October 15, 2026

Presented By

Hello, Thursday! We’re midway through October, which means now is a prime moment to pull out those Halloween-themed phishing simulation emails.

In today’s edition:

🎫 Ticket intel

🎛️ Channel surfing

↕️ Going up!

—Billy Hurley, Brianna Monsanto

IT OPERATIONS

Taking a closer look

Photo collage showing a woman from behind speaking into a headset, with abstract AI network nodes and patterns around her.

Shannon May, Photos: Adobe Stock, Unsplash

Help desk tickets like “can’t log in,” or “computer is slow,” or “I spilled a Stanley Cup’s worth of coffee on my laptop,” might offer more useful information than you might assume.

When analyzed for metrics like volume, sentiment, and seasonality, help desk data can reveal larger tech problems and warning signals within the organization—including broken processes or workflows that could use a little automation.

Categories. Before you can spot troubling trends, you need informative, well-defined categories, according to Robert Rohrman, SVP of IT infrastructure at certifications and training body CompTIA. Increases in specific ticket types allow IT pros to zoom in on specific areas of need.

“If you just see a spike in ‘software,’ what is that really telling you?” Rohrman said. Software, he added, could mean a marketing team’s platform, Excel, or video-editing tool.

Trend spotter.—BH

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Defining what AI can change: Softr handles authentication, permissions, and data restrictions separately from generated code.
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Maintaining oversight as teams build: Shared governance and audit logs help IT manage access and review activity.

With Softr, teams can build without shadow IT debt. They maintain their tools within a platform IT can govern, thanks to Softr managing hosting and the back end.

See how Softr helps IT stay in control.

CYBERSECURITY

Everywhere all at once

Red mouse shattering a speech bubble; signifying a cyberattack on comms

Francis Scialabba

Like your friend who’s tuned into NFL RedZone every Sunday, threat actors these days are on many channels at once.

In these “omnichannel” or “multichannel” attacks, an adversary might send a fake password-reset email, then phone a minute later, pretending to be the help desk. They may even follow up with a message on an internal comms platform. By reaching out on three different channels, there’s a greater chance an attacker may appear authentic, especially to a harried employee.

“They’re very calculated pathways meant to create trust,” Chris Nyhuis, co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm Vigilant, said of this attack tactic.

This year, vendor security teams have disclosed instances of attackers using multiple communication methods in quick succession. For instance, Microsoft, in September, revealed a convincing combination of social engineering and realistic infrastructure to collect targeted data.

But multichannel attacks require a bit of legwork.—BH

CLOUD

Scale up

Abstract illustration of a stack of squares, representing the different layers of a tech stack.

Shannon May

We’ve all been there. Your website is hit by a spike in traffic and suddenly, you’re faced with one burning question: How will you increase your server capacity?

For IT pros seeking a temporary fix, vertical scaling may be the answer. Vertical scaling (a.k.a., “scaling up”) is when more resources (RAM, CPU, etc.) are added to a system or server to increase its capacity, as opposed to upping capacity through additional machines. (The latter is known as horizontal scaling.)

“The way I like to think about it is just maximizing a single host or server or instance to get the most out of that one thing instead of creating a more complicated environment with multiple redundant hosts,” Ben Bernstein, manager of cybersecurity advisors at Huntress, told IT Brew.

What’s it good for? According to Osmar Olivo, senior director of product management and core database at MongoDB, a company may choose to scale up because it is often quicker and simpler than horizontal scaling.

The best times to scale up.—BM

Sponsored By Zoom

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 49.8%. That’s the proportion of tech pros who suspect or were able to confirm that an agent in their organization took unintended, unexpected, or unauthorized action within the past year. (ITPro)

Quote: “What companies are facing today is an AI zoo—dozens of unsanctioned LLMs in daily use across the workforce, each one widening the organization’s exposure to data leaks and security breaches.”—Andrius Buinovskis, NordLayer VP of product strategy, on the shadow AI problem (TechRadar)

Read: Goodbye, ~~Columbus~~ neoclouds? (The Register)

Power (management) to the people: A little extra cash doesn’t hurt either. Take this 2-minute survey about power management for the chance to win a $300 AmEx gift card.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

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✳︎ A Note From Zoom

†Quickbase, 2025

Written by Billy Hurley and Brianna Monsanto

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