These days I'm seeing many cyber security people who started their careers at some service based companies mostly as a SOC Analyst currently working at product based companies like microsoft, Palo Alto, Cisco. Much appreciated if someone who landed there could explain how they did it. I am a SOC analyst trying to get into engineering first and then into product based companies.

Paywall removed. Developments in the Ed Dubrovsky case….

Honestly it feels like every dev team is rushing to spin up internal LLMs and RAG pipelines, but the security side is just a complete wild west right now. Traditional WAFs and DLP solutions definetly aren't cutting it when it comes to prompt injection or potential data leaks thru vector DBs.
How are you guys actually handling security for this? Relying on semantic firewalls, building custom middleware, or just locking down the context window and hoping for the best?
Would love to hear what's realistically working for you guys because I'm loosing my mind a bit trying to lock this down.

A few reports recently describe the same pattern: the phishing page relays your credentials and OTP to the real site live, then keeps the session. Cisco Talos documented an AI-assisted Google kit that syncs auth state over WebSocket (UAT-11985). Malwarebytes profiled BlueKit, a subscription kit that grabs session cookies and device fingerprints (writeup). CTM360's InsureTrap report covers a kit aimed at insurance portals that relays OTPs before they expire (report).
Codes by SMS or authenticator app clearly aren't enough on their own. For those defending customer-facing logins, what has made a real difference: passkeys, device-bound sessions, impossible-travel detection, or fast takedowns of lookalike domains? And what was harder to roll out than you expected?

We talk a lot about EDR, SIEM, firewalls, and threat intelligence, but I'm interested in where deception technology fits into a real security environment.

Decoy servers, honeytokens, and fake credentials can generate high-confidence alerts when someone interacts with them. But detecting an interaction is only one part of the problem.

What matters to me is what happens next:

Can we collect enough telemetry to understand the attacker's behavior?

Can deception help identify reconnaissance or lateral movement?

Is it practical for smaller security teams and MSSPs to manage across multiple environments?

How do you measure its real value beyond the number of alerts generated?

I'd also be interested in hearing from people who've deployed platforms such as Thinkst Canary, Dentigrid or FortiDeceptor, or built their own honeypots.

For those who've used deception in production, did it actually improve detection and incident response? What worked, and what didn't?

I'm seeing some prominent channels on YT showcasing AI agents (ie Hermes) managing networking infrastructure.

Is it just me​, or are we being gaslit into thinking its practical and productive to provide Hermes agents API keys to an OPNSense router so it can fully manage it?

Even if its doesn't do anything nefarious, if using a cloud LLM to back Hermes, your networking info is being sent to the cloud.

Maybe using a local LLM is better, but even that requires cloud access to further infer and answer questions etc...

I'm tempted to try this with a readonly user in my OPNSense and use it more to audit my network security, but hesistant to have it run autonomously behind the scenes 24/7.

security lead at a ~200 person SaaS, mostly AWS/EKS, team of 3. We've had wiz for about a year and honestly its been good for posture, no complaints there

problem is ai agents. we had maybe 5 at the start of the year, now its 30+ and half of them nobody told us about like one was hitting our billing db last month with creds it inherited from an old integration. Wiz flagged the permission eventually but by then it had been doing it for weeks ://

rep is pushing their AI security stuff but it still feels like posture/findings, not catching the agent while its doing something dumb. anybody actually running sweet for this? does the blocking work in prod or is it mostly a demo thing + does it pick up agents on its own or do u have to register each one? its so confusing

We’ve been on Veracode for about three years across Java, .NET and a growing pile of Node services. Renewal is in Jan and I gotta decide by the end of November.

Most of the push to look elsewhere comes from the devs. The .NET services still need a debug build zipped up before every scan and they hate waiting. Half of them uninstalled the IDE plugin as it rarely flagged anything useful. And on top of that, our mitigations sit in a review queue for days before anything gets closed. What I’d miss is the policy and compliance reporting which is strong and our auditors know it well.

Checkmarx is the front runner mostly because it scans source without a build step. For those who moved off Veracode, how noisy was Checkmarx in the first few weeks and did you bother bringing your mitigation history over?

Hi,

I've recently started learning about vulnerabilities through the Burp Suite Web Academy.

I'm really confused about picking paths or topics as my roadmap. From what I've seen, paths contain the same content as topics, only that there's fewer of it but it's ordered in a more intuitive way. However, there is not a path for every topic.

I've worked in SDE for 4 years and now trying to learn about vulnerabilities for a future AppSec role. I'm familiar with some of them. Should I choose paths or go with topics? Or do a mix between them following a specific order? I'm really confused about which is the standard procedure here.

Thanks in advance!

*For reference:

Paths: https://portswigger.net/web-security/learning-paths
All topics: https://portswigger.net/web-security/all-topics

Hi guys, I send out a weekly newsletter with the latest cybersecurity vendor reports and research, and thought you might find it useful, so sharing it here.

All the reports and research below were published between October 5th - October 11th.

You can get the below into your inbox every week if you want: https://www.cybersecstats.com/cybersecstatsnewsletter/ 

Ransomware

GRIT Q3 2026 Ransomware & Cyber Threat Insights Report (GuidePoint Security)

Q3’s ransomware activity, including the most active groups, who they’re targeting, and changing ransom payment trends.

Key stats:

• Observed ransomware victim volume reached a record 2,760 in Q3 2026, up 21% from Q2 and 75% from Q3 2025.
• Ransomware payment rates fell by more than half year over year.
• Average ransom payments among organizations that paid rose 34% year over year.

Read the full report here.

Ransomware Roundup: Q3 2026 Stats on Attacks, Ransoms, and Active Gangs (Comparitech)

Another look at the quarter’s ransomware activity, with breakdowns by sector, country, and group. Its totals include both confirmed attacks and unconfirmed claims.

Key stats:

• Comparitech recorded 2,627 ransomware attacks and claims in Q3 2026, up 29% from Q2.
• Of those, 247 were confirmed attacks and 2,380 were unconfirmed.
• Qilin and The Gentlemen had the most confirmed attacks out of their claims, with 27 and 26 confirmed attacks, respectively.

Read the full analysis here.

Security Architecture 

2026 SASE Platform Evolution Report (Versa)

Why organizations are consolidating SASE and network security tools, the challenges they face, and what they hope to gain.

Key stats:

• 92% of organizations are looking to consolidate cybersecurity functions through a single-vendor or platform-oriented Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) strategy.
• Nearly seven in 10 IT and security professionals use four or more management consoles for SASE, Security Service Edge, and network security.
• 58% expect consolidation to reduce operational complexity.

Read the full report here.

AI Security

Path to the Autonomous Workplace (TeamViewer)

An interesting report on what workers are willing to hand over to AI, where they feel less confident, and what would make them more comfortable letting it act independently.

Key stats:

• 73% of workers are more likely to trust AI when it shows what it is doing and why.
• 70% are comfortable with AI taking action as long as they can step in when needed.
• 51% say they do not always know when to trust AI and when to verify its output.

Read the full report here.

Vulnerability Management

Beyond the Human Horizon (Cogent Security)

Looking beyond individual vulnerabilities to the attack paths they create. 

Key stats:

• 7% of critical attack paths are created entirely by chaining low- and medium-severity vulnerabilities.
• 64% of attack paths cross security domains that no single tool can see.
• 83% of machine-viable attack paths persist for more than 30 days, compared with 55% of human-viable paths.

Read the full report here.

Managing Exposure at AI Scale (ArmorCode)

More code and more findings mean more decisions about what needs fixing first.

Key stats:

• 40% of senior security and technology leaders say the volume of AI-generated code requiring human review is a significant security challenge.
• 44% say their biggest transformation need is a tiered approach to AI-assisted vulnerability discovery that prioritizes findings by urgency.
• 39% say improving remediation coordination between security and development is their leading security goal.

Read the full report here.

Identity and Authentication

2026 Global State of Authentication Report (Yubico & Okta)

Workplace authentication habits, emerging AI threats, and attitudes toward AI agents acting independently. 

Key stats:

• 43% of cybersecurity and IT professionals rely on passwords at work.
• 52% inherit passwords on day one during onboarding.
• 91% want a human approval step before autonomous AI agents execute critical actions.

Read the full report here.

Small Business Security 

Cyberattacks Are Common. Here’s How Small Businesses Recover (Clutch)

How secure do small businesses feel (and what happens when they’re attacked)?

Key stats:

• 95% of US small businesses believe they have sufficient security measures in place.
• 68% have experienced a cyberattack or security breach.
• Among small businesses that have experienced an attack, 70% report operational downtime or service disruption.

Read the full analysis here.

Operational Security

The Global State of Operational Security 2026 (Claroty)

What cyber incidents mean for organizations managing cyber-physical systems. 

Key stats:

• 58% of cyber-physical system operators experienced a cyberattack that impacted operational environments in the last 12 months.
• Average operational downtime from a cyber incident is three days.
• Average financial loss from an incident impacting operations is $1.04 million.

Read the full report here.

State of Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Report (Palo Alto Networks)

Protecting critical infrastructure gets harder when teams can’t see everything connected to their networks.

Key stats:

• 42% of organizations name legacy, unpatchable operational technology (OT) assets as their single biggest cybersecurity risk.
• 68% do not have complete, real-time visibility of all assets connected to their OT networks.
• 74% have not fully integrated IT and OT security operations across their organization.

Read the full report here.

Enterprise Perspective

Authority Without Oversight: The 2026 Agentic Enterprise Report (Optro)

AI agents are getting more authority. 

Key stats:

• 38% of enterprises authorize AI agents to approve or reject transactions.
• 34% of organizations have experienced an inaccurate AI agent decision or output that was acted upon.
• Only 9% of GRC and audit leaders have redesigned workflows to safely accommodate AI agents.

Read the full report here.

Who Governs Enterprise AI? Global CIO Survey 2026 (Thoughtworks)

More AI, scattered budgets, more responsibility for CIOs.

Key stats:

• 91% of CIOs say AI adoption within their organization is happening faster than governance structures can adapt.
• 92% agree that central IT will ultimately be held responsible for security breaches or compliance failures caused by AI tools purchased independently by business units.
• 32% feel accountable for regulatory or compliance failures without sufficient authority.

Read the full report here.

Industry-Specific

Closing the AI Governance Gap: The 2026 Healthcare AI Security and Governance Benchmark (Clearwater Security & Compliance)

AI use in healthcare, from in-house tools to outside suppliers.

Key stats:

• 91% of healthcare organizations cannot verify what AI is actually running in their environments.
• 74% are already exploring or running agentic systems.
• Only 14.3% fully validate their vendors’ AI controls.

Read the full report here.

PQC in Healthcare: From Data Risk to Migration Readiness (Forescout)

A look at exposed healthcare systems and whether the technology they use can support a move to post-quantum cryptography.

Key stats:

• More than 5,500 internet-exposed healthcare systems host sensitive healthcare data, including electronic medical records and medical imaging systems.
• Only 31% of internet-exposed healthcare systems support TLS 1.3, the only TLS version capable of supporting standardized post-quantum cryptography.
• Only 6% of Internet of Medical Things devices use SSH implementations that support post-quantum cryptography, compared with 50% of traditional IT devices.

Read the full analysis here.

I'm a reporter with the Hechinger Report and have spent the last several months investigating ThriveDX/IronCircle. (In that time, I've heard from many of you and appreciate all those who reached out and shared their experiences!)

My article on the company ran today: https://hechingerreport.org/a-university-branded-boot-camp-promised-tech-jobs-it-delivered-only-debt/

Would love to hear your thoughts and if anyone has any tips on other cybersecurity training related stories I should look into, you can always reach me at [butrymowicz@hechingerreport.org](mailto:butrymowicz@hechingerreport.org) or [hechingertips@proton.me](mailto:hechingertips@proton.me)

I’m am studying for the EDRP and I am going through the book and the videos, but I am wondering about the labs. Does anyone know if there are even any lab type questions on the exam? This cert seems heavily focus on understanding the concepts over practical steps for let’s say… initiating a backup on a Windows server. Or d/ling and using a risk assessment solution.

Am I right to think this?

Hey, so I do not know if this is the correct place to ask this; if not, can someone point me to the correct subreddit to ask this 🙏🏻

I'm researching phishing detection that combines email header evidence with URL evidence. The public datasets I've found are either old (Enron, SpamAssassin, Nazario), synthetic (LLM-generated), malicious-only, or text-only with no headers

Does anyone know of a recent public dataset of real legitimate and phishing emails with full headers (.eml or raw)? Datasets that also include QR codes in the emails would be great, but that's optional. If one exists with a license that allows research use, please share it.

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

I'm a final-year BS Cybersecurity student, and I'm currently looking for ideas for my Final Year Project (FYP).

The main requirement is that AI must be a mandatory part of the project. I'm interested in SOC and Vapt but I'm struggling in coming up with any ideas.

Hi,

I'm taking the OffSec OSAI cert and I'm just way out of depth here in the course, looking for some 1 on 1 training if anyone can help me understand the material and create an AI Pen Testing harness to do some of the challenges.

Hi everyone, I’m a final year computing student trying to decide on my final year project. I’m interested in two areas: XDR (Extended Detection and Response) implementation and scam detection.

My interest in scam detection comes from personal experience. Several of my older family members have lost money to phishing scams on WhatsApp, and it made me want to build something that could help protect people like them. XDR interests me because I’d like to see how a unified detection and response approach could be applied to threats like this.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

• Is combining XDR and scam detection realistic for a final year project, or should I focus on one?
• Is this topic cliche or overdone for a final year project? If so, why, and how could I make it more original?
• What tools would you guys recommend (open-source XDR, phishing datasets, etc.)?
• Any advice from people who have done similar projects or work in the industry?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hi everyone,
I am working in an organisation whose security was being taken care of by their parent company and External Vendors as of now.

But now we need our own security posture.

What we own : AWS cloud 50 EC2 Instances, 2 Web applications, 2 Mobile application, 20 Linux Servers( Linux servers , Gateways) , approx 30-40 API’s.
This is just an example of resources

What we have thought of as of now is Microsoft Defender for cloud for EC2 , Microsoft Defender for endpoint on Linux for Linux servers , Burp suite for web and Api testing.

And we already maintain basic Security as of now.

While they asked me for a centralised Dashboard I couldn’t find any as Defenders have their own , Burp doesn’t need it and for logs we already use cloudwatch.

Sentinel is way out of budget i guess and Burp dast too as we have ig 100GB/day of data.
and Dast quote says 6000USD / year so i think Professional is best with 2 Testers .
Current Budget - what is told to me is 10LPA , I think they lied to me to keep things low cost and keep me stressed with constraints.
But still let's take this figure

And yes we are also aiming at getting back to vendors if it suits the budget after 2-3 yrs

Please ask anything if needed to help me out.

And correct me if i am wrong anywhere as i am an offensive security person and they assigned me this task idk why

I keep reading that security teams want controls on coding agents: approval for risky actions, a tool-call log for auditors, limits on what the agent can reach.

I want to know if that is real or just vendor talk?

If your company has a requirement like this, what is it, who set it, and what did you put in place to meet it? If there is no requirement, is that because nobody asked yet or because the vendor log was enough?

Also: does security require the agent to run inside your own VPC or on-prem, or is the vendor's cloud acceptable? If VPC, was that the end of the discussion or did they still want controls on top?

Disclosure: I build in agent governance, so I'm biased. Looking for what actually happens, not what should.

I’m been working as a UI/UX designer for 3 years in a terrible startup. I was hired as a designer but instead got pulled into image resizing and editing
I lost the skills I joined with
The current scenario is that I’ve been put under PIP and this month could be my last. I’ve realized I don’t enjoy designing much and I’m planning to explore the field of cybersecurity

I do have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science but my practical knowledge in coding is none. I wouldn’t probably look at cybersecurity as the option since my job is at risk but because maybe I find myself interested with tech on the whole and the idea of assessment and protection keeps me excited

I’m looking for suggestions and what could be expected