That 65-inch smart TV in your home can be more dangerous than you think.

That’s according to a joint report from Bitdefender and Netgear, which found that the average smart home receives at least 29 attacks per day via connected devices. Streaming devices and TVs were the most vulnerable connected devices, accounting for 25.9% and 21.3% respectively of exposed devices examined by the two security companies. The report is based on threat intelligence from 6.1 million smart homes in the US, Australia, and Europe collected between January and October this year. The average smart home has 22 connected devices, according to the report.

Sneak attack. Port scanning attacks, which occur when cybercriminals send packets to ports to determine server vulnerabilities, were the most common type of attack in the report’s analysis of 13 billion security events. Bogdan Botezatu, senior director of threat research and reporting at Bitdefender, told IT Brew that these attacks are used to determine what device they can target and how it could be compromised.

“They will be able to identify devices this way, and they will be able to identify vulnerable services running on these devices,” Botezatu said. “If they want to exploit the device, they first need to understand what they’re dealing with.”

Even the fridge isn’t safe.—BM

Humans are often the weakest link in cybersecurity, and the healthcare industry is no exception.

Healthcare workers may not think of themselves as part of the cybersecurity team, but they’re often the last line of defense for facilities when cyberattackers take aim, primarily because they’re often making decisions related to access and identity.

A common way for hackers to access health networks is to steal clinicians’ credentials through social engineering techniques like phishing—whether via emails, calls, or texts—John Riggi, national advisor for cybersecurity and risk at trade and lobbying group the American Hospital Association (AHA), told us.

“Cyber hygiene is as important as medical hygiene to help protect patients from harm,” Riggi said.

See how hospitals are preparing for ransomware.—EH, CC

In a few years, consistent software pricing might join the list of things technology leaders reminisce about as companies deploy new pricing strategies to keep up in the AI era—strategies that might lead those prices to swing wildly depending on a variety of factors.

According to an October Revenera report, more than half (52%) of 501 surveyed product leaders said they plan to roll out new monetization models to combat growing cloud and AI spend.

What are the biggest changes tech leaders can expect to see from pricing models as AI features become the new norm? For starters, a dip in pure subscription-based pricing and a rise in pricing models that blend subscription and usage-based charges. While 42% of surveyed leaders claim to offer pure subscription-based pricing, which was the most popular pricing model for AI offerings, only 37% expect to do so going forward. Revenera found the subscription and usage-based hybrid pricing structure will see a five percentage-point uptick in the future.

Vendors are also considering “outcome-based” pricing.—BM