SmartData Collective, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
10 AI Trends That Should Shape Your 2027 Business Plan
Ten AI planning trends for 2027, urging budgets that tie AI spending to measurable outcomes, defined costs and accountable owners. more →
This WeekHome →Calendar →Back Issues/Search →Archive →RSS →Subscribe →Services →Vendors →
Monday’s Briefing · October 12
Customer Experience Dive, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
A Health Insurance Agency's Journey From Pilot to Full-Time Voice AI Agent
eHealth used a voice AI agent to prescreen Medicare callers, ending six-hour waits during a 500,000-call enrollment surge. more →
CIO, Friday, October 9th, 2026
AI Is Your Newest Hire. Manage It Like One
Firms that onboard AI like a new hire, with context, connections and self-assessment, get results others miss, says a CIO.com author. more →
CIO Dive, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
AI Platform Sprawl Undermines Enterprise ROI
Few firms run AI on one shared platform; FICO's analytics chief says CIOs should push an AI standard to curb sprawl and costs. more →
CIO.com, Friday, October 9th, 2026
AI Won't Empty the Software Factory: Why the New Engineers Act Like Foremen
Executives cutting engineering headcount over AI misread the job; demand for engineers who steward AI-built code will grow. more →
Analytics Insight, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Artificial Intelligence Terms: A Practical AI Glossary for 2026
A plain-language glossary of modern AI terms, from machine learning and foundation models to agentic AI, RAG, evals and observability. more →
CIO, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Moving Off Legacy in a Regulated Business Without Breaking It
A CIO explains how regulated migrations succeed by proving the new system matches old outcomes, guarding against 'quiet' failures. more →
The CTO Advisor, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Private AI Won't Be the Center of Your AI Universe. Hybrid Will.
Keith Townsend argues private AI won't displace frontier model APIs; like private cloud, it will succeed as part of a hybrid model. more →
Computerworld, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Tech Execs Are Getting Wise About ROI From AI
McKinsey and Gartner analysts outline new ways to measure AI ROI as CFOs demand returns. more →
CIO, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
The CIO's New Mandate: Rearchitecting Enterprise Work
As agentic AI starts doing the work, CIOs must design 'Enterprise Work Architecture' deciding what humans and agents each perform. more →
Heller Search Associates, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
The Fixer's Dilemma: What 3 Years Outside IT Taught Me About Leading Transformations
Ex-IT leader Christoph Hesterbrink says transformation leaders focus too much on fixing and too little on educating sponsors. more →
Heller Search Associates, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
The New Rules of Security Leadership
Insights from the Cyber Means Business series on how CISOs are evolving into business strategists, board advisors and trust builders. more →
You've Been Heard, Monday, October 5th, 2026
460- Seat at the Table, Still the IT Guy w/Brian Ledbetter (58:22)
Veteran CIO Brian Ledbetter shares his LEAD IT framework and argues every AI conversation should start with the business outcome. more →
youvebeenheard.com, Monday, October 5th, 2026
461- Just Because It's Old Doesn't Make It Wrong w/Jeremy Mayfield (54:48)
National Sugar IT leader Jeremy Mayfield explains running fully SaaS and serverless and delivering a new ERP early and under budget. more →
DevOps.com, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
HackerOne Report Surfaces Massive Increase in Vulnerability Backlogs
HackerOne finds fix times fell from 135 to 62 days, yet unresolved validated vulnerabilities grew 131% as AI speeds discovery. more →
CXOTalk, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Mozilla CTO: Open Source and Open Weight AI, Rent or Own?
Mozilla CTO Raffi Krikorian explains open source vs. open weight AI models and what keeps enterprises from putting them into production. more →
theCUBE Research, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
The AI Skill Gap Is a Thinking Problem, Not Just a Training Problem
AI readiness is a human capability problem: workers lack the mental frameworks to work with AI, not just training, says theCUBE Research. more →
Fluid management in the AI era
As liquid cooling adoption accelerates, operators are learning what it takes to support performance and reliability across growing deployments. more →
The Register, Friday, October 9th, 2026
BOFH: Smells Like Team Spirit
In this BOFH tale, a failing basement computer tied to the waste water system gets passed up the management food chain with smelly results. more →
The Register, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Cheapskates Wouldn't Pay for Security Help, Got Hit by Ransomware, and Went Bust Months Later
The Register's PWNED column: a small firm that refused security help was hit by ransomware and failed months later. more →
The Register, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Rejecting a Promotion Sent Field Service Tech Into Support Hell
On Call: a 1990s field engineer who turned down a promotion spent his time cleaning up after the incompetent colleague who took it. more →
Expert Panel: Preparing for AI: Governance, Risk, and Compliance
In this TDWI Expert Panel, industry leaders will examine how organizations can build the trusted data, governance frameworks, and controls needed to scale AI responsibly without slowing innovation. more →
InfoQ, Monday, October 5th, 2026
The Platform Engineering Playbook for Production LLMs
A team cut production LLM hallucinations from 15% to 1.5% with platform controls like retry loops and intent gates, not a new model. more →
Platform Engineering, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Users Only Notice Great Infrastructure When They Don't Notice It at All
Good platform work is invisible to users, which skews budgets and careers toward incident response over prevention. more →
CSO Online, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
AI Is Turning Offensive Security Into a Continuous Necessity
With AI flooding teams with vulnerabilities, CISOs are using continuous pentesting to prove what is actually exploitable. more →
Infosecurity Magazine, Friday, October 9th, 2026
AI Training Critical as Governance Challenges Grow
ISACA says organizations are adopting AI faster than they build the skills and governance to manage it. more →
SC Media, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Airline Zoom Calls, Pix, Windows, TP-Link, AgentCorruption, OSS Scanner, Josh Marpet - SWN #623
Security Weekly News #623 covers Windows support cutoffs, TP-Link fraud suits, the AgentCorruption AWS flaw and shadow AI. more →
SC Media, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Cybersecurity Predictions That Came True in the First Half of 2026
AI gave attackers a speed advantage, identity eclipsed malware and AI infrastructure itself became an attack surface in early 2026. more →
TechTarget, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Data Centers Aren't Enough: The Real AI Infrastructure Is People
The AI race is about chips and data centers, but workforce AI literacy, including in rural communities, is the real competitive edge. more →
CNCF, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Don't Give AI Agents Root. Make Them Propose the Next System State.
A CNCF ambassador argues agents should change systems through immutable, reviewable state proposals, not root access. more →
Tecmint, Friday, October 9th, 2026
10 Tips to Harden SSH Access on Production Ubuntu Servers
How to harden SSH on Ubuntu 26.04 with sshd_config drop-ins, UFW and Fail2Ban, including avoiding cloud-init config overrides. more →
Linux Journal, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Google's Kage Project Rethinks Linux Kernel Security With Isolated Device Drivers
Google's experimental Kage uses compiler-based sandboxing to isolate Linux drivers without moving them to user space. more →
Tecmint, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Top 5 Podman Alternatives to Run Containers on Low-Resource Edge Linux Servers
Tecmint compares five lightweight container tools for edge Linux devices, including containerd with nerdctl, on memory and reliability. more →
The Top Priorities for CIOs in 2027: From Technology Strategy to Business Impact
What should CIOs prioritize to create business value and lead effectively in an increasingly volatile environment? As economic uncertainty, accelerating AI adoption and rising stakeholder expectations reshape the technology landscape, many organizations continue to face gaps between AI ambitions and operational realities. more →
Open Source For You, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Quantum Computing in Data Science and Analytics: An Overview
An overview of quantum computing applications across data science, AI, cybersecurity, finance, healthcare and logistics. more →
Professional Security, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Quantum Computing's Uncertain Timetable
OpenSSL's Tim Hudson says the real post-quantum deadline is how long it takes you to change your cryptography, not when Q-Day arrives. more →
Computer Weekly, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
AI May Be Driving More Software Developers to Freelance
Stack Overflow's 2026 survey shows freelance developers rising from 4% to 10% as AI lets one person do more, and job satisfaction is low. more →
Ask The Headhunter, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
I'm 64 & Ready for a New Gig
Nick Corcodilos tells a 64-year-old ex-agency owner to pitch a new business to contacts over lunch rather than hunt for a job. more →
KDnuggets, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
ML Engineer, AI Engineer, or LLM Engineer: Which Role Actually Builds What in 2026?
A practical breakdown of what ML, AI and LLM engineers actually build, to cut through confusing job titles. more →
LeadDev, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Your Junior Engineers Are Getting Faster but Are They Getting Better?
An engineering leader found AI tools let juniors ship 14 features yet build no mental models, and redesigned onboarding. more →
Akto, Friday, October 9th, 2026
AI Agent Identity Threats & Detection: A Security Guide
Akto explains why AI agent identities need their own threat model and what detection must cover. more →
Akto, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Governing AI Coding Agents on the Endpoint
Akto warns that approved AI coding agents become risky once developers add MCP servers, extensions and rules files. more →
Akto, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Shadow AI Attack Surface: How Unsanctioned AI Creates Risk
Akto defines the shadow AI attack surface created by unsanctioned AI extensions, API connections and agents. more →
Akto, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Shadow AI Management Platforms: Key Capabilities
Akto outlines what shadow AI management platforms do to detect and govern unsanctioned employee AI use. more →
Akto, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Shadow AI Risk Assessment: How to Score Your Exposure
Akto explains how to run a shadow AI risk assessment to find, score and govern unofficial AI tools. more →
The Shadow AI Epidemic: Uncovering Hidden AI Agents And Components On The Endpoint
This webinar will explore how traditional endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions often miss the actions of agentic software, leaving critical blind spots in what tools AI agents can access and what actions they are permitted to take on the endpoint. more →
Arista Networks, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Arista Announces Rack-Scale Architectures for Scale-Up and Scale-Out AI Fabrics
Arista unveils open Ethernet rack-scale platforms, including Etherlink SU-144, for scale-up and scale-out AI fabrics. more →
Arista Networks, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Next-Gen Scale-Up Networking for AI Fabrics
Arista explains why AI scale-up domains are moving from PCIe and proprietary links to open Ethernet across racks. more →
Network World, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Cisco Readies New Control Plane for Quantum Networks
Cisco's prototype Quantum Network Controller aims to coordinate entanglement across multi-vendor quantum networks. more →
What Every Enterprise Should Know About Securing Cloud Assets in the Age of AI
In this free, full-day virtual event entitled What Every Enterprise Should Know About Securing Cloud Assets in the Age of AI, you'll learn about the emerging threats and vulnerabilities in the cloud today, and how to ensure you have a comprehensive view and insight into your cloud infrastructure. more →
CoreWeave, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Closing the Loop Between Inference and Post-Training
CoreWeave explains how Model Distillation, RL Rollouts and a training API in CoreWeave Forge turn production inference signal into better models. more →
CoreWeave, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
CoreWeave Direct-to-Expert: Work With the Engineers Who Built CoreWeave Cloud
CoreWeave details Direct-to-Expert, a support model that puts customers in a shared channel with the engineers who built its cloud. more →
SiliconANGLE, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
CoreWeave Targets GPU Utilization in Continuous AI Post-Training
CoreWeave and You.com explain how faster data movement and weight loading keep GPUs busy during continuous AI agent post-training. more →
C-Suite AI Conversations: Ready to Fail vs Ready to Scale
In this session, Gartner shares the inconvenient truths emerging from interviews with chairpersons and CEOs from organizations including IBM, Accenture, Tata Group and PwC. Explore what it takes to move from being ready to fail to being ready to scale, and learn the leadership, operating model and organizational shifts required to turn AI investments into sustained business value. more →
Databricks, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
How to Build Governed Enterprise Apps on Databricks with Replit and Lakebase
Databricks explains how teams use Replit Agent on live Databricks data to build and deploy governed apps with Lakebase. more →
Databricks, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Introducing Funke: Native HL7v2 Parsing on Databricks
Databricks open-sources Funke, which parses HL7v2 health messages into native Spark types while keeping their full hierarchy. more →
Databricks, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Lakebase and Agentic SDLC: Branching Databases for Coding Agents
Databricks shows how Lakebase copy-on-write branching gives each parallel coding agent its own isolated database. more →
Databricks, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Load Terabytes of Data in Minutes Into Lakebase Postgres
Databricks' LTAP architecture lets Spark build Postgres pages and indexes in parallel, loading data into Lakebase up to 147x faster. more →
Databricks, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Now GA: Building Permission-Aware Databricks Apps with On-Behalf-of-User Authorization
On-behalf-of-user authorization for Databricks Apps is now GA, letting apps act with the signed-in user's own data permissions. more →
Databricks, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Set Budgets and Alerts for Cloud Data Warehouse Costs
Databricks lays out how to tag SQL warehouses, set layered budgets and use pacing alerts to stop month-end cost surprises. more →
Datadog, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Define User Actions on Your Web App with Visual Labeling in Product Analytics
Datadog's Visual Labeler lets teams name web app user actions in Product Analytics without code or new deployments. more →
Datadog, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
How We Replaced Our Host Vulnerability Scanner with the Datadog Agent
Datadog moved internal host vulnerability scanning to its own Agent, keeping scan freshness above 99%. more →
Datadog, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Process and Route Critical Security Logs to Exabeam with Observability Pipelines
Datadog Observability Pipelines adds Exabeam packs to filter and route high-signal security logs to the Exabeam SIEM. more →
Datadog, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Ship Faster, Improve Reliability, and Control CI Costs with Datadog CI/CD Optimization
Datadog CI/CD Optimization correlates pipeline, test and runner data to cut CI wait times, flaky failures and compute costs. more →
Datadog, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Unify Data Across Datadog BYOC with Cross-Cluster Queries for Teams and AI Agents
Datadog BYOC adds cross-cluster queries so teams and AI agents can search data across regional deployments at once. more →
2026 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools: Key Market Shifts and Vendor Insights
Join this Gartner webinar as an expert reviews the 2026 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools. Explore the latest vendor positioning, significant market developments, and emerging trends in pricing, licensing and AI capabilities. Gain practical insights to help navigate a changing vendor landscape and make more informed enterprise architecture tool decisions. more →
Dynatrace, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Contain, Observe, Adapt: Three Trends Shaping Agentic Software Development
Dynatrace shares three themes from WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America: agent containment, observability and agent experience. more →
Dynatrace, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Forrester Study Models 466% ROI from Unified Observability with Dynatrace
A Dynatrace-commissioned Forrester TEI study models 466% three-year ROI and payback in under six months from unified observability. more →
Harness, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Harness CI Pipeline Tutorial: Build and Push to Docker
Harness walks through generating a CI pipeline from a GitHub repo and pushing a Docker image without writing YAML. more →
Harness, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
How to Deploy Your First App with Harness CD in 15 Minutes
Harness tutorial shows how to set up a rolling Kubernetes deployment with rollback using Harness CD. more →
Harness, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Judgment, Not Generation: Rebuilding Our AI API Classifier on Jev
Harness cut AI API classification costs about 1,200x by replacing a generative LLM decision step with its Jev model. more →
Harness, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Knowledge Graphs for Software Delivery: Architecture & Guide
Harness engineers describe how software delivery knowledge graphs unify fragmented SDLC data for reliable AI reasoning. more →
KnowBe4, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Cyber Espionage: When the Attacker's Best Asset Is You
KnowBe4's Erich Kron introduces its spy-themed Cybersecurity Awareness Month kit focused on social engineering. more →
KnowBe4, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
CyberheistNews Vol 16 #40 Why Microsoft's Latest Defense-in-Depth Email Benchmark Is So Surprising
KnowBe4's CyberheistNews examines Microsoft's fifth email security benchmarking report and its real-world findings. more →
KnowBe4, Friday, October 9th, 2026
The Rise of Legitimate-Service Phishing: 1 in 10 Phishing Emails Now Comes From a Platform You Trust
KnowBe4 Threat Lab measures how attackers abuse trusted platforms like DocuSign, SharePoint and Dropbox for phishing. more →
KnowBe4, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Threat Actors Abuse Trusted Accounts and Internal Tools to Launch Convincing BEC Attacks
Rapid7's Douglas McKee describes 'calendar warfare' and other BEC tactics using compromised trusted accounts. more →
KnowBe4, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Two Systems, One Truth: Unifying Training Records Across SAT and LMS
KnowBe4 explains why split SAT and LMS training records can fail as evidence for cyber insurance and compliance. more →
KnowBe4, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Warning: Attackers Are Tricking Employees Into Sharing Malicious Calendar Invites
Attackers posing as prospects get employees to forward booking links that lead to Microsoft 365 credential phishing. more →
Mistral AI, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Introducing Mistral Large 4
Mistral AI launches a public preview of Mistral Large 4, a 1-trillion-parameter multimodal open-weight model with weights due this month. more →
The Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends for 2027
In this webinar, Gartner analysts explore the top strategic technology trends expected to shape 2027 and explain why they matter to CIOs. more →
OpenText, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Determining Data Access Risks Using the DAG Maturity Model (Part 1 of 3)
OpenText introduces a data access governance maturity model for assessing unstructured data risks as AI tools roll out. more →
OpenText, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Transforming Engineering Content for AI Readiness
OpenText explains how validating and connecting engineering documents to asset records makes them AI-ready. more →
Oxide Computer Company, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Our $445M Series D
Oxide Computer raises a $445M Series D led by Eclipse, with AMD joining as a strategic investor, to fund a large order backlog. more →
Back to the beginning: Why AI's impact on data security makes the endpoint the battlefield once again
How AI has moved more work and data to the agent: agent actions, data transformations and egress paths more →
Rapid7, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Four Compliance Frameworks, One Security Team: Why Fragmented University Security Raises Regulatory Risk
Rapid7 explains how FERPA, GLBA, HIPAA and CMMC obligations make fragmented multi-campus university security a regulatory risk. more →
Rapid7, Friday, October 9th, 2026
Metasploit Wrap Up: A Collection of What Can Only Be Called Eclectic Modules
This week's Metasploit release adds 12 modules, including LLM-targeting scanners, Linux LPEs and an N-able N-central RCE. more →
Rapid7, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Securing Agent-to-Agent Communication: The Next Identity Frontier
Rapid7 argues autonomous AI agents must be treated as first-class identities, with delegation, behavior and tool use monitored. more →
Rapid7, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
The ASOS Incident: When Attackers Use the Channels Customers Trust
Rapid7 examines the hostile push notification sent through ASOS's own app and what attacker use of trusted channels means for defenders. more →
Scale AI, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Building Trust at the Frontier
Scale AI outlines a four-stage AI testing lifecycle and argues the US government needs a mandate to evaluate frontier models. more →
Scale AI, Monday, October 5th, 2026
Introducing AgentEnv: An Open-Source Framework for Building RL Environments
Scale open-sources AgentEnv, the framework behind its reinforcement learning environments for AI agents. more →
Scale AI, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
Introducing Humanity's Sixth Sense: Measuring Intuitive Visual Reasoning
Scale's Humanity's Sixth Sense benchmark shows top AI models score 53.6% on intuitive visual reasoning versus 93.1% for humans. more →
Security in the Cloud: Building Cyber Resilience Across Your AWS Estate
Join us to see how Cohesity's resilience platform extends AWS-native protections across your data, workloads, and the agents that act on them, so you can recover quickly and with confidence. Join speakers from AWS and Cohesity to learn how to build resilience across your evolving cloud estate. more →
Sophos, Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
CISA's 17 Active Directory Attack Techniques: Detection and Defense with Sophos MDR
Sophos groups CISA's 17 Active Directory compromise techniques into four categories and explains how to defend against them with MDR. more →
Sophos, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Understanding Asymmetric Routing Risks
Sophos explains how asymmetric routing breaks stateful firewall inspection, raises adversary-in-the-middle risk and disrupts cutovers. more →
TierPoint, Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
Modernize VMware Workloads: Where VCF 9 Delivers Top Value
TierPoint explains where VMware Cloud Foundation 9 delivers value as an alternative to replatforming VMware workloads. more →
Threat Intelligence Futures: AI-powered Intel, Cross-sector Sharing
This webcast explores the future of threat intelligence. We'll highlight how AI can supercharge correlation and prediction, and why collaboration across sectors is no longer optional. more →
Zscaler, Monday, October 5th, 2026
NIST's New OT Guide Draws the Zero Trust Line at Level 3. Attackers Are Working Below It.
Zscaler critiques NIST's draft SP 800-82r4, which applies zero trust to OT mainly at Purdue Level 3 and above. more →
Zscaler, Thursday, October 8th, 2026
Pharma Is Building Again. It's Time to Put Security in the Blueprints.
Zscaler urges pharma firms building new US plants to bake OT security into user requirement specifications early. more →