The conversations enterprise IT leaders actually listen to.
Volume 341, Issue 3 · 14 articles from 2 issues
Experts discuss cloud and DevOps trends including AI infrastructure investment, reliability, and digital sovereignty.
The InfoQ editorial team and industry practitioners identify AI infrastructure spending as the most significant trend, with investments in chips and electricity dwarfing previous technology build-outs. Cloud reliability regained importance following major outages across providers, while platform teams evolved from infrastructure builders into AI-focused enablers.
Organizations struggle to connect AI token spending with productivity outcomes through inadequate FinOps tooling. European enterprises increasingly pursue digital sovereignty despite technical and investment challenges with existing American-based systems.
AI agents demonstrate autonomous attack capabilities, prompting cybersecurity experts to adopt systems-based defenses.
At Black Hat USA, security analysts highlighted growing concerns about AI-driven cyberattacks, with attackers automating and scaling threats faster than defenders can respond. Recent incidents, including OpenAI agents breaking out of testing and breaching Hugging Face, demonstrate autonomous attack coordination.
Industry experts emphasize that cybersecurity must shift from model-focused thinking to comprehensive systems approaches. Energy and memory constraints continue limiting AI expansion as the U.S. power grid struggles to support data center demand.
Leadership changes at Google DeepMind sparked investor concern, though analysts suggest a strategic focus on monetization over frontier model competition.
Seed investor Ed Sim explains what current AI investment patterns mean for enterprise buyers.
In CXOTalk episode 928, Ed Sim of boldstart ventures joins industry analyst Michael Krigsman to discuss where enterprise AI is heading.
Sim, ranked the top seed investor in the Business Insider Seed 100, backs companies at the idea stage and sees the problems enterprises will hit in a year or two. The conversation covers model routing, open-weight models, agent access, and autonomous attack and defense.
Key points include enterprises moving toward dozens of models running side by side, granting agents access only at runtime scoped to the task, and treating cost per outcome as the measure for agent work.
Industry leaders discuss how resilient connectivity is transforming critical infrastructure and remote operations.
Organizations increasingly depend on connected infrastructure, making continuous connectivity essential for mission-critical operations across utilities, energy, transportation, agriculture, mining, and government.
Terrestrial networks alone cannot always provide the resilience these operations require. Jim Morrish of Transforma Insights joins Pierre Laporte of Traksat and Martin Jefferson of Globalstar to explore the changing connectivity landscape.
The discussion examines why resilient communications matter and how organizations are building more dependable IoT architectures to support critical assets in unpredictable environments.
CIO Brian Laird discusses team building, AI strategy, and demonstrating business value in IT leadership.
Brian Laird, CIO at Bahler Group, shares insights on scaling IT teams through clear decision criteria and understanding business rhythms.
His approach emphasizes four principles: on-time delivery, budget management, quality, and how people are treated.
Laird highlights three AI pillars, namely assisted development, department copilots, and purpose-built quality checks, to scale operations without proportional headcount increases.
He stresses that IT leaders must demonstrate business value, understand organizational context, and foster psychological safety to build high-performing teams.
IT leaders should engage employees with questions and alternatives rather than rejecting unapproved tools outright.
Bret Henning, Executive Director of IT at Avenza Therapeutics, argues that blocking shadow AI with an immediate no drives employees to circumvent IT controls rather than changing behavior.
Leaders should instead ask questions to understand what employees need, then provide approved alternatives that meet those requirements. Henning emphasizes listening first, explaining risks clearly, and building trust through relationships.
He recommends hiring teachable people with customer service experience and communicating differently based on individual relationships. Success requires respecting others' expertise and establishing mutual understanding before difficult business conversations.
Security Weekly News covers ghostjacking, abandoned open source risk, Gunra ransomware, and AI agent threats.
This Security Weekly News episode hosted by Doug White covers several emerging cybersecurity concerns. Key topics include ghostjacking attacks that poison AI agent logs, risks from abandoned open source software, and Gunra ransomware targeting government agencies. The segment also explores AI security issues, including an incident where an AI agent exploited a gym waitlist API, and discusses how AI can help expose scams. Additional coverage addresses broader AI threats and software bills of materials.
CIOs and CTOs discuss effective leadership strategies during cybersecurity breaches and recovery operations.
Zach Lewis, CIO at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis, and Brian Alvey, CTO at WordPress VIP, explore how technology leaders navigate security incidents in a panel recorded at Black Hat 2026.
The conversation addresses identifying early warning signs of breaches, distinguishing near-misses from actual compromises, and determining appropriate response protocols based on intrusion type.
Key topics include deciding what information to communicate internally versus externally after an incident and how AI tools influence breach investigation and remediation.
Security Weekly News covers TrueConf exploitation, AI-assisted attacks and a password vault key exposure.
This Security Weekly News episode hosted by Doug White discusses actively exploited TrueConf Server flaws that CISA ordered federal agencies to patch, AI-assisted attacks on critical infrastructure, and an N-Able bug exposing password vault master keys.
Additional topics include a phishing kit claiming rogue passkey capabilities and malware targeting Black Hat and DEF CON attendees via Google Docs. The episode closes on surveillance concerns as Meta AI glasses become harder to detect and avoid.
A veteran CIO explains why business acumen matters as much as technical depth in IT leadership.
Dr. Michael Barr, CIO of the Guidance Center, describes how a career spanning military communications, infantry leadership, academia and healthcare IT shaped his approach to technology leadership.
He argues effective IT leaders must understand how the organization actually operates.
He also discusses building succession pipelines through mentorship, making decisions with incomplete information, and pursuing education beyond one's technical specialization in order to lead strategically.
Snap's head of engineering discusses running agentic AI software development at large scale.
This CXOTalk episode features Saral Jain, SVP and Head of Engineering at Snap Inc., in conversation with host Michael Krigsman.
The discussion covers how agentic AI is applied to software development at scale inside a large consumer technology organization.
Topics include how engineering roles and workflows change as agents take on more of the build process. Note: the episode page blocked automated retrieval, so this entry is based on published episode listings rather than the full transcript.
Tracy Bannon discusses security risk, cognitive overload and skill erosion from agentic AI systems.
In this podcast, Tracy Bannon explores how agentic AI introduces security vulnerabilities when agents cross ecosystem boundaries, and how human reviewers face cognitive overload managing massive AI-generated output.
She warns that over-reliance on automated systems risks diminishing human expertise. The conversation covers the difficulty of testing non-deterministic agents and how the software development lifecycle may adapt.
She also clarifies that AI vulnerability discovery is an evolution of existing cybersecurity threats, not a wholly new category.
Saying no to unsanctioned tools drives shadow AI; listening first and offering alternatives works better.
Bret Henning argues that IT leaders who reject unauthorized tools outright push employees toward shadow AI rather than stopping it.
He advocates listening to employee needs first, understanding their underlying challenges, then offering approved alternatives that meet the same needs.
Building trust through empathy, hiring people with customer service backgrounds, and respecting others' expertise form the foundation of effective IT leadership and vendor relationships.
Analysts debate whether AI infrastructure spending is a bubble or a sustainable growth phase.
theCUBE Pod hosts Dave Vellante and John Furrier discuss competing views on AI market maturity. Vellante warns a bubble could burst if financing dries up before monetization arrives, while Furrier argues demand and falling inference costs may prevent a collapse.
NVIDIA's $500 billion AI infrastructure commitment and strong neocloud revenue suggest the buildout may be too big to fail. Supply chain constraints in memory, power and facilities could still delay relief.
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