The first week of a new year is usually quieter than we expect — fewer alerts, fewer meetings, a little more room to think. I’ve always liked that pause. It’s a chance to look at systems not for what they promise, but for what they actually do when no one’s watching. As we kick off 2026, that mindset matters more than ever. Progress in security doesn’t come from grand declarations; it comes from small, deliberate improvements that quietly compound over time.
Over the years, I’ve learned that the most effective solutions are often the simplest ones — the ones that remove friction, reduce noise, and let teams focus on what actually needs attention. Automation helps. Tooling helps. But clarity is what makes everything work.
🔒 Security Tip of the Week:
Pick one repetitive task you dealt with last year — log review, alert enrichment, account checks — and script or automate a small piece of it. Even a modest improvement saves time, reduces errors, and gives you space to focus on higher-value problems.
Here’s to starting 2026 with clean inputs, steady execution, and systems that do exactly what we expect them to do.
-Kyle Beverly, CTO
📰 Weekly News Roundup:
🛰️ The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed a data breach affecting its external servers after a threat actor known as “888” claimed to have stolen 200GB of sensitive data. The stolen information reportedly includes source code, API tokens, and confidential documents related to collaborative engineering projects, though ESA states its internal corporate network remains secure.
🎵 Hacktivists under the banner of “Anna’s Archive” claim to have scraped nearly 300TB of data from Spotify, including 86 million audio tracks and metadata for 256 million songs. While Spotify denies that user passwords or payment information were accessed, the group frames the massive scraping incident as a “preservation” effort, highlighting vulnerabilities in digital rights management and anti-scraping controls.
🏥 New Zealand’s largest patient portal, ManageMyHealth, is managing a significant breach exposing the health documents of approximately 126,000 users. The company detected unauthorized access on December 30 and has since obtained a High Court injunction to prevent the distribution of stolen data, while working with forensic experts to close the security gaps.
⚙️ A new critical vulnerability (CVE-2025-68668) has been discovered in the n8n workflow automation platform, carrying a CVSS score of 9.9. This flaw allows unauthenticated attackers to execute arbitrary commands, marking the second major security issue for the platform in recent weeks and prompting urgent patch notices for self-hosted users.
⚡ Tensions have escalated following a massive power outage in Venezuela, with government officials accusing the United States of orchestrating a sophisticated cyberattack against the nation’s electrical grid. The incident has reignited global debates regarding cyber warfare and the vulnerability of critical infrastructure to state-sponsored sabotage.