CYBERSECURITY

Anna Kim

If you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. And if you pay a cybercriminal a ransom, they’ll come back for more money.

That’s according to a July Proofpoint report, based on a survey of 953 security pros from 12 countries, in which 54% of global organizations reported paying a ransom in the last year to regain access to their data following an attack. US organizations had the highest ransom payment rate, with 93% of affected organizations admitting to coughing up money to hackers. (Proofpoint noted that the US also had the highest incident rate among examined markets.)

However, paying the ransom didn’t close out the situation for many organizations. While 56% of companies that paid one ransom regained access to their data, more than one-third (37%) said they were burdened with a second extortion demand.

“What the data tells us is that ransomware has evolved beyond a single transactional event where paying attackers restores normal operations,” the report wrote. “It now functions as an ongoing negotiation in which attackers hold multiple forms of leverage at the same time: continued encryption, stolen data, and the threat of public disclosure.”

Why ransomware attackers keep coming back for more.—BM

      

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CYBERSECURITY

Nick Iluzada

For some companies, cheaper might be better when it comes to AI—as long as the right security measures are in place.

Organizations navigating AI implementation are already turning away from tokenmaxxing and trying to restrain their operating costs, especially with cutting-edge “frontier” models produced by Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI giants.

That creates an opening for Chinese tech companies like Moonshot AI and Z.ai (formerly Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Co.), which are offering open-weight and open-source alternatives that organizations can theoretically deploy at cheaper cost than the frontier models.

With open-weight AI models, the “weights” that govern the model’s interpretations of inputted data and how it responds are released to the public for downloading and customization. Open-source AI models, meanwhile, allow users to download and tweak everything, including source code and training data. Provided a company has the infrastructure to run these models, they can prove a less costly alternative to the companies charging per-token for AI usage.

Talk about being open.—CN

      

IT STRATEGY

Morning Brew Inc.

As AI models compete for users amidst uncertain government regulation, experts say that the ability to replace AI systems is crucial for maintaining business operations.

In June, Anthropic temporarily disabled its most advanced frontier models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after the Trump administration ordered the company to suspend access to those models for all foreign nationals. The administration’s move reportedly stemmed from concerns over the potential for those models to be jailbroken and misused, particularly in cyberattacks.

Victor Wieczorek, SVP for offensive security at GuidePoint Security, said the temporary shutdown raised the question of whether organizations and their IT teams should plan for disruptions to their AI setups. For example, a company that previously relied on a single model for its AI work might consider a mix of frontier, legacy, and open-weight models, or even a balance between cloud-based and on-prem AI.

“This injected a lot of uncertainty, and what you have to do with uncertainty is take a step back and plan,” Wieczorek said. “So, now we’re getting a lot of people who are planning better than what they ever did.”

Make the switch.—CN

      

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: Three. That’s how many companies were impacted by Claude’s unauthorized access to outside production environments during internal cyber-capability testing. (Ars Technica)

Quote: “A model does not need to ‘understand’ that it is escaping; it only needs to discover that a vulnerability, exposed credential, or misconfiguration helps it achieve its objective through all available avenues.”—Acceldata CEO Rohit Choudhary on Meta’s AI escaping a testing lab (Dark Reading)

Read: The rise of AI interviewers means job candidates can schedule interviews for whenever…including the very, very early morning hours. (Wired)

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