SOC Insights

  The new gift card fraud prevention partnership between Digimarc and Honeywell was announced today as a strategic collaboration designed to strengthen the defenses of retailers against rising gift-card abuse. Under the agreement, Honeywell will integrate Digimarc’s next-generation on-scanner security software into its handheld retail scanners by early 2026, enabling real-time detection of tampered or fraudulent gift cards at the point of sale. This move aims to make it significantly harder for fraudsters to unscrupulously activate or redeem compromised cards, while offering retailers and consumers enhanced protection and a smoother checkout experience. Why This Collaboration Matters Escalating Gift Card Fraud Risks: The global gift card market is expanding rapidly, and with that growth come increased vulnerabilities. Fraudsters target gift cards because of their anonymity and widespread use, often executing tampering, cloning, or fraudulent activation schemes. Security Built int...

  ServiceTrade Smart Scan has been introduced as a new AI-powered nameplate scanning feature in the ServiceTrade mobile app, allowing technicians to snap a photo of an equipment nameplate and instantly capture accurate make, model, and serial-number information. This cuts asset-entry time from minutes to just seconds. The tool is designed to either create a complete record for a new unit at the correct location or if the unit already exists in the system quickly retrieve the existing record. The result: a dramatic reduction in manual typing, fewer errors from hard-to-read plates, and faster field workflows. What Makes Smart Scan a Game-Changer for Contractors Speed and Efficiency: With Smart Scan, asset-entry can take around 10 seconds roughly six times faster than the typical manual process (≈ 60 seconds). Improved Accuracy: By reading the nameplate directly and auto-populating data, the technology removes much of the human error that comes with manual transcription, especially...

  The newly announced NATO Google Cloud sovereign cloud partnership marks a major milestone in the alliance’s digital transformation strategy. As cyber threats escalate and global security environments grow more complex, NATO has signed a multi-million-dollar agreement with Google Cloud to develop a highly secure, AI-powered sovereign cloud designed to protect sensitive and classified workloads. This move positions NATO to modernize its digital infrastructure, boost operational efficiency, and enforce strict data sovereignty at a time when secure handling of information has never been more critical. A Strategic Collaboration to Strengthen NATO’s Digital Backbone NATO’s Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) has selected Google Cloud to deploy a next-generation cloud environment capable of supporting its Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC). This center manages a wide spectrum of sensitive mission data, training simulations, intelligence insights, and advance...

  Swimlane AI-driven case management is stepping into a new era with the launch of its industry-first incident-response AI agents , now available in the Swimlane Turbine platform through its Hero AI suite. These private, agentic AI services are designed to save security operations (SOC) teams thousands of hours each year, delivering real-world impact backed by in-production workloads. How These AI Agents Elevate Incident Response When security analysts juggle multiple tools, data sources, and browser tabs, triage becomes inefficient and error-prone. Swimlane addresses this by centralizing case management into a unified hub where intelligent agents provide real-time triage , contextual reasoning, and explainable decisions all at human-plus speed. This empowers analysts to monitor AI suggestions, take informed actions, and maintain full visibility across incidents. Michael Lyborg, CISO at Swimlane, highlighted the practical benefits: since deploying Hero AI agents, their in-house SO...