August 26, 2026

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It’s Wednesday! It’s almost September! Time to swap out your laptop’s beach-themed wallpaper for some crisp autumn leaves.

In today’s edition:

🐛 Data caterpillar

⛔ MFA workaround

🧠 How to train your SDR

—Eoin Higgins, Caroline Nihill, Tricia Crimmins

CLOUD

C-AI-terpillar

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That construction site is producing a new building—and tons of data for analysis.

Caterpillar machines are sending information from jobsites to the company’s tech team, which can be used to not only provide insights into how equipment is operating but also ways to improve the products. Jaime Mineart, Caterpillar’s CTO, told IT Brew at the Ai4 conference this month in Las Vegas that this high-volume collection of sensor and machine data integrates with AI systems embedded on the machines.

“We’ve got 1.6 million connected assets; we have over 16 petabytes of data in a very high-quality, highly structured way,” Mineart said. “When you combine that data with the intelligence that we have on our machines and the understanding of how machines wear, how machines operate, we can serve up a lot more valuable insights and recommendations for our customers.”

AI is also helping boost revenue for the company.—EH

Sponsored By JumpCloud

Confidence is key, but so is governance

How IT leaders feel about AI doesn’t look like it matches up with how they handle it.

In a recent JumpCloud survey of 800 IT leaders, 98% said they were confident in their ability to govern AI securely. The same survey found an average of just 3.1 of 10 recommended controls being implemented.

The issue is that AI agents don't behave like anything IT has governed before. Sometimes they simply run quietly in the background, and when the project ends, nothing prompts anyone to turn them off.

The governance frameworks for human identities are not designed for this. While confidence is high, the infrastructure just hasn't caught up. That’s why JumpCloud built Agentic IAM to help close the gap.

Learn how to secure every identity, human or not.

CYBERSECURITY

Brand new MFA

A thief surrounded by cards on fishing hooks floating above a laptop.

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If you’re trusting all of your organization’s cybersecurity to multifactor authentication (MFA), we have bad news for you: Attackers are getting much better at sidestepping it.

In a new report, identity and access management company Okta found that cyberattackers are using a new phishing kit to bypass MFA and obtain credentials via vishing attacks. Targets of potential attacks could include customers of Salesforce Identity, Microsoft Entra, and Okta itself.

According to the report, Okta obtained an inside view of this kit, “Work Panel,” which it described as a “multi-tenant platform” with tools for setting up new phishing domains and sites, and cloning targets.

Method of attack. This particular phishing attack is designed to mimic the sign-on experience from an identity provider.

How the attack works.—CN

IT STRATEGY

SDR x AI

Four white squares stacked on top of one another.

Morning Brew Design

For business majors hoping to land an entry-level sales job in the next year, the proliferation of AI into SDR and BDR roles might seem like a nightmare. And trepidation is certainly warranted: Some companies are using AI to accomplish work that would otherwise be delegated to entry-level employees. Some are hiring fewer recent grads—or expecting them to be trained right out of school.

But others are reimagining how SDRs and BDRs can work alongside AI in a way that prepares recent grads for the sales landscape they’ll be working in long-term. These investments in training new hires on the technology and changes in job descriptions poke holes in the pervasive narrative that all entry-level sales jobs will be wiped off the map by AI.

Right-hand man

A pioneering example is that of Asymbl, a workforce orchestration company that paired (human) BDR Mitch Canaday with an AI agent dubbed “Teddy” that would do the same work as Canaday.

How Canaday and Teddy trained together.—TC

Sponsored By Resolve.io

Vet the bot + call the shots. Four rounds for a human hire but zero questions for the AI before prod? No wonder agents screw up. Resolve’s AgentLab lets you define an agent’s role, guardrails, and skills in plain English—and chat with it before it deploys. Then cut manual tickets by up to 90%, on the terms you’ve defined.

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: $1.6 trillion. That’s how much revenue the global semiconductor industry is expected to bring in this year, according to Gartner. (The Register)

Quote: “An AI agent lets them ask a plain-language question—such as ‘which users are registered without MFA?’—and get an immediate, prioritized answer instead of a week of manual work.”—Sivan Tehila, CEO at cybersecurity company Onyxia Cyber, on how agents can benefit security teams (CSO Online)

Read: Old, but still security gold. (BBC)

Confidence conundrum: JumpCloud's research found that despite 98% of IT leaders saying they’re confident in AI governance, they've only implemented just 3.1 of 10 recommended controls on average. Learn how to secure every identity.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

AI and IT e-book

Amelia Kinsinger

AI cuts both ways for IT pros—speeding up coding and threat detection but adding workflow complexity, too. This e-book breaks down where AI actually helps versus where it’s just hype, with advice on navigating the shift.

Check it out

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Written by Eoin Higgins, Caroline Nihill, and Tricia Crimmins

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