Platform defenses took center stage as CrowdStrike sketched a blueprint for an agentic SOC and CSO Online detailed Okta’s new identity fabric for AI agents. At the same time, attackers continued to press the edge: zero‑days against Cisco ASA/FTD and active exploitation of Fortra GoAnywhere MFT underscore the urgency of patching and monitoring. On the policy front, the U.S. approved a restructuring that shifts TikTok’s domestic operations to American control, reported by BleepingComputer.
AI operations: Controls and autonomy converge
CrowdStrike framed the evolution of SOC workflows around intelligent agents that can reason, act and learn, mapping a path from human‑supervised orchestration toward higher autonomy while maintaining human oversight. The company emphasized a data advantage to train agents and floated AIDR to govern agent lifecycles. In parallel, Okta proposed an Identity Security Fabric to discover, credential, control and monitor non‑human identities across the stack, with lifecycle management for AI agents, cross‑app access based on an OAuth extension, and verifiable digital credentials to anchor trust. Both pitches aim to reduce alert fatigue and shrink response times while shifting practitioners into strategic oversight roles.
Cloudflare sharpened the developer experience for agent tooling with Code Mode, which asks models to write TypeScript that calls Model Context Protocol bindings inside a sandbox, improving multi‑tool orchestration and reducing token overhead. Complementing that, AI Index enters private beta to let domain owners publish a curated, permissioned search index with opt‑in discovery and monetization, exposing standard interfaces like MCP, LLMs.txt, a search API and pub/sub updates. Together, these moves target safer, more efficient agent execution and a cleaner data supply chain for AI builders.
Exploitation at the edge: ASA firewalls and MFT under fire
Unit 42 reported active exploitation of multiple zero‑days in Cisco ASA/FTD, attributing intrusions to a state‑sponsored actor and detailing malware components capable of persistence and covert control. Cisco released updates and the U.S. CISA issued an emergency directive for federal agencies; mitigations may disrupt services and patching is urged. See Unit 42 for indicators and hunting guidance. Why it matters: once edge device exploits circulate, lagging patches amplify organizational risk.
Researchers say Fortra GoAnywhere CVE‑2025‑10035 was exploited as a zero‑day about a week before disclosure. Attackers chained an access control bypass with unsafe deserialization to reach pre‑auth code execution, created a backdoor account, and deployed payloads for persistence and control. Fortra shipped fixes, and defenders are urged to patch, remove public exposure of admin services, and hunt for newly created users, relevant stack traces and payload names. Details via The Hacker News.
Separately, Akira‑linked actors are breaching MFA‑protected SonicWall VPNs by reusing credentials and OTP seeds stolen from previously vulnerable devices. Rapid post‑login reconnaissance and backup infrastructure targeting have been observed. SonicWall advises upgrading to the latest firmware and resetting SSL VPN credentials on any device that ever ran affected versions. Coverage: BleepingComputer.
Observability and network performance: Data‑driven upgrades
Cloudflare rolled out Observatory in open beta and launched Smart Shield for automated origin protection across all plans. Observatory unifies RUM, backend telemetry, cache metrics, and synthetic tests, pairing each signal with prescriptive Smart Suggestions; Smart Shield applies one‑click mitigations and validates impact, creating a feedback loop for performance and availability. Read more in Observatory. Why it matters: integrated monitoring with actionable controls can compress time‑to‑fix and reduce origin risk.
Under the hood, Cloudflare is migrating its request‑processing brain to FL2, a Rust‑based reimplementation designed for safety, modularity and speed, reporting lower CPU/memory use and faster responses. The shift is complemented by network‑wide tuning informed by passive logs and RUM, with early QUIC experiments showing average performance gains around 10% on free‑tier traffic. See FL2 and the company’s performance data approach.
Cloud operations: Playbooks and regional coverage
AWS published a hands‑on blueprint to evaluate the enhanced Security Hub in public preview, emphasizing measurable success criteria, coordinated trials across GuardDuty, Inspector, Macie and CSPM, and validation steps using standardized OCSF findings. The guidance covers delegated administration, scoping, test generation, integrations, cleanup and reporting so teams can quantify outcomes and plan rollout. Guide: AWS Security.
Regional and cost‑optimization updates also landed: Amazon Neptune Analytics is now available in Asia Pacific (Mumbai), bringing in‑memory graph analytics closer to data and users (Neptune Analytics), and Compute Optimizer expanded recommendations to 99 new EC2 instance types, helping right‑size fleets to newer SKUs (Compute Optimizer).