What if I told you that everything you know and everything you do to ensure quality backups is no longer viable? In fact, what if I told you that in an era of generative AI, when it comes to backups, we're all pretty much screwed?
"Shortly after access was terminated, we began receiving extortion demands. The criminals threatened to distribute materials from both the February 2025 incident and the recent incident to media outlets and on social media if we did not comply. We will not pay these criminals," Percoco stated.
"World Cloud Security Day is a useful reminder to recognize how much cloud risk now comes down to everyday access decisions and overlooked misconfigurations," says James Maude, Field CTO at BeyondTrust.
Never feel that you are totally safe. In July 2025, one company learned the hard way after an AI coding assistant it dearly trusted from Replit ended up breaching a "code freeze" and implemented a command that ended up deleting its entire product database. This was a huge blow to the staff. It effectively meant that months of extremely hard work, comprising 1,200 executive records and 1,196 company records, ended up going away.
For mid-market organizations, cybersecurity is a constant balancing act. Proactive, preventative security measures are essential to protect an expanding attack surface. Combined with effective protection that blocks threats, they play a critical role in stopping cyberattacks before damage is done. The challenge is that many security tools add complexity and cost that most mid-market businesses can't absorb. With limited budgets and lean IT and security teams, organizations often focus on detection and response.
An FBI informant helped run the Incognito dark web market and allegedly approved the sale of fentanyl-laced pills, including those from a dealer linked to a confirmed death, WIRED reported this week. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Epstein's ties to Customs and Border Protection officers sparked a Department of Justice probe. Documents say that CBP officers in the US Virgin Islands were still friendly with Epstein years after his 2008 conviction, illustrating the infamous sex offender's tactics for cultivating allies.
Near-identical password reuse occurs when users make small, predictable changes to an existing password rather than creating a completely new one. While these changes satisfy formal password rules, they do little to reduce real-world exposure. Here are some classic examples: Adding or changing a number Summer2023! → Summer2024! Appending a character Swapping symbols or capitalization Welcome! → Welcome? AdminPass → adminpass Another common scenario occurs when organizations issue a standard starter password to new employees, and instead of replacing it entirely, users make incremental changes over time to remain compliant.