Katrina Thompson

As organizations shift from vulnerability management (VM) to exposure management (EM), the role of the VM analyst must evolve or become outmoded. This necessary transition forces analysts to move beyond the job description of scanning and patching and into more strategic, business-aligned roles. AI has necessitated this change in many areas of security, from SOCs to CISOs, and now vulnerability analysts are feeling the shift. It’s an opportunity. By leaning into exposure management and all that AI enables within it, VM professionals can do more than continuously clear out backlogs. They can provide more value to the business by: By adopting exposure management…

AI SOC platforms have been gaining rapid traction in the industry over the past few years. and will continue to grow in popularity as their usability and time-saving capabilities are demonstrated. These AI-driven, often agentic SOC platforms sit at the intersection of autonomy and human oversight, doing the heavy work on alert investigations so SOCs can spend their time on strategy and action. cut out the hard work and start in on strategy and action. “AI SOC agent tools promise security operations leaders an opportunity to augment their workforce across a wide range of activities,” notes Gartner in their Hype Cycle for Security Operations, 2025. “It can…

Exposure assessment platforms (EAPs) are the new tool for the new era. As AI forces teams to reconcile with lightning-fast exploits, bot-barraged entry points, and teeming pools of data, things become obscured. EAPs, or exposure management platforms as they’re also called, provide visibility into weaknesses across the entire attack surface, mapping out attack paths rather than disjoined exposures, and gathering all relevant data into one place. The exposure management market is poised for growth. This blog will help you navigate which EAP tool is right for you as you evolve your security stack to be simpler, more comprehensive, and make more sense. The Value of EAPs If you’re here, you already know how important exposure management in cybersecurity can be.…

Being the world’s leading AI innovator comes with a prize. But is it a good one? President Trump’s Executive Order (EO), Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” has experts debating the cost at which global AI supremacy might come. “To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation,” states the December 11th EO, underscoring new federal measures to override state policies and “remove barriers to United States AI leadership.” Given the complexity of adhering to 50 different AI state frameworks, a unified federal standard could be a breath of fresh air for companies…

AI has transmuted the game for attackers and defenders within the past three years. Threat actors haven’t hesitated to adopt AI-powered methods. Defenders have the opportunity to respond in kind with AI-powered solutions. While emerging on the market, these solutions have yet to be adopted across the board. However, given the risks created by large language models and other advanced technologies, AI-powered security tools may quickly become more than nice: they may become necessary. Threat Actors are Leveraging AI in Powerful Ways GenAI provides a host of new tools for attackers to use. The end result is that it allows…

Although business email compromise (BEC) and phishing are often included in the same breath, their differences extend beyond how they are launched to how they are caught. BEC requires deeper context-aware detection than basic phishing tools provide, and AI delivers that. BEC vs. Phishing: The Security Perspective From a practitioner’s point of view, stopping a BEC scam can look very different than spotting a phish. Phishing Scams BEC Scams This puts SOCs in a tough spot. BEC emails fly under the radar, leaving nothing but an employee’s own wits to figure out the scam in real time. Because of AI,…

Researchers recently uncovered a worldwide phishing scam that leverages highly convincing phishing emails to deliver a malware dropper called UpCrypter. According to Fortinet FortiGuard Labs, the detection count has doubled within a timespan of two weeks; an alarming rate of growth. Researcher Cara Lin observed, “This is not just about stealing email logins, but is a complete attack process that can secretly install a malicious payload inside a company’s network.” Since the beginning of August 2025, UpCrypter has been spotted targeting sectors such as technology, manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and construction. Its broad reach throughout countries ranging from Pakistan and Belarus…

Researchers discovered nearly two dozen malicious Android apps designed to steal cryptocurrency credentials and compromise wallets. The coordinated campaign, uncovered by Cyble Research and Intelligence Labs (CRIL), is comprised of over 20 cryptocurrency phishing applications created to imitate legitimate platforms. Since CRIL reported the issue to Google, most have been removed from the Play Store with more being reported for future takedown. “If you’ve recently downloaded any of the flagged apps, uninstall them immediately,” states Jamie Akhtar, CEO and Co-founder at CyberSmart, “and run a trusted mobile security scan. It’s also wise to change your passwords, particularly for any accounts…

It has been reported that hackers have recently shared a new database they claim contains sensitive customer information stolen from the American telecommunications giant, T-Mobile. However, the company denied any connection to the archive, saying it had nothing to do with it, or its clients. A “Trove of Sensitive Details” The Cybernews report asserts that a sample of the dataset was uploaded to a popular data leak site at 2am on June 13th, with the attackers claiming the information was as recent as the first of June. This is especially concerning as relatively “new” data would put impacted individuals at…

Nobody questions the fact that today’s SOC analysts are drowning. AI-driven threats, sophisticated malware variants, and geopolitical tensions are enough to overwhelm any team. Enter AI SOC Analysts. An AI SOC Analyst platform does all the “dirty work” of triaging alerts and investigating potential incidents. It can even run remediations when there’s high confidence true positive alert. This reduces the manual workload, leaving humans to review the AI’s findings, hunt for hidden threats that detections miss, and focus on incident response. The intersection of human and AI-based SOC marks a turning point for the marketplace. But as more vendors…