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New CISO appointments 2026
Companies including Mistral AI, Trellix, Marriott, and ANZ appointed new CISOs in July-September 2026 amid high security-leadership turnover.
CSO Online's rolling column tracks senior security appointments, noting many companies are hiring a CSO/CISO for the first time. Notable moves include Thomas Coudray leaving Ledger to become Mistral AI's CISO, David Soto joining Trellix from Amazon, and Daniel Dubowski becoming Marriott International's SVP and CISO. Other appointments span ANZ, Gigamon, Axonius, Tricentis, Remitly, Allied Universal, and the State of California.
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Week in review: Linux rootkit deployed on F5 BIG-IP APM devices, Cisco FMC bugs exploited
Weekly roundup: Cisco FMC and N-able N-central zero-days exploited in the wild, MikroTik RouterOS hijacks, Microsoft Patch Tuesday ships two exploited zero-days.
State-sponsored and financially-motivated attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-20079, a critical authentication bypass in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC), alongside CVE-2026-20316. N-able issued an emergency hotfix for CVE-2026-86218, a critical pre-auth RCE in the N-central RMM platform exploited in the wild. CERT Polska disclosed six RouterOS vulnerabilities being chained to hijack internet-exposed MikroTik devices. Microsoft's September 2026 Patch Tuesday shipped a record patch count including two zero-days, while roughly 67,000 Trezor customers faced phishing after a shipping-partner breach and researchers privately disclosed a zero-click WeChat worm to Tencent.
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AI adoption brings new security headaches for already stretched CISOs
Proofpoint's 2026 Voice of the CISO report finds 79% of CISOs must manage AI-related risks without added resources or expertise.
Proofpoint's 2026 Voice of the CISO report says AI governance is expanding CISO responsibilities faster than resources, with 79% expected to manage AI-related risks without proportional support. Seventy-eight percent of CISOs consider GenAI a security risk, chiefly customer data loss through public AI platforms, and 61% expect a targeted attack within 12 months, down from 76% in 2025. Human risk remains the top vulnerability for 79% of respondents, and 93% of organizations with material data loss said departing employees played a role. Cloud account takeover now tops perceived threats, while email fraud, ransomware and malware declined in the rankings.
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Mistral raises €3B as sovereign AI becomes big business
Mistral AI raised a €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation, led by Samsung Electronics, to scale European compute capacity and sovereign AI services.
French AI lab Mistral AI raised €3 billion (~$3.58B) at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, which it calls the largest equity round ever completed by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; a16z, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Advent, BlackRock, and Luxembourg also participated. The company plans to build 1 GW of European compute capacity by 2030, offer region-selectable query processing, and host third-party open-weight models as part of a sovereign AI strategy. Mistral operates in 20 countries and targets governments and enterprises seeking control over AI models and data residency.
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North Korea’s Lazarus Operates Through Six Distinct Cyber Clusters
Sekoia and Kudelski Security reclassify North Korea's Lazarus umbrella into six clusters spanning espionage, financial theft, and fake IT worker operations.
New research by Sekoia and Kudelski Security, published September 7, divides the former Lazarus umbrella into TEMP.Hermit, Citrine Sleet, CryptoCore, Jade Sleet, Moonstone Sleet, and Famous Chollima, mostly under North Korea's military intelligence bureau (GRIB). The former APT38 likely split into CryptoCore and Jade Sleet, focused on cryptocurrency, Web3, and blockchain targets. Moonstone Sleet combines espionage with financially motivated operations, using custom malware alongside Qilin ransomware-as-a-service. Thousands of fake IT workers generate regime revenue and provide access, linked to incidents like the $62.5M Munchables protocol theft.
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The story behind the intelligence
Cisco Talos newsletter features adversary-engagement podcast, flags AI guardrail 'safety penalty' slowing defenders, and recaps McKesson breach and PaperCut patching headlines.
The Threat Source newsletter spotlights the Beers with Talos podcast, in which researcher Azim Khodjibaev describes maintaining eight dark-web personas to identify prolific cybercriminals and support disruption efforts. Talos also argues frontier AI guardrails impose an AI 'safety penalty', citing a July 2026 incident where Hugging Face's primary cloud LLM refused to analyze forensic breach data and delayed response. Recapped headlines include ShinyHunters claiming theft of 284 million patient records from McKesson via vishing and Okta account takeover, Anthropic warning Claude users about infostealer malware, and PaperCut issuing emergency patches for chained vulnerabilities.
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Stop playing with the CISO role. Fix cybersecurity leadership
Op-ed argues the CISO role is overloaded and advocates elevating a business-first Chief Security Officer above it.
The author contends that business-alignment failures in cybersecurity are structural rather than communication problems, with CISOs expected to act simultaneously as technologists, strategists, risk executives, and board advisers. The piece proposes a distinct Chief Security Officer role focused on enterprise protection, business continuity, and cross-functional decision authority, with the CISO retaining technical cybersecurity responsibility and potentially reporting to the CSO. It argues this model would give executive ownership of business protection while preserving technical depth.
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Researchers Built a Fake Crypto Startup and Hired Three Suspected North Korean IT Workers
Security researchers hired three suspected North Korean IT workers at a fake DeFi startup, documenting forged IDs, AI-edited images and post-hire system access.
Researchers from BCA LTD, NorthScan and ANY.RUN built a fake DeFi protocol called Ballena Azul and hired three suspected Famous Chollima operatives through a real recruiting pipeline. The hires submitted inconsistent or AI-processed identity documents, including a driver's license whose metadata showed Google Gemini processing and a SynthID watermark. On day one the workers profiled their assigned VMs, checked their egress country, and one installed Chrome Remote Desktop and logged into GitHub. The findings were presented at DEF CON 34 and align with a July 31 joint government alert on DPRK IT worker schemes.
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Threat Activity Group RedFoxtrot Linked to China’s PLA Unit 69010; Targets Bordering Asian Countries
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