October 20, 2026

Presented By

Tuesday! Time to DIY a Halloween costume if you don’t have one ready. Our best recommendation? Pick the scariest thing you can think of, like an employee who’s recently answered a phishy call or email…and didn’t report it!

In today’s edition:

🤖 Musings

🔥 Tech’s hottest new club

🧼 Clean it up

—Eoin Higgins, Patrick Kulp, Caroline Nihill

CYBERSECURITY

Muse on

Meta Muse mascot Jolly on a billboard advertisement

Getty Images

Meta wants to be the muse for tech inspiration—but its new product might be more of a problem than a solution.

The company’s new personal agentic AI assistant, Muse, can access massive volumes of user data. That’s an issue for IT pros whose organizations allow bring-your-own-device (BYOD) with company information on employee phones.

As Storyblok CEO Dominik Angerer told IT Brew, the issue didn’t begin with Meta.

“The concern started already with Siri because it also reads the emails off the screen itself and tries to help you by summarizing things,” Angerer said. “And now that Siri is going to be powered by [Gemini] intelligence, you have another third-party liability topic.”

Sing to me, o Muse.—EH

Sponsored By JumpCloud

May AI ask permission?

AI agents can get work done without waiting for a person at every step, but not every action should carry the same level of autonomy.

New research from JumpCloud found that 46% of organizations allow high-risk agent actions to happen automatically and review the logs afterward. Only 18% require human approval first.

The answer isn’t putting a human in every loop. IT needs controls that reflect what an agent actually does. Routine, appropriately scoped actions may require less oversight, while privileged or high-impact actions warrant stronger guardrails.

That starts with identity: knowing which agent is acting, who owns it, what it’s allowed to do, and maintaining a record of what happened.

See how to secure every identity, human or not.

IT STRATEGY

You will be…popular!

Two colleagues sitting side-by-side in front of a desktop computer, one is pointing to the screen while the other listens

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc. Photo: Nina Lawrenson/Adobe Stock

Thomas Baucom is friendly and unassuming, for someone who holds what’s been hailed as the “hottest job in tech.”

He’s a forward-deployed engineer (FDE) at Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, where he embeds with clients like universities and large companies to solve their specific problems using customized coding and product fixes.

His title was virtually nonexistent before last year, and now it’s everywhere. Amazon invested $1 billion in a forward-deployed engineer org in June, only to be quickly outdone by Microsoft’s $2.5 billion FDE investment. Google and Accenture jointly announced their own version last month.

The trend is being driven by the complexities of implementing AI at companies, according to Mukul Saha, a senior director analyst at Gartner.

The IT crowd.—PK

IT OPERATIONS

Educated guesses

AI visual representation with colorful dialogue windows

Getty Images

Is there a way to keep data constantly AI-ready—even when the next AI trend is largely unknown?

Ramon Thomas, a strategic advisor at IT services and consulting company World Wide Technology, told IT Brew that “data is the crux of all AI initiatives,” while acknowledging that many organizations have historically struggled with data quality in general.

Poor data quality can lead to a “garbage in, garbage out” situation where poorly structured, undefined data ingested by an AI model leads to poor results, according to Thomas.

According to a 2026 Cloudera report, only 7% of respondents (which included people involved in their organization’s data decisions, and whose organizations were actively exploring, testing, or running AI projects) said their organization’s data is completely ready for AI adoption. Over one-quarter (27%) of those surveyed said their data is either not very or not at all ready.

Prep for the future.—CN

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 700. That’s how many supermarkets throughout France experienced a mass hacking of refrigeration systems that led to spoiled food, fires, and more. (Ars Technica)

Quote: “So, if in the previous election you could have seen fake websites aimed at getting people to actually read it, and containing content built to impact what they’re thinking, what we’re seeing here is…now instead of spending time and effort on getting people to read the content, [they’re] getting into their AI and being influenced by that.”—Nitsan Daniel, chief technology officer and co-founder of VisionHeight, on chatbots being manipulated to influence political campaigns (CyberScoop)

Read: Fake AI attacks are on the rise, and attackers are using ClickFix-like methods to target enterprises. (DarkReading)

Too much automation? 46% of organizations allow high-risk AI agent actions before human review. As agents gain autonomy, IT needs identity, appropriate permissions, and oversight that reflects the action. See how Agentic IAM works.*

^{*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 Eoin Higgins, Patrick Kulp, and Caroline Nihill

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

☕ Muse behind it all