grade integration to critical third-party platforms. Through the partnership, customers can access data, whether stored in cloud services, on-prem databases, or productivity tools, through a consistent, SQL-based interface.

By embedding CData connectors into SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP can provide its customers with access to non-SAP data, and improve their time-to-insight across AI, analytics, and operational workloads.

Driving the Shift Toward Open, AI-Ready Data

CData’s connector infrastructure helps ensure that every integration point meets the speed, security, and scale demands of AI-driven environments.

The expanded partnership comes at a time of significant growth for CData’s Embedded business, which has seen increased demand from software providers looking to offer connectivity to a growing variety of data sources. This momentum is fueled by the rising need for AI-ready data and the pressure on software providers to deliver immediate, self-service access to the data sources their users prioritize.

CData’s market leadership was recently validated by its inclusion in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. This recognition reflects the differentiated business outcomes CData delivers to customers through its comprehensive connectivity solutions and integration capabilities.

This announcement follows CData’s strategic growth funding of approximately $350 million led by Warburg Pincus, with participation from Accel, announced in June 2024. The investment has allowed CData to accelerate its mission of simplifying data connectivity for enterprises, users, and applications through continued investments in operations, product development, and go-to-market strategy.

For more information about CData’s embedded connectivity solutions, visit www.cdata.com/embedded.

a16z-backed Scribenote launches free veterinary AI scribe, as adoption surges across practices

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

Veterinarians typically spend hours after appointments writing medical records, often working late into the evening to complete documentation. It’s a broken system that contributes to widespread burnout across the profession. Today, Scribenote – the company that pioneered the AI-powered scribe built specifically for veterinarians – is flipping the economics of veterinary software by launching a Free Plan, a move that could fundamentally alter how veterinary clinics across North America operate.

The announcement comes as Scribenote experiences significant growth following its $8.2M funding round from Andreessen Horowitz in September 2024. The platform turns veterinarians’ words into structured SOAP notes in seconds, eliminating hours of post-appointment documentation. This free tier launch represents the next phase in the company’s mission to make these benefits accessible to all veterinary practices, building on its strategic price reduction in January. 

The Free Tier includes everything a veterinary practice needs: unlimited AI-generated medical records using Scribenote’s default templates, full team collaboration capabilities through Teams Mode, and access to self-serve help documentation and AI-powered chat support. Premium features like custom Adaptive Templates, Client Summaries, Multilingual Mode, AI Writing Assistant, and human support from Scribenote’s Customer Delight team remain part of Scribenote Pro. New signups automatically receive a 2-week free trial of the Pro plan.

The timing is strategic. The veterinary industry faces a well-documented staffing crisis, with burnout and work-life balance cited as primary concerns. Traditional practice management systems, built decades ago and barely updated since, compound the problem by requiring extensive manual data entry. Meanwhile, a wave of AI solutions has emerged, but few offer the veterinary-specific features and accuracy that define purpose-built platforms.

By removing price as a barrier, Scribenote accelerates its path to becoming the standard for veterinary documentation. The move reflects broader changes in AI economics – as models become more efficient and affordable, companies can offer powerful capabilities that were previously cost-prohibitive.

Since its founding in 2019, Scribenote has grown from a solution built for Gallagher’s veterinarian sister to a platform that has tripled its user base in the past year alone – even as 44 competing AI scribes flooded the market. The company’s AI technology records conversations between veterinarians and clients, automatically generating accurate medical records in minutes – replacing hours of manual documentation. This proven scale has enabled Scribenote to recently complete the largest enterprise rollout of AI scribing software in veterinary medicine.

Looking ahead, Scribenote is slated to release a second product this fall to create even more value for veterinary clinics, the details of which are currently under wraps. In the meantime, the company sees the launch of its free tier today as a catalyst for industry-wide adoption of AI-assisted documentation – helping veterinarians spend less time typing and more time with their patients.

Veterinary professionals can sign up for free access immediately at scribenote.com.

SuperDial raises $15M to automate healthcare’s endless admin phone calls

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

As AI agents reshape work across industries, SuperDial is targeting one of healthcare’s most expensive and invisible burdens: administrative phone calls. Today, the company announced $15 million in new funding to scale its voice AI platform, which automates high-friction insurance calls that cost provider organizations and billing companies billions of dollars every year.

The debt and equity series A round was led by SignalFire, with participation from Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, and Scrub Capital. It includes $3 million in venture debt for SuperDial to invest in R&D and go-to-market initiatives. In total, the company has now raised over $20 million in funding. This also marks one of the first investments from SignalFire’s new $1 billion fund focused on applied AI.

SuperDial builds AI agents that handle outbound phone calls from providers and billing companies to insurers – navigating phone trees, waiting on hold, and conducting live conversations with payer reps. These AI agents support tasks like benefits verification, prior authorization, claims follow-up, and credentialing. When a call can’t be completed by an AI agent, SuperDial’s human call center team steps in, ensuring reliable outcomes while continually improving the AI.

The platform integrates with EHRs and other systems of record to automate documentation, including writing back data gathered from calls, such as claims status updates. Customers rely on SuperDial not just to cut costs, but to unlock capacity across their revenue operations teams. Customers have reported up to 3x cost savings per call and 4x productivity gains for their existing billing teams.

SuperDial was founded by Sam Schwager and Harrison Caruthers, who met at Stanford while studying computer science. After building a healthcare billing company that spent thousands of hours on repetitive calls to payers, they saw the opportunity to automate the problem. What started as an internal tool quickly grew into a standalone solution.

Since launching at the end of 2023, the company has quickly scaled to seven figures in revenue and tens of thousands of calls per week. Earlier this year, SuperDial acquired MajorBoost, a voice AI company specialized in navigating complex phone trees and insurer workflows. The acquisition deepened SuperDial’s technical team and further cemented its leadership in healthcare-specific call automation.

SuperDial’s growth comes as healthcare organizations seek to cut admin costs without expanding headcount. The $150B U.S. RCM market still relies on manual phone calls for basic tasks – calls that can take over an hour and pull staff away from higher-impact work.

SuperDial’s customers include RCM companies and large provider organizations – including DSOs and MSOs – that manage billing in-house. Their customers rely on SuperDial to improve financial performance, reduce burnout, and unlock their teams’ capacity to focus on higher-value work. At West Coast Dental, SuperDial now handles over 10,000 calls per month to check claim statuses, a process that previously left nearly 70,000 claims in backlog and would have required five new hires to process. With SuperDial, the team has significantly reduced AR days and gained trustworthy, up-to-date visibility into claims.

Looking ahead, SuperDial will deepen its EHR integrations, expand to new administrative workflows, and continue training its agents using real-world call data. Although healthcare never built the APIs to enable clean, system-to-system communication, SuperDial is building the next best thing: a network of AI agents that can navigate fragmented infrastructure on behalf of the organizations that rely on it. SuperDial believes the future of healthcare coordination will be agent-powered – where payers, providers, pharmacies, labs, and other healthcare organizations can seamlessly communicate with one another, AI-to-AI. And SuperDial will power that future.

Salesforce Announces Agentforce 3

Posted in Commentary with tags on June 24, 2025 by itnerd

Salesforce’s Agentforce 3 is a major upgrade to its digital labour platform that gives companies the visibility and control to scale AI agents without compromise.

Agentforce 3 | New Innovations:

  • Optimized observability with a New Agentforce Command Center that provides a complete observability solution for optimizing AI agents, enabling leaders to manage, track, and scale how AI agent activity enhances human productivity. 
  • Seamless agent interoperability with built-in support for open standards like Model Context Protocol (MCP), and through the expanded AgentExchange, customers can now access plug-and-play services from over 20 partners, including Box, PayPal and WRITER. 
  • Enhanced secure, enterprise-ready performance for 100+ new industry-specific AI actions and support for natively-hosted LLMs such as Anthropic. 

With a new Command Center for complete observability, built-in support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) for plug-and-play interoperability, and over 100 new prebuilt industry actions to speed time to value, Agentforce 3 helps companies scale what works, fix what doesn’t, and unlock the full potential of agentic AI — with clarity, control, and speed.

Why it Matters: AI agent adoption is surging. According to a soon-to-be-released Slack Workflow Index, AI agent usage is up 233% in six months, and over that same period, 8,000 customers have signed up to deploy Agentforce. But until now, agent platforms have lacked the tooling, governance, and observability needed to scale enterprise-wide. Agentforce 3 closes this gap — delivering the complete visibility, secure tool integration, and enterprise-grade controls organizations need to make agent velocity their competitive advantage.

At the same time, New Salesforce research ‘A Pulse on Agentic AI in Canada‘, shows Canadians are frustrated with their current customer service experience 

  • Top frustrations include unhelpful/non-existent self-service (59%) 
  • Too many transfers across departments/people (55%)
  • Spending too much time getting what they need (45%)

Canadians Are Hopeful AI agents Can Help | More than 1 in 3 Canadians are willing to interact with an AI agent if it reduces hold times and eliminates having to wait for a customer service representative – which signals that Canadians value quick fixes, convenience, and efficiency.