Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

In late July 2026, 36 municipal waste and water systems across Minnesota were targeted in a cyber attack. The attackers targeted Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) that were in control of pressure, pumps, and chemical dosing. When the news broke, it felt like it was everywhere. This was an attack on critical systems, systems that we require and use daily. But cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure systems like water, hospitals, sewage, gas, and electricity aren’t new.

Security teams can spend years tuning DLP rules for the tools they know about. But, then an employee will paste a customer list into an AI assistant that did not exist on any policy six months ago, and the rule never fires. The tool was not on the list, and once the data returns as a summary, it no longer matches the pattern a rule was written for either, creating risk the security team is completely blind to. A bigger rule set does not close this new risk gap.

Privileged Access Management (PAM) helps small businesses control, monitor and secure access to sensitive systems, administrator accounts and business-critical applications. It reduces the risk of credential theft, excessive permissions and unauthorized access, without requiring a large IT or security team. Small businesses are now one of the most targeted groups by cybercriminals. Attackers know that SMBs often run on lean IT teams, shared credentials and minimal oversight of who can access what.

A model built on industry data produces an industry answer. The obvious next step is to calibrate it to the specific environment, and the obvious place to start is the threat picture, because every organization believes its own is distinctive. ‍ It is the wrong parameter to start with. Some inputs should stay general, some must be local, and the ones that must be local are the harder ones to observe, which is why they get left at a default. ‍

Plenty of material explains what ISO/IEC 42001 contains. Clause by clause, control by control, with a checklist of documents to prepare. The standard itself is a management system specification rather than a control catalogue, and the distinction is where audit preparation goes wrong. ‍ The checklists share one omission.

Atlassian Guard protects your employees through SSO and MFA. It does not cover portal-only customer accounts. However, customers need to access your Jira Service Management (JSM) portal to raise tickets and do so securely. But they often use portal-only accounts, which, in most cases, are protected only by a password. You’ll have security gaps if they don’t authenticate the same way as your employees. You must understand what the limits of Atlassian Guard are.