Business briefing for 09.30.26. By the N2K CyberWire staff Investments and insights. $481M RAISED | 7 DEALS | 3 COUNTRIES * Island has raised $400 million in a Series F round led by Evolution Equity Partners. * Reco has secured $55 million in a strategic investment from AT&T Ventures. * Rig Security has emerged from stealth with $12 million in seed funding led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Brightmind Partners. * RemoteThreat has emerged from stealth with $7 million in pre-seed funding led by Osage University Partners and DataTribe. * Kontext has raised $4 million in funding led by 42CAP, with participation from a16z CSX and HTGF. * Palma.ai has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding led by D11Z. * OneClickComply has raised £1 million (US$1.3 million) in funding from North East Accelerate Fund. Dallas-based enterprise cybersecurity company Island has raised $400 million in a Series F round led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from existing investors Prysm Capital, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Alta Park Capital, Georgian, G Squared, and Squarepoint, alongside another personal investment from Dmitri Alperovitch. The funding brings the company's valuation to $6.4 billion. Island says the funding "will fuel the company's next phase of growth and innovation as enterprises scale AI agents and modernize how work gets done." Florida-based agentic AI security company Reco has secured $55 million in a strategic investment from AT&T Ventures, with support from new investors Forestay and Quadrille Capital. The company says the investment "brings Reco's total funding to $140 million and will support expansion across sales, partnerships, channels and customer support." Israeli identity protection platform provider Rig Security has emerged from stealth with $12 million in seed funding led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Brightmind Partners, with participation from the CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and angel investors. Maryland-based offensive cyber operations platform provider RemoteThreat has emerged from stealth with $7 million in pre-seed funding led by Osage University Partners and DataTribe. The company says it will use the funding to "accelerate deployment of the platform and additional feature development." AI runtime security platform Kontext has raised $4 million in funding led by 42CAP, with participation from a16z CSX and HTGF. The company says the funding "will support the expansion of Kontext's engineering team, continued development of its runtime enforcement platform, and help customers safely deploy AI agents with greater control and visibility." Berlin-based AI security company Palma.ai has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding led by D11Z, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, Deel, Scale Now Ventures, and angel investors. The company says it will use the funding to expand its go-to-market and engineering teams. Security compliance automation platform OneClickComply has raised £1 million (US$1.3 million) in funding from North East Accelerate Fund, with participation from the Venture Sunderland Fund and the Northstar EIS Growth Fund. The company says the funding will be used to expand its platform, grow sales and customer success, and hire more employees. Mergers and acquisitions. 6 DEALS | 6 COUNTRIES * Upwind is acquiring AI cybersecurity startup Aegis. * Epiq has acquired data breach response technology company Canopy. * Omada has acquired Ohio-based agentic AI governance firm EmpowerID. * IBM has acquired UK-based cybersecurity consultancy Logiq Consulting. * Nomios has acquired Portuguese MSSP Orbcom. * IT Solutions Technology Partners has acquired Detroit-based MSSP STACK Cybersecurity. Israeli cloud security company Upwind is acquiring AI cybersecurity startup Aegis (also based in Israel) to establish the Upwind AI Lab. Upwind stated, "We want to combine the speed of a startup with Upwind's engineering, production data, and security expertise. Some of this work will become product, some will become research, benchmarks, and open technical work, and some will simply help us learn faster." New York-based legal software provider Epiq has acquired data breach response technology company Canopy. Epiq stated, "The acquisition enables organizations to manage cyber incidents more efficiently and accurately by combining the Canopy platform with the global scale, cyber expertise, and ongoing AI investment of Epiq." Danish identity security company Omada has acquired Ohio-based agentic AI governance firm EmpowerID. The company says the "acquisition brings EmpowerID's runtime agent governance capabilities into Omada, strengthening its ability to provide security controls for human, non-human and agent identities." IBM has acquired UK-based cybersecurity consultancy Logiq Consulting. IBM stated, "Logiq Consulting extends IBM's cybersecurity transformation portfolio and adds complementary capabilities to SiXworks' (an IBM Company) digital transformation expertise in Defence and the Public Sector. The acquisition advances IBM's broader hybrid cloud, AI and digital sovereignty agenda." Paris-headquartered cybersecurity services provider Nomios has acquired Portuguese MSSP Orbcom. Nomios stated, "The acquisition marks another milestone in Nomios' European expansion, establishing the Group's first foothold in Portugal and further reinforcing its position as the trusted cybersecurity partner for organisations across Europe." Philadelphia-based managed service provider IT Solutions Technology Partners has acquired Detroit-based MSSP STACK Cybersecurity. The company stated, "The acquisition of STACK Cybersecurity expands IT Solutions' presence in Michigan and enhances its ability to provide specialized technology support to businesses throughout the region. This partnership will give clients access to additional cybersecurity governance capabilities, advanced AI expertise, and a broader portfolio of strategic technology services." Executive moves. Filigran has named Mathieu Rigotto as Chief Information Security Officer and Tim Durkee as Senior Vice President of Sales, Americas. Doppel has appointed Joey Rachid as Chief Security Advisor and Field CISO. Rachid most recently served as Global Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Security Officer at Xerox. Rockwell Automation has promoted John Fung as Deputy CISO, Director of Cyber Defense. Fung previously served as the company's Director of Security Operations and Cyber Defense. Microsoft for Startups has named Kevin Magee as Global Head of Industries. Magee previously served as the organization's Global Director of Cybersecurity Startups. Gurucul Security has hired Varun Kohli as Chief Marketing Officer. LogicGate has named Mike Zinne as Chief Customer Officer and Ram Venkat as Senior Vice President of Product. Zinne most recently served as Chief Revenue & Experience Officer at Quiq, while Venkat previously served as Head of Platform Product at Highspot. Selected Reading Marketplace. EigenQ and Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp. Advance Proposed Business Combination with Public Filing of Registration Statement on Form S-4 (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - EigenQ, Inc. ("EigenQ" or the "Company") and Silicon Valley Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: SVAQ) ("SVAQ") today announced the public filing with... Products, services, and solutions. Keyfactor Launches Online Community for Users and Experts Shaping the Future of Trust Infrastructure (Keyfactor) The centralized hub gives members direct access to peers, product experts and trusted resources to solve challenges faster and prepare for what is next in trust infrastructure Sublime Security Launches Email DLP, Becoming the First Platform to Deliver Agentic Email Security for Both Inbound Threat Detection and Outbound Data Protection (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Sublime Security, the agentic email security platform, today announced the general availability of Sublime Email Data Loss Prevention (DLP)... Cribl Launches StreamAI with Free Inference, Giving Enterprises Control over AI Costs (Cribl) AI gateway automatically routes each prompt to the right model, with built-in budget controls that keep AI spend predictable as agents scale Hope Isn't an AI Strategy: RSA Agent ID Closes the Agentic Identity Gap for Highly Regulated Industries (RSA) At The AI Conference in San Francisco, RSA announced RSA Agent ID, the agentic identity security platform for highly-regulated industries. Read the press release to learn more about how the solution helps finance, government, and regulated industries discover, secure, and govern agents. Coverbase Adds Third-Party Risk Veterans as Enterprise Adoption Accelerates (Yahoo Finance) Brian Shaw and Constantine Malaxos join as enterprise customers expand across financial services, healthcare, and technologySAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Coverbase, AI engineered for third-party risk management (TPRM), today announced that Brian Shaw has joined as GTM Lead and Constantine Malaxos as Head of Alliances. Both bring decades of experience building and selling third-party risk technology to large enterprises. In less than a year since closing its Series A, Coverbas Sonar Extends Agentic Code Governance and Verification to Self-Managed Infrastructure (Sonar) Sonar, the global leader in agentic code governance and verification, today announced the general availability of SonarQube Server 2026.5 LTA, enabling enterprises to guide, verify, and continuously resolve issues in agentic code entirely on infrastructure they control, including on-premise, air-gapped, and VPC-restricted environments. RapidFort and Aqua Security Partner to Enhance Aqua Trivy Scanner with RapidFort Curated Images, Advisories and Remediation Data (RapidFort) Trivy Connect Partnership Enables Development and Security Teams to Start with Near-zero CVE Images, Reduce Operational Burden of Vulnerability Management, and Spend Less Time Sorting Through Scanner Noise Ping Identity Launches Identity Agents on Google Cloud Marketplace (Ping Identity) New agents enable employee self-service and identity administration capabilities in Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise DENVER, Sept. 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Ping Identity, a leader in securing... Cloudflare Announces Public Certificate Authority for the Post-Quantum Web (Cloudflare) Automated certificates for everyone, built for today, and hardened for the era of quantum computing Progress Software Launches ShareFile Enterprise, Offering a New Standard in Governance Controls for Enterprise Document Collaboration (Progress Software) New ShareFile Enterprise offering helps organizations scale collaboration without scaling manual administration and security work through enterprise identity management, native data loss prevention and AI-driven threat detection Insiders for Hire: Underground Recruitment, Access Claims and Insider-Enabled Services. (Intel471) Explore the cyber threats targeting the financial sector, from ransomware and fraud to nation-state activity and insider risk. Discover the actors, tactics and trends shaping today's financial threat landscape. Radware Introduces Agent Trust Management to Help Businesses Securely Embrace the AI Agent Economy (GlobeNewswire) New solution captures AI agent intent to continuously assess trust, supporting organizations in more securely engaging with trusted agents while helping to protect applications, business processes and sensitive data Memcyco Advances Upstream Fraud Protection (Memcyco) Memcyco Advances Upstream Fraud Protection With Earlier Attacker Identification and More Actionable Risk Intelligence Auvik Announces New Strategic Partnership with Acronis (Auvik) Partnership embeds Auvik's network management capabilities into the Acronis RMM platform, delivering a comprehensive remote infrastructure management solution in a single console SpecterOps Expands Tradecraft Academy with New AI Frontier Model Tradecraft Course in Partnership with OpenAI (BusinessWire) New Adversary Intelligence: LLM Tradecraft course teaches security practitioners to build, evaluate, attack, and detect LLM and agentic systems Descope Launches Family Accounts to Power Guardian, Dependent, and Household Experiences (GlobeNewswire) Dependent profiles, independent guardianship, family-scoped roles and attributes, and multi-family participation let consumer apps model real family relationships without building custom identity middleware BlackFog Launches ADX Vision 2.0 to Secure the Next Generation of Enterprise AI (BlackFog) ADX Vision 2.0: New release adds seven layers of prompt protection, AI governance and token management as organizations accelerate adoption of agentic AI Cyware and WaterISAC Join Forces to Strengthen Water Sector Cyber Defense (Cyware) Strategic partnership equips water utilities with a leading-edge threat intelligence platform to drive information sharing and protect critical water infrastructure nationwide Fortune 500 Credential Exposure Report 2026 (NordLayer) A Fortune 500 credential leaks every 100 seconds. Get the full 2026 research on exposure by industry, company size, and browser role. Vulnerability Discovery and Exploitation Trends in the AI Era (Google Cloud Blog) GTIG investigated vulnerability disclosure and exploitation statistics and found that AI is measurably changing the pace of vulnerability discovery, exploitation, and the types of vulnerabilities being discovered. Commvault Protects and Recovers Agent Configurations and AI Data that Employees Can't Afford to Lose on Their Laptops (Commvault Systems, Inc.) Commvault today announced that it's enabling IT and Security teams to discover, protect, and recover agent configurations and other AI data in Claude Cowork by Anthropic, Claude Code by Anthropic, and OpenClaw (agentic AI tools) that employees are running on their managed Windows and macOS devices. ESET evolves portfolio for the AI era, delivering effortless cybersecurity as a service (ESET) ESET launches its AI-native PROTECT portfolio, combining AI security, MDR, cyber awareness training and cyber warranty for businesses of all sizes. Versa Earns Highest Rating in Cloud Firewall Test by Leading Independent Lab (Versa Networks) Versa Earns Highest Rating in Cloud Firewall Test by Leading Independent Lab New 2026 comparative report finds Versa with 99.91% security effectiveness and the second lowest price per Mbps among nine products reviewed Santa Clara, Calif. - September 30, 2026 News Summary Versa Cloud NGFW was one of only four vendors tested to earn a The Enterprise Guide to Governing Autonomous AI Agents | TrendAI (US) (TrendAI) In this report, we present the security and governance issues enterprises should consider when adopting and using AI agents. We lay out the risk structure unique to AI agents and present a security framework and a method for technical and organizational controls to support AI adoption. Forward Predict is Now Generally Available, Advancing Safer Agentic NetOps and Autonomous Networking (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Forward today announced that Forward Predict, a first-of-its-kind capability and critical enabler of safe Agentic NetOps, is now generally... Omnissa announces AI innovations that help IT shift to an increasingly autonomous workspace with greater visibility and control (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Omnissa(R), the platform leader for governing digital work, today announced new AI innovations at Omnissa ONE 2026 that accelerate the shift... Britive Launches Frictionless PAM Transformation Program to Modernize Privileged Access for the Autonomous Era (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Britive today announced the Frictionless PAM Transformation Program, a new initiative designed to help enterprises modernize privileged access... Athena's disclosures begin (Chainguard) Athena begins disclosing AI-discovered vulnerabilities, with patches, advisories, and remediated Java artifacts available to defenders today. McAfee Unveils a New Era of Consumer Protection for Today's AI-Driven World (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - AI is everywhere, rapidly evolving and drastically changing the way people navigate their lives. In a world where normal, everyday interactions... Hoxhunt Expands Adaptive Phishing Training Beyond Email With AI Voice, Deepfake and Multichannel Simulations (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Hoxhunt, the world's leading human risk management platform, today announced expanded capabilities for its flagship Adaptive Phishing Training... Fivecast Launches OPENSCREEN to Close Digital Blind Spots with Rapid, AI-Powered Screening (BusinessWire) Combines traditional screening with deep online footprint intelligence to help organizations identify relevant risk and make faster, better-informed decisions Delinea Report Finds 87% of Organizations Saw an AI Tool Access Sensitive Data Beyond Its Scope in the Past Year (GlobeNewswire) New research reveals a gap between AI policy and enforcement, and pressure on employees to use AI on sensitive data Comcast and Fastly's New Content Delivery Model Powers Highest Quality Experience for Peacock's Biggest Live Events (BusinessWire) Creates a Blueprint for Expanding Capacity and Improving Efficiency Across High-Demand, Real-Time Streaming Experiences Doppel and San Francisco 49ers Announce Multi-Year Partnership (Doppel) Homegrown deal between the two Bay Area-based brands names Doppel the 49ers Official Social Engineering Defense Partner and brings AI-native defense to the franchise Acalvio Launches ShadowPlex AI Agent in the Gemini Enterprise Agent Marketplace (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - As AI-driven cyberattacks accelerate reconnaissance, credential abuse, and lateral movement, security teams face increasing pressure to deploy... DNSFilter Expands Channel Partner Program for Resellers as DNS Demand Soars (DNSFilter) DNSFilter expands its Channel Partner Program with three tiers (Select, Accelerator, Strategic) to help resellers build a profitable protective DNS practice. CyberAcuView Selects CYGNVS as its CIRM Platform Advancing Cyber Resilience for the Insurance Industry (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - CYGNVS, the market leading Cyber Incident Response Management (CIRM) platform, and CyberAcuView, the organization dedicated to strengthening... 80,000+ enterprises had employee AI logins stolen and ChatGPT is the front door (SOCRadar) SOCRadar mapped more than a million infostealer records against corporate domains. TENEX.AI Joins the Wiz Partner Alliance Managed Service Provider Program (TENEX.AI) TENEX collaborates with Wiz, now part of Google Cloud, to deliver managed cloud and AI security at scale Reco Announces Partnership with ServiceNow to Extend AI Agent Security (GlobeNewswire) New integration gives security teams visibility into AI agents and continuous posture coverage across the ServiceNow environment, with findings routed back into ServiceNow for remediation SentinelOne and NVIDIA: Governing AI From Silicon to Runtime (SentinelOne) Read why effective AI governance demands tamperproof, hardware-rooted security controls that autonomous agents cannot reach, bypass, or rewrite at runtime. NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform: A Reference for Continuous In-Silicon Agent Monitoring (NVIDIA Technical Blog) To understand where agentic AI stands today, consider the last seismic shift in technology: the rise of the internet in the 90s. It was new and full of possibilities. You could build a website over a... Deepfake Statistics 2026: Enterprise Survey of 250 Security Leaders (Pindrop) 74% of security leaders report deepfake attacks, but only 10% have tools built to catch them. Findings from Pindrop's 2026 Deepfake Readiness Index, a survey of U.S. enterprise security leaders. C1.ai Launches C1 AppHub, a Self-Hosted Platform for the Apps Your Teams Build (C1.ai) C1 AppHub is a self-hosted platform that deploys, authenticates, and sets permissions for the applications your teams build, with a skills file that lets an AI coding agent build and launch a governed application in one prompt. SentinelOne Extends Wayfinder Threat Hunting's Continuous Coverage to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud (BusinessWire) AI-powered security paired with elite human threat hunters to extend continuous hunting across rapidly expanding AI, endpoint, identity, and cloud attack surfaces BreachRx Launches AI Tabletops on Demand Powered by Rex AI to Turn Offensive AI Threats into Response Exercises in Minutes (GlobeNewswire) New agentic AI offering enables continuous response practice and includes a downloadable scenario modeled on the Hugging Face/OpenAI incident; BreachRx will provide a complimentary, facilitated tabletop to major hospital or healthcare companies WethosAI Opens Stuart McClure's Twin to the Public (GlobeNewswire) Anyone can now question the model WethosAI built with its founder Noma Extends Agent Security and Governance to the Employee Endpoint (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Noma, the market-leading enterprise AI and agent security platform, today announced expanded endpoint agent security capabilities across the... Announcing Chainguard's industry-first validated FIPS 140-3 module delivering post-quantum readiness (Chainguard) Chainguard delivers the first FIPS 140-3 validated module with approved hybrid post-quantum key exchange, helping teams prepare for CNSA 2.0. Camelot Secure and DigiFlight Named Baltimore Ravens' Proud Cyber Resilience Partner (Camelot Secure) Partnership Brings National-Security Expertise to Professional Football to Protect Organizational Digital Systems. Beazley expands cyber protection as businesses face growing AI risks (Beazley Insurance) While organisations are increasingly focused on threats from AI-enabled cyber attacks, Beazley's latest endorsements respond to the equally important risks that can emerge when businesses deploy AI within their own operations. Darktrace Launches Signal Labs to Research Emerging Risks of Enterprise AI Agents (Darktrace) Darktrace Signal Labs will research emerging AI risks in safe, sandboxed environments to strengthen defenses so organizations can adopt AI securely and with confidence. Opus 5.5: 6x cheaper and 2x faster than Fable 5.1, but only 33.5% of code is secure (Endor Labs) Claude Code with Opus 5.5 finishes coding tasks in a median of 2.2 minutes for $116 in total, the fastest run on our board and the cheapest Anthropic run by far, but lands at only 33.5% for secure code. How MCP Is Bypassing a Decade of Cloud Security Best Practices (OX Security) OX Security Research reveals a governance gap in the MCP ecosystem, with servers hosted in China, Russia, and private homes Portnox Closes the Gap on Shadow AI Visibility & Control (Portnox) New capability identifies unauthorized AI applications and agents on devices and automatically restricts access when they violate policy. Gurucul Launches AI Risk and Response to Detect and Stop Risky AI Behavior Before It Escalates (Cision PR Newswire) /PRNewswire/ - Gurucul, the leader in Unified Entity Intelligence and security analytics, today announced the general availability of Gurucul AI Risk and... Reimagining the SOC for the agentic era in Microsoft Defender (Microsoft Security Blog) We are announcing ISOC in Microsoft Defender: a foundation built for agentic security that brings leading solutions for SIEM and threat protection together.

Daily briefing for 09.30.26. By the N2K CyberWire staff Top stories. * FBI tells ShinyHunters members to turn themselves in. * AI companies sign a voluntary accord aimed at addressing safety concerns. * Business news: Island raises $400 million in Series F funding. FBI tells ShinyHunters members to turn themselves in. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is calling on members of the ShinyHunters extortion group to come forward willingly after one of their alleged colleagues was arrested in Amsterdam this month. FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Brett Leatherman stated, "Arrests have a way of changing who is willing to talk, and seized infrastructure has a way of showing us who's left." ShinyHunters earlier this month claimed responsibility for hacking the FBI and stealing sensitive data on almost all of its employees. The data included extensive personal information and details on secretive job assignments, potentially placing FBI employees in danger. The New York Times says some observers are comparing the incident to China's hack of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015. ShinyHunters issued a fresh statement this week stressing that it will not publish the stolen data online, as the breach was simply payback for the FBI's assertion that the hacking group's claims are often exaggerated. SecurityWeek notes, however, that the group could monetize the data privately by selling it to foreign intelligence agencies. If identity fails, can your organization recover? Organizations have spent years strengthening their perimeter. But when attackers compromise the identity systems everything else depends on, keeping them out is no longer enough. Jimmy McNary, Deputy Federal CTO at Semperis, joins Dave Bittner to explain why identity resilience requires organizations to continuously monitor, protect, and prepare to recover their environments. Listen to learn how to identify gaps in your identity resilience strategy before an attacker exposes them. AI companies sign a voluntary accord aimed at addressing safety concerns. President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson met with a large group of AI company leaders yesterday to sign a voluntary AI safety accord, NPR reports. The accord was signed by President Trump, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and xAI founder Elon Musk. The companies agreed to implement "robust internal controls" that would be evaluated by an "independent external auditor," and establish a committee within each company's board of directors to assess safety reports from internal and external auditors. Some experts believe the accord is a step in the right direction toward balancing safety and innovation, while others believe voluntary oversight will prove insufficient. Business news: Island raises $400 million in Series F funding. Dallas-based enterprise cybersecurity company Island has raised $400 million in a Series F round led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from existing investors Prysm Capital, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Alta Park Capital, Georgian, G Squared, and Squarepoint, alongside another personal investment from Dmitri Alperovitch. The funding brings the company's valuation to $6.4 billion. Island says the funding "will fuel the company's next phase of growth and innovation as enterprises scale AI agents and modernize how work gets done." Sponsored Events Anthropic's Approach to Stopping GenAI attacks (Virtual, Sep 30, 2026) Join Kyla Guru from Anthropic's Safeguards team and Roi Vanunu from Jazz to uncover the GenAI attack scenarios security teams are least likely to detect. And, learn how to put the right guardrails around data movement without blocking AI adoption in your organization. Uniting Women in Cyber 2026 (Capital One Hall, Tysons, VA, Oct 8, 2026) Join cybersecurity leaders, practitioners, learners, and allies at UWIC 2026 for a day of learning, connection, and conversation. Together, we'll explore how human ingenuity and emerging technology can strengthen cybersecurity, drive innovation, and build a resilient future. Mobile Spyware & AI Briefing & Breakfast (Washington, DC, Oct 14, 2026) Join Zimperium & N2K CyberWire on Oct 14, 2026, at the International Spy Museum in DC for an interactive breakfast briefing. Federal cybersecurity leaders and experts will discuss AI-driven mobile spyware threats and defense strategies for Mobile Zero Trust. Selected Reading Attacks, threats, and vulnerabilities. WaterISAC reckons with range of threats after summer of cyberattacks (CyberScoop) Tom Dobbins, executive director of the Water Information Sharing Analysis Center or WaterISAC, told CyberScoop, the sector's biggest ongoing weaknesses include exposed OT, vulnerable PLCs, insecure connections through integrators and poor cyber hygiene at smaller utilities, which have pushed the center to make threat sharing faster across the sector. From EDU Account Takeover to Job Scam Abuse: West African Fraud Actors Target Universities (Proofpoint) Key Takeaways Threat actors are using compromised university email accounts to distribute job-based advanced fee fraud. College students are uniquely vulnerable due to financial pressure Attackers Combine ChatGPT Feature Abuse With ClickFix to Deliver RAT (Infosecurity Magazine) Cybersecurity researchers at Huntress identify campaign to deliver potent trojan which targets users searching for ChatGPT via Google Litigation, Investigation, and law enforcement. US Air Force members given over 6 years in prison for cyber theft of more than $2 million (The Record) According to court documents, both men pleaded guilty to wire fraud, identity theft and access device fraud charges in June. OpenAI Gets Sued Over the Hugging Face Hack (WIRED) A nonprofit in California is doing what Hugging Face has not - attempting to hold OpenAI legally accountable for the actions of its agents. Industry Events For a complete running list of events, please visit the Event Tracker. Events. THREATCON1 (Reston, Virginia, USA, Oct 5 - 7, 2026) A place where leaders in cyber threat response collaborate to get better, smarter, and faster in how we protect our global economy and national security. THREATCON1 brings together security researchers, cyber operators, and business leaders for three days of keynotes, technical sessions, hands-on challenges, and high-impact networking. Uniting Women in Cyber 2026 (Tysons, Virginia, USA, Oct 8, 2026) At UWIC 2026, our theme Creative Cyber: Amplified Intelligence reflects the energy and evolution of cybersecurity today. Join us to explore how human ingenuity and AI come together to outpace emerging threats and build a more creative, resilient future. AI Security Summit 2026: Runtime Trust (Virtual, Oct 21 - 22, 2026) AI agents no longer just request access. They take action. They plan, negotiate, and execute across your cloud and enterprise systems, often without a human in the loop. Traditional security answers one question: should this user have access? It has no answer for the one that matters now: should this agent be allowed to take this action, right now, in this context? That's the question AARM (Autonomous Action Runtime Management) was built to answer. Originally developed by Vanta and donated to the Cloud Security Alliance as an open, vendor-neutral specification, AARM defines how to intercept an agent's actions before they execute, evaluate them against context and policy, and stop the ones that shouldn't happen. Nearly 100 companies are already building on it, and CSA is now the permanent home stewarding where it goes next. Join CSA, Vanta, and Insecure Agents for the AI Security Summit 2026: Runtime Trust, a free, two-day virtual event on October 21-22, 2026, going deep on AARM alongside STAR for AI Level 2 and the fastest-moving, time-sensitive frontier of AI security shaping the year ahead. [un]prompted II (Virtual and San Francisco, California, USA, Oct 27 - 29, 2026) [un]prompted is back for the second time, this October, in SF. Whether you're a CISO Excel jockey or a researcher sniffing for the scent of bits, we see you as part of our wider AI security practitioner community. [un]prompted is an intimate, raw, and fun gathering for the professionals actually doing the work, from offense to threat hunting to program building to national policy. No fluff. No filler. Just sharp talks, real demos, and conversations that matter. CyberSat 2026 Unclassified Program (Reston, Virginia, USA, Nov 2 - 3, 2026) Space systems now form the backbone of critical infrastructure - from energy grids to autonomous transportation. CyberSat is the only forum where the operators, officials, and engineers actively defending those systems meet for four days a year. Sponsor & Support Grow your brand, generate leads, and fill your funnel. With the industry's largest B2B podcast network, popular newsletters, and influential readers and listeners all over the world, companies trust N2K CyberWire to get the message out. Learn more.

Island lands $400m Series F at $6.4bn valuation. September 25, 2026 Island, the enterprise-focused agentic control plane provider, has closed a $400m Series F funding round that lifts its valuation to $6.4bn, more than twice the figure it reached in 2024. Evolution Equity Partners headed the investment, joined by a mix of new and returning backers. Among the existing investors taking part were Prysm Capital, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Cyberstarts, Insight Partners, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Alta Park Capital, Georgian, G Squared and Squarepoint. Cybersecurity entrepreneur Dmitri Alperovitch also made a further personal investment. The fresh capital will support the next stage of Island's expansion and product development as businesses increase their use of AI agents and overhaul the way work is carried out. The company positions its technology as the layer that gives organisations the oversight, control and auditing capabilities required in the AI era. Island has 1,000 employees and has doubled its annual recurring revenue (ARR) in each fiscal year since launching in 2022. It attributes this steady expansion to growing enterprise appetite for faster AI adoption, networks redesigned around end users, simpler security infrastructure and the protection of sensitive data without creating obstacles for staff. The firm first established the Enterprise Browser category by building security, access and productivity controls directly into the environment where most knowledge work takes place. It has since extended this base to consumer browsers via an extension, along with endpoints, applications, modern SASE and data. Its agentic control plane uses a single policy engine and a single audit trail across the entire sequence of work activities while keeping the user experience seamless. This gives organisations one hub for onboarding, governing and auditing AI across both human and agent-based workforces. Island's Enterprise AI lets businesses roll out AI at scale no matter which models, apps or agents they select. Its capabilities cover identity governance, access, guardrails, data boundaries, human approvals and cost governance, backed by a complete audit trail spanning browsers, endpoints, the cloud and internal resources. Evolution Equity Partners founder and managing partner Richard Seewald said, "Enterprises are rethinking the basic architecture of work. Island meets the moment with a unique advantage: it can see and govern what people and agents are doing as they interact with applications and data, wherever that happens. "Island has already shown it can create a category, displace legacy technologies, and accelerate customers' business transformation from the browser to the network. By extending its vision to safeguard browsers, endpoints, networks, and data, Island built the essential control layer for the next generation of enterprise computing." Island CEO and co-founder Mike Fey said, "We've entered a new era in which people and AI agents work side by side. Just like humans, agents need the right context, access, guardrails, and accountability to succeed. "Island created the first Enterprise Browser to protect the primary place people work. From there, we expanded into data protection and DLP, then built a next-generation SASE architecture from the endpoint outward. Those combined capabilities give CIOs, CISOs, and business unit owners one security, productivity, and governance framework for everywhere human and agentic work occurs. This investment gives us even more capacity to innovate with our customers and help them safely scale AI." Enjoying the stories? Investors. The following investor(s) were tagged in this article.