Amy Bennett

Will AI agents eat the SaaS market? Experts are split Time will tell if backend databases will be needed at all once agents end up doing most of the work.

"As hype about AI agents reaches new heights, an emerging theory suggests that the groundbreaking AI tools will kill the long-running SaaS business model. The claim isn’t particularly new, but it keeps resurfacing, with people like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella voicing this position."

His name is Mohammad Al-Motawaq. He is 18 months old. And he is starving in Gaza Hidaya Al-Motawaq's son is a year and a half old and weighs less than 10 pounds. Doctors warn of permanent damage to children's health due to chronic malnutrition from Israel's earlier blockade.

Hidaya Al-Motawaq's son is a year and a half old and weighs less than 10 pounds. Doctors warn of permanent damage to children's health due to chronic malnutrition from Israel's earlier blockade.

IT leaders scramble as Windows 10 deadline nears Migrate to Windows 11, pay for extended Windows 10 support, or forgo security updates? With less than three months to go, IT leaders are taking a multi-pronged approach.

Support for Windows 10 ends October 14. Still, “many organizations are balancing multiple initiatives and waiting for the right moment in their device lifecycle or broader IT strategy,” says Stefan Kinnestrand, VP Product Marketing at Microsoft, who oversees Windows commercial marketing.

IT buyers are investing in AI PCs — with no clue how to use them Companies looking to buy Windows 11 PCs designed for AI tools are doing so without really understanding what they can — and can't yet — do, analysts say.

Eyeing the upcoming end of support for Windows 10 in October, many IT buyers are snapping up Windows 11 AI PCs despite having no clear understanding of how to use them in their infrastructures. Story by @agamsh.bsky.social

Clorox sues Cognizant for $380M over alleged helpdesk failures in cyberattack Filed in a California court, the complaint accuses Cognizant of gross negligence, citing transcripts where helpdesk agents gave away passwords and reset MFA without any identity checks.

“It is shocking that a corporation the size of Clorox had such an inept internal cybersecurity system to mitigate this attack,” said a Cognizant spokesperson.

www.csoonline.com/article/4027...

As Windows 10 end-of-support looms, IT faces a painful choice Supporting Windows 10 PCs is about to get very expensive, but upgrading to Windows 11 poses significant hardware and software challenges for many organizations. What terror awaits when 1,000 applets I...

Enrolling 5,000 Windows 10 PCs in ESU for the full three years would cost a business more than $2.1 million. A large organization that wants to keep 30,000 PCs on extended Windows 10 support for three years would have to pay more than $12.8 million to do so. (Story by ‪@evanschuman.bsky.social‬)

Putting AI-assisted ‘vibe hacking’ to the test Valuable tools for experienced attackers and researchers, LLMs are not yet capable of creating exploits at a prompt, researchers found in a test of 50 AI models — some of which are getting better quic...

Forescout’s tests of over 50 LLMs found that these tools are not yet ready to turn run-of-the-mill cybercriminals into exploit developers. But some of them are getting closer quickly.

8 tough trade-offs every CISO must navigate Increasing responsibilities and greater need to align with business objectives have security leaders facing greater risks — and more frequent and challenging security strategy compromises.

While all executives face high-pressure choices, CISOs in particular contend with trade-offs that could have monumental consequences for their businesses and their careers. (Story by Mary K. Pratt)

Why LLMs demand a new approach to authorization Give a large language model broad access to data and it becomes the perfect insider threat, operating at machine speed and without human judgment.

If an AI agent misinterprets intent or gets manipulated by malicious input, it could access or reveal data it shouldn’t. Mitigating these risks requires rethinking how we enforce security and authorization in AI-driven applications. Read more in @mjasay.bsky.social's latest column.

Licensing lessons from VMware-Siemens spat Siemens got into some hot water after Broadcom acquired VMware and changed licensing terms. What can enterprises learn from this dispute?

Plenty of ink has been spilled over VMware licensing and support since its acquisition by Broadcom. The VMware-Siemens spat, though, is different and worrisome. Story by @mariakorolov.bsky.social

EU finalizes General-Purpose AI Code of Practice for enterprises The code of practice arrives just in time to help enterprises comply with the second wave of EU AI Act rules, which will enter force on August 2.

The Code of Practice was originally scheduled for publication in May, and some European enterprises had called for application of the EU AI Act as a whole to be delayed. Story by Peter Sayer for CIO.com

My piano teacher used to tell me, "If you can't play it right play it loud." Pretty sure that's what Google's doing here:

The trillion-dollar question: Who pays when the industry’s AI bill comes due? CIOs may have to pay for the current AI boom through rising prices and new products as AI vendors, hyperscalers, and software makers seek to recoup their AI investments.

AI market observers don’t all agree about the timeframe or the methods of how AI vendors will recoup their investments, but many warn CIOs that a reckoning is coming. Story by @grantgross.bsky.social

AMD discloses new CPU flaws that can enable data leaks via timing attacks Four newly revealed vulnerabilities in AMD processors, including EPYC and Ryzen chips, expose enterprise systems to side-channel attacks. CrowdStrike warns of critical risks despite AMD’s lower severi...

AMD has disclosed four new processor vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to steal sensitive data from enterprise systems through timing-based side-channel attacks. Story by Gyana Swain.

Exploit details released for Citrix Bleed 2 flaw affecting NetScaler Amid confusing reports about Citrix NetScaler exploits in the wild, researchers offer technical analyses and indicators of compromise for one of the vulnerabilities dubbed Citrix Bleed 2 that can lead...

Security researchers have released a technical analysis and PoC exploit code for a critical vulnerability fixed last month in Citrix NetScaler appliances that is suspected to have been exploited in the wild, though in a limited capacity. Story by @lconstantin.bsky.social

Warning to ServiceNow admins: Fix your access control lists now Unless corrected, the vulnerability allows anyone to get at sensitive data.

A vulnerability in the way ServiceNow manages user access control lists can easily allow a threat actor to steal sensitive data, warns security vendor Varonis. Admins are urged to review their custom and standard data configuration tables to beef up security.

US Treasury Department sanctions individuals and entities over illegal IT worker scheme Russians and North Koreans contributed to the scheme to provide illegal remote IT workers to US companies to fund the North Korean regime.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on two individuals and four companies involved in schemes to provide US companies with illegal remote IT workers whose income would, it said, generate revenue for the North Korea.

Lesson from huge Blue Shield California data breach: Read the manual Data on 4.7 million members was captured over almost four years from a misconfiguration that sent Google Analytics data to Google Ads.

www.csoonline.com/article/3970...

Apple plans to make all US iPhones in India by end of 2026 Shifting manufacturing of US-bound iPhones away from China may help Apple avoid steep tariffs. But the move to India hasn't happened overnight; it has been a long-term effort.

"Apple is on track to source all the iPhones it sells in the US from India by the end of next year as politically driven tensions drive a wedge between the US and China." Story by @jonnyevanssays.bsky.social

www.computerworld.com/article/3971...

IT consulting spending is ‘wasteful,’ says US Defense Secretary Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has axed contracts worth $5.1 billion with Accenture, Deloitte, and others, citing excessive IT consultancy spending.

In a new directive signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Defense Department has ordered the cancellation of several contracts with firms including Accenture, Deloitte, and Booz Allen Hamilton, citing them as “wasteful spending.”

www.computerworld.com/article/3960...

CEOs believe AI can develop better business plans than board members Some AI experts aren’t as confident as CEOs about the technology’s ability to provide strategic insights into their businesses, but others say it’s getting there.

94% ... that's how many of the CEOs surveyed for this report said AI can do it better. I wonder if that isn't more of a statement on the sorry state of business plans than it is about AI's capabilities.
www.cio.com/article/3954...

Trump fires NSA and Cybercom chief, jeopardizing cyber intel Lawmakers fear the firing of Gen. Timothy Haugh will lead to a loss of critical intelligence at a time when cyber threats continue to escalate.

"The firing of these top intel leaders took place at the instigation of Laura Loomer, a controversial right-wing influencer." Article by @metacurity.com for @csoonline.bsky.social

www.csoonline.com/article/3954...

Why a culture of fear has no place in IT:  “When a critical IT issue can disable an entire company, it’s an occupational hazard to avoid admitting mistakes.” — Jack Allen, ITequality as told to CIO’s Grant Gross

www.cio.com/article/3856...

Oracle quietly admits data breach, days after lawsuit accused it of cover-up A lawsuit filed Monday accused Oracle of failing to acknowledge a recent data breach — but the company has reportedly since informed some customers.

Oracle finally fesses up to suffering a significant data breach, quietly notifying select customers about the security incident just days after being hit with a class action lawsuit that accused the tech giant of attempting to conceal the breach from affected users

www.csoonline.com/article/3953...

Rewriting Social Security will be a train wreck The software industry has known for decades that rewriting a system from scratch is never the right solution. The bigger the system, the worse the mistake.

www.infoworld.com/article/3950...

Why women leave your IT organization — and how to help reverse that talent drain A wide range of contributing factors has women of every IT rank eyeing the exit. Here’s what is causing them to reconsider their roles, employment, and profession, and what IT leaders can do about it.

"Women remain underrepresented in technology roles and have, in fact, lost ground in recent decades." This article offers an open-eyed view of the forces at work and what organizations can do to retain women technologists.

www.cio.com/article/3846...

Has AWS lost its edge? The tech giant offers a plan to form a group focused on agentic AI but no actual technologies or systems. What does this say about the future of its cloud leadership?

"Recent shifts in strategy suggest that AWS may be faltering in its ability to pioneer meaningful innovations in enterprise technology," writes David Linthicum for @infoworld.bsky.social.

www.infoworld.com/article/3842...

The most important decision in tech is being made today, but you won’t be told about it. A single UK judge is making a decision that has global repercussions.

The most important decision in global tech is being made by a single UK judge in a small room, in near-total privacy with no transparency at all. The decision is part of what seems to be a plan to turn the UK into a surveillance society. It must be opposed.
www.computerworld.com/article/3845...

IDC: 80% of companies plan to buy AI PCs this year Because of the high costs and security risks around cloud AI deployments, more companies are planning to roll out AI on PCs this year, according to a new IDC study.

"The percentage of AI PCs in use is expected to grow from just 5% in 2023 to 94% by 2028" predicts research firm IDC.

www.computerworld.com/article/3845...

IBM laying foundation for mainframe as ultimate AI server Multi-modal AI support, faster chips and AI accelerators are among forthcoming mainframe upgrades that promise big changes.

"When the next generation of IBM mainframe, the z17, makes its anticipated summer debut, it will be outfitted with multiple technologies aimed at making the Big Iron mainframe the ultimate AI server."
@networkworld.bsky.social
www.networkworld.com/article/3845...