When a primary server or database goes down, every second of downtime costs money. Automatic failover detects those failures and redirects traffic to a standby system without paging anyone at 3 am. Even consumer networking hardware is catching up in this regard.

For years, installing an npm package has meant trusting that every package in the dependency tree will behave as expected. Whether code originated from the npm registry, a Git repository, a remote URL, or an installation script buried deep within a transitive dependency, npm would typically execute or retrieve it automatically during the installation process.

Sharing applications with the world is no easy task. Developers struggle to ensure compatibility across different platforms, vendors continually search for new channels to showcase and distribute their software, and users often encounter hurdles when installing and updating the applications. To help solve this challenge, Microsoft offers multiple solutions including its Microsoft Store, the native Windows Installer component (.msi packages), and a lesser-known but powerful option: ClickOnce technology.

A few weeks ago, we published our initial findings from Project Glasswing, looking at what happens when you point frontier security models at an enterprise codebase. We also explored how our defensive structures adapt to protect our infrastructure and customers from threats posed by frontier AI.

Microsoft Build 2026 delivered a clear message: AI is no longer being positioned as a standalone productivity tool. It is becoming a core platform capability embedded across the Microsoft ecosystem. From AI agents to developer tooling and enterprise governance, this year’s event focused on helping organisations move from AI experimentation to operational adoption. For UK businesses, the most important takeaway is not a single announcement.

Following our deep dive into the internals of ClickOnce application deployment in Part 1 of this two-part blog series, let’s focus on the security implications of this technology. In this blog, we examine how threat actors can weaponize ClickOnce features, and we reveal what we believe to be a new abuse that security teams need to be aware of.

The economics of continuous security at frontier-model prices, and why the math points back to independence. The frontier models are astonishing at finding vulnerabilities. That is not in dispute, and it is not what this piece is about. The question is not whether a frontier model can find a flaw in your code. It is whether you can afford to run one as your scanner, continuously, across your entire estate, the way real security actually works.

CISA Binding Operational Directive 26-04: Prioritizing Security Updates Based on Risk requires Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies to prioritize security updates based on operational risk, not just severity. It builds on earlier Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) directives by combining exposure, exploitation, impact, and prioritization logic into a more actionable remediation model.