U.S. federal cybersecurity agency CISA said it did not have a prepared response plan for how it should handle a cybersecurity incident in May, after an investigative reporter notified the agency that a contractor had publicly exposed sensitive keys and credentials for accessing U.S. government systems. CISA, the Homeland Security unit tasked with defending federal networks and helping to safeguard critical infrastructure, revealed Friday in a postmortem report that its staff “had to spend time building [a playbook] during the early stages of the incident.” The agency said it is important to prepare playbooks for “all anticipated needs” to ensure that organizations are ready to respond in the event of a security incident rather than scrambling to improvise one in real time. The agency did not say how long the missing playbook delayed CISA’s response, and a spokesperson did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. Independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported in May that a security researcher with cyber firm GitGuardian alerted him to reams of exposed passwords stored in a publicly accessible GitHub repository, which an employee of a CISA contractor had uploaded. According to Krebs, the researcher tried to alert the contractor but didn’t hear back. Only after Krebs contacted CISA did the agency take the repository offline and revoke and replace all of the exposed credentials to prevent any potential future abuse. CISA said that no customer or mission data was exposed in the incident and thanked the researcher and reporter for their help. The agency said that its channels for allowing security researchers to notify CISA of potential incidents “were not well defined,” and that it has made changes to make it easier and faster for researchers to contact the agency. CISA has been without a permanent director since the start of President Donald
Jul 11, 2026 · via techcrunch.com
Security is never finished. That conviction is where the Secure Future Initiative (SFI) started two years ago and continues to guide us today. AI is reshaping cybersecurity. Cyberattackers can discover vulnerabilities, chain attack paths, and scale exploitation faster than manual approaches allow. Defenders can use the same advances to identify risk, strengthen protections, and accelerate response. As the threat landscape evolves, security must evolve with it. This latest SFI progress report shows how Microsoft is adapting to that reality: strengthening security foundations for an AI-accelerated cyberthreat landscape, applying AI to improve security outcomes at scale, and preparing for future challenges such as scalable quantum computing. This report organizes our progress into three outcome-driven themes—secure foundations, proactive defense, and future-ready security—and shares lessons learned, practical guidance, and deeper insights across the culture, governance, principles, and engineering pillars that underpin security at Microsoft. Secure foundations The most consequential security failures rarely come from a single missing control. They come from environments where identity gaps, unmanaged assets, and inconsistent configurations sit side by side, creating composite attack paths that determined threat actors can chain together. SFI addresses this systemically, strengthening security across our environment. The results show the progress: - Phishing-resistant multifactor authentication now protects 99.97% of user/device pairs at Microsoft. - More than 732,000 resources have had public access revoked, with network isolation scaling across 1 million resources. - 1.4 million unused apps were decommissioned and cross-boundary credential isolation reached 98.7%. - Engineering defaults now prevent 83% of pipelines from accessing unapproved package endpoints. These controls form reinforcing layers: identity feeds access governance, access governance feeds segmentation, segmentation contains blast radius, and engineering defaults reduce what enters production in the first place. One of the lessons we have learned is that foundations are durable only when they’re continuously validated, not periodically audited.
Jul 11, 2026 · via microsoft.com
Press play to start listening A former ransomware negotiator who supplied BlackCat ransomware with confidential information from companies seeking help has been sentenced to 70 months in federal prison. Angelo Martino, 41, of Land O’Lakes, Florida, received the sentence on July 9 for conspiring with operators of the ALPHV, also known as the BlackCat ransomware group. US prosecutors said he used his position at a cyber incident response company to help ransomware operators pressure victims into paying higher demands. Court documents show that Martino began working with BlackCat members in April 2023 while employed as a ransomware negotiator. His job gave him access to private discussions about how affected companies planned to respond, including their negotiating positions and payment strategies. Prosecutors said Martino passed that information to the BlackCat group in exchange for payment. The information allowed the ransomware operators to assess how much victims might pay and adjust their demands during negotiations. According to the DOJ’s press release, the scheme impacted five ransomware victims whose cases Martino was supposed to help manage. His access placed him inside confidential negotiations while he was also assisting the criminals demanding payment from those clients. Martino later worked with former cybersecurity professionals Kevin Martin of Texas and Ryan Goldberg of Georgia to deploy BlackCat ransomware against other organisations in the United States between April and November 2023. Martin joined Martino’s workplace after the conspiracy had begun, while Goldberg worked for a separate incident response company. Prosecutors said the three men operated as BlackCat affiliates and carried out ransomware attacks using the group’s malware and extortion platform. One victim paid approximately $1.2 million in Bitcoin following a successful attack. Martino, Martin, and Goldberg divided their share of the payment into three parts and used several methods to launder the proceeds. Hackread.com previously reported that
Jul 11, 2026 · via hackread.com
🚀 CloudSEK becomes first Indian origin cybersecurity company to receive investment from US state fund Read more Cybersecurity in retail is the practice of protecting payment systems, customer data, and the online and in-store channels that retailers depend on from cyberattacks. Few sectors concentrate as much cashable data, from payment cards to customer accounts, across as many systems as retail does. The stakes are rising. Even as global breach costs fell in 2025, retail was among the sectors where they climbed, reaching $3.54 million per breach, according to IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report. The threat has shifted too, from quiet card theft toward ransomware that shuts down trading entirely, as the 2025 attacks on Marks & Spencer and other major retailers showed. That’s why it’s essential to know why retailers are targeted, where the omnichannel attack surface is exposed, the threats and breaches that define the risk, the standards that govern retail data, and how retailers can defend. Retailers are targeted because they sit on exactly what criminals want: payment-card data and mass customer records, tied to money that moves every second. Verizon found that 100 percent of retail breaches in 2025 were financially motivated, a clarity of motive few sectors match. High transaction volumes turn each compromised system into a steady source of cards and credentials. Stolen cards and logins move quickly through dark web markets, where buyers turn them into fraud within hours. The retail attack surface keeps expanding as commerce moves online. Stores, e-commerce sites, mobile apps, loyalty programs, and hundreds of third-party scripts each add exposure, and seasonal peaks like Black Friday concentrate both sales and attacks. Because retailers cannot afford downtime during peak buying periods, they face heavy pressure to pay ransoms quickly. The same urgency makes peak periods the favorite window
Jul 11, 2026 · via cloudsek.com
Researchers at firmware security firm Binarly have found six new flaws in U-Boot, the small program that starts up hardware as varied as home routers, smart cameras, and the management chips inside data-center servers. Four of the bugs can crash a device. The other two could let an attacker who slips a malicious image in front of the bootloader run their own code, before the device has confirmed that the software is genuine. That last part is the point. A bootloader runs before the operating system, so a flaw here can undermine everything that loads after it. All six bugs are reached while U-Boot is still reading an untrusted image, before it has checked the signature. What Binarly found U-Boot can bundle a kernel, device tree, ramdisk, and other boot components into one package, a FIT (Flattened Image Tree), and it checks that package's digital signature before handing over control. Binarly went looking for weak spots in that check and found six. Most of the vulnerable code has been in U-Boot since v2013.07, Binarly says, across more than 50 stable releases, and it also lives in the many vendor firmwares built on top of U-Boot. The bugs are tracked as Binarly advisories BRLY-2026-037 through BRLY-2026-042. No CVE identifiers have been assigned yet. They fall into two groups: two that could run code, and four that only crash. The two are BRLY-2026-037 and BRLY-2026-038, and both trace to one unchecked value. U-Boot calls fdt_get_name, a lookup in the device-tree parsing library it borrows, and on a malformed image, that lookup returns a null pointer and a negative length. U-Boot uses both without checking either. One bug follows the null pointer into a memory copy that, on devices where address zero is mapped, becomes a stack buffer overflow. The other feeds the
Jul 11, 2026 · via thehackernews.com
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has once again reinforced a critical message for the federal contracting community: Cybersecurity compliance is no longer simply a contractual obligation. It is increasingly becoming a False Claims Act enforcement priority that can expose government contractors to significant financial liability. In a recently announced settlement, a defense contractor agreed to pay more than $500,000 to resolve allegations that it knowingly failed to comply with cybersecurity requirements incorporated into contracts with the Department of the Navy while continuing to submit claims for payment. The case serves as yet another reminder that federal agencies and enforcement authorities are actively scrutinizing contractor compliance with cybersecurity obligations, particularly those tied to safeguarding sensitive government information. This latest enforcement action underscores a growing reality for companies operating in the defense industrial base. Cybersecurity failures can now create not only operational and contractual risk, but also substantial exposure under the False Claims Act. The Government’s Cybersecurity Enforcement Focus Continues to Intensify According to the DOJ, the contractor allegedly failed to fully implement required security controls under NIST Special Publication 800-171, the cybersecurity framework that governs how contractors must protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) across nonfederal systems. The alleged compliance failures occurred over a period spanning nearly four years, during which the contractor continued performing under Navy contracts and submitted invoices for payment despite purportedly failing to implement required cybersecurity safeguards. The contractor’s alleged deficiencies were identified during an assessment conducted by the Defense Contract Management Agency, which reportedly issued the contractor an assessment score of negative 170 under the Department of Defense’s cybersecurity scoring methodology. For context, scoring under the assessment framework ranges from negative 203 to positive 110, making a score this low particularly significant from an enforcement perspective. The government alleged that unimplemented security controls created material vulnerabilities
Jul 11, 2026 · via natlawreview.com
BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo is leading two National Science Foundation (NSF) awards — together totaling $950,000 — to prepare the next generation of the U.S. workforce in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing. Led by Wenyao Xu, PhD, the Carl V. Granger Endowed Chair Professor in UB’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, the three-year awards build on UB’s strengths in AI and security and unite partners including the University of Georgia (UGA), placing UB at the center of a growing national training enterprise. Hands-on cybersecurity and AI research for undergraduates The first award, a $450,000 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site grant approved by NSF in May, will deliver intensive summer research training in cybersecurity and AI to 30 undergraduate students — 10 per year over three years — recruited from across the country. People are also reading… Xu serves as principal investigator, with Jun Xia, PhD, professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, as co-principal investigator. Hosted under the theme “Frontier Technologies in Authentication and Biometrics,” the program applies AI to real-world security challenges, with student projects spanning micro-expression recognition, 3D finger-vein imaging, electrocardiogram-based continuous authentication, and cancelable biometric systems built from brainwave signals. The grant marks the second renewal of UB’s REU site — a testament to sustained NSF confidence and to the university’s historic strengths in AI and biometrics. The program emphasizes broad participation, reaching first-generation college students, students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and those at institutions with limited research infrastructure. Securing agentic AI for advanced manufacturing The second award, a $500,000 NSF CyberTraining grant approved by NSF in October 2025, launches a new program on “Secure Agentic AI for Advanced Manufacturing,” jointly
Jul 10, 2026 · via buffalonews.com
Building engagement across local governments was a recurring theme during a whole-of-state panel discussion at last month's ISAC Annual Summit.* As the concept has evolved over the past decade, state cybersecurity leaders said they have learned that engaging local governments early, working through trusted partners and respecting local autonomy are essential to successful statewide cybersecurity programs. Moderator Karen Sorady said one definition of whole-of-state cybersecurity is a unified effort to coordinate collaboration and address shared cyber risks across state and local government, education, and sometimes industry and nonprofit partners. Sorady is the vice president of strategy and plans for the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), which hosted the summit. “We don’t have an official definition, but we’ve been living it for years,” Tennessee Deputy CISO Aimé Nsengiyumva said. “We’ve been trying to figure out how we can work closely with local government organizations, how to support them, how to help them, but also how to work together.” Nsengiyumva also said his state includes local leaders in developing cybersecurity initiatives through its cybersecurity advisory council and other committees, where officials help shape programs and evaluation criteria. State leaders also speak at conferences hosted by organizations such as the Tennessee Municipal League. This type of association can be key for finding trusted messengers and connectors. In New York, Meghan Cook is director of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services' Cyber Incident Response Team, and she has researched technology and cybersecurity for many years. During her tenure with the University at Albany, she said developing a cybersecurity primer with various professional public-sector organizations gave additional credibility to recommendations that had been made elsewhere. The Cybersecurity Primer for Local Government Leaders, published in 2022 by the University at Albany's Center for Technology in Government, was created in partnership with the
Jul 10, 2026 · via govtech.com
US-based cybersecurity firm Dmarcian Inc. reaffirmed its win blocking a Dutch competitor from allegedly avoiding US law again to infringe intellectual property.
Dmarcian Europe BV, dIncâs Netherlands-based counterpart didnât convince the appellate panel to overturn an injunction or dismiss the district court case, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson said in an opinion filed Friday in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
In 2021, dInc. sued dBV for trade secrets theft and trademark and copyright infringement in US federal court. The company first failed to escape the lawsuit in 2023 after arguing that the court should to defer to ...
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Jul 10, 2026 · via news.bloomberglaw.com
Most of us understand that companies track our activities around the web. They’d love to track our activities in the real world too, if we let them. But what we don’t expect is our operating systems to track us, and for the companies that make those operating systems to provide that information to law enforcement (or anyone else, for that matter). Which is why this week’s news that your Windows PC has a unique “Global Device ID” that Microsoft can use for, well, whatever it wants, took many people by surprise. The reveal came as part of a story about Microsoft helping law enforcement find and arrest a 19-year-old hacker who was part of the Scattered Spider hacking group, which has been responsible for several high-profile attacks. Putting that aside, learning how closely Microsoft can keep tabs on your Windows PC is a bit unnerving, especially since there’s no way to opt out of the tracking. Make no mistake, the unique device ID part isn’t the unusual thing. Your PC has many unique identifiers at the software and hardware levels that, if obtained, could link you to it. What’s unusual is that Microsoft was able to obtain fairly detailed information about what the teenage hacker was doing on his PC, such as the websites he visited, and provided it to law enforcement when they asked for it. The fact that Microsoft could connect a user's device ID to their activity, and that any ID can be associated with third-party actions and their timings, even led one security researcher to claim that Windows itself is surveillance software. Add this to the news that Windows’ market share has been dropping for the first time, and it’s not a great look for the company overall. In other worrisome news, if you own a
Jul 10, 2026 · via uk.pcmag.com
Cybersecurity and Water System Risk: What City Leaders Should Know By Bill Kloster Turning on the tap feels simple; however, today’s water systems are anything but. Once mostly mechanical, they now rely on connected software, sensors, and control networks. That shift improves efficiency and visibility, but it also opens the door to cyber risk. Cybersecurity is no longer just a background IT concern. It directly impacts reliability, public health, and community trust. For utility leaders, recognizing and addressing these vulnerabilities is essential to keeping water systems safe, resilient, and dependable. Cybersecurity in water systems: What it actually means Modern water infrastructure relies on computer-based technology, often called Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Operational Technology (OT) systems. These platforms direct how water is treated, monitored, and distributed. In simple terms, they support day-today operations by managing treatment processes, chemical balancing, pump controls, and distribution. Without this coordination, infrastructure could not function as intended. Cybersecurity goes beyond traditional IT environments like office networks or email. It also includes protecting the operational technology that controls physical water processes. As connectivity increases, understanding where risks exist is important for protecting operations and public safety. Why cybersecurity has become a water sector issue Water systems are not targeted because they are easy to access, but because they are essential. Disruptions create immediate, visible impacts, making these systems attractive targets for cyber threats. As digital connectivity expands across treatment, distribution, and monitoring systems, operations become more efficient and visible, but also more exposed. Cyber activity is increasingly targeting metropolitan areas of all sizes, where large-scale systems and data are valuable targets. In October 2024, American Water, which serves more than 14 million people across 14 states and 18 military installations, experienced a cyberattack that forced billing pauses, disrupted customer service, and required system isolation.
Jul 10, 2026 · via lmc.org
Edisto Beach says it lost undisclosed amount of money in cyber fraud scheme
EDISTO BEACH, S.C. (WCSC) — The town of Edisto Beach says it was the victim of a cybersecurity fraud scheme in January that resulted in the loss of an undisclosed amount of money.
The town said the incident occurred Jan. 22 and that it has since recovered nearly 89 percent of the funds lost.
Following the incident, the town brought in a cybersecurity specialist to investigate its computer systems. The specialist determined the breach was an isolated incident and that no customer or resident information was compromised.
Several local and state law enforcement agencies investigated the case before it was ultimately handed over to federal investigators.
Federal officials said the criminals responsible are likely operating outside the United States and that similar fraud schemes have been reported across the country.
Copyright 2026 WCSC. All rights reserved.
Jul 10, 2026 · via live5news.com
Dive Brief: - Internal IT teams and outsourced IT providers share cybersecurity priorities, but the latter outpacing its investments according to a Sapio Research survey commissioned by Cynet. - The survey of 800 managed service providers and 800 in-house IT teams of SMBs across nine countries found that both groups ranked identity security, email and phishing protection, cloud and SaaS security as their top three cybersecurity capabilities. However, 89% of MSPs planned further investments in cybersecurity tools this year, compared to 78% of SMBs. - MSPs are ahead on AI adoption, with 64% having embedded AI into their remediation and response operations, compared to 48% of in-house teams. MSPs are also using an average of eight cybersecurity tools, compared to five for SMBs. Dive Insight: Outsourced IT teams and internal IT teams share priorities but are investing at different rates. That reflects how an MSP is structured differently from a small business's internal IT. Matt Rose, chief experience officer at Florida-based MSP Tech Rage IT, said both groups attend the same conferences and hear the same messages about cybersecurity. However, they vary widely in their scope. “We are dealing with many companies, not one,” Rose told Channel Dive. “We build diverse teams that have to help us get through these problems.” MSPs’ wide aperture across IT environments has exposed them to more security tools, and more recently, AI tools. That’s one of the reasons 64% of MSPs have baked AI into remediation and response operations versus 48% of internal IT teams. “I think it proves why MSPs can bring value in a co-managed situation,” said Rose. Many of the internal teams are actively working with an MSP for cybersecurity; 27% used an MSP for security, 44% operated in a co-managed model and 29% managed security on their own. Compliance and
Jul 10, 2026 · via channeldive.com
Florida man Angelo Martino has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for conspiring with hackers to deploy ransomware during his job as a ransomware negotiator for a U.S. cybersecurity company. The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed the sentence on Thursday, noting that the government seized more than $10 million worth of cryptocurrency and assets. Martino allegedly bought these assets, which include a food truck and a luxury fishing boat, with money stolen in the hacks. Martino is the third person to be jailed for the scheme, following the earlier incarceration of cybersecurity professionals Kevin Martin and Ryan Goldberg. The trio, prosecutors say, worked together to deploy the BlackCat ransomware against companies in the United States throughout 2023. In one successful attack, the cyber professionals moonlighting as criminals extorted a company for about $1.2 million, which they then split three ways after laundering the funds. The investigation highlights a rare case of security professionals working for malicious hackers while on the job. Governments have long advised victims of hacking and extortion not to pay any ransom and prevent cybercriminals from profiting, although some companies do so anyway in attempts to prevent their customers’ private data from being leaked. Extortion attacks have helped create an entire insurance sub-sector in the U.S. for responding to ransomware and extortion attacks. Some companies in this space employ negotiators to try to bring down the cost of ransoms. BlackCat (also known as ALPHV) is a ransomware-as-a-service operation that allows independent hackers, known as affiliates, to rent access to the gang’s file-encrypting malware in exchange for a cut of the profits from cyberattacks. The group’s ransomware was famously used to steal highly sensitive medical and billing data of more than 192 million people in America during a hack at U.S. health technology giant Change
Jul 10, 2026 · via techcrunch.com
The Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center is partnering with tech companies to bolster rural healthcare security. The Cyber Resiliency Center (CRC) is a nonprofit initiative by the Georgia Cyber Center, affiliated with Augusta University, geared toward strengthening cybersecurity across various sectors throughout the state, such as local governments, school districts and rural hospitals. Cyber resilience involves a system’s ability to deal with, prevent and recover from potential problems, like cyber attacks. In February, the Georgia Department of Community Health (DCH) announced that it qualified for more than $218 million in federal Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) funds. This gave rise to the Georgia Rural Enhancement and Transformation of Health (GREAT) Program to finance projects throughout the state to improve rural healthcare. Wednesday, the CRC announced that it would be meshing its rural healthcare cybersecurity and resilience initiatives with the goals of the DCH’s Rural Health Transformation program (RHT). The CRC will be collaborating with CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity tech company based in Austin, and health data risk management organization HITRUST, also based in Texas, to establish strong cybersecurity for rural healthcare providers. This includes securing telehealth systems, electronic health records, and protecting patients’ and hospitals’ data. This burgeoning digital infrastructure may also lead to integrating cybersecurity training into both clinical and administrative roles, the CRC says. “Cybersecurity is no longer an IT issue. It’s a patient safety and access-to-care issue,” said CRC director Dr. John McLain. “By aligning with [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’] Rural Health Transformation goals, we are helping Georgia build resilient, future-ready rural healthcare systems that can innovate, collaborate, and thrive.” The CRC also touted the posssiblity that the modernized system to secure rural healthcare data could establish a scalable model other states can use. Skyler Andrews is a reporter covering general reporting with The Augusta
Jul 10, 2026 · via theaugustapress.com
As a cybersecurity student, completing an internship is more than a graduation requirement—it's an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge in a professional environment, develop hands-on technical skills, and build a professional network.
This Internship Lab is designed to prepare cybersecurity students for every stage of the internship process. Join us for interactive, hands-on session where you'll receive personalized guidance and practical strategies to strengthen the internship search and stand out to employers.
During these workshops, students will have the opportunity to:
✔ Have questions answered about the internship process
✔ Strengthen professional communication skills
✔ Receive feedback on internship search approach
✔ Connect with staff who can help navigate next steps
Internship Lab Details
-
When: July 15
-
Time: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
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Where: Virtual - register here to receive Zoom Link: https://forms.gle/fNvqspht3UG5DsMD7
Monarch Internship and Co-Op
Jul 10, 2026 · via odu.edu
Cybersecurity In-Depth: Feature articles on security strategy, latest trends, and people to know. As Global Conflicts Go Digital, Businesses Need Wartime Gameplans The fate of a Ukrainian tax software company shows how modern cyberwarfare can claim casualties far beyond the battlefield, and how businesses across the ocean still need to protect themselves. Intellect Services could hardly be less interesting. A midsized, family-owned business in Ukraine that sold tax software. Its owners really can't be faulted for not anticipating that they might one day be a huge pawn in a regional cyberwar. To Russian foreign military intelligence, Intellect Services was totally interesting. The company's platform, M.E.Doc, was ubiquitous across Ukrainian businesses. Compromising M.E.Doc they could, in effect, impact most of the country's economy. And like other midsize businesses, the company wasn't likely to have any kind of exceptional cybersecurity defenses getting in Russia's way. The rest is history. The world's most notorious cyber threat actor, Sandworm, planted a backdoor in an M.E.Doc software update that came to be known as "NotPetya." Beyond the damage to Intellect Services, NotPetya caused tens of billions of dollars in damage to thousands of unwitting companies around the world, an example of how cyberwarfare can spill far beyond the borders of warring nations. Nation-states at war won't necessarily look to attack the government or the military, because the private sector can be a much easier target, argued Allie Mellen, a Forrester analyst and author of "Code War: How Nations Hack, Spy, and Shape the Digital Battlefield." It's very difficult for an enterprise to strike back. A lot of businesses that don't think of themselves as targets in war in fact are, and a lot more executives need to be gameplanning around it, Mellen argued at Zenith Live 2026 in Las Vegas last month. Why Businesses Become
Jul 10, 2026 · via darkreading.com
SHREVEPORT, La. - It's Thursday and that means it's time for "Doing Better Business."
Jo Ann Deal with the Better Business Bureau informs viewers about important cybersecurity resources available for businesses and consumers.
Join KTBS each Thursday at 3 p.m. on KPXJ CW 21 as the Better Business Bureau helps you do better business.
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Click on the attached video for the full interview.
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Jul 9, 2026 · via westcentralsbest.com
The newly approved state budget includes $18 million in recurring funding and another $42 million in one-time funding for cybersecurity. It also provides $25 million in non-recurring funding to modernize data management systems and $3.8 million for the North Carolina Health Information Exchange Authority. But two words carry a lot of weight in North Carolina's new budget: recurring and non-recurring. One keeps the lights on for the state's long-term cyber program. The other tackles more urgent technology upgrades. “The recurring funds will support maturing the cybersecurity program and ensuring a whole-of-state approach to securing the state’s data and systems,” the spokesperson said. “The non-recurring funds will support immediate upgrades, modernization, and risk-reduction efforts across state systems.” The distinction matters because resilience isn’t built with one-time investments alone. As the agency put it, these are not “one-off needs” and say “we [the state] need a stronger overall infrastructure.” The added cybersecurity funding provides that continuity, reducing North Carolina’s dependence on temporary funding sources and creating “a more stable foundation for core cybersecurity operations,” according to the NCDIT representative. But when will the actual funding arrive? The agency confirmed that the funding will not be distributed immediately. The state must first complete its budget certification process before agencies begin receiving money. From there, projects will be rolled out in phases based on North Carolina’s strategic cybersecurity plan, which was published in October and is now being reviewed. Once that review is complete, state officials will identify projects that align with the plan’s goals and applicable delivery timelines. Those projects, however, will require not just dollars and technology, but a workforce equipped to put the investments into action. Asked whether the additional funding would help address staffing needs — amid nationwide cyber workforce shortages — the spokesperson said the investment will support ongoing
Jul 9, 2026 · via govtech.com
A future where artificial intelligence agents talk to each other is right around the corner. According to Anshuman Chhabra, an assistant professor in USF’s Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing, agentic AI is the next frontier for machine learning models. These agents will be able to autonomously act on a user’s behalf, from writing emails and making dinner reservations to coding alongside a software developer. With agents interacting with other agents, there is a need for a better and more robust framework of engagement. Chhabra’s recent paper, “Agentic AI Security: Threats, Defenses, Evaluation, and Open Challenges,” published in IEEE Access, outlines a taxonomy of threats from agentic AI as well as opportunities to improve trust and safety. Chhabra wants to find ways to orchestrate better cooperation between models while ensuring that confidential data remains private and secure. As the leader of the Pioneering Advancements in Learning Methods (PALM) Lab in the Bellini College, he focuses on enhancing trust and safety of machine learning models and using these models in interdisciplinary applications. AI trust and safety involve a goal of interpretability, meaning that a human can understand how and why a model made a specific decision or output. “My work seeks to characterize the information flow in these AI models to understand what is driving them internally,” Chhabra said. “We want to see what the problematic behaviors are and how we can improve them by doing 'surgery' on the models. Building trust in autonomous systems The risk of agentic AI is higher than that of traditional chatbots without autonomy, especially in areas like medicine or cybersecurity. Agents, performing tasks on behalf of a user, can make mistakes such as accidentally misleading a doctor with regards to a diagnosis or deleting files in restricted codebases, leading to system failures. “At
Jul 9, 2026 · via usf.edu