Category: Secure

Secure provides guidance and insight on the myriad issues that business technologists grapple with while protecting business data assets and ensuring continuity.

Google Cloud Summit Sydney: Putting Agentic AI into Action

by siowmeng, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, Secure
S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

  • Enterprises are deploying AI agents leveraging Google Cloud’s solutions and achieving positive business outcomes.
  • Google Cloud offers the full AI stack, and its sovereign cloud and cyber solutions are especially crucial for enterprise customers.

AI agents are no longer an idea. They are now being deployed by enterprises to improve internal workplace productivity and external customer experience. At Google Cloud Summit Sydney (held on June 25, 2026), more examples of agentic AI in operations were presented, moving from deterministic AI chatbots to more autonomous systems. Bunnings, a home improvement, gardening, and hardware products retailer in Australia, upgraded its Buddy AI chatbot that helped customers with product search to an AI agent that takes customers’ descriptions of their projects and fills the shopping carts with the products that they need. Bunnings indicated an uplift of conversion rates and basket sizes when customers engage with Buddy. Similarly, Woolworths supermarket has an agentic AI powered Olive assistant that is able to build shopping baskets from recipe photos and assist with proactive meal planning. These two examples demonstrate how AI agents trained with proprietary knowledge (e.g., Bunnings’s DIY catalog and Woolworths’ recipe catalog) can deliver greater customer outcomes.

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Why Quantum-Safe Connectivity Could Become the Next Differentiator for Wholesale Providers

by Brendan Swan, posted in Cloud Enable, Secure
A professional headshot of a man smiling, wearing a suit with a light pink shirt, set against a neutral gray background.
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

  • Telecom Italia’s Sparkle has launched its quantum-safe interconnect (QSI) with Equinix across 20 International Business Exchange (IBX) positioned throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
  • With the rise of quantum computing, it has highlighted the importance of cybersecurity, with growing concerns around future attacks where sensitive data could be compromised – store now, decrypt later.

The wholesale telecommunications segment has traditionally competed on scale, reach, latency and price. However, as enterprises accelerate the adoption of AI, hybrid cloud, and internationally distributed workloads, another factor is rapidly moving up the priority list: Security. With cyber threats becoming increasingly sophisticated and quantum computing edging closer to becoming able to break traditional encryption, quantum-safe connectivity is emerging as the next major differentiator for wholesale operators seeking to move beyond price-led competition. CSPs that can combine their global reach, low latency, and post-quantum security will be positioned to capture a greater share of the enterprise and hyperscaler demand. The broader question now emerging for the industry is whether security could soon become just as important as scale, reach, and price in wholesale telecommunications.

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Verizon DBIR: Adversaries Weaponize AI in Stealth Attacks by Targeting Points of Exposure

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
A close-up portrait of a woman with light brown hair, wearing a black blazer and a light-colored turtleneck sweater, smiling softly against a light blue background.
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

  • Bad actors are raising their intelligence quotient with AI, tapping it to find vulnerabilities faster and to power mobile-centric phishing campaigns.
  • Supply chains are a weak link with partner network weaknesses linked to nearly half of all breaches.

An already volatile threat landscape is becoming even more dangerous as threat actors tap AI to accelerate and improve the success of their attacks on enterprises. Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) reveals how effective adversaries have become in using AI to capitalize on enterprise weaknesses. Exploiting software vulnerabilities was the initiating factor in 31% of all breaches, notable because this is the first time in almost 20 years that it has overtaken compromised credentials as the most frequent entry point for an attack.

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Lumen Research Paints a Dark Picture of the Threat Landscape in 2026

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
A professional headshot of a woman with long blonde hair, smiling gently while wearing a black jacket over a light-colored top.
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• As the operator of one of the world’s largest global internet backbones, Lumen has a view into 99% of the public IPv4 addresses; its threat research team Black Lotus Labs monitors 2.3 million threats daily.

• Lumen’s 2026 Defender Threatscape Report underscores the highly organized and effective tactics cybercriminals are using to infiltrate the enterprise by exploiting network and edge vulnerabilities.

Long gone are the days when it was a question of if, not when, an organization would be breached. Most enterprise security practitioners are painfully aware of how successful threat actors have become in evolving their techniques to outwit some of the best defensive tools. But if anything, Lumen’s 2026 Defender Threatscape report, highlights that the real security challenge is only beginning. Leveraging research from its Black Lotus Labs threat intelligence unit including data from investigations, network telemetry, and campaigns between September 2024 and January 2026, Lumen notes that in response to the increasing effectiveness of endpoint detection solutions, cybercriminals have changed their strategies to leverage camouflaged proxies, vulnerable edge devices, and generative AI (GenAI) to set up attacks.

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Akamai Research Shows AI-Powered Attacks are Targeting Undersecured APIs

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
Headshot of a woman with long blonde hair, wearing a black jacket over a beige sweater, smiling against a light blue background.
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• APIs are an alluring target for threat actors now with the average number of daily API attacks soaring by 113% versus last year.

• More than 60% of the attacks in 2025 were affiliated with unauthorized workflows and activity that veered from the norm; indicators that are cybercriminals shifted from conventional web breaches to behavior-based incidents.

AI is changing the threat landscape, and it is doing so at lightning speed. Aggressive threat actors are putting the technology to work to expedite endpoint discovery and improve overall efficiencies. This has left enterprises flat-footed, often missing breaches until the real losses are finally discovered.

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A Unified Network for IT and OT Delivers Efficiency and Creates Opportunity for Service Providers

by siowmeng, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Secure
A professional portrait of a man with short black hair, wearing a dark blazer over a light shirt, standing in front of a blurred glass background.
S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

  • Businesses are modernizing their IT and digitizing their operations. The case of IT and OT convergence is becoming stronger, and this should extend to the underlying network infrastructure.
  • Network services providers can capture this opportunity by strengthening their professional services and focus on business outcomes.

Businesses are constantly looking for automation and efficiency to improve their speed of operations while lowering costs. Technology is a key driver. Much attention on digital transformation has been on information technology (IT), in the form of migrating workloads to the cloud for agility, leveraging data analytics for business insights, and using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for automation.

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EY Survey Reveals Enterprises are Investing in AI to Repel Adversaries Weaponizing the Very Same Technology

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
A professional portrait of a woman with long blonde hair, wearing a black jacket and a light-colored top, smiling against a soft blue background.
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• Ninety-six percent of the security leaders surveyed see AI as a core element in their cybersecurity strategy that they are already deploying

• However, that same number perceive AI-driven attacks as serious threats to their organization

Cybersecurity is a delicate balancing act, requiring organizations to mount multi-layered defenses without causing the kind of friction that can impede productivity. An effective defense also requires the adequate funding to ensure the appropriate technical and personnel resources are in place to protect enterprise assets. With AI as an active part of the cybersecurity conversation, there are more angles for IT organizations to consider as both a proactive tool and an offensive weapon.

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Geopolitical Conflicts Driving New Resilience Imperative for Critical Infrastructure

by Dustin Kehoe, posted in Secure
A smiling middle-aged man in a suit and tie, standing in front of a blue background with digital patterns.
D. Kehoe

Summary Bullets:

• Geopolitical conflicts are forcing providers of critical national infrastructure to revisit and double down on the securing of supply chain to reduce operational risks and improve auditability.

• This is forcing businesses to unify cyber security with enterprise-wide operational resiliency. This is both the highest priority and greatest challenge.

In times of war, a rise of nationalism, global tariffs, and market volatility, mixed in with unhealthy doses of geopolitical tensions, state-assisted cyber-attacks targeting critical national infrastructure (CNI) are on the rise. Unlike other sectors, CNI are the core systems that underpin the functioning or delivery of essential services. CNI is also vital for the running of the economy. Major sectors such as transportation, utilities (e.g., energy, water), banking, health care, government services, telecoms, etc. fall within this group. While these sectors have always been required to guarantee confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information crucial to their operations at a higher standard compared to other sectors, it is the supply chain which is the weakest link. This has the greatest number of threat vectors from brute-force attacks, exploitation of software vulnerabilities to various strains of malware and ransomware attacks happens here.

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The Middle East Conflict – The Impact on the ASEAN ICT Market

by Alfie Amir, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, Mobilize, Secure
A smiling man in a suit and tie, with short hair, against a white background.
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Within the ASEAN enterprise ICT market, the conflict has no direct impact, but indirect effects are becoming increasingly apparent due to the higher crude oil prices and rising electricity costs.

• The industry can expect lower ICT spending, higher operational costs for telcos, and slower AI momentum.

The conflict in the Middle East has entered its third week and is expected to continue for several more weeks. Its impact can already be seen globally across multiple sectors, as discussed in detail in GlobalData’s The Middle East Conflict – Executive Briefing, March 10, 2026.

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IBM X-Force Threat Index 2026: Adversaries Use AI as a Weapon in Scaling Attacks

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
A professional headshot of a woman with long blonde hair, smiling softly while wearing a black blazer and a light-colored turtleneck.
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• New research from the IBM X-Force threat intelligence team said the most sweeping developments in cybersecurity are threat actor exploiting exposed systems, gaps in supply chain defenses and fissures in interlinked application and cloud ecosystems to increase the volume and effectiveness of their attacks.

• IBM X-Force saw a dramatic rise in the number of active ransom groups, noting that cybercriminals are employing leaked tools and playbooks while using AI to automate attacks.

It is no secret that the enterprise is under threat from ambitious and aggressive cybercriminals, and that these threats have been escalating. Recently published research from IBM X-Force bears that out, highlighting the fact that adversaries are quick to exploit some major vulnerabilities to breach their targets. Compiling data from incident response, penetration tests, the dark web, and other intelligence, the newly published X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2026 uncovered that the most common entry point for bad actors is publicly-facing applications. Citing the increasing complexity of applications and the frequency of misconfigurations, these applications are easily breached. There was a 44% increase in the number of publicly facing applications breached this year versus last.

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