People Are A Cybersecurity Liability—But They Could Also Be A Solution

Forbes

12-06-2025

Anyone who works in IT knows this basic fact about cybersecurity: People are the weakest link. As long as there has been cybercrime, scammers have exploited this fact. According to a new study from AI-powered cybersecurity company Abnormal, attackers tried to steal more than $300 million from companies through scam emails impersonating vendors in the last year.
While you may be conducting trainings on email safety and continually testing employees with fake scam emails, the scammers are still successful. By monitoring activity in 1,400 organizations' email accounts, Abnormal found a 44.2% engagement rate with these fake emails. They were some of the most often replied and forwarded emails throughout company inboxes, with large companies' employees responding and forwarding them 72% of the time. And the vast majority of these incidents—98.5%—were not reported to the IT department.
It's a difficult problem to solve. Abnormal found that most of the engagement with scam emails came from more entry-level employees, who are likely unaware of the extent of phishing emails and company processes. Adding a section on phishing email training to onboarding might not have the desired effect, considering new hires could be overwhelmed. Abnormal suggests using an AI-powered platform to scrutinize suspect emails, like ones that come from slightly misspelled domain names, or that ask for more information about past transactions in completely different email threads. But a more holistic approach might be leaning on education, so that people in the company better police their inboxes. If they know what to look for, are told the stakes, have an established reporting process and potentially earn rewards for stopping fraudsters, employees will have a reason to pay attention and care—something every IT department hopes they can find.
AI is transforming everything about the way we do business. If you are ready and have a plan to utilize it, AI can take your business to the next level. If you aren't ready, your business could be left behind. Boomi CEO Steve Lucas wrote a book about preparing for the change called Digital Impact: The Human Element of AI-Driven Transformation. I talked to him about that transformation, and an excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.
Scale AI cofounder and CEO Alexandr Wang
Meta is known for putting a deep stake in the ground around up and coming areas in technology, like the VR metaverse and AI-enabled smart glasses. This week, reports indicated it's making a big move toward the goal of AI 'superintelligence'—a system that outperforms human capabilities. Forbes' Rashi Shrivastava writes Meta has its eye on a 49% stake in AI evaluation startup Scale AI, reportedly costing it $14.8 billion. In this potential deal, Scale AI's CEO Alexandr Wang would join Meta as part of a new AI superintelligence lab. The New York Times reports Meta is also trying to woo other top AI figures to work for its new lab. Reports indicate that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has grown impatient with the company's progress in AI so far, and this acquisition would help Meta close some of the distance between it and other top AI companies.
Meanwhile, this week the Browser Company released the beta form of Dia, its generative-AI-enabled browser, writes Forbes senior contributor Barry Collins. Dia includes several features that allow generative AI to get to know users, as well as summarize and compare information open in different browser tabs. Its standout feature 'remembers' everything you do online: every tab you open, every search you do, the work you've been doing online, and even your writing style. Browser Company CEO Josh Miller said in a video introducing Dia that at the end of a week, month or year of browsing, Dia will 'know you as well as your closest friends and colleagues.' Collins notes the Browser Company doesn't provide details about how it would keep this information secure.
Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco, California
In the last month, three top tech companies made acquisitions in the data space worth nearly $9.3 billion, writes Forbes senior contributor Peter Cohan. Analytics company Databricks is spending $1 billion to buy cloud-based open source database company Neon. Salesforce is spending $8 billion to purchase data management provider Informatica. And data cloud service Snowflake is spending $250 million to buy data warehouse provider Crunchy Data. Cohan writes that these acquisitions have one thing in common: Many of the larger companies' customers are demanding better data platforms and organization in order to more effectively use AI.
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 09, 2025 in Cupertino, California.
This week was Apple's WWDC, its anticipated annual conference where the tech behemoth usually announces new software updates. This year, many of Apple's announcements were about AI, bringing more features through Apple Intelligence, which will come to devices with the iOS 26 update this fall, writes Forbes senior contributor Kate O'Flaherty. (Apple is changing its iOS naming conventions to be the same as the year they are released. Updated devices now run on iOS 18.5.) Some of the major updates include the ability to search and take action on whatever users are viewing across apps—they can ask ChatGPT for more information about what's onscreen and easily search across Google to find similar products. It can recognize when someone is looking at an event and suggest adding it to their calendar. It can screen text messages from unknown senders, keeping them silenced until users accept them. And it will be able to do live translation, which will be integrated into Messages, FaceTime and the phone itself—but the translations will stay on devices and remain personal.
O'Flaherty writes that another new feature, reported on by MacRumors, will basically serve as a secure digital ID verification. The feature, called Verify with Wallet on the Web, will allow users to verify important ID details—like age when renting a car—without having to upload a photo of their actual ID. It will allow users to store state-issued IDs, driver's licenses and passports online for identification purposes. The data will be protected by end-to-end encryption, so the underlying data will only be accessible to the user. It will also prohibit the use of fake IDs.
Last but not least, Apple is rolling out a refreshed design. Called Liquid Glass, it updates the traditional look of the iOS experience to look, feel and reflect like glass panels. The appearance of screens, toolbars, icons and functions themselves will become more reactive to touch and motion, and will feature more rounded corners. Apple is extending the Liquid Glass look to all of its platforms with the fall's operating system update. It's received mixed reviews so far.
Steve Lucas
Integration and data management platform Boomi CEO Steve Lucas realized that the capabilities and possibilities of AI were zooming toward businesses like a meteor—but with deep changes that could translate to a wipeout for businesses that aren't prepared and cannot embrace it. He wrote his new book, Digital Impact: The Human Element of AI-Driven Transformation, to look at what AI can do and help businesses take full advantage of the possibilities.
I talked to Lucas about what companies need to do to not just survive, but succeed in the AI era. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.
How do you recommend a company get all of its data sprawl, apps used by various employees and departments, and legions of APIs under control?
Lucas: The first thing is acknowledging you have a problem. The first thing is recognizing the digital fragmentation—a term I use frequently—exists and it is a real problem.
The second thing is then assessing within your organization: What are the systems, the applications, the data, the business elements that I need to run and operate my business? What are the core things that I must absolutely have on a day-to-day basis?
The third is mapping the processes within your organization, what I characterize as the hidden processes today. So think about this for a minute. How many CEOs could say: 'I know exactly how our income statement is assembled at this company… all the systems required to pull that data together … the spreadsheets that are sitting out there with the magic translation that my accounting team does.'
Knowledge processes are very different than business processes. A business process is a manufacturing process, and I know every step that goes into the assembly. The knowledge process: Do I understand what elements go into the assembly of the income statement as a product? Most organizations don't have a good model for what their knowledge processes are, so you've got to inventory that.
Once you do that, you have the ability to weigh: Here's my knowledge processes. Here's my business processes. What systems and applications do I really need to achieve this?
Ultimately, where we're going with this is probably 75% to 90% of the knowledge processes that we rely on today, that human beings work on, will go to AI.
How does the transformation to AI impact contracts you already have for SaaS and with other tech vendors?
You can't rely on your suite anymore—rigid architectures, closed systems. By the way, these vendors know that they're in deep trouble. Your competitors, the ones that aren't weighed down with these rigid architectures, are building flexible, agent-driven, highly composable systems.
You have to learn how to extract value from your existing stack, not invest in your existing stack. Companies are not going to win by replacing their core systems. Those are very, very expensive. I go back to a simple example: Hundreds of thousands of companies all over the world rely on antiquated billing systems that are 20, 30 years old. If I want to go in and have my billing system be more intelligent so it's not sending collection notices to my most important customers, the average company today has to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading their infrastructure just to do that. That doesn't make any sense at all.
Keeping your existing technology, but making it more composable and more flexible with AI, that's where this stuff is going.
The last thing I would say is silos are a massive liability. If you've worked really hard to create this stack that is siloed in nature, when you hear things like your competitors are moving more quickly, they're more nimble, it's because they've invested in an integration automation orchestration platform.
What advice would you give to a CIO who is working toward bringing in AI agents and wants to make sure they're going about it the right way?
Prioritize integration, automation and orchestration. Companies that do, that can build modern composable, AI-driven workflows, will win. Build your digital nervous system early. Invest in a platform layer that lets systems, data and agents communicate. Without that layer, your AI is blind and isolated; you'll build terrific AI that is totally unable to orchestrate meaningful workflows.
I don't think we're in a 'rip and replace' world. I think we're in a 'wrap' world, where we can wrap our silos and our systems in intelligence and connectivity. Those systems that you already own, wrapping them in intelligence and connectivity is extraordinarily transformative.
Lastly, create out of the gate your AI or agentic governance strategy before the chaos arrives. I met with a hospital network, and they said, 'Steve, we all have the technology now to build an amazing AI that could help a doctor look at test results and go, 'Holy cow, your creatinine level was super high,' and then it could figure out [potentially related conditions the patient was] here for once upon a time. What we can't bring together is our digital past. The data for that sits in a hundred different systems, and how do we also operate and access all of those systems in a highly regulated environment where HIPAA still matters? How do we protect your privacy at the same time?' As compelling as that future is that has arrived, we have to rationalize it with our digital past.
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Last week, Walmart unveiled its generative AI-powered shopping assistant embedded in its app. What is it called?
A. Walter
B. Roly
C. Rover
D. Sparky
See if you got the answer right here.