October 29, 2026

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Thriller Thursday! Halloween is this weekend. If you’re not into candy but still want something sweet, Coke’s aiming for your wallet.

In today’s edition:

🔒 Lock in

🚍 Road warriors

🏦 Bank on it

—Caroline Nihill, Eoin Higgins, Brianna Monsanto

CYBERSECURITY

Chaos containment

An illustration of a rogue humanoid robot running into a hand held up in the

Niv Bavarsky

More software and hardware vendors are offering up new tools to help prevent “rogue” AI agents from breaking free and wreaking havoc online. But will these solutions be enough for IT professionals to effectively protect their organizations?

At the end of September, Nvidia announced OpenShell, an open-source runtime explicitly designed to keep agents from unauthorized system and data access. In addition to that, the company unveiled Sentry, an authentication tool that carefully monitors agents’ requests and responses.

Arjun Bhatnagar, CEO and co-founder of digital privacy startup Cloaked, told IT Brew that Nvidia’s approach to securing agents is “definitely work that’s needed to be done,” while adding that much will come down to execution.

Integrating these types of solutions into organizations is a big question, Bhatnagar added: “It’s about to become a lot more work, and I don’t think it’s going to be with, as we’re hoping, a one-click solution.”

Brass tacks.—CN

Sponsored By Comcast Business

Intruders you can’t even see

No, we’re not talking about ghosts. We’re talking about cyber attackers.

Spooky? Indeed. Indefensible? Not so much.

Here’s the rundown on what to expect: Comcast Business notes that modern cyber attackers are increasingly finding ways to go unnoticed, using techniques that help them blend into normal enterprise activity rather than immediately setting off alarms.

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Attackers are also using public blockchains to host command-and-control infrastructure, creating systems that are difficult to take down or disrupt.

Learn how businesses can shift toward orchestrated responses that focus on how systems are actually being used.

IT STRATEGY

FurAI Road

Getty Images

When it comes to putting money into the tech stack, enterprises are putting their money where the AI is—but that spend largely isn’t finding its way to IT budgets as the technology expands its footprint.

Businesses aren’t in a wait-and-see mode, said Vladimir Lukic, global leader for tech and digital advantage at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The chase for agentic success reminds him of Mad Max: Fury Road, where Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron, in a huge “war rig,” are pursued across the desert by marauders anxious for glory and loot.

“All the vehicles are moving after that runaway truck,” Lukic said. “Will all of those chasers get there? No, but what we are seeing is the level of energy is real. The target is real. They know that they’re going to deploy this at scale in their business.”

Driving forward.—EH

IT STRATEGY

Finance x AI

A human hand and a robot hand pointing at a stylized pie chart

Getty Images

AI may be changing the securities industry, but according to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) EVP and CIO Steve Randich, it’s still business as usual for market participants adhering to the regulator’s guidelines.

During Bloomberg’s AI in Finance Summit in New York on Oct. 15, Randich told the audience that FINRA, the self-regulatory organization that governs US brokers and broker-dealers, will continue to sustain a technology-neutral regulatory stance as AI becomes more embedded in firm operations: “The supervisory requirements and obligations of firms don’t change because of AI.”

Randich, who joined FINRA in 2013, acknowledged that certain “elements” are different. A decade prior, for instance, the organization discovered there were no solutions for model management and operations, requiring it to develop governance capabilities from “scratch.”

Scratch the itch.—BM

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 25%. That’s roughly how much of Anthropic’s revenue came from just five customers, according to its IPO filing. (Tech Brew)

Quote: “Look, the internet is rotting. The question is, where are we going to put our energy?”—journalist John West on the dying internet (Wired)

Read: Silicon Valley is going after the bugs discovered by AI. (the New York Times)

Bump in the night: Comcast Business notes that modern cyber attackers are increasingly finding ways to go unnoticed, using techniques that help them blend into enterprise activity. To stay ahead, businesses can shift toward behavioral analytics and orchestrated responses.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

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Written by Caroline Nihill, Eoin Higgins, and Brianna Monsanto

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