The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), and 15 international cybersecurity authorities have published joint guidance on the minimum elements of a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). An SBOM is a detailed list of software components, including open-source libraries and hidden dependencies, together with the creators or vendors associated with those components.

Software supply chains are often large and complex, and vendors can be slow to release patches to address vulnerabilities, especially when those vulnerabilities affect third-party components. Cybercriminals target software supply chains as they often have ample time to exploit vulnerabilities before patches are released. Keeping up to date with vendor patches is important; however, simply applying vendor patches does not guarantee that the software is secure. If an SBOM is obtained from a software vendor, users will be able to identify vulnerable or risky components long before patches are released by vendors, allowing them to implement temporary solutions to protect against software supply chain attacks.

In 2021, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) published guidance on the minimum elements for an SBOM, and the latest guidance replaces that document, incorporating stakeholder feedback obtained following the publication of draft guidance in 2025. “SBOM tooling has advanced, driven by the growing number of organizations generating, sharing, consuming, and analyzing SBOMs,” wrote the authoring agencies. “These advancements enable organizations requesting SBOMs to demand more information about their supply chain and software components than they could have in 2021.”

The latest guidance applies to all software solutions, although additional requirements may be necessary for certain types of software, such as AI-based software systems and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions in cloud environments. The authoring agencies recommend using the guidance to ensure that their SBOMs include the minimum requirements and then assessing each software solution to determine if any further efforts are required to improve software transparency.

The update includes an additional ten data fields, updates to eight components to clarify scope and specify expectations, and five minor updates to improve information quality and align the guidance with the latest technical developments. The guidance is aimed at organizations that produce, procure, or operate software, and will allow them to better understand the makeup of their software components and supply chains and make more risk-informed decisions.

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Health sector organizations have been warned about an increase in successful attacks by the ShinyHunters threat group. In contrast to ransomware actors, ShinyHunters conducts supply chain and identity attacks, targeting cloud SaaS and storage platforms. The group is focused on cloud-scale data exfiltration, with initial access typically achieved by voice-based social engineering (vishing) to reset passwords, MFA, or enroll new devices, according to a recent Health-ISAC cybersecurity alert.

Once account access is gained, they log in to the organization’s Okta, Microsoft Entra, or Google SSO dashboard, which lists all applications the account holder has access to, such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive, and other third-party platforms.  Data is rapidly exfiltrated, and victims are advised about the data theft. ShinyHunters demands a ransom payment to prevent the stolen data from being leaked on the group’s dark web data leak site.

In recent months, ShinyHunters has conducted successful attacks on several healthcare and medtech companies, including the medical device manufacturers Medtronic and iRhythm, and OneMedical, DentaQuest, AdaptHealth, and Him & Hers. Health-ISAC explained that in a recent attack on a health sector organization, ShinyHunters claimed to have conducted vishing attacks on multiple employees, allowing a Microsoft Entra account to be compromised and a significant amount of company data to be exfiltrated from SaaS and internal platforms such as Microsoft 365 and SharePoint.

Health-ISAC has shared practical, high-impact recommendations for healthcare and medtech companies to improve defenses against these types of campaigns, the most important of which involves breaking the attack chain between the vishing call and the SSO account takeover. Helpdesk and IAM support workflows can be hardened by requiring out-of-band identity proofing for any password or MFA reset, or device reenrollment. Procedures should be implemented that require verification of the request by a callback to a previously verified number, and manager approval for any privileged user. It should not be possible to perform the password/MFA reset or device re-enrolment on the same inbound call.

To harden MFA security against reset abuse, phishing-resistant MFA (FIDO2/WebAuthn security keys or equivalent) should be implemented for admins and high-risk groups, and ideally for all users. SMS/voice MFA and weak fallback methods should be disabled or tightly restricted, and strict controls should be implemented for MFA factor registration.

Since the target is SSO, which provides the keys to the kingdom, Health-ISAC recommends classifying these systems as Tier 0 – the most critical company assets. As such, MFA and compliant devices should be required for accessing sensitive cloud services, legacy authentication should be blocked, administrative portals should be limited to managed devices, and geo-velocity/impossible travel checks implemented.

Extortion is only possible with data exfiltration, so it is vital to closely monitor logs for signs of account takeover and large-scale data access. Health-ISAC recommends centralizing Microsoft Entra sign-in logs, audit logs, and SaaS audit logs into an SIEM and configuring alerts for new device enrolments, MFA factor registration OAuth reset events, new OAuth apps or unusual consent grants, unusual bulk downloads, atypical API calls, and new forwarding rules and mailbox delegation changes.

Healthcare employees may be familiar with traditional phishing attacks, but less familiar with vishing. Vishing should be incorporated into security awareness training programs, and consider running vishing simulations on the workforce, especially on individuals with privileged accounts, helpdesk IT staff, new hires, and remote workers.

Health-ISAC recommends a 30- to 60-day time frame for implementing the recommendations, starting with phishing-resistant MFA for high-risk users, strengthening helpdesk reset procedures, and enforcing conditional access policies. In addition, tabletop exercises should be conducted for containing compromised cloud accounts (token/session revocation).

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A recent analysis of healthcare websites has revealed that the majority use marketing and analytics tools that could potentially disclose sensitive data to third parties. The study was jointly conducted by Piwik PRO, a privacy-first web analytics platform provider, and Verified Data, an automated audit platform that helps organizations verify analytics accuracy, data quality, and privacy compliance.

Healthcare organizations have faced increased scrutiny of their use of website tracking and analytics tools in recent years, after studies revealed these tools were being routinely used on healthcare websites, in some cases on authenticated pages, and were disclosing sensitive data to third parties. These tools collect and transmit information to third parties about website use, which may include protected health information – personally identifiable health information that HIPAA requires regulated entities to protect. Major HIPAA breaches have been reported to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) related to these tools, including by Advocate Aurora Health, Kaiser Permanente, Novant Health, and Atrium Health.

Patients are increasingly taking legal action over the use of these tools by healthcare providers. Over the past two years, dozens of lawsuits have resulted in settlements to resolve alleged privacy violations. Piwik PRO reports that more than $100 million was paid out in settlements between 2023 and 2025 to resolve healthcare privacy violations due to tracking and analytics tools such as Meta Pixel, Google Analytics, and Microsoft Advertising code.

The Piwik PRO/Verified Data study findings are published in the healthcare website tracking report, Are healthcare companies one audit away from a compliance crisis? The study involved scans of 59 websites of major U.S. hospitals and clinics to assess tracking, consent, and data compliance. The study did not investigate whether protected health information was being disclosed to third parties; rather, it looked for the presence of and behavior of tracking scripts, cookies, advertising pixels, and consent systems.

Concerningly, almost three-quarters (73%) of scanned healthcare websites had active advertising or marketing trackers, even when the Global Privacy Control (GPC) opt-out signal was running. GPC is a browser-based signal that communicates the user’s preference to opt out of the sale or sharing of their personal data to website operators. More than two-thirds of sites (69%) used marketing or advertising cookies, which strongly suggests that data is routed to third-party platforms. The narrow spread between the tracking figure and cookie figure suggests some trackers are likely operating without cookies, which means cookie blocking would not fully prevent exposure. The researchers identified 75 unique tracking tools across the 59 scanned sites, including Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, Microsoft Advertising and session replay technologies.

Over the years, The HIPAA Journal has observed improved education about HIPAA, with patients now having a much better understanding of what HIPAA protects, what it does not, and the rights HIPAA gives them. Patients expect privacy when they visit their healthcare providers, and those expectations extend to their providers’ digital presence. When they visit a healthcare website and search for information about sensitive health matters, book appointments, or disclose their information in forms, they expect that information to be kept private and not be disclosed to third parties such as social media companies and advertising networks, yet these tools have been doing that for years.

“This isn’t a story about reckless marketers or bad intentions. Healthcare organizations often inherit their analytics setup rather than actively choose it. Google Analytics became the default for many because it was free, established, and widely understood. The challenge today is scope creep. What began as website analytics has evolved into broader behavioral ad targeting platforms,” explained Magdalena Pawlitko, Head of Global Sales at Piwik PRO. “In regulated sectors such as healthcare, that creates greater compliance risk and requires much closer scrutiny of how data gathering tools are configured and governed.”

The problem for healthcare providers is that these tools provide important and useful features. While there are regulations governing the use of these tools, healthcare providers do not have to call a halt to their digital marketing campaigns, but they do need to assess their strategy and ensure that they have the right infrastructure in place to ensure compliance and protect patient privacy.

“Patients expect that their health-related behavior stays private when they visit a hospital website. “Meeting that expectation is entirely possible with the right setup – and organizations that get there aren’t just reducing their legal risk. They’re building something more valuable: a digital presence their patients can actually trust. said Brian Clifton, founder of Verified Data and digital analytics and privacy expert.

If not done so already, the researchers recommend that healthcare organizations conduct an audit of their current tracking setup, ensure that advertising pixels on web pages that are PHI-adjacent are removed, that they enforce opt-out signals at the tag management layer, replace non-compliant analytics with a purpose-built platform, and ensure they have compliant infrastructure in place. In addition, the researchers recommend making compliance a standing requirement, rather than a one-off review, ensuring that all compliance-related decisions are fully documented.

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Accenture, one of the world’s largest consulting firms, has confirmed it has experienced a security breach, shortly after a hacker claimed to have breached its systems and exfiltrated 35GB of data from the company. Accenture has confirmed that it identified the source of the intrusion and remediated the incident, and that it had no impact on its financial position or operations.

Accenture provides professional services to help businesses and governments solve complex problems and assist them with the implementation of new technologies, cloud migrations, along with managed services to help them run day-to-day business processes. Its client list includes many Fortune 500 companies.

On July 6, 2026, a cybercriminal hacker with the handle “888” added a post titled “Accenture Data Breach” to a cybercrime forum claiming to have stolen 35 GB of data including source code, RSA keys, SSH keys, Azure Personal Access Tokens (PATs), Azure Storage access keys, configuration files, and other data. The hacker was offering the data for sale, requesting payment in the Monero digital currency. The post included a screenshot as proof of data theft.

While Accenture has confirmed that there was an intrusion, the company has not stated whether the attacker’s claims are genuine or provided any further information about the nature of the incident. This is not the first time the hacker has attempted to sell data stolen from Accenture, having listed data for sale that had been stolen in a third-party incident in 2024.

In that instance, the hacker claimed to be selling sensitive data, including the personally identifiable information of more than 30,000 employees, although Accenture said at the time that the hacker’s claims were vastly exaggerated, and only included the data of around three of its employees. The latest data theft claim may also have been exaggerated; however, if genuine, the highly sensitive nature of the stolen data will be a major cause of concern, potentially impacting the company’s clients and partners.

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Researchers have identified what they believe to be the first agentic ransomware attack. An autonomous large language model (LLM) agent conducted an entire attack without human involvement, including vulnerability exploitation, credential theft, lateral movement and file encryption.

The attack was identified by researchers at the cloud security company Sysdig, who linked the attack to the JadePuffer ransomware operation. JadePuffer used a fully autonomous AI agent to conduct reconnaissance on the targeted company, exploit a vulnerability (CVE-2025-3248), steal credentials, move laterally within the victim’s network, establish persistence, escalate privileges, encrypt data, and drop a ransom note, adapting to failures on the fly without human intervention.

The vulnerability exploited for initial access was an unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in the Langflow open source framework. The researchers explained that this is an attractive entry point as Langflow servers are AI-adjacent, often hold provider API keys and cloud credentials, and are commonly stood up quickly without network controls. While a patch had been issued to fix the vulnerability on April 1, 2025, and the flaw was known to be actively exploited, the vulnerability had not been patched.

The AI agent was able to adjust its approach in a similar way to a human attacker. For instance, when an API request returned XML instead of JSON, the next payload adjusted its parsing logic accordingly, and when certain steps failed, the AI agent retried those steps using refined parameters. “In one sequence, it went from a failed login to a working fix in 31 seconds,” explained the researchers.

The AI agent gained access to a production MySQL server running Alibaba Nacos by exploiting a 2021 authentication bypass vulnerability, then encrypted all 1,342 Nacos service configuration items and deleted the originals. The AES encryption key was not transmitted to the attacker’s infrastructure, so even if the ransom was paid, recovery would not have been possible.

According to a recent statement from the Five Eyes cybersecurity agencies,  advances in artificial intelligence have accelerated the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyber threats. The agencies warned that “frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years; it is months.” The Sysdig researchers say the age of agentic threat actors has arrived.

While the attack was fully automated, it did not involve the exploitation of any zero-day vulnerabilities or novel techniques, therefore defending against automated attacks is no different to defending against hands-on- keyboard attacks. As recommended by the Five Eyes agencies, organizations should take steps now to combat threats by reducing their attack surface, accelerating patching processes, addressing legacy systems, reviewing and strengthening identity and access controls, and ensuring they develop and test incident response plans, which should be focused on fast containment and recovery.

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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has announced the formation of the Alliance of National Councils for Homeland Operational Resilience–Critical Infrastructure, or ANCHOR-CI for short. ANCHOR-CI will operate for two years initially but may be extended by DHS Secretary under the authority provided by Section 871 of the Homeland Security Act.

ANCHOR-CI is the successor to the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC), which enabled critical infrastructure entities to exchange sensitive information with the federal government about physical and cyber risks. CIPAC was established by the DHS in March 2006 and served as the framework for public collaboration on security for almost two decades, until it was eliminated by then DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in March 2025. There has been no formal framework for government-industry coordination on critical infrastructure cybersecurity for more than a year, and without the legal protections provided by CIPAC or an equivalent framework, some critical infrastructure sectors stopped sharing cybersecurity data with the federal government.

ANCHOR-CI retains the legal protections of CIPAC and creates a new framework to strengthen information sharing and broaden partnerships across government and industry to better secure the nation’s critical infrastructure. “The new and innovative ANCHOR-CI framework will be a game changer in how the public and private sectors collaborate and share information,” said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “In a rapidly evolving threat environment, ANCHOR-CI will ensure we have the right people in the room working together to keep the critical infrastructure Americans rely on secure and resilient. This is just another example of the partnership needed to confront the threats of today and tomorrow.”

ANCHOR-CI allows the establishment of four council types: critical infrastructure sector councils, cross-sector councils, critical infrastructure industry councils, and regional coordinating councils, which will advise and provide strategic and actionable recommendations to ensure a coordinated national effort to strengthen critical infrastructure cybersecurity. The councils will recruit members from four groups: critical infrastructure owners, operators and their trade associations; federal, state, local, tribal and territorial government agencies; organizations with direct responsibility for cybersecurity and infrastructure resilience; and other private sector entities.

The new framework is more flexible than its predecessor, supports open and candid discussions of sensitive information, strengthens collaboration between the government and industry, and will ensure more critical infrastructure stakeholders participate. One key feature of CIPAC that has been dropped in ANCHOR-CI is liability protection for participants. This was an important feature that allowed executives to discuss incidents in group settings without antitrust or regulatory exposure.

Under the new framework, CISA will approve proposed council members and may appoint additional participants. Under CIPAC, private sector councils chose their own representatives. While some meetings can be opened to the public, sensitive discussions are shielded, as ANCHOR-CI is exempted from the Federal Advisory Committee Act.

Governance of the ANCHOR-CI councils will be managed by the DHS and CISA, and it will be housed by CISA, which will provide the necessary funding and administrative support. The HHS Office of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection (CIP) will work closely with DHS and CISA to advance collaboration and ensure that the Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) sector priorities are elevated.  The ANCHOR-CI councils will help strengthen partnerships within the HPH sector, as well as across interdependent critical infrastructure sectors, including water and communications.

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The ClickFix social engineering technique is the leading method of malware delivery, according to an analysis by researchers at ReliaQuest. The researchers analyzed cyberattacks between March 1 and March 31, 2026, and found that attackers were most commonly exploiting trusted identities, devices, and tools in their attacks. This approach allows the attackers to hide their activities, which resemble normal user behavior, and bypass traditional perimeter and file scanning defenses.

The leading technique was ClickFix, which involves tricking users into pasting the attacker’s commands and scripts into trusted system dialogs, such as the Windows Run dialog. Pressing the Windows Key + R, launches the Run dialog, and the user is convinced to copy the supplied code into the dialog and execute it, having been tricked into thinking that the command will resolve an IT issue.

For instance, a user visits a website that triggers a pop-up, warning them that their browser contains a vulnerability or an image failed to load. They are told to click a button, which copies code, and then paste that command into the Run dialog and press Enter, thus executing the command. Other methods involve generating a fake CAPTCHA page, informing the user that they need to complete the test to verify they are human by pasting and running the command. That command launches PowerShell code that delivers the malware payload.

ReliaQuest researchers report that this technique is commonly used to deliver the NetSupport RAT, a remote access Trojan, and Deepload fileless malware, although they observed this technique being used to deliver a range of malware variants. This approach has also been used against MacOS users for the first time, delivering Atomic Stealer (AMOS), which can steal browser credentials, session cookies, cryptocurrency wallets, and keychain data.

ReliaQuest recommends companies add this method of attack to their security awareness training programs, warning employees not to paste commands into dialog boxes, such as Run, Terminal, or Script Editor, to consider restricting the use of the Run feature, restrict users from executing executable files, and use web filters to block pop-ups and prevent access to malicious websites.

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