October 22, 2026

Presented By

Then, Thursday! In case you haven’t heard, a critical vulnerability in PHP is putting huge swaths of the internet at risk. Patch now.

In today’s edition:

💥 Boom time

▶️ Service tips

✔️ Make it

—Billy Hurley, Eoin Higgins

IT OPERATIONS

Crash and learn

3D blue, pink, and green error alerts layered over each other

Amelia Kinsinger

A website crash takes many forms. For example, WordPress Security Specialist Stefan Ristić recently helped a theater nonprofit deal with the slings and arrows of a 503 error (which indicate temporarily unavailable servers, often due to an overload of requests).

“For a few hours the site worked fine. Then, for a few hours, it did not work because the server could not serve those requests from the visitors. It was basically clogged with a ton of requests,” Ristić, also the founder of domain security research project TLDWP, told us.

Root of the issue.—BH

Sponsored By HUMAN Security

Knock knock—guess who’s there? AI agents.

They’re already at your digital door. Which ones will you let in?

The HUMAN Iris Report: CISO and CMO Perspectives on Agentic Traffic Visibility found that 98% of CMOs know AI agents are visiting their sites, but only 4% can quantify them.

This visibility gap has consequences. Agent traffic can shape marketing performance, customer journeys, and security risk. Without knowing who’s behind the traffic, teams are left making decisions with incomplete data.

Capturing perspectives from 100 CMOs and CISOs, the report shows what leaders can measure today, where their visibility gaps remain, and what they would change with better information.

Learn what CMOs and CISOs can actually measure.

SOFTWARE

Order up!

Morning Brew Inc.

Embedding a “place order” button on your site requires just a few lines of code, but don’t be fooled by the simplicity: behind the simple icon is the opportunity for lots of clickable chaos.

Initiating an online purchase sets off a chain of interactions, including tasks as diverse as asset management, forecasting, payment processing, delivery, and fraud protection. The button also adds to a company’s set of responsibilities.

“Do you understand it changes the nature of your business? Do you understand inventory and logistics management?” Aaron Hutten, CTO at digital commerce consultancy Studio Science, said. “Do you understand that you have to grow year over year and that your site or your app is going to be a living and breathing entity the second [the button is] turned on?”

Pick me up.—BH

CYBERSECURITY

Certifiable

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

Shannon May

When it comes to managing certificate inventory, IT pros need to be aware of the importance of a changing environment—and identities.

Many organizations and enterprises are facing challenges in keeping up with a rapidly changing and evolving certification space.

But changes in certificate inventory validity adds a sense of chaos to how teams approach management, said RapidScale CISO Brent Neal.

“You can’t use a person to go run through all the hundreds or thousands of certificates you may have—it’s becoming unfeasible,” Neal said. “That’s where I see where we are right now in the certificate management world, a little bit of chaos on what we need to do, and that does lead to knock-on effects for security.”

Manage it.—EH

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 52%. That’s how much of SpaceX’s business income comes from its AI business. (TechCrunch)

Quote: “Step one, solve intelligence. Step two, solve everything else.”—Demis Hassabis, DeepMind co-founder, on why he started the company (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: A crypto detective tracks a scam back to her own family. (Wired)

Check the (digital) peephole: Nonhuman traffic shapes your performance data, customer journeys, and risk decisions. The HUMAN Iris Report: CISO and CMO Perspectives on Agentic Traffic Visibility shows how organizations navigate agentic traffic with discernment. Get the report.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

Jobs

CollabWORK connects you to the hidden job market through IT Brew and other trusted channels. Browse roles curated specifically for this community by clicking through to the job board.

Share the Brew

Share the Brew, watch your referral count climb, and unlock brag-worthy swag.

Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win.

Your referral count: 0

Click to Share

Or copy & paste your referral link to others:
itbrew.com/r/?kid=71df84e8

Written by Billy Hurley and Eoin Higgins

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here.

Get smarter in just 5 minutes

Tech & AI News: Tech Brew
Markets News: Brew Markets
Real Estate News: The Playbook
Money & Career: Bossy

Take The Brew to work

Interested in podcasts?

Check out ours here.

ADVERTISE//CAREERS//SHOP//FAQ

Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here.
View our privacy policy here.

Copyright © 2026 Morning Brew Inc. All rights reserved.
22 W 19th St, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10011

☕ Log jam