Nebraska is ‘taking cybersecurity serious,’ says state’s CISO Nebraska Chief Information Security Officer Bryce Bailey said he understands why confidence levels are down among state CISOs, but that he’s not backing down. This video interview was recorded at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers midyear conference in Philadelphia on April 27 and April 28, 2026.
Nebraska’s ‘whole of state approach’ to cybersecurity Nebraska Chief Information Security Officer Bryce Bailey said he wants to “hone in” on his state’s “whole of state” approach to cybersecurity. This video interview was recorded at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers midyear conference in Philadelphia on April 27 and April 28, 2026.
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Technology advisors are increasing their cybersecurity sales as vendors and customers embrace a broker model, but their opportunities may narrow as they court larger businesses. The lion’s share of TA security sales has been through managed services providers. The enterprise market, where firms prefer point solutions they can manage, remains a challenge. “When I run into somebody who says, 'We want to do it all; we're all inside,' that's a tough sell as an advisor,” Cloud Communications Group CISO and AI Practice Lead Mike Stute told Channel Dive. The TA channel has a limited set of unmanaged point solutions. Legacy cybersecurity vendors historically went through resellers rather than brokers. However, the TA vendor line card is loaded with end-to-end managed security service providers for customers who want to hand over control. TAs are left with three options: clamor for tech services distributors to sign security software providers, sign direct agreements with those providers, or wait for big logos to warm to co-managed models. A segmentation problem The self-management barrier is an enterprise problem, as managed and co-managed models dominate among small and even midmarket customers. A recent Cynet survey found that 71% of SMBs use MSPs for security, with co-managed the most common strategy. Team KC Telecom Founder Cynthia Ferrell said the firm almost exclusively recommends MSSPs to its midsize client base. Although clients in the 200- to 250-employee range often balk at MSSPs charging up to $50 per endpoint per month, they lack the staff and expertise to do it themselves. “At best, I have a network sysadmin and an IT manager,” Ferrell said. “Sometimes I just have one person doing all of that. I tell them, 'You absolutely do not have the time to manage this when you're wearing 27 hats. If you're going to pay for managed
40 out of 52 analysts rate CRWD stock as ‘buy,’ 11 say ‘hold’ and one ‘sell’ with an average 12-month price target of $184.32, about 12% lower from current levels. A sudden profit warning from International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and subsequent commentary from CEO Arvind Krishna highlighting rising cybersecurity priorities among customers triggered a massive rally in major cybersecurity firms. Customers Focusing On Cybersecurity IBM Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna attributed the financial miss primarily to the company’s infrastructure division, where sales fell 7%. Retail View On Cybersecurity Stocks Retail sentiment on CRWD, Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Zscaler (ZS), and Okta (OKTA) stock were between ‘extremely bullish’ and ‘bullish’ with ‘normal’ to ‘high’ retail chatter. CRWD stock has gained 76% year-to-date.
The ACC has a new multiyear deal with ReliaQuest, making the Tampa-based company the official cybersecurity sponsor of the conference. The multiyear deal was struck in conjunction with Disney Advertising and ESPN, and as part of the pact, both sides are committing to help raise awareness of cybersecurity and cybersecurity careers through ReliaQuest’s proven cyber labs program. The deal covers each of the ACC’s 28 sponsored sports and will begin in the fall. The ACC has now doubled its portfolio of corporate sponsors over the past five years. ReliaQuest has been involved in college football through a bowl game sponsorship in its home market since 2022 (the former Outback Bowl at Raymond James Stadium, which pits Big Ten and SEC teams). ReliaQuest founder and CEO Brian Murphy is a Florida State alum and member of the FSU BOT. The company also has a sponsorship deal with the PGA Tour.
White House Launches Gold Eagle Initiative for Unprecedented Cybersecurity Vulnerability Coordination President Trump’s bold vision to secure and accelerate American artificial intelligence (AI) innovation is being actioned through the creation of “GOLD EAGLE,” a clearinghouse that enables unprecedented cybersecurity vulnerability coordination. Open-source software partners and American critical infrastructure companies built a coordinated system to receive and patch cyber vulnerabilities at a speed and scale never seen before using the existing authorities and resources of the federal government. The White House, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Department of War (DOW) have worked closely with industry partners to enable faster exploit detection and develop a rapid and prioritized response to cyber vulnerabilities across our critical infrastructure sectors. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Treasury Department is working hand in hand with the private sector to safeguard our financial institutions, close vulnerabilities, and protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “Treasury, along with our partner agencies, will continue to harness frontier AI capabilities to stay ahead of our adversaries and defend the American people from emerging threats.” GOLD EAGLE, established in President Trump’s June 2, 2026 Executive Order “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security” (EO 14409), represents a new operational model for cyber defense. This new model will leverage frontier AI capabilities to continue advancing faster than adversaries, reduce duplicative scanning efforts, and deliver prioritized and actionable threat and remediation information to defenders across the Federal government and the private sector. “Under the leadership of President Trump, we are bringing a wartime footing to the cyber domain to relentlessly patch vulnerabilities,” said Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “GOLD EAGLE serves as the vanguard of America’s cyber defense. We
CYBERSECURITY BREAKING: Pentagon’s CMMC Pause Draws Praise, Criticism from Industry By Josh Luckenbaugh iStock illustration The Defense Department on July 13 suspended the Phase 2 requirements for its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program and initiated a review of the effort, drawing both praise and criticism from experts. Phase 2 of the program, which was scheduled to start Nov. 10, would have introduced in applicable Pentagon solicitations requirements for contractors handling controlled unclassified information to be certified by a CMMC third-party assessment organization, or C3PAO. Citing Small Business Administration data, the department in a release said CMMC compliance is forcing innovative companies out of the defense industrial base, which will delay the delivery of critical capabilities to U.S. warfighters. As a result, it is suspending the transition to Phase 2, as well as pending and future CMMC implementation milestones. Pete Sfoglia, co-founder and CEO of Pistos Information Protection, said the suspension of Phase 2 is an overdue admission from the department that after decades of indifference to how small and medium-sized companies safeguarded controlled unclassified information, the Pentagon through CMMC “demanded they become experts in a discipline that was never their core competency.” Full implementation of the security requirements outlined in National Institute of Standards and Technology Special Publication 800-171 “plus the cost of C3PAO assessments was cost-prohibitive on its face, and the predictable outcome was not a more secure industrial base but a smaller one,” Sfoglia said. “The right move now is not to delay the burden but to rethink who bears it." In a statement provided to National Defense, authorized C3PAO Redspin said while the department is exercising existing flexibility allowing it to suspend pending CMMC implementation milestones, it is not rescinding the program. “For organizations in the defense industrial base, this suspension means more time to prepare, not
AI is reshaping cybersecurity roles, with IT professionals spending more time validating outputs, managing risk, and overseeing AI decisions. Artificial intelligence is changing how cybersecurity teams work, with security professionals spending more time validating AI-generated recommendations and deciding when to trust AI outputs, according to new research from ISC2. The ISC2 survey of 856 cybersecurity professionals found that 65% spent more time deciding when to trust or act on AI-generated recommendations during the past year, while 63% reported spending more time reviewing or validating AI outputs. The study also found that AI-related mistakes remain common. Nearly nine in 10 respondents (89%) said they have experienced AI recommendations that led to incorrect outcomes, and 50% said human decision-makers are ultimately held accountable when those mistakes occur. “AI is not replacing cybersecurity professionals; it is changing what the profession requires of them,” ISC2 CEO Scott Beale said in a statement. “As AI takes on more repetitive tasks, cybersecurity roles are shifting toward higher-value work, from asking the right questions to validating findings, interpreting outputs, and applying human judgment.” The ISC2 survey also revealed that: - 48% said AI has reduced workplace stress. - 32% said it has increased stress. - 62% cited overreliance on AI recommendations as a top concern. - 61% cited undetected errors that could scale rapidly across systems as a top concern. Many cybersecurity professionals are expected to act on AI-generated outputs without fully understanding how those outputs were produced, ISC2 found. Nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) said they are often or very often expected to act on AI-generated outputs without fully understanding how those outputs were produced. Still, respondents emphasized the importance of governance and oversight. About 80% said governance frameworks, understanding when to trust AI outputs, and knowing when to override recommendations are critical for effective
We’re Raising Our Price Target on This Cybersecurity ETF Plus a quick word on ETFs, their strategies and purity levels. You've reached your free article limit You've read 0 of 1 free Pro articles. After lifting our Apple (AAPL) price target yesterday, we are making further progress revisiting a few other Pro Portfolio holdings, including the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR). Our underlying thesis for the ETF is that cyberattacks are on a growth vector that is being amplified by the rising adoption and expanding usage of AI by bad actors. We’ve shared numerous examples of that, and odds are that volume of signals isn’t going to slow down much, if at all. That growing cybersecurity pain point, as companies and other entities look to protect their assets, IP, and other crown jewels, is expected to drive cybersecurity spending to more than $520 billion by 2031. The math behind that equates to a 7.6% compound annual growth rate over the ensuing years. Backing that forecast from the Futurum Group is a survey of more than 900 enterprise cybersecurity buyers globally. The survey’s findings flagged cloud security, security operations and governance, risk and compliance, data security and application security as the fastest-growing segments inside that spending. Reviewing that list, we continue to favor the diversified exposure CIBR brings to the Portfolio, and we are raising our price target to $105 from $85. As we make this move, we are also adjusting our CIBR checkpoint to $75 from $70. As holdings in CIBR’s basket report their quarterly results, we’ll look to revisit those figures as needed. Before we move on, let’s take a moment to discuss CIBR’s holdings and share a thought or two on purity levels. For those unfamiliar with the term “purity levels,” we’re referring to the degree to
Cybersecurity researchers have flagged a new macOS information stealer called CrashStealer that's capable of harvesting sensitive data from compromised systems. Unlike other information stealers that are built on AppleScript droppers or Objective-C-based wrappers, CrashStealer is implemented in native C++, according to Jamf Threat Labs. "It validates the victim's login password locally before harvesting, collects broadly across browsers, cryptocurrency wallets, password managers, and the keychain, encrypts what it collects with AES-GCM before exfiltrating over libcurl, and persists by copying and re-signing itself," security researcher Thijs Xhaflaire said in a report shared with The Hacker News. CrashStealer is said to be distributed by means of a signed and Apple-notarized dropper that's distributed as a disk image file named "Werkbit.app." Because both the disk image and binary are notarized and carry a valid developer ID ("Emil Grigorov (WWB7JA7AQV)"), it passes Gatekeeper checks. The disk image itself originates from the domain "werkbit[.]io," which was registered in June 2026. In an interesting twist, the download is gated behind a meeting PIN, meaning the installer is served only to those site visitors who arrive with the right code rather than everyone. The discovery of additional domains and shared backend infrastructure tied to the same operation points to CrashStealer being part of a larger, multi-platform campaign. Once mounted, the disk image presents the user with an installation setup screen that instructs them to right-click the app and choose "Open" to get them to run it. Once launched, the "veltod" executable contacts a GitHub repository ("github.com/mgothiclove") to retrieve a file named "sys.cache." The file is then used to extract a curl command and pull a shell script, which acts as a downloader to fetch and stage the next payload ("CrashReporter.dmg") and saves it to the "/tmp" directory. The malware, upon execution, establishes persistence as a LaunchAgent, resists analysis,
Every major cybersecurity vendor now claims their product is “AI-powered.” The term has become so overused that it has lost almost all meaning. When everything from a firewall to a password manager is described as artificial intelligence, the word stops being informative and starts being noise. But behind the marketing, there is a real question worth answering: where does AI actually work in cybersecurity, and where is it still failing? Having worked in cybersecurity across regulated industries — aviation, port operations, healthcare, and manufacturing — I have seen both sides of this problem. I have seen AI-labelled tools that were nothing more than regex under a dashboard. I have also seen machine learning solve problems that no human team could handle at scale. And in my own work, I work with a credential exposure dataset of over 8.2 billion records — large enough that the question of what AI can and cannot do stopped being theoretical a long time ago. The difference comes down to one idea: AI is useful in cybersecurity when the problem is scale. It is dangerous when the problem is judgement. Everything below follows that line. Where AI Actually Works These are scale problems — problems where the volume of data exceeds what any human team can process manually, and where pattern recognition provides genuine, measurable value. 1. Dark Web Content Classification The dark web produces an enormous volume of unstructured content across multiple languages, formats, and platforms — forums, paste sites, Telegram channels, marketplaces, and onion services. Manually triaging this content is not scalable. NLP works well here because many threat actor communities use recurring language patterns, listing formats, and commercial vocabulary. Ransomware groups announce victims using consistent phrasing. Credential sellers describe their data in formulaic ways. Multilingual NLP models can classify posts by threat
Photo courtesy of: Felicia Pratt Election cybersecurity: what's new for 2026 Tuesday, August 18, 2026 11 a.m. – Noon PT USC Capital Campus, Room 202 and Online The USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy is pleased to host a forum titled "Election Cybersecurity: What's New for 2026" at the USC Capital Campus. Government and campaign officials will address new challenges created by AI-enabled cyber attacks - and how to defend against them. The event will be held in a hybrid format (in person and online) on Tuesday, August 18, at 2:00 p.m. ET / 11:00 a.m. PT. This program is open to all eligible individuals. USC Annenberg operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
Cybersecurity In-Depth: Feature articles on security strategy, latest trends, and people to know. 'Yellow Teams' Are Defining the Future of AI Security In some companies, engineers are building defense and attack tools to test the potential of artificial intelligence for cybersecurity — and its threat. A small number of engineering teams are developing the defenses that organizations will need against future advanced AI attacks. They're also building the frameworks attackers will utilize to carry out those attacks. In April, Anthropic invited more than 50 organizations to participate in its Project Glasswing initiative to preview Claude Mythos, which the company claimed at the time was the most advanced cybersecurity AI. OpenAI followed suit shortly after, inviting organizations to play with its own GPT 5.5 under the Daybreak program. Since then, red teams — penetration testers — have been using the AI models to exploit their own companies' systems, and rival blue teams tried to detect and defend against those exploits. In the middle of it all are engineers, building both mitigations against the models' greatest threats and frameworks for mobilizing their greatest powers. In modern cybersecurity parlance, these are "yellow" teams, a term first introduced at Black Hat 2017 to bring developers into the security testing process. They're out defining what cybersecurity will look like for years to come. "Yellow team is a build team," explains Sam Curry, chief information security officer (CISO) at Zscaler, a Glasswing partner. "They'll say: 'Hey, Red, what tools could you use to do better attacks?' As if they were the engineering department behind a major attacker. They'll also turn to Blue and go: 'What would you like on defense that isn't supplied to you by your vendor community?'" Step Into the Room With Yellow Teams Yellow teams don't often build for red teams. Yet that's
CISA Adds One Known Exploited Vulnerability to Catalog CISA has added one new vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, based on evidence of active exploitation. - CVE-2008-4128 Cisco IOS Cross-Site Request Forgery Vulnerability This type of vulnerability is a frequent attack vector for malicious cyber actors and poses significant risks to the federal enterprise. Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 26-04: Prioritizing Security Updates Based on Risk establishes vulnerability management requirements for Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies. BOD 26-04 reinforces the importance of the KEV Catalog and requires federal agencies to prioritize rapid remediation of high-risk vulnerabilities, specifically those identified by Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) listed in CISA’s KEV Catalog on publicly exposed assets that grant total control of the asset post-exploitation, while deferring action for lower-risk vulnerabilities. BOD 26-04 further establishes basic expectations for when agencies must check whether threat actors compromised the system before the patch was applied. While BOD 26-04 applies only to FCEB agencies, CISA encourages all organizations to adopt risk-based vulnerability management and prioritize remediation of KEV Catalog vulnerabilities. CISA will continue to add vulnerabilities to the catalog that meet the specified criteria. Aware of an exploited vulnerability not currently listed in the KEV Catalog? Submit it for potential addition through CISA’s KEV Nomination Form. Potential KEV additions must have a CVE ID, evidence of exploitation, and clear mitigation guidance. This product is provided subject to this Notification and this Privacy & Use policy.
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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is suspending part of its cybersecurity requirements for industry, specifically related to third party assessments, citing onerous burdens on especially smaller defense firms. “In support of Secretary of War Hegseth’s directive to aggressively scale warfighter readiness, I’m announcing the immediate suspension of the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, or CMMC, Phase II requirements, which were originally scheduled to go into effect November 10, 2026,” Kirsten Davies, chief information officer, told reporters at the Pentagon today, using the secondary name for the secretary of defense. “I want to be clear across the Department of War and our defense industrial base, investing in and dynamically maintaining robust cybersecurity remains a critical non-negotiable priority. This action does not eliminate the legal requirement for our industry partners to protect federal data.” Davies added later, “We are not reducing cybersecurity through this measure. We are reducing the red tape.” A July 10 memo released by the Pentagon today notes that the current iteration of CMMC imposes “significant and often prohibitive burdens on the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), particularly the small and non-traditional businesses that are the engine of American innovation. While cybersecurity is essential, administrative compliance cannot come at the cost of warfighting capability and industrial base growth.” The current administration has made it a top priority to loosen perceived bureaucratic restrictions and hurdles in order to speed up the delivery of systems and capabilities while seeking to simultaneously grow the industrial base. CMMC has been in the works since at least 2019, during the first Trump administration. At the time, there was worry that America’s enemies were able to infiltrate contractors and suppliers to steal information and aggregate it to gain a significant advantage. The program was meant to bolster the security of the entire industrial base so that the weakest
CINCINNATI — As cyberattacks continue to target critical infrastructure across the country, cybersecurity professionals from government, the military and private industry gathered at the University of Cincinnati this week to prepare for the next digital threat. Now in its fifth year, Ohio Cyber Guardian is a four-day cyber defense exercise hosted by the Ohio Cyber Range Institute at UC’s Digital Futures building. The exercise simulates cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, allowing participants to practice detecting threats, coordinating responses and strengthening cybersecurity readiness. “We are cyber insecure; that’s just a starting point,” said Richard Harknett, co-director of the Ohio Cyber Range Institute. The exercise comes as cybercrime continues to rise nationwide. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, Americans reported more than $20 billion in cybercrime losses last year. Rebekah Michael, executive staff director of the Ohio Cyber Range Institute, said cyber threats extend beyond computers and can affect the services Ohioans depend on every day. “Every Ohioan is vulnerable, but also businesses and our critical infrastructure like our electric grids and our wastewater treatment plants,” Michael said. Organizers said one of the exercise’s greatest strengths is the collaboration between military personnel, government agencies, private industry and cybersecurity professionals. “There will be no future war without cyber, and there will be no winning of wars without cyber readiness and superiority,” said Brig. Gen. Clarence K. Maynus, Ohio’s assistant adjutant general. Michael said cyber threats will continue to evolve, making ongoing training essential. “There’s no way to ensure that we are safe. There’s no 100% solution,” she said. “But with trainings like this and preparing our people for this, we are more secure.” Harknett said participants leave the exercise with more than technical experience. “Hopefully they’re going back trained up, skilled up, but also with a different orientation about what they can
When platforms like Canvas or the underlying cloud providers experience outages, the impact is immediate and personal: Exams are postponed, schedules are disrupted, grades are delayed and students question whether the institution is as reliable as its marketing suggests. That’s not a “technical hiccup.” It’s a hit to student experience, and ultimately to retention, recruitment and revenue. Cybersecurity leaders who continue to talk in terms of patches, vulnerabilities and scan counts are missing the moment. The institutions that are evolving are those where CISOs are now business enablers, not just technical guardians. The Modern Higher Ed CISO: Business Leader First, Technician Second Thirty years ago, a CISO or security practitioner was often buried inside IT, there to fulfill compliance requirements and keep systems “secure enough.” Reporting lines and expectations reflected that. Today’s reality is different. Modern CISOs must be able to answer questions like: - How does our security posture help us retain current students and attract new ones? - How does it support new research initiatives and the grants tied to them? - How does it protect our intellectual property and institutional reputation? That requires business acumen: understanding funding models, student lifecycle, research pipelines and competitive positioning. It also requires the courage to move away from purely technical metrics and speak in the language of outcomes. WATCH: IT leaders share their CIO playbook best practices when cybersecurity threats surge. Demonstrate Business Value Through Outcomes Fear‑based arguments such as breach headlines, critical vulnerabilities and compliance fines might get attention, but they rarely sustain investment. Boards and CIOs increasingly want to know, what do we get for this spend? That’s where outcome‑based framing comes in: - Instead of “we patched 3,000 systems,” say, “we ensured 100% uptime for the 55 systems that drive tuition revenue and student success.” - Instead of
Artificial intelligence has emerged as the quintessential innovation platform of the 21st century, transforming economies, governments, businesses, and the everyday lives of billions. Similar to electricity, the Internet, and cloud computing, AI is developing into essential infrastructure—yet at a significantly accelerated rate and with implications that affect every industry. Artificial intelligence continues to evolve at an accelerating pace, transitioning from narrow, data-driven tools to systems capable of reasoning, autonomous action, human augmentation, brain-inspired efficiency, and deeper human-machine integration. We are entering the Acceleration Era, where AI converges with quantum computing, enhanced networking, robotics, biotechnology, space technologies, edge computing, and next-generation computing architectures, integrating biological and chemical paradigms. These technologies are not evolving in isolation. They are enhancing each other to develop whole new capabilities while concurrently broadening our cyber risk landscape. Technological innovation and cybersecurity have become fundamentally intertwined. Each novel breakthrough presents remarkable opportunities, yet also unparalleled vulnerabilities. This trajectory—from machine learning foundations through generative and agentic phases to augmentation-focused decision-making, neuromorphic efficiency, and cyborg symbiosis—will redefine industries, security, and human potential. The potential of AI is vast. Artificial Intelligence Transforms Global Society; AI replicates human capabilities in learning, problem-solving, and natural language processing. It generates multi-trillion-dollar economic effects, transforms healthcare through pharmaceutical innovation and predictive analytics, improves customer experiences through robotic process automation and chatbots, and facilitates human enhancement via neuromorphic computing and brain-computer interfaces that could significantly augment cognitive abilities. However, the challenges are equally substantial. Artificial intelligence, along with 5G, the Internet of Things, and quantum computing, creates hyper-connected systems that improve efficiency but also lead to complex data flows, model opacity, bias vulnerabilities, and larger attack surfaces, which require immediate governance and security frameworks. Please see: This overview aims to examine the evolution of AI from four interrelated angles, weighing its revolutionary advantages against its