Shadow IT includes hardware, software, and services running outside IT and security teams’ visibility or approval.  It can include unapproved applications employees install, browser extensions with excessive permissions, and endpoints provisioned once and never enrolled in any monitoring platform. These unmanaged assets create visibility gaps because existing security controls do not monitor them.

Many organizations rely on network discovery scans to measure asset coverage. While useful, network discovery only identifies endpoints that respond during the scan window. Powered-off devices, isolated network segments, and software that does not expose listening ports can remain invisible. As a result, network discovery measures network reachability, not monitoring coverage.

Wazuh is a free and open source security platform that unifies SIEM and XDR capabilities across endpoints and cloud workloads. It collects system inventory data directly from each monitored endpoint, allowing security teams to compare what network scans report against what the Wazuh-monitored endpoints report.

This comparison helps identify unmanaged endpoints, unauthorized software, and monitoring gaps.

Why shadow IT resists discovery

Shadow IT persists because the tools that report findings often can’t observe the assets in question. Understanding where the gaps form helps security teams decide which controls to extend.

• Unmanaged endpoints: A workstation that is reimaged and never re-enrolled, or a virtual machine built for a short-lived project and left running, produces no telemetry. It does not appear in patch reports, vulnerability findings, or alert data, because no agent is installed to monitor them.
• Unapproved applications on managed endpoints: Remote access tools, file sharing clients, and productivity utilities installed outside the approved software baseline introduce risk on endpoints that are otherwise fully monitored. The endpoints are visible, but the software running on them is not always reviewed against policy.
• Software that opens no network port: Unauthenticated network discovery can infer services from the ports a host exposes, but it cannot reliably identify software that does not listen for inbound connections. Browser extensions, locally installed utilities, and remote access tools that initiate outbound connections to a broker are not observable through that method.
• Devices that cannot run an agent: Printers, switches, IP cameras, and other network devices require inventory and monitoring methods other than an endpoint agent.

Addressing these categories requires endpoint telemetry and additional data sources for devices that cannot run an agent.

Closing the blind spot with Wazuh

Wazuh helps organizations reduce shadow IT exposure through continuous system inventory collection, centralized analysis, and correlation of inventory data with vulnerability and policy information. The following capabilities help security teams identify unmanaged assets and unauthorized software across their environment.

• Continuous system inventory: The Wazuh agent collects hardware details, operating system information, installed packages, network interfaces, listening ports, running processes, services, users, groups, and browser extensions from each monitored endpoint. The Wazuh agent on Windows endpoints additionally reports installed updates. The Wazuh agent forwards this data to the Wazuh server, which processes it and stores it in the Wazuh indexer as the endpoint’s current state. The system inventory capability is enabled by default, runs an initial scan when the Wazuh agent starts, and rescans on a configurable interval that defaults to one hour.
  

  

• Centralized visibility across the environment: Inventory data from every monitored endpoint is aggregated into dedicated indices and presented on the Wazuh dashboard under IT Hygiene, organized into Dashboard, System, Software, Processes, Network, Identity, and Services sections. Security teams can query the entire data from a single interface rather than inspecting endpoints individually. The Network section includes a Traffic tab listing the ports actively listening on each endpoint. This is a host-side view of the same information a network scan attempts to infer remotely.

• Visibility into browser extensions and endpoint services: Wazuh 4.14.0 and later collect inventory data about browser extensions, endpoint services, users, and groups. The browser extension model is unified across Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing security teams to identify extensions with broad permissions across the estate from a single query. The services inventory normalizes Windows services alongside Linux systemd units, which helps teams find unapproved software configured to start automatically.

• Coverage for devices that cannot run a Wazuh agent: Wazuh provides agentless monitoring over SSH for routers, firewalls, switches, and Linux or BSD systems. For devices that support neither an agent nor an SSH session, the Wazuh server accepts syslog directly from network appliances and other equipment. These capabilities provide additional visibility into devices that cannot run a Wazuh agent. However, SSH and syslog monitoring provide only the information exposed by the configured commands, files, and device logs.
• Monitoring agent coverage itself: Agent enrollment status measures coverage among endpoints already registered with the Wazuh server. It does not identify unknown endpoints that were never installed or enrolled. A Wazuh agent reports one of four states: never connected, pending, active, or disconnected. Agents that enrolled but never connected indicate deployments that did not complete. An agent moves to disconnected when no keep-alive message arrives within the configured window, which defaults to 15 minutes. Reviewing these states helps security teams identify endpoints assumed to be monitored but not reporting.
• Correlating inventory against vulnerabilities and policy: Inventory data supports security decisions when compared against a reference. Wazuh vulnerability detection correlates collected software inventory with vulnerability content from the Wazuh Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) platform. It does not probe endpoints or sweep the network, so the analysis runs centrally on data the endpoints have already reported. The same inventory can be joined against external data sources to identify end-of-life software that no longer receives security updates. 

• Threat hunting across inventory data: Because inventory is stored centrally and indexed, security teams can query it during investigations rather than collecting data on demand. The Wazuh blog post Threat hunting using inventory data collected by Wazuh demonstrates this with custom rules, CDB lists of unauthorized software and ports, and queries run against the inventory. This approach surfaces assets that no single alert flags on its own.
• Detecting and removing unauthorized applications: Security teams can configure custom Wazuh rules to detect selected unauthorized applications and use a tested Active Response script to remove them from monitored endpoints. The Wazuh blog post Managing shadow IT with Wazuh covers the full configuration, including the custom detection rules and the active response script that uninstalls unapproved applications from monitored endpoints.

Conclusion

Shadow IT is a visibility problem before it is a policy problem. Organizations cannot enforce a software baseline on assets they cannot see, and network scanning alone shows only the systems that respond during a scan.

Wazuh helps reduce this visibility gap by collecting inventory from monitored endpoints and ingesting data from configured agentless sources. Endpoint inventory shows what is installed, running, and listening on each host, while agentless monitoring and syslog ingestion extend visibility to supported devices that cannot run a Wazuh agent. Wazuh agent enrollment states also help security teams measure monitoring coverage instead of assuming it. 

With this data indexed centrally, security teams can identify vulnerabilities, investigate inventory across monitored endpoints, compare software with lifecycle information, and initiate configured remediation for applications outside the approved software baseline.

Discover more about Wazuh by exploring its documentation and joining its growing community of professionals.

Sponsored and written by Wazuh.

from the modular-design dept

A theme going on many years here at Techdirt has been the idea that separating content and advertising, as was the traditional model, makes far less sense in the modern era. Audiences are no longer captive in the way they used to be, with many ways to skip advertising. Entertainment vectors are far more plentiful then they used to be, with more options for how we spend our entertainment time. Eyeballs are the currency of the day, which has led to far, far more things competing for our attention.

Given all of that, content is always some form of advertisement, intentional or otherwise, and advertising definitely better include good content or it will be ignored. On the advertising side, this means creating ads of one sort or another that are engaging and interesting. That itself can take many forms, but absurdity and humor are a common method for achieving this.

And if you want absurdity and humor, allow me to introduce you to Ikea’s approach, which was to create a Skyrim mod.

Ikea, the Swedish furniture-and-stuff giant, has released a mod for Skyrim called Kallax Storageborn: A new companion who is also a shelf, who is also voiced by Matt Berry. If you think that sounds weird, it gets weirder, because this mod doesn’t just add a companion, it includes an entirely new questline built around the character. Becoming encumbered in the game, as will inevitably happen eventually, will give you the opportunity to visit an abandoned dwemer emporium, where you’ll embark upon a quest to “unravel the origins of a mysterious master.”

During this quest, you’ll assemble Kallax Storageborn, a companion “with unfathomable storage capacity,” who can be summoned with a newly-added Thu’um—Skyrim’s famous voice of power—even when he’s not your active companion. Your ultimate goal: Tidy up the clutter plaguing the realm of Nords and Dragonborn.

Advertisement

There’s more. You can acquire the Allenblade, which is, yes, a sword styled after an Allen wrench, a common tool shipped with Ikea furniture. There’s also a helmet that is made from a meatball, a nod towards Ikea’s famous in-store Swedish meatballs.

You can see the announcement video here for yourself.

This whole thing is incredibly dumb, and I mean that in the most endearing, praising way possible, because it’s also quite smart. It’s a creative way to advertise a brand and, yes, a specific model of shelving from a furniture store. The delivery is done with Monty Python-esque silliness, a motif which fits quite comfortably in the realm of Skyrim, an otherwise very serious game. The voice production is a nice touch. It doesn’t in any way take itself seriously.

And, if you’ve played Skyrim yourself for more than an hour, you’ll know that encumbrance and inventory capacity are major, and to some annoying, challenges within the game.

So, this is advertising on a relatively low budget in a game still widely played and modded to this day, with a mod that actually addresses something some players find annoying, and does so with absurd humor and self-deprecation. And a meatball helmet.

Whatever else you think of this advertising, there’s no denying that it’s also content.

Filed Under: advertising is content, allenblade, content is advertising, kallax storageborn, skyrim

Companies: ikea

A three-and-a-half-minute video released this weekend made an N64 first-person shooter look like it belonged on the Super Nintendo, a 16-bit machine that many grew up with. Bond stands on the Arkhangelsk dam, the gun is in the lower corner of the frame, and the concrete bunkers pass by in chunky polygons while fog eats the far cliffs.

Retroports released a new video on their channel on September 20th. The video is simply titled ‘GoldenEye SNES Test’, and a small but devoted audience of a few hundred subscribers watches to see what they’re up to. The video in question is a live capture from a Mesen emulator, showing the opening and Dam missions from a 2MB Super FX2 cartridge running in polygon rendering mode, with some interesting features like fog and occlusion culling in action. Unfortunately, with such a restricted texture budget, just the first part of the level is rendered. What you may not know is that Claude Opus did the most of the work on the renderer, while ChatGPT Astra addressed a few other bugs.

For those who can remember back to the 1990s, Super FX2 was the newest generation of Argonaut and Nintendo’s collaboration, a processor that was shoehorned onto a few late SNES carts. Star Fox was the first game to make use of the original Super FX processor, which operated at around 10.7 MHz. On the other side, titles like Yoshi’s Island, DOOM, and Stunt Race FX required the extra horsepower of the Super FX2, which ran at 21.47 MHz, to power through all of the 3D arithmetic that the 65816 CPU alone couldn’t manage. Retroports has been playing with a 2MB Super FX2 cart inside Mesen, and they’ve used the extra power to test out a first-person camera, textured walls, and an animated gun sprite.

The Dam is the only mission that survives the cut, which is logical given how simple it is to texture a large concrete wall in comparison to all the offices and city blocks on the other levels. Then there’s occlusion culling, which helps by hiding geometry that the camera can’t see, and fog, which helps by reducing the draw distance so the chip doesn’t have to paint the entire valley every frame. Still, you can see the 1997 intro to Rare’s GoldenEye, even if it’s running on a device that’s a few generations behind the Nintendo 64.

Following Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo Power reported that Rare was working on GoldenEye for the Super NES, with initial plans to adopt a similar pre-rendered graphic style. However, the team eventually switched to a 64-bit processor, which resulted in the first-person shooter that redefined multiplayer in living rooms for a decade. Anyway, Retroports has managed to recreate some of the latter design on the earlier machine, utilizing the same chip that Nintendo gave for Star Fox plus a handful of language models to improve rendering.

To be totally honest, no one has been able to obtain a ROM for this game because, as far as we know, it has only ever been loaded onto the original hardware by the Retroports team themselves. Until we have a file that other people can run, this clip will have to suffice as proof in the pudding. Retroports describes it as a test to determine if 3D on the SNES may have been a more economically viable idea.
[Source]

Smart glasses may look cool but there’s absolutely no place in our schools or classrooms for them.

Sabine Winton said that on Tuesday. Western Australia’s education minister was announcing what she called the country’s most comprehensive ban on the devices.

It is not a policy statement. The same day, the department’s director general Jay Peckitt issued an instruction to every public school principal in the state. It takes effect on 12 October, the first day of Term 4.

What the instruction actually orders

The CEO Instruction is short and unusually specific.

Principals must stop students and staff wearing, using, charging or storing the glasses on school premises. The same applies at any school organised event or activity. The charging clause matters, because it closes the locker.

Principals must also bar parents, carers, visitors and contractors from bringing the devices onto school grounds at all. The instruction says the ban should reach government residential colleges too, through separate mechanisms.

It runs on real legal authority rather than guidance. The director general issues it under section 233 of the School Education Act 1999. Principals enforce it under regulations 69 and 70. Those let a principal direct people on school premises, and bar an item from coming in. Both rules say the school must display the order publicly.

The risk nobody expected on the list

The instruction names six risks. Four are the ones you would guess: privacy, child safety and wellbeing, unauthorised recording, and cyber security.

The fifth is disruption to teaching. The sixth is examination and assessment integrity.

That last one reframes the device. The instruction’s own definition runs well past a camera. It lists audio recording, video, photography, artificial intelligence functionality and live streaming. Then internet connectivity, facial recognition, information retrieval and communication.

Principals can still approve the glasses for medical, accessibility or assistive technology use, and for educational programmes they authorise themselves. Students who break the rule fall under the student behaviour policy, staff under staff conduct and discipline. Principals can tell visitors and contractors to take the devices off, and to leave if they refuse.

No incidents, on the record

Winton said the education department has recorded no instances of smart glasses being used irresponsibly in WA schools.

Prevention is the stated driver. Callum Liddelow and Courtney Withers reported the ban for ABC News. Winton pointed to growing community concern about careless, criminal and malicious use, not to anything that has happened in a classroom.

Kya Graves runs the WA Principals Federation. She told the ABC that principals had been writing their own school-level policies, with no departmental decree to work from. Some had incidents on their sites and put measures in place themselves.

Tama Leaver teaches internet studies at Curtin University. The worst outcome would be indecent recording of children, he told the ABC. He raised deepfakes as the second risk, and said it takes about 30 seconds of footage to make one with rudimentary tools.

Canberra asked the councils to do it

The federal government is the one part of this not acting.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland ruled out an import ban on 31 August. Erin Handley reported for the ABC that Rowland said the government was not consulting on one, though it was not ruling anything out on other measures.

In its place she offered a privacy overhaul. The draft laws carry a right to erasure from large platforms and search engines, a fair and reasonable test on data collection, and meaningful consent rules. An identity document service called IDLock is due in 2027.

Rowland also encouraged councils to restrict the glasses in their own facilities, and suggested retailers could police change rooms.

The eSafety commissioner put the other side. The devices help people with disability, through speech to text for deaf users and scene descriptions for people with low vision.

The councils took the invitation

Matthew Taylor reported for Lawyers Weekly that the City of Sydney and Canterbury-Bankstown have now barred the glasses from their pools and fitness facilities, joining Brisbane and Yarra.

Councillor Matthew Thompson put the motion on Monday. It directs the chief executive to review the council’s conditions of entry and update them, covering leisure centres, libraries, council childcare centres and community centres. The document notes the pools already excluded the glasses.

Canterbury-Bankstown got there first and wrote in enforcement. Its staff can order patrons to remove the eyewear, confiscate it, and move on anyone who refuses. Women and parents raised the concerns that started it.

Brisbane barred non-consensual use of camera-enabled devices at its 21 public pools, a category taking in phones and ordinary cameras. Gold Coast is considering the Brisbane model, Adelaide is weighing its own, and the City of Vincent in Perth ordered a report last week.

Thompson wants the import ban Rowland declined. He told TechRadar that Canberra has left the problem with councils. Federal crossbenchers asked for the same ban in late August.

The office is next

Employment lawyers are now telling Australian employers to write their own rules.

Paul O’Halloran, a partner at Dentons, told Lawyers Weekly the technology exists in public and workplace settings for one practical reason, which is to record people without their knowledge or consent. He said it should be banned outright.

He called the technology insidious, because unlike a phone or a camera there is no obvious moment of recording. That is the feature rather than the flaw, he said.

O’Halloran argues employers already carry the risk. Privacy law and work health and safety codes oblige them to protect staff from harm, including covert surveillance. An employee could be recorded all day, in meetings, in break rooms, even in bathrooms and change facilities, and neither the employer nor the person filmed would know.

Michael Byrnes, a workplace relations partner at Swaab, put it more plainly. Employers should have no hesitation in banning the glasses, he said, and telling staff not to wear them is a reasonable and lawful direction.

His specific worry is audio. Secretly recording private conversations potentially breaches surveillance devices legislation.

Byrnes allows two exceptions. Employees with a visual impairment should be able to use them as far as the work requires. Where the glasses reduce a genuine safety hazard, that may also justify them, with rules on retaining and using any recording.

Three statutes already cover this ground: the NSW Workplace Surveillance Act 2005, the Privacy Act 1988 and the Fair Work Act 2009.

What the evidence says

A University of Sydney study sampled 350 public Instagram videos shot on smart glasses. It found that around 60% could potentially count as harassment of a person or people. We covered that research in August, and the way the algorithm pushed those videos.

Independent testing published this week found a second problem. A hacker can get into some ultra-cheap smart glasses without a password.

People have started building their own defences. A Polish developer released an app that detects the glasses over Bluetooth.

Not only Australia

Courts in England and Wales barred the glasses in August. New York state courts did the same in July. In the United States, cinemas, schools and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have all restricted them.

Australia already banned social media for under-16s, and Victoria bars wearables in schools from January 2027. South Australia’s attorney-general, Kyam Maher, is taking advice on whether state law is adequate, and has been talking to Rowland about nationally consistent rules.

The rapid growth of extra-large TVs measuring 85 inches and larger has put real pressure on the home projector category. Today’s biggest TVs are brighter, smarter, and increasingly affordable, making them a compelling alternative for buyers who once would have automatically considered projection.

Projectors still hold one major advantage, however: sheer image size. In dedicated home theaters and larger multipurpose rooms, projection can deliver a 100-inch, 120-inch, or even larger image without pushing prices into the stratosphere.

Following the launch of its higher-end Pro Cinema Q-Series 4K Laser Projectors in 2024, Epson is now bringing more attention to its step-down Home Cinema lineup with the new LS5000, LS6000, and LS7500 4K HDR laser projectors. The three models sit below the flagship Q-Series but retain a number of the technologies and features that made those projectors noteworthy.

The new LS Series models are built around Epson’s 3-Chip 3LCD technology and use a laser light engine. For owners of older lamp-based projectors, the move to laser brings a longer-lasting light source, more consistent brightness over time, and faster startup and shutdown.

The new models complement Epson’s established Home Cinema projector lineup, which is currently headed by the Home Cinema LS11000, introduced in 2022. Epson says the new Home Cinema projectors are designed to balance image performance with flexible installation and easier integration across a wide range of home entertainment spaces.

“As TVs get bigger, they can also become a design challenge, leaving a large black rectangle that dominates the room when not in use. Projection offers a discreet alternative that virtually disappears when the entertainment ends, while creating immersive experiences not possible with a traditional TV – from everyday 16:9 content to cinematic 21:9 and IMAX-style viewing,” said Fernando Tamashiro, product manager at Epson America, Inc. “By expanding our Home Cinema lineup with these new 4K HDR laser projectors, we’re offering an even broader range of solutions for today’s home entertainment spaces. Combining our unique 3-Chip 3LCD technology with our latest laser light source, Epson projectors are the optimal choice for customers looking to create a big-screen experience tailored to their viewing preferences, space and budget.”

Designed for movies, sports, and immersive gaming, Epson’s new Home Cinema laser projector lineup can display 4K HDR images at screen sizes ranging from 40 to 300 inches.

What the Epson LS5000, LS6000, and LS7500 Have in Common

Image Display Technologies: All three projectors use an advanced Epson Picture Processor, proprietary 4K display technology that produces a full 8.29-million-pixel on-screen image via Quad Pixel Shifting, and a 3-Chip 3LCD projection engine powered by a laser-array light source.

Light Output: The three projectors produce between 2,500 and 3,500 lumens of equal Color Brightness (IDMS Rated) and White Brightness (ISO Rated), depending on the model. Epson says the result is a bright, vivid image with strong color performance and deep black levels.

Advanced HDR Capability: Full 10-bit color processing supports HDR10 and HLG content. Additional HDR processing is provided by Epson’s Automatic HDR Scene Correction.

Multiple Aspect Ratios: From 16:9 HDTV content to cinematic 21:9 presentations, the new Home Cinema LS projectors are designed to support a range of screen formats and viewing environments.

Lenses: The Home Cinema LS5000 and LS6000 incorporate Epson Cinema standard-throw lenses, while the Home Cinema LS7500 features a short-throw lens that allows the projector to be positioned closer to the screen than conventional long-throw models. That makes the LS7500 better suited to larger screen sizes in rooms where projector placement is more limited.

High Black Contrast: Producing convincing black levels while maintaining shadow detail has long been a challenge for projectors. Epson specifies dynamic contrast ratios ranging from 800,000:1 to 1,200,000:1 across the three new LS models, depending on the projector. The goal is greater differentiation between bright and dark portions of the image while preserving detail in darker scenes.

HDMI Connectivity: All three projectors include dual HDMI inputs supporting refresh rates up to 120Hz, with one HDMI port providing eARC for audio passthrough to a compatible AV receiver or soundbar.

Gaming: In addition to supporting refresh rates up to 120Hz, the new LS projectors include Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and input lag rated below 20ms. That combination makes them suitable for gaming with compatible consoles and PCs where faster response times are important.

Flexible Installation: A compact design with quiet, front-exiting airflow provides additional placement flexibility. Manual lens shift of ±21% horizontally and ±59% vertically also makes it easier to position the projector in a variety of home theater and multipurpose spaces.

Bluetooth: Bluetooth connectivity is still not standard across the projector category, but the Home Cinema LS5000, LS6000, and LS7500 include Bluetooth 6.0. This allows audio from HDMI-connected sources to be streamed to compatible wireless headphones or speakers.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

Epson’s position as the world’s top-selling projector brand did not happen by accident. Its lineup stretches from classrooms and conference rooms to dedicated home theaters, and the new Home Cinema LS5000, LS6000, and LS7500 fill an important spot just below the company’s more expensive Pro Cinema Q-Series.

What makes these three interesting is not simply that they use laser light sources or can throw a 300-inch image. Epson combines its 3-Chip 3LCD architecture with equal rated color and white brightness, output ranging from 2,500 to 3,500 lumens, Quad Pixel Shifting for an 8.29-million-pixel 4K image, HDR processing with tone mapping, and gaming features that include 120Hz support and ALLM. The LS7500 also adds a short-throw lens for installations where putting a conventional projector farther back in the room simply isn’t practical.

That combination gives the LS Series a legitimate point of differentiation from many single-chip DLP competitors, where white-light output and color-light output can differ substantially. It also gives buyers much of the functionality they actually need for movies, sports, and gaming without forcing them into Epson’s considerably more ambitious Pro Cinema Q-Series.

Competition from Sony, Hisense, Leica, JMGO, Optoma, and others is substantial, and some alternatives offer more light output, different installation options, or integrated entertainment features. But for someone trying to build a genuinely large-screen home theater without entering flagship-projector territory, the LS5000, LS6000, and LS7500 make a strong case for staying with traditional projection. A 98-inch TV might be getting easier to justify; a 150-inch one remains something of a financial incident.

Pro Tip: None of the three projectors includes a built-in speaker system or projection screen, so those need to be factored into the total system cost. Bluetooth is available for wireless audio, but anyone building a serious home theater will still want to budget for an external audio system and an appropriate screen.

Price & Availability

The new Epson Home Cinema LS Projectors are available through Epson’s Online Store and Select Retailers. 

Related Reading:

MediaTek is taking its first proper step into desktop-style computing, with its new Dimensity CX C10 Max confirmed for an upcoming premium Googlebook.

The new chip is the first member of MediaTek’s Dimensity Compute Experiences (CX) family, and it’s built around a fairly serious set of hardware. Manufactured on TSMC’s 3nm process, the C10 Max uses an octa-core all-big-core CPU, an 11-core GPU and MediaTek’s eighth-generation NPU.

Beats’ new 360 headphones are different from any Beats pair we’ve seen before. They’re designed around an adaptable core frame with easily swappable earcups and headband cushions in multiple colors and styles, along with features like much-improved noise canceling compared with the Studio Pro and IPX4 water resistance.

Their $350 MSRP is the same as the 2023 Beats Studio Pro and considerably less than competing models from Bose, Sony, and others. But can they really be your everything headphones?

Skip the reading? Click play above or watch the Beats 360 review on YouTube.

The 360’s unique form factor takes a cue from true wireless earbuds, with a battery and circuitry in each earpiece, allowing for a thin, flexible headband. They’re still relatively heavy at nearly 300 grams, but the balanced design fits well and remained comfortable for hours of wear. The four-piece control system is simpler and more elegant than the Studio Pro’s. There are nine microphones in total; eight are used for noise canceling and transparency mode, while three contribute to excellent call quality alongside DSP and AI-powered noise suppression.

The headphones ship with diamond-knit textile earcups designed for durability, and they work reasonably well for workouts. The core frame comes in four colors: Black, Cloud, Sky, and Pink. The swappable earcups and pads add Navy and Volt Green, along with faux-leather options in white and black. Introductory pricing starts at $10, rising to as much as $50 per set afterward. Custom 40 mm drivers are powered by what Beats calls a “high dynamic range amplifier.”

Features include iOS options like Audio Sharing and hands-free Siri, while both Android and iOS users get one-touch pairing, audio switching between connected devices, and finder functionality. There are no auto-pause sensors, manual EQ, or line-in playback options of any kind. Battery life is rated at 32 hours per charge, with an hour of playback from five minutes of charging, which matched my testing. Unfortunately, the battery continued to drain after the headphones were powered down, at a rate of around 0.5 percent per hour. Beats assumed this was due to the always-on Find My feature, but the issue persisted with Find My turned off. I’m hoping Beats offers a fix soon.

Noise canceling is excellent for the money, testing just a notch or two below top models like Bose’s QC Ultra Gen 2 and Sony’s WH-1000XM6. Transparency mode is also solid, though not as clear or natural-sounding as Apple’s AirPods Pro or AirPods Max.

Sound quality is generally balanced and includes head tracking for 3D audio formats like Dolby Atmos. The bass isn’t as potent as on previous Beats headphones, including the Studio Pro, but it’s musical and well controlled. The treble is brighter than on models like Sony’s XM6, and the 360 doesn’t offer the same level of definition, but it remains relatively detailed across the frequency range, with good clarity and instrumental separation. For a closer look at performance, watch our full video review on YouTube.

The Bottom Line

The latest Beats headphones have a lot to offer, from their adaptable, splash-resistant design to powerful noise canceling and accessible sound. They’re an enticing option for folks who want a stylish, sporty pair of headphones, as well as those who don’t want to spend up for the latest flagship models from Bose, Sony, and others.

I do wish they had a few more features, including auto-pause. It would also be nice to get a hard case, though I don’t expect one from Beats at this point. The biggest issue is the odd battery drain when powered off, which makes the 360 tough to recommend based on my current testing. I’m hoping Beats can fix the problem, and it’s always possible the issue is limited to a small number of units like mine.

Otherwise, the 360’s solid performance and unique design would make them worth considering for anyone looking for versatile headphones that stand out from the crowd.

Pros:

• Distinctive customizable design
• Clear and relatively detailed sound
• Excellent noise-canceling for the money
• Fantastic call quality
• IPX4 water resistance

Cons:

• Potential battery drain issue when powered off
• Bass isn’t as big as Beats fans might require
• No manual EQ or line-in playback options
• No auto-pause

Our Ratings:

Editor’s Note: These ratings reflect the battery drain issue we experienced and will be updated if it’s fixed.

★★★★★★★★★★ Performance

★★★★★★★★★★ Build Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Comfort

★★★★★★★★★★ Features

★★★★★★★★★★ ANC

★★★★★★★★★★ Value

Where to Buy:

Related Reading:

A new Windows malware named ClosedQuorum uses Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Qwen, and Mistral AI models to autonomously determine the actions to take during post-compromise stages of an attack.

The Go-based malware acts with no commands from a human operator, using reconnaissance information and a voting system to decide its next step on infected hosts.

When votes are tied, DeepSeek has priority at making the final call, based on the option it considers most appropriate, followed by Qwen, Mistral, and Gemini.

Cisco Talos researchers analyzing ClosedQuorum say that the models are restricted to a predefined set of decisions, including:

• steal — simultaneously runs LSASS credential dumping, browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) credential theft, and cryptocurrency-wallet (MetaMast, Exodus, Ethereum) extraction
• inject — generates shellcode, then uses either process hollowing or Early Bird APC injection
• persist — executes the malware’s persistence module
• move — included as a possible lateral movement decision, but the analyzed distribution build has no corresponding handler, so it cannot execute this action

The stolen details are then passed to the operators via a Discord webhook, so apart from the malware delivery, the attack can be fully automated.

Talos describes ClosedQuorum as the first publicly documented Windows implant to delegate tactical command-and-control (C2) decisions to a panel of AI models, commenting that this adds greater speed and scaling potential to malicious operations.

The researchers also highlight that this eliminates human interaction, allowing the attack chain to proceed at any time.

However, Cisco notes that this may also pose challenges in certain cases where rate limits are hit, output is malformed, or commercial APIs that the system relies on are temporarily unavailable.

Since it is not a sophisticated piece of malware, it is unclear if ClosedQuorum is a test or experiment. However, the researchers warn that it represents an “architectural shift towards attack-chain automation.”

“While we do not have confirmation of in-the-wild deployment, artifacts from the binary were used to connect the developer to postings on criminal forums related to carding, dating back to 2025,” explains Cisco Talos.

The binary that Cisco Talos analyzed contains placeholder API credentials and a dummy Discord webhook, although the creators can add those in their custom ClosedQuorum builds.

Cisco Talos discovered ClosedQuorum through CAIRN, an open-source toolkit it released to help researchers track and analyze AI-integrated malware.

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