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The CA/B Forum Is Rewriting the Rules of Digital Certificates. Are You Ready?
For decades, X.509 digital certificates have quietly underpinned trust on the internet. They authenticate websites, encrypt traffic, secure devices, protect applications, and enable machine-to-machine communication. But that foundation is now undergoing its biggest transformation yet.
Driven by browser vendors, security incidents, operational failures, and the looming reality of quantum computing, the CA/Browser Forum (CA/B Forum) has approved sweeping changes to how public digital certificates are issued, validated, and managed. These changes will reshape how organizations design PKI architectures and force a long-overdue shift toward automation and crypto-agility.
This is not a future problem.
The first enforcement milestones arrived in March 2026.
Identity Is Now Your First Line of Defense. Are You Treating It That Way?
For years, security strategies were built around the network. Firewalls, segmentation, and perimeter controls defined how organizations protected access to systems and data.
That model doesn’t hold up anymore.
Today, identity is the control plane. It determines who gets access, under what conditions, and how that access is used. And as the pace of change accelerates—cloud adoption, hybrid work, third-party integrations—identity has become both the most critical security layer and the most targeted.
The challenge isn’t recognizing its importance. It’s managing the complexity that comes with it.
Modern Observability: From Reactive Monitoring to Proactive, Business-Aligned Insight
As IT environments continue to expand across hybrid infrastructure, cloud platforms, and distributed applications, the challenge isn’t a lack of data—it’s making sense of it fast enough to act.
That’s where modern observability comes in.
In a recent ANM Pathways webinar with Cisco and Splunk, our teams explored how organizations are moving beyond traditional monitoring toward a more connected, intelligent approach—one that ties performance, security, and business impact together in real time.
Managing IT Inflation Without Sacrificing Outcomes
Technology has always changed quickly. What’s different now is how fast costs are rising and how often organizations are caught off guard. Across software subscriptions, infrastructure hardware, and cloud platforms, many IT leaders are seeing budgets hold steady while pricing moves in the opposite direction.
This gap is what many teams are calling IT inflation: sustained cost increases across the technology stack that outpace normal budget growth. The result is familiar: renewal shock, delayed projects, and difficult conversations between IT, finance, and the business.
The goal isn’t to stop spending. It’s to spend smarter and avoid surprises.
Next-Generation Disaster Recovery: Building Cyber Resilience Before the Next Attack
Downtime is no longer hypothetical. Ransomware, supply chain attacks, cloud outages, power failures, and natural disasters can bring even well-funded IT organizations to their knees — and the consequences go far beyond an inconvenient afternoon. Financial losses, regulatory penalties, reputational damage, and in public-sector environments, real risks to public safety.
The uncomfortable truth? Most organizations are not as resilient as they think. In a recent assessment of a large transportation agency, ANM discovered that one-third of their production systems — including critical file servers — had zero data protection in place. Nobody realized it until a formal audit surfaced the gap. That agency would not have survived weeks without those systems.
This post captures the key insights from ANM’s Director of Data Center & Cloud, David Abbott, shared during a recent webinar on next-generation disaster recovery. Whether you are just getting started or looking to mature an existing DR program, the framework below gives you a practical, incremental path forward.
Creating a Safer Learning Environment with Cloud-Based School Security Platforms
Schools today face a growing responsibility: creating environments where students and staff feel safe while keeping campuses open, collaborative, and welcoming. Administrators must balance physical safety, cybersecurity, student privacy, and operational efficiency — all while responding faster to incidents when they occur.
Traditional security approaches built around isolated cameras, on-premises recorders, and disconnected access systems simply cannot keep up. Modern campuses need unified, cloud-managed security platforms that provide real-time visibility, secure access control, and AI-driven alerts so staff can move from reactive response to proactive prevention.
This is where cloud-based physical security platforms are changing how schools protect their communities.
What IT & Security Leaders Need to Know About Quantum Computing Fundamentals
Technology headlines move fast, and it’s not always clear which innovations require action today and which are still on the horizon. Quantum computing sits right at that intersection. While practical quantum systems are still emerging, their long-term impact, especially on cybersecurity, is significant enough that IT leaders should understand what’s coming.
In our recent ANM Pathways webinar, we broke down quantum computing in practical terms: what it is, how it differs from classical computing, where it will have impact, and why security teams should begin preparing now.
Cisco 360: What the New Partner Program Means for Customers and Why It Matters
Cisco has officially launched Cisco 360, a complete overhaul of its iconic partner program, and it’s more than a structural refresh. It’s a strategic shift that aligns how partners are measured, rewarded, and discovered with how customers actually buy, deploy, and operate technology in an AI-driven, hybrid world.
For customers, Cisco 360 signals a move away from transactional relationships and toward partners who can deliver outcomes across the full technology lifecycle — from architecture and deployment to adoption, optimization, and ongoing services.
In this post, we explore what Cisco 360 really means and why it’s important.
SASE: The New Baseline for Modern Enterprise Security
For years, networks were built like fortresses—everything tucked safely inside a data center with a hard perimeter and a single drawbridge. It worked when users and applications lived inside the walls. That world is gone.
Microsoft 365 Pricing & Feature Updates Coming July 1, 2026: What It Means for You
Microsoft has announced a major update to Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans, effective July 1, 2026. While this includes a price increase for some SKUs, it also delivers significant added value by bundling advanced security and management features that previously required separate add-ons.
AI-Driven Security Operations in an AI-vs-AI World
Today’s threats are evolving faster than ever. Traditional security operations centers (SOCs) and manual processes can no longer keep pace with the sophistication and speed of modern attacks.
This is where AI-driven Security Operations (SecOps) is becoming a practical approach that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to enhance visibility, accelerate response, and reduce complexity.
Microsoft Ignite 2025: Copilot and Agents Power the Next Frontier of Work
Microsoft Ignite 2025 has set the stage for a new era of AI-driven business transformation. This year’s theme centers on Frontier Firm, organizations that embed AI across every layer of their operations to scale faster, deliver more value, and innovate with confidence.
The announcements highlight how Microsoft Copilot, AI agents, and new agentic capabilities are redefining productivity, security, and cloud operations.