IT STRATEGY

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We hate to break it to you, but unfortunately, the rules of “finders, keepers” do not apply to your IT talent.

That means organizations need to invest time and effort into strong employee retention programs to decrease the chances of top-notch employees jumping ship.

Preservatives. There are several reasons why companies may want to prioritize employee retention. Iccha Sethi, SVP of engineering at Vanta, told IT Brew long-standing employees are key holders of business context, making them crucial players for supporting business growth.

“It makes them more effective at taking on more complex challenges over time, solving problems faster,” Sethi said. “They also become a great resource for helping onboard newer employees.”

Megan Slabinski, a district president at management consulting company Robert Half, added that the hiring market is currently picking up. According to a 2026 report from the firm, 78% of tech hiring managers plan to increase full-time headcount in the second half of this year. Companies losing talent not only have to compete with other businesses that are hiring, but may need to hire for more roles than expected.

And companies with turnover risk damaging their reputation.—BM

      

Sponsored By PwC

No judgement, but how long has your organizational scaffolding been up? Months? Years? It maaay be starting to crumble if you don’t get on that.

In Agentic scaffolding: How to build new AI workflows and a nimbler organization, PwC explains how agentic scaffolding can give your org a structured, governed, and sturdy way to build new AI workflows from the ground up and subsequently check in with the existing scaffolding you have in place.

PwC notes that your roadmap could start with just three decisions.

Read them here and choose your outcome.

IT OPERATIONS

Francis Scialabba

It happens to Bournes, Bonds, and bots alike: Eventually, some agents need to retire.

Professional services firm KPMG’s Q2 2026 numbers reveal that, among more than 200 senior business leaders at US companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more, AI agents have a 53% adoption rate. That’s a solid rate for deployment—but what happens if a company wants to un-deploy one, two, or even all of them?

There are many reasons to cut an AI agent from the tech stack: New and better ones might come along, for example, or maybe that latest research bot just isn’t providing the sales team with the right answers. But doing so without careful consideration could lead to problems related to security, service outages, and angry users.

We spoke with agentic pros about how to give an AI agent its burn notice.

Proper decommissioning means disabling the credentials.—BH

      

WORD OF THE WEEK

Site reliability engineer: More AI adoption means more work for site reliability engineers. Site reliability has always had a role in the digital landscape; with AI making things faster and more efficient, SREs are increasingly important for system management. Learn more.

CYBERSECURITY

Francis Scialabba

As anybody who follows cybersecurity knows, when a new technology emerges, it’s usually followed by a threat actor trying to -jack it up.

There’s clickjacking (tricking someone into hitting a disguised URL), sessionjacking (stealing a token to impersonate a user and gain their web access), and DNSjacking (redirecting someone to an attacker-controlled destination). And now, with attackers trying to take over large language models, we have…LLMjacking.

This is more than just freeloadin’ freecoders using compromised access to steal AI services for their personal use: LLMjackers are building attack tools now, too.

LLMjacked up. Cloud security company Sysdig (which claims to have coined “LLMjacking” in May 2024) describes the tactic as “using stolen cloud credentials to gain access to a victim’s paid AI model services and leverage the compute power.”

Crystal Morin, senior cybersecurity strategist at Sysdig, has seen an evolution in how attackers leverage cloud-based LLMs once they obtain access.

Some are even creating automated attack tools.—BH

      

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patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 60%. That’s the percentage of US adults who feel “not too or at all comfortable with a new data center operating in their area,” according to a recent report. (Pew Research Center)

Quote: “The reality is that no state, red or blue, is relying upon the federal government for this assistance at this point.”—David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, on election cybersecurity help (the Associated Press)

Read: Federal tech workers are reportedly worried about AI tests being used to determine government website accessibility. (the Washington Sun)

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