We are sitting at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence in the enterprise, and there is much to know and do. Our goal is not just to keep you updated with the latest AI, cybersecurity, and other crucial tech trends and breakthroughs that may matter to you, but also to feed your curiosity.
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Welcome to the first edition of our new format aimed at providing you more value:
Did You Know - Machine Workforce
Strategic Brief - The 144:1 Ratio
Threat Radar
The Toolkit
AI & Cybersecurity News & Bytes
C-Suite Signal
Byte-Sized fact
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💡 Did You Know - Machine Workforce
Did you know that for every 1 human employee, there are now 144 non-human identities operating in your network?
Did you know that 43% of all exposed secrets are found outside of source code, often buried in build logs, Slack channels, and SharePoint spreadsheets?
Did you know that 1 in 20 AWS machine identities carries full-admin privileges, effectively acting as a "Shadow Admin" waiting to be exploited?
Did you know that 38% of all identity provider users are "dormant" (inactive >90 days), creating a massive reservoir of zombie credentials?
Did you know that the Midnight Blizzard attack against Microsoft succeeded by compromising a legacy, non-production OAuth app, not a production admin?
Did you know that China's new Cybersecurity Law (effective Jan 1, 2026) mandates reporting serious incidents within one hour, making manual triage effectively illegal for MNCs operating there?
Did you know that half of all secrets found in SharePoint originate from developers auto-syncing local spreadsheets (
.xls) containing credentials to the cloud?
🎯 STRATEGIC BRIEF:
The 144:1 Ratio: The Non-Human Identity (NHI) Singularity 🤖
Machine identities explode and far outnumber humans in the enterprise
The Issue: Strategic intelligence confirms that non-human identities (service accounts, bots, API keys) now outnumber human employees by a staggering 144 to 1 in the average enterprise. This "Shadow Identity" estate grew 44% in the last year alone, yet most security programs still focus 90% of their effort on human users.
The Opportunity: The "Identity Debt" crisis—where 38% of all accounts are dormant and 1 in 20 cloud identities is a "Shadow Admin" presents a chance to drastically reduce attack surface. By shifting focus from User Behavior Analytics (UBA) to Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM), organizations can close the vectors used in breaches like Midnight Blizzard.
Why It Matters: Attackers have pivoted. They no longer break in; they log in using valid, over-privileged machine tokens found in dev environments. A compromised human is a risk; a compromised service account with *:* permissions is a catastrophe.
The Playbook:
Audit: Deploy agentless discovery tools immediately to map the NHI estate (expect to find 5x more than you think).
Purge: Aggressively remove "Identity Debt"—delete the 38% of accounts that are dormant.
Govern: Implement "Non-Human HR." Every bot needs an owner, a role, and a decommissioning date.
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📡 THREAT RADAR - Rapid intelligence on active threats
Ivanti Connect Secure (CVE-2025-0282):
Risk: Critical (RCE).
Impact: Attackers are deploying "RESURGE" malware to harvest session tokens and machine certificates directly from the gateway.
Action: Patch immediately. If you cannot patch, assume all active sessions are compromised and force a global MFA reset.
MongoDB "MongoBleed" (CVE-2025-14847):
Risk: High (Information Leak).
Impact: Allows unauthenticated attackers to read uninitialized heap memory, scraping active connection strings and service credentials.
Action: Remediate by Jan 19, 2026 (CISA Deadline). Rotate all database credentials after patching.
Cisco ASA (Zero-Day Campaign):
Risk: Critical (Persistence).
Impact: Sophisticated actors are modifying the Read-Only Memory (ROM) of devices to maintain access even after reboots/upgrades.
Action: Verify integrity of boot images and restrict management interface access strictly to internal management VLANs.
🛠️ THE TOOLKIT - Solutions to modern problems
The NHI Cartographer: Astrix Security
Problem: You can't secure the "mesh" of third-party app connections (OAuth) you can't see.
Solution: Agentless discovery that maps every app-to-app connection and flags over-privileged integrations preventing supply chain attacks.
The Lifecycle Automator: Oasis Security
Problem: Service accounts are created and never deleted ("Identity Debt").
Solution: Automates the full lifecycle of non-human identities from provisioning to decommissioning, ensuring every bot has an owner.
The Secrets Enricher: Entro Security
Problem: Secrets are scattered across multiple vaults and code repos without context.
Solution: Enriches secrets with metadata (who created it, where it's used) to detect anomalies and enforce "Zero Standing Privileges."
Artificial Intelligence News & Bytes 🧠
Cybersecurity News & Bytes 🛡️
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📊 C-SUITE SIGNAL - Key talking points for leadership
Regulatory Velocity: China's 1-Hour Rule is now in effect. Why: If we do business in China, our Incident Response plan must be automated. We cannot rely on human analysis to meet a 60-minute reporting deadline.
The Compliance Cliff: NYDFS Part 500 certification is due April 15. Why: The mandate for MFA on all remote access is being interpreted to include non-human access. We must audit our API security immediately.
🧠 BYTE-SIZED FACT
his month marks the 40th Anniversary of the Brain Virus (Jan 1986), the first IBM PC virus. It spread via floppy disks to track pirated software.
The Lesson: 40 years later, the "virus" isn't code; it's Permission. Over-privileged access replicates across the cloud just like Brain replicated on floppies—silent, pervasive, and dangerous.
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