July 28, 2026

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Tuesday! While you’re still trying to get your robotic vacuum to work, Japan has 44 companies that have gone all in on AI-powered humanoid robot workers.

In today’s edition:

🤓 From Geek Squad to COO

😈 AI tool sprawl

🚗 Cyber that excites

—Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins, Caroline Nihill

IT STRATEGY

Geeking out

Natalia Crosdale

Before Natalia Crosdale became an IT program manager at the US State Department, or the founder of her exec-level advisory Crosdale Consulting, or a production support specialist at CNN, she was a Geek.

Crosdale’s IT journey began in 2009 on Best Buy’s Geek Squad, which sends out teams of technicians to set up and repair the computers, tablets, and other devices sold in the megastore.

Her stint at the Geek Squad led Crosdale to change her major (which was HR management at the time), attain tech certifications, and ultimately see and follow a career path into IT.

“In my mind at that point, either you were a licensed engineer or not. I didn’t realize [until then], ‘Oh, there’s a space for the people who help the people, who are using the products and services that the licensed engineer might have built,’” Crosdale said.

Squad goals.—BH

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IT STRATEGY

Grow up

Stressed out CEO sitting in modern office

Getty Images

Large and in charge—for enterprises, that’s a sign of the times, and could lead to problems.

AI tool sprawl is increasingly presenting challenges for organizations as they manage the changing tech landscape. For companies investing in growth areas while trying to keep costs down, that often means looking for the most efficient solution in the short term, said Shashi Kiran, chief marketing officer at Nile. And often it also means adding other tools to the tech stack, which makes things more difficult.

“If you look at the traditional enterprise companies, there’s a lot of accumulated technology and technical debt because they’ve got this infrastructure that’s spread out across potentially different cities, countries, globally, and they have mergers and acquisitions,” Kiran said. “There is a technology stack that builds up to a bit of a Frankenstein stack, which can make it very difficult for them to move quickly, have compliance, figure out where issues are, and all of that stuff.”

Eliminating sprawl.—EH

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CYBERSECURITY

Buckle up!

Sopa Images/Getty Images

A zero-day exploit of Oracle’s PeopleSoft offerings exposed data at auto manufacturer Nissan, including payroll, tax data, social security numbers, and other sensitive employee information. Is there a lesson here for IT professionals tasked with securing their tech stack?

According to a breach notification submitted by Nissan, the attack reportedly took place between May 27 and June 9. The company said in a statement that it “quickly activated incident response protocols” and has been communicating with authorities about a response.

Lloryn Love-Carter, senior manager of corporate communications at Nissan, wrote in an email to IT Brew: “While the investigation is ongoing, certain employee information was accessed without authorization. We are communicating directly with employees and will provide updates as appropriate.”

The breach. In its notification, Nissan stated that attackers accessed unauthorized data that manages personally identifiable information (PII). The event also involved an “unknown vulnerability” in Oracle’s PeopleSoft software.

Dangerous road ahead.—CN

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: Over 700,000. That’s how many users had their PII exposed due to a vulnerability in the Vatican’s official prayer app. (Dark Reading)

Quote: “Even for how quickly some botnets can rebound, theirs was surprising. We’ve seen them all rebuild, but we haven’t seen anybody do it that fast.”—Ryan English, information security engineer at Black Lotus Labs, on botnets repopulating despite takedowns (CyberScoop)

Read: Who’s blaming AI for layoffs? Monday.com is among the latest. (TechCrunch)

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Written by Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins, and Caroline Nihill

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☕ Geeking out