November 11, 2026

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Wednesday! Everything old is new again: Most US consumers plan to buy at least one secondhand item this holiday season.

In today’s edition:

👻 Ghosted!

🔌 Have you tried turning it off?

💼 AI jobs to the rescue

—Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins

CYBERSECURITY

Who ya gonna call?

Credit: Morning Brew Design, Photos: Adobe Stock, Koi / The Noun Project

If you thought your regular sysadmin scared you after you spilled coffee on your laptop twice in one week, there’s a far spookier IT figure lurking in the forgotten corners of the infrastructure: the ghost admin.

A ghost admin, according to Craig Birch, principal technologist at identity-management software company Cayosoft, refers to a non-human entity capable of administrative impact (think: controlling access or managing data) without any kind of administrative governance.

Left unnoticed, this invisible, often highly privileged account can be hijacked and brought back to life, zombie style, ready to eat the heart of your IT infrastructure.

Here’s what to do if there’s something strange in your Active Directory and it…don’t look good.

What causes ghost admins?—BH

Sponsored By Proton

The big cyber shore-up

A shortcut that’s fine for a team of three becomes a risk at 30. That’s security debt, and it builds up as you grow.

Proton Workspace helps you build good security habits from the start. Their SSO and SCIM give people access when they join and remove it when they leave, automatically.

New admin roles mean only the right people have admin access. It also requires 2FA and set sharing rules for your whole team, while Proton VPN keeps your team’s connection secure wherever they work. Activity logs can even make security reviews and client checks easier.

IT Brew readers get 40% off all plans for Black Friday.

IT STRATEGY

Cut!

Morning Brew Inc.

Troubleshooting an AI agent might rely on an old IT classic: turning it off and back on again.

These days, as agents have demonstrated an ability to break free of their designated boundaries, many IT pros, pundits, and even legislators are debating the formerly sci-fi idea of a “kill switch”: a mechanism that shuts an agent down before it can do more damage.

In July, California Democratic Congressman Ted W. Lieu and Texas Republican Congressman Nathaniel Moran introduced the AI Kill Switch Act, which would require developers of the most powerful AI systems to maintain the technical capability to halt their creations’ operations. (A Senate bill, announced in September, also proposes an “emergency button” to facilitate AI system shutdown.)

Lieu and Moran’s bill came just two days after OpenAI disclosed that one of its internal models bypassed its sandbox restrictions, hit the open internet, and exploited vulnerabilities to access internal systems of machine-learning startup Hugging Face.

But it’s not that simple.—BH

SNAP POLL

Is your organization already thinking about how to implement post-quantum cryptography?

⚛️ Yes
🔓 No

IT STRATEGY

Bumped up

human and AI robot looking at growth in chart

Getty Images

A strong national jobs report trickled down to the tech sector as AI continued to push the industry’s fortunes.

According to numbers from CompTIA, tech unemployment fell from 3.3% in September to 2.8% in October. It’s a stronger number than the national unemployment rate of 4.1%, which also saw a month over month drop.

AI is helping to drive tech jobs, Seth Robinson, CompTIA VP of research, explained in a statement accompanying the numbers. Knowledge of how to navigate the new IT reality is key, with things changing so rapidly.

“The strength in tech hiring and job postings is encouraging, but the bigger story is where the demand is occurring,” Robinson said. “Employers across industries are looking for people with software, AI, cybersecurity, data, systems, and networking capabilities, reinforcing the value of building adaptable technology skills.”

Job listings for AI-specialized roles are on the rise.—EH

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: Around 17,000. That’s the current supply of forward-deployed engineers within the US. (the Wall Street Journal)

Quote: “Nvidia is not an ordinary company and Jensen is not an ordinary CEO; he IS Nvidia.”—Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon on the US chip giant and its CEO, who is currently at the center of an alleged Chinese spy affair probe (CNBC)

Read: All about Microsoft’s new test-free credential. (The Register)

Security hygiene: Proton Workspace helps you build good security habits from the start. Their SSO and SCIM give people access when they join and remove it when they leave, automatically. IT Brew readers get 40% off all plans for Black Friday.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

AI meets virtualization

Three server racks covered in glowing binary code

Illustration: Amelia Kinsinger, Photos: Adobe Stock

AI and cloud are reshaping virtualization. An NCC expert says AI complicates the mash-up of containerized stacks sitting on top of other operating technologies. This deep dive untangles what that means for IT teams.

Check it out

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Written by Billy Hurley and Eoin Higgins

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