Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

The security community has long operated on a foundational belief: Sharing knowledge makes everyone safer. Researchers publish technical blogs, release proof-of-concept (POC) code, and distribute scanning templates to help defenders understand vulnerabilities, prioritize patching, and build better detections. This belief is not wrong, but it is incomplete. The same public research that helps defenders understand a vulnerability also hands adversaries a roadmap to exploit it.

If you’ve spent the past few weeks responding to security advisories, you know what a challenge it is to keep delivery moving. As AI accelerates how quickly vulnerabilities can be found and exploited, it makes fundamentals like credential security more important. While a vulnerability may let attackers into an environment, credentials often determine how fast and how far they can move laterally within an environment. Once inside, they may search for credentials to use elsewhere.

Five steps to review the credentials behind your apps, tools, and AI agents.

A Fortune 500 CISO recently told me, “If you are not implementing some form of autonomous threat detection and response, then even your best defenders will fall behind.” Attackers have weaponized AI and automation, driving up alert volume and threat sophistication. The use of agentic AI for defense is an absolute necessity to level the playing field. Security leaders now face a foundational decision: Build a homegrown AI SOC platform or buy a commercial one?

We all know that a Privileged Access Management system protects identities that have privileged access. Usually, we think of people, such as employees or IT administrators. But that is not even the tip of the iceberg. Knowing the types of identities in PAM is important because there are many identities that are often overlooked by businesses. And it is these identities that create security vulnerabilities.

It is easy to integrate IAM with popular applications. Most of them support SSO out of the box. But what if you have applications that you developed internally? These applications often have their own login mechanisms, user databases, and authorization rules. Let’s explore how IAM integration with custom applications works, including the integration methods, implementation steps, challenges, and security practices you need to consider.

CVE-2026-123158 is a password authentication bypass in sshd on Linux systems where sshd is linked against musl libc and runs without PAM. The CVE record rates it CVSS 3.1 8.1 (High); NVD analysis is pending. OpenSSH fixed it in Portable OpenSSH 10.6p2 on November 5, 2026. It was reported by Özgün Kültekin of Wakefield.

Acronis Chief Information and Security Officer (CISO) Gerald Caron connects modern cyber defense with mission outcomes, Zero Trust and the responsible use of AI. His perspective places the mission at the center of cybersecurity, drawing on a career in public service, where security decisions are closely connected to accountability, continuity and mission outcomes.