The major news in technology policy circles is this month’s release of the long-anticipated Executive Order (E.O.) on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. While E.O.s govern policy areas within the direct control of the U.S. government’s Executive Branch, they are important broadly because they inform industry best practices and can even potentially inform subsequent laws and regulations in the U.S. and abroad.

Adversaries are becoming more sophisticated and faster with their attacks. According to the CrowdStrike 2023 Threat Hunting Report, the average eCrime breakout time is just 79 minutes. This is partly due to adversaries taking advantage of tools that leverage automation like password-cracking tools, exploit kits for web browser vulnerabilities, and marketplaces that sell stolen data.

Today’s adversaries increasingly use compromised credentials to breach target environments, move laterally and cause damage. When attackers are logging in — not breaking in — legacy endpoint security offers little help in detecting and stopping breaches. Exacerbating the problem is an expanding attack surface, largely due to the growth of remote work and evolving supply chains.

Modern applications are designed to process, use and store vast amounts of sensitive data. As adversaries seek to infiltrate these applications, IT and security teams must ensure the software they use has the strongest possible security. The first step to implementing strong application security is understanding the type of application you need to protect. The two types of applications security teams must be familiar with are custom-developed software and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software.

The holiday season brings a shift in how people and businesses operate: Some companies may partially shut down, leaving only a skeleton crew to manage their IT environments, while others head into their busiest time of year. This seasonal change in staffing and business operations, combined with the general holiday distraction, often creates risk and makes organizations more vulnerable to cybercrime.

Cyber risks for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have never been higher. SMBs face a barrage of attacks, including ransomware, malware and variations of phishing/vishing. This is one reason why the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) states “thousands of SMBs have been harmed by ransomware attacks, with small businesses three times more likely to be targeted by cybercriminals than larger companies.”

CoreWeave is a specialized GPU cloud provider powering the AI revolution. It delivers the fastest and most consistent solutions for use cases that depend on GPU-accelerated workloads, including VFX, pixel streaming and generative AI. CrowdStrike supports CoreWeave with a unified, AI-native cybersecurity platform, protecting CoreWeave’s architecture by stopping breaches.