Hello everyone,
There used to be only 11 months in the year, then some clever German workers invented May.
Thank you, dear ancestors! Bright sunshine, blue skies, lush greenery, colourful blossoms, fresh air, high spirits, and an effective 80% increase in hourly pay thanks to the blessings of public holidays and long weekends. And when you do happen to turn up at the very empty offices, you can simply brush off any kind of task with a “we’re still waiting for feedback” without facing any critical questions. Pro tip: slip in 1–2 sick notes here and there to make the dry spell until the summer break bearable. That way, you can enjoy the collective procrastination even more relaxed.
“Just because you’re fit doesn’t mean you can’t get fitter.” A quote from CEO Matthew Prince in response to the question of why Cloudflare is laying off 20% of its staff despite a record quarter. Apparently, the AI-enhanced colleagues are up to 100 times more efficient than the dregs of the human workforce. At Arctic Wolf, too, ~10% of staff must leave the pack. The same applies to both companies (and all the others not mentioned here): the bills for token consumption are higher than previously budgeted, and every dollar can only be spent once.
What’s more, in reality, it’s more pleasant for long-suffering managers to interact with a machine than with staff who are increasingly seen as uncooperative. AI has no fragile ego and is never offended when I want to change the formatting for the tenth time (and I mean right now!). ChatGPT finds all my jokes funny, forgives my rare mistakes, never criticises me (and certainly not behind my back), shares my worldview and rightly confirms my genius.
Claude doesn’t call in sick the next day out of spite or complain to the works council just because I commented on his miserable performance in front of the whole team. Performance monitoring in general is welcomed with open arms rather than fought against. When I’m prompting, the chatbot watches me patiently and obediently, keeping quiet. Let those overpaid grumps try doing that first, instead of pestering me every minute with annoying staff issues (salary, promotion, working from home, parental leave, height-adjustable desk, etc.).
Ms Langgraph doesn’t expect praise and recognition for every little thing she takes for granted. The lady next door, on the other hand, already knows it all at the age of 26, has more followers on LinkedIn than I do, sees herself as an unrecognised CEO talent following her trainee programme, and relentlessly bombards me with suggestions for improvement. It’s not for nothing that the lion is king of the animal kingdom; after all, he works at the weekend too. And my future team will soon consist entirely of AI lions. Messrs Joule and Codex appear in my office at a moment’s notice, even outside core working hours, whilst recalcitrant colleagues plaster their calendars with ‘Deep Work’ blockers and simply ignore my emails or calls. That is, if they were even theoretically available – after all, it is only May.
Back in the day, you were the boss if you had a large reception area with sights to see, a sprawling org chart under your own name, and absolutely no idea what RAM meant. Long gone! The new status symbol in the boardroom is the local model on the 128 GB MacBook. Anyone who tries to gloss over their technical shortcomings in a department head meeting with quips like “But visually, the whole thing isn’t quite as appealing as my secretary, hehehe” is quickly regarded as dead weight that needs to be disposed of urgently.
Back in the day, you were the boss if you had a large reception area with all the trimmings, a sprawling organisational chart under your name, and absolutely no idea what RAM stood for. That’s long gone! The new status symbol in the boardroom is the local model on the 128 GB MacBook. Anyone who tries to gloss over their technical shortcomings in a department head meeting with quips like “But visually, the whole thing isn’t quite as appealing as my secretary, hehehe” is quickly seen as dead weight that needs to be disposed of urgently.
Agency AI as a security risk? Hello? Ever spoken to the customer support team about phishing-resistant MFA? Discussed the removal of local admin rights with developers? Or walked through logistics on the night shift? By then, at the latest, it’s clear where the real risks lie. On closer inspection, the so-called ‘human firewall’ is more like a clan of semi-organised arsonists.
Of course, my worker node is a bit unpredictable when it comes to output quality. However, the average standard it usually achieves is generally better than the results produced by the human workforce, which vary depending on mood and the day’s form. After all, there are people there who, even after eight years of study, have no grasp of logic and struggle with reading (all hired by my predecessor, of course).
And if an absurd error were to slip through the AI-enhanced review for one of my agents, I can have a lovely chat with my superiors about the imperfections and potential of the technology. With human employees, on the other hand, I’m quickly accused of a lack of leadership skills – followed by ‘Lessons Learnt’ workshops with HR, senior leadership skip-level meetings and mutually unwanted feedback delivered with kid gloves. Nobody needs that. 😉
M&A:
- Akamai acquires LayerX (browser security) for approximately $200 million
- SecurityScorecard acquires Driftnet (CTI / domain scans, similar to Censys or Shodan)
- Cymotive (IIoT+ECU security with many automotive OEMs as customers) is acquired by Indian engineering services provider KPIT
- Torq (AI SOC + SecOps automation) acquires JIT (AI agents for product security)
- WatchGuard acquires ITDR provider Perimeters
- Exaforce (Agentic SOC) secures ~$200 million in funding
- Frame (Awareness from Israel) raises $50 million
Vendor Briefings:
Arvato Systems (Bertelsmann Group):
- 3,500 employees in IT services (of whom an estimated 150 are dedicated to security), 25 locations worldwide, headquarters in Gütersloh
- In principle, their portfolio covers every conceivable (managed) security service. For example, they also offer DevSecOps consultancy for development teams and have their own vulnerability aggregation platform. However, the focus is clearly on IT, not OT/IIoT
- Provide security services for the group (interesting point: no obligation for sister companies to purchase these services; they compete with other providers) + currently for approx. 25 external companies, particularly utilities
- Consequently, extensive experience with complex organisations, multi-tenant architectures and incident runbooks, or granular reporting for individual legal entities
- MSOC/MDR:
- Analysts in Lithuania, Romania and optionally Malaysia (24/7 EU-only coverage also possible)
- Standard tech stacks: SaaS MS Defender/Sentinel, on-premise deployments: Splunk + Cribl. Nozomi for OT. Also open to other solutions
- Pricing: In addition to traditional models such as log-based / number of endpoints, users, etc., flat-rate pricing is now also available to avoid surprises for customers
Novee:
- Israeli start-up specialising in automated penetration testing, DAST and mitigation… using… AI!
- Validation of all identified vulnerabilities for exploitability
- Scope: Currently web apps only; everything else, including on-premises infrastructure, is set to follow
- Tests all possible user interactions with GUIs (in the demo, ~50 browser windows open simultaneously)
- Targeted testing of e.g. WAF bypass, error handling, input validation or session management possible
- Proposes new WAF policies based on findings
- Licensing model based on number of applications and number of tests
Aryon:
- CSPM as a SaaS solution from Israel, developed by the team that pioneered public cloud adoption within the IDF
- Approx. 50 enterprise customers, most in the US (e.g. Transocean), with some already in the EU (hosted in Frankfurt)
- Approach: prevention rather than detection. Example: Azure Firewall rule – inbound RDP for all IPs cannot be created in the first place
- For Azure, AWS and GCP, there are recommended configurations and rule sets (also based on CIS) that are enforced. The policies can, of course, be customised, e.g. with exceptions for specific servers
- Audit mode to avoid directly disrupting running systems. However, it is clear that implementation requires coordination with operations teams
Malwation:
- Malware + URL sandbox from Turkey
- Approx. 30 corporate clients, including many Turkish companies such as Turkish Airlines, as well as Leonardo, Barracuda and the German security consultancy Cirosec, amongst others
- Can also be installed on-premises
- Emulates Windows, Ubuntu, macOS and Android (but no server versions)
- Standard features such as sleep/timeout evasion, screenshot capture
- Max. file size up to 4 GB (significantly higher than most alternatives)
- Reboot emulation on the roadmap
As always, please feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, comments, testimonials, requests for topics, or even opposing views or corrections. The same applies if you wish to unsubscribe from the mailing list.
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Best regards
Jannis Stemmann
