Had a busy week this week, what with our quarterly planning session all day on Tuesday (EOS L10, for those familiar), plenty of sales and networking meetings, and a cookout for lunch today. Also made it downtown twice, Tuesday night for the Tribe game (they’re 3-0 with me in attendance this year) and the Slightly Stoopid show (Millican and Travis thought I was having a stroke when I texted them that) last night. Nautica (or whatever it’s called now) is always a great place for a show, and even better on a night like last night. The inbox had plenty of AI news this week (the new normal), and still found room for ransomware, business email compromise (“man in the middle”), various acts of nature, and more. Enjoy.
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Stolen Identities
“Attackers have realized that they no longer need to hack through firewalls when they can simply log in with stolen credentials.” 79% of ransomware attacks now come through “Identity”, and hackers have found that phishing, social engineering, and credential theft are significantly easier and cheaper than exploiting vulnerabilities. All the more reason for your user base to be educated as it relates to current security threats and issues.
Men in The Middle
Who’s at fault when a town sends $500K+ to a contractor, only to find out that it wasn’t really the contractor? The town blames it on the contractor, and vic versa. And investigators hired by both parties claim their clients weren’t at fault. My guess is that the contractor got hacked, rules were put in place to delete certain emails upon receipt, while forwarding others, and the hackers waited for the contractor to request payment from a client. Then they stepped in.
Ransom Payments
Every IT provider has a data backup system in place, but the key question to ask is “can you recover my data in the event of a disaster?” Ransomware attacks were up 389% in 2025 over 2024, and half the companies who get hit pay the ransom to retrieve data. A couple of problems lie therein; many state, local, and federal governments are now banning ransom payments, and even if you do pay, it’s likely that you won’t recover all of your data.
So, what to do? Starting with an excellent security solution in place, is key. And making sure that not only are your data backups working properly, the data is actually recoverable.
Food and Beverage
If you like Fairlife milk (owned by Coca Cola), you might consider grabbing a few extra bottles. The company was hacked last week, and given until this coming Monday (July 27) to pay up or risk having data leaked. The hack took American production offline, and I’m sure that a week or two like this will have a big effect on the supply.
Recorded Conversations
Sitting in a meeting the other day when somebody said something seemingly profound. Unfortunately, nobody noted it word for word, at which point Travis said “and I don’t have the AI notes taker recording this!” I’ve never recorded a meeting or call, but to many people, it’s now par for the course. And in one woman’s case, she was “triggered” when told she couldn’t record. Because, of course. Talked about this the other day, when somebody said something wise, but couldn’t remember exactly what it was.
Should people be recording everything? Should they tell you when they are? Do you want to record it all, or, are you like me and content to take notes like I was taught in school?
Nature
Had a lot of random nature topics come through the inbox this week… We’ll start with really cool footage of orcas smashing other fish to bits, seemingly to make them easier to eat, and move on to pigeons wearing backpacks so that engineers might make better drones.
Next up is Jimothy the racoon in Seattle followed by a guide to help you figure out what kind of bug bite that is on your leg.
That’s that for this week. A busy weekend ahead, and I hope you have something to keep you occupied, as well.
If you’re a regular reader, you probably know that we spend a lot of time in Northern Ontario, so I was excited to come across this piece titled “A History of Canada in 24 Objects“. It was even better when I found that item #1 was bagged milk, which made me remember the first time I tried to deal with such a thing. And my result was exactly like the writer’s.
Have a great weekend!
Abbey