Experts are advising cybersecurity professionals to stay cautious during the escalating US-Israel war with Iran.

Periods of military escalation in the Middle East, according to the Sophos X-Ops Counter Threat Unit, have correlated with increased concern about state-aligned and “ideologically motivated” cyber threat actors—and attackers linked with Iran have “shown a willingness to conduct disruptive and psychologically oriented operations” during heightened tensions.

Are cyber threats imminent? While Sophos reported an elevated level of cyber risk for government, financial services, and critical infrastructure, the company’s Global Head of Government Partnerships and the Director of Threat Research Alexandra Rose told IT Brew that the risk for most businesses is the same as it was “a week ago.”

“State-sponsored threat actors still have their strategic objectives, and this isn’t going to likely deter them off of what their current objectives are,” Rose said. “Getting money is the criminals’ objective, so this [conflict] just helps them.” For example, employees’ interest in the conflict could lead them to click on malicious links pretending to be legitimate news articles.

How the cyber-threat landscape is changing.—CN

At the Clorox Company, employees have been training religiously for the past few years—not for a marathon, but the company’s transition to a new cloud-based enterprise resource planning system.

In February, Clorox announced it had wrapped a five-year project to upgrade its 20-year-old legacy ERP system to SAP S/4HANA. Clorox SVP and Chief Information and Data Officer Chau Banks told IT Brew the company took a greenfield approach (i.e., starting from scratch rather than upgrading a current ERP system) to the $580 million revamp, which is intended to help it remain “competitive and agile” from a technology standpoint.

“Of course, the ultimate result is to respond faster to consumer needs across the channels,” Banks said, adding that Clorox also wanted a unified platform and data for “end-to-end visibility.”

People skills. Clorox spent the past five years priming its workforce for the modernized ERP system, including 38,000 training hours for more than 5,000 employees. Banks, who said this was the thirteenth major SAP implementation of her career, said that the company prioritized transparency with employees about the purpose of the incoming changes and the potential benefits. Change impact assessments and other evaluations helped inform Clorox’s approach to training, which was provided in a variety of different learning formats to employees.

A squeaky-clean ERP transition.—BM

AI is disrupting the IT job market—and for companies that need trained talent, the answer may lie with existing staff.

Upskilling current workers to work with AI can be an effective solution to the tech talent crisis, said Daniele Grassi, CEO of training hub General Assembly. Grassi and his team recently released the company’s State of Tech Talent 2026 report, which indicates that 80% of HR pros believe upskilling staff AI capabilities will be a path forward.

“All companies, particularly large enterprises, are redefining the way they look at the workforce,” Grassi said. “They need to be more strategic in the way they look at it, they cannot take just a short-term or a reactive approach, as sometimes it has been in the past—and upskilling and reskilling the internal employees is a critical part of the equation.”

Slow down, you move too fast. Still, there are hurdles to the process. General Assembly survey respondents in the HR space listed the barriers to training, including, low participation and buy-in on the part of employees (36%) and low buy-in from leadership (32%). Meanwhile, 47% of all companies say a lack of time is the biggest roadblock, with 46% citing budget.

How AI tech talent is driving the future.—EH

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout-out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.

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