Ian Barker

Enterprise cyberattack

AI-powered attacks, zero-days, and supply chain breaches -- the top cyber threats of 2025

New analysis of recent high-profile breaches and global threat patterns, reveals a cybersecurity landscape dominated by AI-enhanced attacks, organized cybercrime, and rapid exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities.

The research, from compliance automation platform Secureframe, shows critical infrastructure, healthcare, and financial services have become primary targets as threat actors evolve faster than traditional defenses.

By Ian Barker -
Cybersecurity threat intelligence

Growing complexity means legacy security systems miss one in every 14 threats

Traditional detection methods are being outpaced, with a 127 percent rise in malware complexity and one in 14 files initially deemed ‘safe’ by legacy systems proving to be malicious.

A new report from OPSWAT uncovers layered threats designed to evade analysis, including obfuscated loaders such as NetReactor and evasive behaviors missed by traditional tools. These results show that modern malware intends to confuse rather than flood defenses.

By Ian Barker -
Cloud security padlocks

New agentic AI platform helps teams fix cloud security problems faster

Security teams are often hampered by having to identify and fix issues while weeding out false positives. This is an area where AI can help and Sysdig has launched a new agentic platform designed to analyze cloud environments end-to-end and uncover hidden business risk so organizations can remediate crucial threats fast and deliver measurable improvements in their security posture.

Sysdig Sage, the company’s AI cloud security analyst, ultimately understands context from the entire business and provides clear, contextual remediation recommendations, reducing an organization’s exposure time to critical vulnerabilities.

By Ian Barker -
Unknown spam fraud phonecall

The rise of vishing and why enterprises need to be ready [Q&A]

Vishing (voice phishing) attacks have surged by over 1,600 percent so far this year, partly driven by a rise in AI-driven deepfake voice scams.

This is yet another way cybercriminals are seeking to impersonate those with access to company systems to disrupt organizations and hold data for ransom. We spoke to Anthony Cusimano, solutions director at Object First, to discover more about this trend and how businesses are at risk.

By Ian Barker -
VPN ban?

Could the UK government really ban VPNs?

As we’ve been reporting over the past week interest in VPN use in the UK has spiked following concerns about the Online Safety Act and its age verification rules.

Inevitably the government has noticed the surge in VPN use and while it insists it has no plans to ban their use the science secretary, Peter Kyle, says it will be looking “very closely” at how they’re being employed.

By Ian Barker -
Cybersecurity investment money

Cybersecurity budget growth hits a five-year low

Average security budget growth has slowed to just four percent year-on-year, the lowest rate in five years and a sharp decline from eight percent in 2024.

The slowdown comes in the face of continued global market volatility, driven by geopolitical tensions, uncertain tariff policies, and fluctuating inflation and interest rates, says a new report from IANS Research and Artico Search.

By Ian Barker -
Cloud security lock

Cloud accounts come under attack as identity threats rise

The latest Threat Detection Report update from Red Canary shows a rise of almost 500 percent in detections associated with cloud accounts during the first half of 2025.

This significant rise stems primarily from Red Canary’s expanded identity detection coverage and the implementation of AI agents designed to identify unusual login patterns and suspicious user behaviors. This includes identifying logins from unusual devices, IP addresses, and virtual private networks (VPNs), which significantly increases the detection of risky behaviors.

By Ian Barker -
Displeased suspicious young woman

75 percent of cybersecurity leaders don’t trust their own data

A disconnect between cybersecurity confidence and data reality is leaving organizations exposed, according to a new report released today by Axonius.

The study, based on a survey of 500 US director-level and above cybersecurity and IT leaders, reveals that while 90 percent of cybersecurity leaders say their organization is prepared to take immediate action on a vulnerability, only 25 percent trust all the data in their own security tools.

By Ian Barker -
Vulnerability security

Attackers exploit old vulnerabilities as zero-day exploits surge

New analysis from Forescout of more than 23,000 vulnerabilities and 885 threat actors across 159 countries worldwide during the first half of 2025 finds 47 percent of newly exploited vulnerabilities were originally published before 2025, and zero-day exploitation has increased 46 percent.

The report also shows ransomware attacks are averaging 20 incidents per day, zero-day exploits increased 46 percent, and attackers are increasingly targeting non-traditional equipment, such as edge devices, IP cameras and BSD servers. These footholds are often used for lateral movement across IT, OT, and IoT environments, allowing threat actors to get deeper into networks and compromise critical systems.

By Ian Barker -
AI security attack

Hackers weaponize GenAI to boost cyberattacks

Adversaries are weaponizing GenAI to scale operations and accelerate cyberattacks -- as well as increasingly targeting the autonomous AI agents reshaping enterprise operations. This is among the findings of CrowdStrike’s 2025 Threat Hunting Report.

The report reveals how threat actors are targeting tools used to build AI agents -- gaining access, stealing credentials, and deploying malware -- a clear sign that autonomous systems and machine identities have become a key part of the enterprise attack surface.

By Ian Barker -
AIOps

Why an adaptive learning model is the way forward in AIOps [Q&A]

Modern IT environments are massively distributed, cloud-native, and constantly shifting. But traditional monitoring and AIOps tools rely heavily on fixed rules or siloed models -- they can flag anomalies or correlate alerts, but they don’t understand why something is happening or what to do next.

We spoke to Casey Kindiger, founder and CEO of Grokstream, to discuss new solutions that blend predictive, causal, and generative AI to offer innovative self-healing capabilities to enterprises.

By Ian Barker -
UK Law court

Concerns mount around UK Online Safety Act

As we reported earlier this week, the UK’s new Online Safety Act has seen a surge in interest in the use of VPNs and an online petition for its repeal has been signed by over 400,000 people.

An article published yesterday by The Critic argues that the legislation is badly drafted. Industry figures too are raising doubts about the effectiveness of the act, its likely wider impact on cybersecurity and its potential for overreach.

By Ian Barker -
Neural networks

Neural networks and their effect on test and measurement [Q&A]

Historically test and measurement has been simply about collecting data and exporting it for later analysis. Now though neural networks make it possible to carry out the analysis in real time.

We spoke to Daniel Shaddock, CEO of Liquid Instruments, to find out more about what this means for businesses.

By Ian Barker -
API development

83 percent of credential stuffing campaigns target APIs

According to new research from Radware 83 percent of credential stuffing campaigns include explicit API-targeting techniques.

The report shows a shift in credential stuffing attacks, underscoring a fundamental transformation from volume-based attacks leveraging a series of repeated password attempts to more sophisticated, multi-stage infiltration techniques.

By Ian Barker -
Enterprise cyberattack

Attacks evolve too quickly for businesses to maintain truly resilient security

As organizations embrace digital transformation and AI, security teams face mounting pressure to defend an ever-expanding attack surface according to a new report.

The research from Cobalt suggests traditional reactive security measures cannot keep pace with modern threats, particularly when adversaries leverage automation and AI to scale their attacks. 60 percent of respondents believe attackers are evolving too quickly for them to maintain a truly resilient security posture.

By Ian Barker -
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