Author: Nikhil
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom. -Dwight D. Eisenhower Browsers are a classic example of “can’t live without, can’t live with.” While we can’t live without browsers like Edge, Safari, and Firefox, they are something the SecOps personnel can live without. Traditional browsers mostly lack features like built-in mechanisms for granular policy enforcement, data isolation, or compliance logging. The same browser used for personal browsing is used to access sensitive SaaS apps, internal tools, and third-party services, creating unavoidable shadow IT and data leakage risks. There are strategies like Remote Browser Isolation (RBI). But it may be the case of cure worse than disease, as it…
IT infrastructure has evolved over time from a 3-tier structure to a desegregated stack that still needs to scale for growth. This means more workloads, more clouds, more endpoints, and more users. Hyperautomation was the logical next step to ensure that automation, AI, and orchestration can finally keep pace with the complexity that humans alone cannot manage. However, as the idiom goes, no good deed goes unpunished. You see, hyperautomation expands the attack surface just as fast as it improves efficiency. Every automated workflow, API integration, script, and self-healing process becomes both a productivity multiplier and a potential security liability.…
The comparison of the Q4 2024 and Q3 2025 SPARK MatrixTM for the Web Application Firewall (WAF) market suggests that the market has changed from considering the importance of WAF as a control to the criteria by which it is evaluated. WAF is no longer assessed as a standalone security product. Rather, it is judged as part of a broader application security and delivery fabric, and that shift explains why some vendors remain leaders, some advance, and others lose relative ground. Akamai, Cloudflare, Radware, F5, Imperva, and Fastly remain as leaders in 2024 and 2025. This continued hold is not…
Networking is essential for both humans and technology to progress further. Like humans, IT infrastructure has also been shaped by the evolving changes across the technological landscape. It has evolved from building more to mindful building by taking into consideration regulatory, geopolitical, environmental, financial, and even computational constraints. These constraints clearly reflect the following trends set to dominate the domain in 2026. Baked-in AI Nativity and the Expansion of AIOps Let us first start with THE most obvious: AI. AI has upended every market landscape and will continue to do so. In 2026, “AI-enabled” infrastructure will make way for AI-native infrastructure, where AI is embedded into the control plane rather than layered on top as an optimization feature. This is expected to see expansion of AIOps. AIOps has evolved from anomaly detection and alert noise reduction to…
While the dead internet theory may be considered a conspiracy theory, there are, in fact, a lot of bots on the internet, some good, some bad. Bot management solutions are necessary to ensure access and interactions with only the good ones. This comparison and analysis of the Bot Management SPARK MatrixTM for 2024 and 2025 includes major vendors and their rankings as per customer impact and technology excellence. These rankings can be a vital asset while choosing a product that is the best fit for your establishment. (If you are interested in analyses going further back, here is the analysis of the 2023 and 2024 SPARK Matrix TM.) Comparing the Q3 2024 and Q3 2025 SPARK Matrices for Bot Management…
The number of incidents involving stolen credentials in 2025 is, to quote an ancient meme, “too damn high.” A Checkpoint report cites a 160% increase in compromised credentials between 2024 and 2025. In addition, Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report cites a staggering 22% of breaches involved credential abuse. This is another list of major incidents in 2025, many involving credentials. A bombastic sentence worthy of writing by an AI, complete with the em dash, explains the situation perfectly: the real blast radius is no longer just a compromised endpoint or a vulnerable server – it’s a compromised identity. And this is why SOC playbooks, which have revolved around endpoints, networks, and malware families for years, are now also incorporating identity-centric detections. This move has been needed for a long time. Identity-led incidents…
While we may think ransomware is a 20th-century phenomenon, it has existed in its most primitive form almost from 75 BCE. This is kidnapping of data for ransom, and the angle of physical harm and personal danger is also covered when medical facilities are targeted, as seen by the 2025 NHS breach. It has already been “democratized” by becoming available as a service, and anyone knowing the right TOR addresses can use it. And so, as a new year approaches, we must ask, will it get any better (for us), or worse (for us, again)? Let us be real, it…
While adoption of SASE is accelerating across all sectors due to a variety of reasons, their approach to solve their clients’ network architecture is not the same across the aisle. Some vendors like Fortinet and Cisco have evolved from security and networking backgrounds, while vendors like Cato Networks began as pure SASE vendors. This background is critical in influencing customers’ choice between consolidation with one provider and composing a stack from several. There is a rising trend towards opting for a single vendor rather than compiling a stack through procurements from various vendors. Let us see what factors are influencing this…
Digitalized healthcare provides numerous benefits. These include improved patient outcomes through personalized care, enhanced access to services via telemedicine, and increased efficiency in healthcare delivery. These technologies also help reduce costs and empower patients to take control of their health. However, the benefits are also offset by the very nature of its connected nature, which opens it to a large type of threats. In this case, the threats can easily turn life-threatening. This comparison and analysis of the Connected Medical Devices Security (CMDS) SPARK MatrixTM for 2024 and 2025 includes major vendors and their rankings as per customer impact and…
Are most of the CAPTCHAs we see today are even trying to block automation? The only users CAPTCHAs are stopping are the elderly, visually challenged, people on low-end devices, users with shaky connectivity, and non-native language speakers.