Lessons from the latest Anthropic security incident involving security researchers

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

There are recent reports about security researchers using AI agents to access Anthropic’s internal systems. And they have sparked an important conversation about third-party software risk and the security gaps that can emerge even in sophisticated technology environments. Like this one: https://cybersecuritynews.com/anthropic-internal-system-breach/#google_vignette

Darin Fredde, Sr. Director of Technical Marketing Engineering, Ridge Security

“There’s a certain irony in building some of the most advanced AI systems in the world and having researchers find a way in through ordinary enterprise software. It’s a reminder that even the smartest technology is only as secure as the architecture surrounding it.

“What makes this research interesting isn’t simply the reported speed of the AI agents. It’s their ability to identify potential attack paths across the trust relationships that connect enterprise systems. A vulnerability by itself tells us very little about the actual business risk. The important question is what an attacker can reach, what they can access, and how far they can go.

“Anthropic deserves credit for reporting that its monitoring detected some of the activity and for taking containment measures. But the real measure of remediation is independent verification that those attack paths are closed.

“We need to stop confusing a successful patch with a verified security outcome. Otherwise, we’re just closing the front door and hoping nobody discovered the spare key.”

Jacob Krell, Sr. Dir: Secure AI Solutions & Cybersecurity, Suzu Labs

“Cathedral’s agents got into Anthropic the same way attackers get into everyone else, through the vendors. By Anthropic’s account, days of direct attacks on its own software failed. The breach came when the agents pivoted to the commercial software-as-a-service (SaaS) tools running Anthropic’s sales, human resources, and IT operations, and Cathedral says its agents found exploitable weaknesses there in under 12 hours.

“Anthropic is about as well-defended as a company gets, and its crown jewels never moved, no model weights, no source code, no customer conversations with Claude. What got hit was the layer it bought instead of built, third-party software that tracks customers and manages staff, the kind of layer wired together with integration permissions nobody re-reviews. Security maturity is capped by the weakest vendor you integrate with, and no amount of in-house engineering changes that.”

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security (www.blackhillsinfosec.com)

https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-strand-a1b4b62

“This is one of those stories that highlights the dark side of bug bounty programs. A well-executed bug bounty program can work incredibly well because it establishes clear rules of engagement, scope, expectations, and communication. This one sounds like an absolute disaster. Now we’re getting into a he-said, she-said argument over the severity of the vulnerabilities and how they were handled.

“What is particularly frustrating is seeing vulnerability research used as a marketing opportunity. When that happens, it starts to look less like the goal was finding vulnerabilities and getting them fixed, and more like the goal was being as sensational as possible in the claims being made against Anthropic.

“But I don’t want the controversy around Cathedral to distract from the vulnerabilities themselves, because there is a much bigger security lesson here. This shows the risk created by heavily interconnected software-as-a-service applications that are tied into multiple critical parts of an organization.

“That becomes exceedingly difficult for any CISO. At some point, you are outsourcing a portion of your security risk. You can get letters of attestation. You can review compliance reports. You can ask vendors about their security practices. But ultimately, you are trusting those vendors to properly secure infrastructure that may have significant access to your organization.

“It’s a very interesting story, and I’m disappointed in how some of this was released and communicated. But there are important lessons here. One is about what happens when bug bounty programs are poorly run or the relationship between researchers and vendors breaks down. The other is about the enormous amount of risk organizations inherit from SaaS applications and the vendors they trust with access to critical parts of their infrastructure.”

While it is nice to see companies like Anthropic get a taste of their own medicine, it shows what an arms race that AI has become. And I am afraid that this is an arms race that we’ll lose.

Leave a comment »

Aokigahara InfoStealer Targets AI Developer Tools & Keys

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

Over the weekend, Check Point researchers published Infostealer riding the AI Train, an analysis of Aokigahara, a newly identified infostealer, and its connection to the evolving AI-driven threat landscape. It explores how cybercriminals are adapting malware operations, including targeting AI coding assistants and developer tools.

Waseem Ahmed, Head of Engineering at Secure.com

“Infostealers follow whatever credentials pay: browser passwords, session cookies, crypto wallets, cloud keys. Check Point’s analysis of Aokigahara shows AI tools joining that list as a category of their own.

“The stealer has a dedicated handler for AI sessions that goes after the credential and config files of Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Amazon Q, Kiro and others, right alongside the AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Git and SSH credentials it also takes.  That pairing is the point. On a developer’s machine, the AI assistant is now wired into the same code, cloud, and secrets as everything else. To be clear, this is theft from a machine that is already infected, not a flaw in any of those tools.

“Check Point names three routes that a successful attacker could take using stolen AI creds or session tokens. These are: using paid AI services on someone else’s account, reselling the accounts, and extortion too if the tokens open up conversation history or uploaded files. It is careful to say it has not confirmed how this group actually makes money, and I would not overstate the market yet.

“”But we already know what AI abuse on a victim’s bill looks like. Last week Wiz documented attackers who hijacked cloud billing accounts and ran up tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in AI usage within 24 to 48 hours.

The bigger risk is access. A coding assistant session can hold conversation history, uploaded files, and pasted code, and the stealer also takes the .env files that sit next to some of these tools, which often carry keys for other services.

“”Threat actors target AI coding assistants because developers are where the keys live. A developer workstation holds source code, cloud credentials, Git tokens, and now an AI assistant with access to all of it so it can do useful work.

Many of these tools store their tokens in files in the user’s home folder, and this stealer also reads the Windows credential store, so it can collect both in one pass. Unlike a password, a stolen session token usually bypasses multi-factor authentication entirely.

“Companies are more exposed to this kind of scenario than most realize, because AI tools spread faster than inventories. Developers install assistants and command-line tools themselves, often using personal accounts, and security teams often don’t know which ones are on which machines. The biggest blind spot is incident response.

“Most compromised-workstation playbooks reset the password, revoke browser sessions, and rotate cloud keys. Few include signing out of every AI tool, revoking AI provider API keys, or checking AI usage and billing for activity that didn’t come from the developer. The second blind spot is monitoring. Organizations rarely monitor spend and usage on AI provider accounts with the same care as cloud spend.

“Security teams must add AI tools to the containment checklist. First, list every AI assistant, coding tool, and command-line client on that machine, because each one is a separate session to kill. Sign out of all of them and revoke their tokens at the provider, not just on the device. Second, rotate every AI provider API key the developer could access, including keys in .env files and in any tool configuration the assistant uses. Third, check the provider’s usage logs and billing for activity from unfamiliar locations or sudden spikes. Fourth, review the conversation history and uploaded files, because that data may now be exposed.

“Then they have to do everything they’d normally do: reimage the machine, rotate cloud, Git, and SSH credentials, and treat anything those credentials could reach as at risk.”

Note: “

Denis Calderone, CTO, Suzu Labs

Stolen AI credentials can be used to be harvested for the compute behind someone else’s paid subscription, or resold as infra on-demand, kind of like a subscription service. The even scarier scenario is that the stolen accounts will come with private chat logs that could then be used to extort the rightful owner, or provide actionable intelligence about other assets leading to further attacks.

“A developer’s AI assistant is a keyring and that makes it a particularly attractive target. The same malware that lifts the Cursor or Copilot session is also grabbing Git credentials, SSH private keys, and AWS config files off that workstation, so one infected machine can expose the codebase, the repos, and the cloud in a single run.

“”Too many organizations are susceptible to this kind of attack. As a penetration tester, the developer workstation has always been my favorite target. Developers typically run with local admin, and the test infrastructure they stand up is usually the least secured real estate in the entire environment.

If an organization suspects an infostealer has compromised a developer’s workstation, they should treat it like any infostealer compromise. That means they isolate and rebuild the workstation, but expand the rotation list: SSH keys, Git credentials, cloud credentials, and Windows Credential Manager entries, not just the AI tokens. And then they also have to audit what was actually discussed with the AI tools, because those conversation histories are now part of their exposed data. The AI assistant transaction logs just became very important evidence when a break occurs.”

This is yet another info stealer to be aware of. And seeing that AI is the new hotness, this should be the top of everyone’s list to protect themselves against. Until the next one shows up.

Leave a comment »

GMO Internet tells customers to disconnect their computers over ransomware attack concerns

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

Japanese internet provider GMO Internet warned customers to disconnect their computers and back up their data after hackers threatened to launch a ransomware attack and publish stolen customer information on October 27, according to official company advisories: https://internet.gmo/en/news/article/255/ and https://internet.gmo/en/news/article/256/.

The warning follows a cyberattack on its Onamae.com Desktop Cloud service that exposed customer information and enabled unauthorized financial transactions.

GMO confirmed that attackers exploited vulnerabilities in its remote desktop service and accessed customers’ trading accounts. The company received a ransom demand of approximately $50 million and refused to pay. It has pledged to reimburse verified losses from unauthorized transactions and provide affected customers with compensation.

In a subsequent update, GMO confirmed that attackers published information purportedly belonging to the company and its customers. The company was still verifying the material and said it had not confirmed a ransomware attack as of 1:55 p.m. Japan time on October 27. Investigators continue examining customer devices for malware.

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security:

“The GMO attack looks like one of the worst-case scenarios for a company like GMO. Right now, though, all of us have very little technical information to actually go on. GMO has been good about notifying customers and telling people to shut things down, but the rest of the security community has basically been holding its breath waiting to find out what the initial attack vector actually was.

“Was this a vulnerability in GMO’s infrastructure? Was it credential harvesting that allowed the attackers to gain access? Was it something else entirely? We honestly do not know yet.

“But when you reach the point where you’re telling customers to back up their data and then shut their computers down, that is absolutely horrific. It becomes even more concerning when you consider how many people are using this service for financial trading applications. The potential impact goes far beyond simply compromising a server.

“In that regard, I give GMO definite credit for taking responsibility and telling customers, under no uncertain terms, to shut these systems down. At the same time, there is a huge responsibility to their customers and the broader security community in Japan to release the indicators of compromise associated with this attack as quickly as possible.

“There is also concern about whether this could be connected to the AI-assisted Artex activity that has been reported in Japan. We do not have enough evidence right now to say that it is. But if that connection is established, then it is time to start pulling fire alarms everywhere.

“This is one more incident making October absolutely miserable for information security professionals around the world. There simply aren’t enough technical details available yet to draw firm conclusions. We need to watch this very closely, get the indicators of compromise out to defenders, figure out exactly how the attackers initially got in, and see where the investigation takes us.”

ㅤ

Phillip Wylie, Chief Security Evangelist, Suzu Labs:

“What stands out about the GMO Internet incident is that attackers reportedly went beyond stealing customer information and gained access to trading accounts, enabling unauthorized financial transactions. This demonstrates how a vulnerability in a remote access service can have consequences far beyond the compromised system.

“Attackers don’t necessarily need to deploy ransomware to cause significant damage. If they can steal sensitive information, compromise accounts, and threaten to publicly release data, they already have multiple ways to pressure an organization.

“The reported $50 million ransom demand also highlights how extortion tactics continue to evolve. Organizations need to prepare for more than traditional ransomware attacks involving encrypted files. Data theft, financial fraud, and threats of public disclosure can be just as disruptive.

“From an offensive security perspective, this is why testing systems from an attacker’s point of view is so important. Organizations need to understand not only whether a vulnerability exists, but what an attacker could accomplish by exploiting it. Remote access services are particularly attractive targets because they can provide a pathway to sensitive systems and customer environments.

“Organizations should prioritize securing remote access infrastructure, implementing multifactor authentication, monitoring for suspicious account activity, and regularly conducting penetration tests that evaluate potential attack paths.

“The biggest takeaway is that preventing the initial compromise is important, but limiting what attackers can do once they gain access is equally critical.

“One important distinction: GMO’s October 27 update had not confirmed ransomware deployment as of 1:55 p.m. Japan time. The reported data publication and unauthorized transactions are serious developments, but they should not be presented as confirmation that ransomware was executed.”

I guess that “Black October” is the gift that keeps on giving. Which is very sad.

Leave a comment »

Cyberattack disrupts New Mexico’s only Level 1 trauma center and results in ambulance diversions

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

A cyberattack on the University of New Mexico Health System forced ambulance diversions, canceled appointments and suspended outpatient surgeries on October 26, according to an official statement published on UNM Health’s website.

The disruption affected New Mexico’s only Level I trauma center and the broader UNM Health Sciences Center.

Officials activated an Emergency Operations Center, and UNM temporarily limited new patient admissions from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. while IT security teams worked to contain the incident.

UNM began restoring systems Monday afternoon, with clinics scheduled to resume appointments and procedures October 27. Health Sciences Center classes remain canceled Tuesday as the investigation continues.

Seemant Sehgal, Founder & CEO, BreachLock:

“Diverting ambulances from the only Level I trauma center in the state is a serious consequence of cyber incident response being built around data breach scenarios rather than patient care disruption. The attack moved from a technical disruption to a patient care decision in the span of a shift, and the decision to continue admitting trauma cases while systems were still being contained had to be made with incomplete information while the attack was still active.

“With how quickly attackers move today, proactive pentesting is critical for healthcare systems. It tells clinical and IT teams which systems go down together, what the patient care impact looks like for each failure, and which diversion decisions need to be made at which thresholds. Having that information upfront is what lets a hospital protect its systems and its patients at the same time, rather than making both tradeoffs under live attack conditions.”

ㅤ

Steven Swift, Managing Director, Suzu Labs:

“The response to the breach appears to have been quickly contained and responded to, despite what appears to have been a major impact. They were prevented from admitting new patients for 2 hours. This is an oddly short time for such a critical service to be limited. Typically, if systems were adversely impacted to the extent that critical services were unavailable, it would take longer than 2 hours to restore functionality. Due to the short nature of this window, it appears likely that this service was taken down as a precaution.

“Its best practice in major security breach events to perform what’s called containment, which is the process of cutting off access to networks or systems. This is done to ensure that attackers are no longer able to access systems, and to allow recovery teams a window to perform emergency recovery services, without being actively interfered with by those same attackers.

“Often, especially early on when the blast radius of an incident is unclear, more systems than are strictly necessary may be put under containment. This is a practical trade off. The impact of containing some extra systems is relatively minor, compared to the harm that can be done if those systems remain unprotected and are further impacted by ongoing hostile activity.

“Major breach events for large organizations often take days to weeks to recover from. The timeline we’re being provided for this incident appears to be on the days rather than weeks timescale, suggesting that impact from the attackers was less than it could have been. Although full details haven’t been provided, and we’re left to read between the lines.

“HIPAA requires breach notifications to be published should the breach meet its requirements. This gives a 60 day deadline, if the response team determines that this incident falls within scope. We’ll know more if and when a formal breach notice is filed, or if the deadline passes and we don’t see one.”

ㅤ

Darin Fredde, Sr. Director of Technical Marketing Engineering, Ridge Security:

“A hospital cybersecurity incident puts two clocks in motion. The security team is working to contain the threat while clinicians are trying to deliver care. Unfortunately, those clocks don’t stop for each other.

“What concerns me most about incidents like this is that the consequences extend well beyond compromised computers or potentially exposed records. The real damage isn’t always the data leaving the network. Sometimes, it’s the patient who can’t get through the door. When a cybersecurity incident forces ambulance diversions and interrupts medical procedures, we’re no longer talking about an isolated IT problem. We’re talking about the availability of critical healthcare services.

“Healthcare organizations operate within a complex architecture of interconnected clinical systems, identities, networks, and third-party services. An attacker doesn’t necessarily have to compromise a medical device to disrupt patient care. Interrupting the systems that clinicians depend on may be enough.

“We need to move beyond periodic security assessments and validate how these environments withstand realistic attacks. That means testing potential attack paths, limiting the ability of an intrusion to spread, and rehearsing how essential medical services continue when technology becomes unavailable.

“Restoring systems is an important milestone, but it doesn’t necessarily establish that the underlying threat has been eliminated. We must find the exposure, fix the weakness, and independently verify the result.

“Ultimately, the measure of cybersecurity resilience in healthcare isn’t just how quickly systems come back online. It’s whether patients can continue receiving safe care while those systems are unavailable.”

ㅤ

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security:

“Anytime I read stories like this, I try to think back to the early days of computer security, when it felt like there was at least some level of honor among thieves. Attackers wouldn’t necessarily go after critical infrastructure, hospitals, and healthcare organizations at the rate we’re seeing today.

“Of course, I also know that’s probably a pipe dream. It’s looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. But I genuinely don’t think we saw attacks against these organizations at the rate we’re seeing them now.

“A lot of financially motivated attackers have figured out that healthcare organizations are incredibly attractive targets because the pressure to restore operations can be enormous. We can have philosophical conversations all day long about whether organizations should negotiate with ransomware groups, whether they should pay, and whether paying simply encourages the entire ransomware ecosystem. But that conversation changes dramatically when lives are potentially on the line. Unfortunately, attackers understand that.

“The other side of this is that medical institutions are dealing with the same problems every other organization is dealing with. They have budget constraints. They have legacy software. They have operational requirements that make taking systems offline incredibly difficult. They have old infrastructure that can’t simply be replaced overnight. At the same time, they’re expected to keep everything patched, secure, operational, and up to date.

“Attackers understand both sides of that equation. They know these organizations are difficult to secure, and they know the consequences of downtime can be severe. That combination makes healthcare an incredibly attractive target for financially motivated attackers.”

ㅤ

Damon Small, Board of Directors, Xcape:

“The cyberattack on the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center on October 26 disrupted ambulance services, canceled clinical appointments, and suspended outpatient surgeries. The incident affected New Mexico’s only Level I trauma center, raising serious concerns about the impact of cyberattacks on critical healthcare services.

“The ransomware group BYOD has claimed responsibility and alleges that it accessed employee and patient data for extortion purposes. These claims have not been independently verified, but they raise additional concerns about the confidentiality of sensitive healthcare information.

“The disruption to emergency services and delays in surgical care are particularly alarming. When a hospital cannot reliably accept patients or deliver time-sensitive treatment because of a cybersecurity incident, the consequences extend far beyond lost productivity or financial damage. Lives may be at stake.

“As we have written before, electronic health records (EHRs) and the supporting business systems required to maintain hospital operations are no longer ancillary IT assets. They are essential components of clinical infrastructure and should be protected with the same rigor applied to biomedical devices and other life-critical systems.

“Healthcare cybersecurity must be evaluated in terms of patient safety, not simply data protection or system availability. When an emergency department must divert patients because its systems cannot be trusted or safely operated, cybersecurity has become a direct clinical risk.

“The UNM incident is another reminder that protecting healthcare IT is fundamental to protecting patients. Healthcare organizations must treat cybersecurity as an integral part of patient safety and operational resilience—not merely an IT responsibility.”

Healthcare is easy for threat actors. That needs to change or else you will get situations like this. Because it’s all too easy for threat actors right now.

Leave a comment »

Hammerspace Names John McKillop to Scale Americas Sales Amid Accelerating AI Infrastructure Demand

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

Hammerspace today announced the appointment of John McKillop as Vice President of Americas Sales. McKillop joins Hammerspace amid accelerating demand for its AI data infrastructure, bringing more than 25 years of experience building high-performance sales organizations, expanding strategic partnerships and driving revenue growth.

As organizations move from AI experimentation to production, Hammerspace is gaining momentum by enabling customers to access and orchestrate data across existing infrastructure, eliminate data silos and maximize GPU investments. McKillop will build on this momentum by expanding enterprise adoption, strengthening the partner ecosystem and scaling sales execution across the Americas.

McKillop brings extensive enterprise technology leadership experience, including senior executive roles at Quantum Corporation as Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Senior Vice President of Americas Sales. He led a global organization of more than 300 professionals, overseeing sales strategy, operations and strategic go-to-market initiatives. Most recently, he served as Chief Revenue Officer at Openprise, helping enterprises optimize go-to-market operations through data orchestration, automation and AI.

Leave a comment »

The CISA’s new strategy promises to evict hackers before they strike, with nearly 968 fewer staff to do it

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

The CISA released CISA 2030: Defend, Harden, Prevail on Oct 26, committing the agency to move from passive defense to an “aggressive, anticipatory” stance built on three pillars: leading national cyber defense, prioritizing infrastructure security and mobilizing national resilience. The Defend pillar calls for modernizing operational technology, improving asset visibility and anomaly detection, and strengthening supply chain integrity.

Jason Brown, Director of Customer Advisory Counter Fraud Lead, iCOUNTER

“CISA 2030 is an honest strategy. It accepts that intrusions will happen and commits the agency to an anticipatory stance. Detect adversaries early, evict them decisively, and remove footholds before they are weaponized. That is exactly the right goal.

The gap is the third party. The strategy treats supply chain as a question of technology and software integrity, but adversaries are not waiting for a flawed product. They are compromising the service providers, platforms, and partners that organizations already trust, and using that access to reach the real target. Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found third parties involved in 48% of breaches, up from 30% a year earlier.

CISA is also asking for an intelligence to operations pipeline, and that is the right instruction. Intelligence that only informs is not enough. It has to drive action, with remediation attached, at machine speed. As CISA narrows its focus and pushes more action to the local level, owners and operators will carry more of that mission themselves. The organizations that extend it across their third party ecosystem will be the ones that stop the compromise before the incident reaches them.”

Everyone should take time to read it and doing all things possible to make sure that are not pwned by threat actors. Ever. Even with their staffing challenges.

UPDATE: More commentary has come in:

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security:

“I like almost everything CISA says in this release. But as always, the devil is in the details. Couple that with the immense budget cuts CISA has had to deal with, and achieving this mission becomes exceedingly difficult.

“We’re talking about thousands of municipalities and critical infrastructure organizations that need protection under this umbrella. Every single one needs money. Every single one needs resources. And every single one needs help upgrading aging infrastructure.

“That takes more than a press release.ㅤ

“I like the direction and the renewed focus on critical infrastructure. But I think everyone should pause, take a deep breath, and wait to see when the money actually starts flowing and how it gets allocated.”

ㅤ

Ryan McCurdy, Vice President of Marketing, Liquibase:

“CISA’s new strategy reinforces an important reality: protecting critical infrastructure requires securing not just the software organizations deploy but the changes that software makes to critical systems.

“Databases underpin essential services across financial institutions, healthcare, energy, and government. Yet database changes often lack the same automated security checks, policy enforcement, and visibility applied to application code.

“As AI accelerates software development, that gap becomes increasingly consequential. Organizations need to validate database changes before deployment, enforce consistent policies, detect configuration drift, and maintain a clear record of what changed, when, and by whom.

“CISA is right to prioritize software security and operational resilience. Extending those principles to the database layer is an important step toward protecting the integrity and availability of the systems Americans depend on.”

Leave a comment »

Apple Responds To “Crackgate”…. Too Bad There’s A Second Video Out There

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

Apple has finally responded to the iPhone Duo controversy known as “Crackgate”. Which I wrote about here and here. Via 9to5Mac:

“The response to iPhone Duo from early users has been incredibly positive, and we are seeing exciting things from developers who are rapidly updating their apps to take advantage of its unique form factor. We are aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units. If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement.”

Pretty short statement. But honestly, at least they said something. Now it is impossible to say how many units have this issue. Or how it compares to say Samsung in this category. But because of the volumes that Apple tends to sell in terms of phones, if even 1% of units have in issue, it’s a “gate”.

Having said that, YouTuber JerryRigEverything has put out a second video where he clearly lays the blame for this issue on Apple’s doorstep. I won’t spoil things for you but you can watch the video here:

Is “Crackgate” overblown? Sound off in the comments.

Leave a comment »

Finance AI Hyphenate raises $45M as customer + revenue growth rallies in 1 year

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

The first wave of finance AI helped teams work faster. The next is taking responsibility for the work itself. Hyphenate, the autonomous finance platform for the office of the CFO, today announced a $45 million Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from B Capital and existing investors including Foundation Capital, BoldCap and Gaia Ventures.

Inside Hyphenate customers, agents are already reconciling cash, processing sales orders, running invoicing, maintaining subledgers and moving the close forward, with finance teams stepping in only where judgment changes the outcome. The round, which brings total funding to $54 million, comes less than a month after Maximor rebranded to Hyphenate, as customers expand its use across the office of the CFO. The company will use the capital to take its agents deeper across the finance function and into strategic finance.

12 months from seed to 86x

Hyphenate raised a $9 million seed one year ago to take repetitive work off finance teams. Since then, the company has passed multi-million-dollar ARR, its agents have taken on work across hundreds of entities, thousands of bank accounts and millions of transactions every day, and customers report 90% less repetitive finance work and 75% fewer audit exceptions. The more telling number is what customers do next: 40% expand within their first year, several by two to three times, and the average customer runs six modules.Companies are handing the system larger parts of finance once it has proved itself in one workflow.

What that looks like in production

The expansion is now visible in production, at companies where finance errors carry real cost.

Mini Melts USA, the consumer goods company, runs Hyphenate agents on top of its SAP environment for orders, invoicing and refunds. Within three months of going live, the company was getting back 16,640 hours of finance work a year.

HiBid, one of the largest online auction platforms in North America, has run more than $2.5 billion in GMV through full order-to-cash automation on Hyphenate. Invoicing, collections and cash application across that volume now run as a single continuous process, and the company has cut its month-end close from three weeks to one day.

Groupon, the Nasdaq-listed marketplace, is replacing legacy and home-grown systems with Hyphenate across treasury, order-to-cash and more than a dozen subledger processes. “As a public company, we run finance at a scale where every number has to stand up to scrutiny: millions of transactions, multiple currencies and markets, and auditors who need the evidence behind all of it. We’re replacing legacy and home-grown tools with Hyphenate because it’s built for that bar, and we see it becoming the AI foundation for our entire finance organization,” said Rana Kashyap, CFO of Groupon.

How Hyphenate works

Hyphenate sits on top of the ERP, banks and other systems a company already runs and connects them into a single shared finance context. The business keeps its systems of record and gains a layer that can act across all of it.

On that layer, agents work across five areas of finance: order-to-cash, treasury, GL accounting, procure-to-pay, and reporting and insights. In practice that covers revenue recognition, invoicing, collections, cash reconciliation, accruals, subledgers, AP, close and board reporting.

What sets the system apart is that it’s self learning. Instead of relying on forward-deployed engineers to build bespoke agents for each customer, Hyphenate trains on a company’s historical spreadsheets, emails and system logs, then replays past months to pick up the edge cases traditional software never handled: the tribal knowledge that has kept finance manual. From there, it gets better the longer it runs. An exception resolved during one close becomes precedent for the next. A policy decision made once is applied every time the same situation appears. Every action carries its evidence with it, so the output is audit-ready by default. Month by month, the share of routine work handled autonomously rises, and the finance leader’s involvement narrows to the decisions that require judgment.

The trust threshold is moving

Finance has been one of the hardest functions for AI to enter autonomously. Research commissioned by the company earlier this year found that 96% of CFOs saw freeing teams for strategic work as AI’s biggest benefit, while only 14% completely trusted AI to produce accurate accounting data independently. Ninety-seven percent said human oversight was critical.

Hyphenate’s growth suggests a path through that tension. Autonomy does not require giving an AI system unrestricted control. It requires giving it responsibility within clear boundaries, preserving evidence behind every action and involving a human at the moments where judgment changes the outcome.

What’s next

The Series A gives Hyphenate the capital to scale even faster as it pushes its agents deeper into every corner of the finance function. The end state is a company whose finance operations run themselves, continuously and with evidence attached to every action, while the team spends its time on the decisions that actually move the business. And because Hyphenate executes the work itself, it is building something no reporting tool can: a live, verified picture of how money really moves through a business, which the company sees becoming the foundation for forecasting and for every capital decision a CFO makes.

Leave a comment »

Bitdefender Launches GravityZone Exposure

Posted in Commentary with tags on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

Bitdefender today announced GravityZone Exposure Management, an advanced solution that gives organizations a comprehensive view of threat risk exposure across their internal and external attack surfaces, reveals the most impactful weaknesses, and remediates them. It consolidates findings across the entire environment into a single view, reducing complexity for lean security teams as AI significantly speeds attack cycles.

For many organizations, the challenge is not simply finding vulnerabilities but knowing which ones matter and having the resources to address them without disrupting everyday business operations.

In a global survey of 1,200 cybersecurity practitioners, the top barriers to reducing the attack surface were high overhead in maintaining hardening rules and exceptions (38%), fear of operational disruption (35.4%), and resource constraints (34.6%). Consolidation addresses that burden, and Gartner® predicts, “By 2028, at least half of the exposure management market will consist of unified exposure management platforms (UEMPs).”¹

GravityZone Exposure Management addresses those barriers as an add-on to Bitdefender GravityZone, a unified security, risk management, and compliance platform. The platform delivers advanced endpoint protection, including endpoint detection and response (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), cloud-native security, and GravityZone PHASR (Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction), a first-to-market dynamic attack surface reduction innovation. GravityZone also provides deep security context for detections and a direct path to Bitdefender Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services.

GravityZone Exposure Management offers a simple path to discover, prioritize, and mitigate threat exposure. Once enabled, it begins identifying and ranking risk automatically, giving security teams a clear starting point and guided recommendations for remediation and continuous attack surface hardening.

Key Benefits:

  • Increase Threat Visibility and Close Attack Vectors — Proactively discover unpatched operating system and third-party vulnerabilities, insecure settings, and risky user behavior on endpoints. External Attack Surface Management (EASM) monitors internet-facing assets for shadow IT, misconfigured services, and exposed subdomains. Security teams receive risk rankings, prioritization guidance, and posture improvement tracked over time.
  • Trace Attack Paths to Critical Assets — Map vulnerabilities and exposures to possible routes an attacker would follow to compromise sensitive data, privileged accounts, financial, and other core business systems. Link identities to see the potential impact of a breached account, then act on the highest-risk steps first.
  • Apply Dynamic Hardening to Manage Excessive Privileges — Baseline and monitor user behavior to autonomously restrict legitimate tools that living-off-the-land (LOTL) attacks abuse, such as PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line (WMIC). Block these attacks at the source without maintaining static hardening rules.

Cybercriminal use of AI has increased both the speed and volume of attacks, flooding security teams with more alerts than they can properly investigate. GravityZone applies a preemptive approach to critical attack surfaces, including business AI adoption, to close gaps and block threats before they reach detection and response or other defenses.

Availability
Bitdefender GravityZone Exposure Management is available now for new and existing customers on Windows, with support for additional operating systems planned. It comes as an add-on to GravityZone Business Security Enterprise (and higher) or as a standalone offer that runs alongside existing endpoint security, with no separate tool, agent, or console to staff. For more information, visit the website.

¹Gartner, Technology Disruption Curve: Preemptive Strategy and Adaptive Resilience Will Disrupt Exposure Management, Esha Bhatia, 22 April 2026. GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.

Leave a comment »

When security cameras become surveillance tools

Posted in Commentary with tags , on October 27, 2026 by itnerd

When the cameras you install to protect your organization become a way for someone else to watch you, the security implications go well beyond video footage.

Recent reports that hackers accessed Dahua surveillance cameras and recorders in Ukraine, including changing settings and creating unauthorized accounts, raise bigger questions about IoT security, exposed devices and the risks of turning everyday connected technology into an intelligence-gathering tool.

I have four cybersecurity experts offering perspective on the story for your consideration, including why connected devices are so often overlooked, how compromised cameras can expose an organization’s people and security operations, how attackers can exploit the connections between physical and cyber infrastructure, and how camera networks can become powerful intelligence assets when their data is aggregated.

Darin Fredde, Sr. Director of Technical Marketing Engineering, Ridge Security (www.ridgesecurity.ai)

“I’ve seen the broader risk firsthand during several authorized, full-scope adversarial emulation engagements. While the techniques differed from those reported in Ukraine, the principle is the same. Compromising surveillance infrastructure can give attackers visibility into the very systems and personnel responsible for protecting an organization. I call that watching the watchers.


What concerns me is that these systems rarely operate in isolation. Video surveillance, physical access controls, building automation, and alarm systems may be interconnected. For an advanced adversary coordinating cyber and physical operations, that visibility can reveal security procedures, personnel movements, and potential gaps in response. The camera is no longer just watching the door; it may be helping someone figure out when to walk through it.


Manufacturers must take greater responsibility for secure-by-default configurations, strong authentication, firmware maintenance, and independent adversarial testing before and after products reach the market. Organizations should isolate these systems, eliminate unnecessary cloud access, and validate their defenses against realistic attack paths. Installing a security device shouldn’t require taking its security claims on faith.”

John Strand, Owner, Black Hills Information Security (www.blackhillsinfosec.com)

“Watch any spy movie and you’ll see the importance of cameras. They can reveal physical blind spots, capture high-resolution video of someone’s fingers as they type a password, or show sensitive information on a screen.

“What’s interesting about this particular story is how many problems are stacked together. Predictable serial numbers. Easy cloud access. Outdated firmware. It’s amazing to me how bad the entire security ecosystem around some of these cameras is.

“But this isn’t unusual. We see the same thing across connected IoT devices that fall outside traditional endpoint management. Patching is poor, firmware gets forgotten, and there’s often absolutely no security monitoring. These devices can see what people type and what’s on their screens, yet nobody is watching the devices themselves.”

Phillip Wylie, Chief Security Evangelist, Suzu Labs (www.suzulabs.com)

“Security cameras are supposed to help protect organizations, but when they’re compromised, they can become surveillance tools for attackers. Instead of protecting your environment, they’re potentially giving someone else visibility into your operations, personnel, and physical security.

“One of the biggest challenges with IoT devices is that they’re often installed and forgotten. Organizations may not realize these devices are running outdated firmware, using weak credentials, or are accessible from the internet. Attackers look for these weaknesses because they can provide an easy entry point into an organization’s environment.

“Manufacturers need to prioritize security by design, including secure default configurations, strong authentication, and reliable firmware updates. Organizations also need to take responsibility for securing these devices by changing default credentials, limiting internet exposure, segmenting networks, and regularly checking for firmware updates.

“Ultimately, a security camera is another computer connected to your network, and it needs to be treated with the same level of security attention as any other endpoint.”

Donald McFarlane, Board Member, Xcape, Inc (www.xcapeinc.com)

“A camera is a sensor.  A network of cameras (or radios, vehicles, routers or other connected devices) is an intelligence collection system.

“We have been seeing nation states turn privately deployed technology into intelligence assets for a long time. Russian intelligence has been publicly linked to compromising cameras to monitor NATO logistics and to identify Ukrainian personnel. U.S. agencies have assessed that Chinese state actors have penetrated and persisted in American communications infrastructure for years, maintaining access that could support disruption in a future conflict.

“An individual camera gives you an image. Aggregated sensor data gives you pattern of life: where people go, who they meet, which facilities matter, how goods move, and how critical systems operate.

“Hostile intelligence services don’t care what our acceptable-use policies or privacy statutes say. If we let them get the data, they’ll use it for their purposes.

“It isn’t enough to regulate what Flock, a police department, or another legitimate operator may do with aggregated data. We must ask whether Russia, China or somebody else can obtain that same data and build their own intelligence picture.

“When you deploy a nationwide sensor network capable of reconstructing movements and relationships, you have built an intelligence platform whether you intended to or not.

“The security requirement has to follow the intelligence value of the aggregate, not the apparent sensitivity of the individual sensor.

“Policymakers and operators must ask themselves: what collection or effects capabilities have we created, who else wants them, and how well are we protecting them?”

Cameras are things that you need to trust. And if you cannot trust them, the only option is to toss them ASAP.

Leave a comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »