BearingPoint’s Laura Kealy explores how she found herself working as a senior technology analyst.
Donegal native Laura Kealy found her secondary education abruptly interrupted in 2020 with the onset of the global pandemic. From there, she went on to pursue management science and information systems studies at Trinity College Dublin, before undertaking a graduate programme at management and tech consulting firm BearingPoint.
“Maths and business were my favourite subjects in school, which led me to pursue a degree that combined both subjects alongside technology. While I enjoyed the technical side of my studies, I also knew I wanted a career that involved working closely with people and helping to solve real-world problems,” Kealy told SiliconRepublic.com.
She explained that BearingPoint stood out to her after interacting with future team members at a college careers fair. Kealy said, “Everyone I spoke to was welcoming, genuine and passionate about what they did, which gave me a great impression of the company culture.”
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Can you describe a typical day in your role?
One of the things I enjoy most about my role is the variety. A typical day might involve meeting with clients to understand their requirements, collaborating with my teammates to solve technical challenges, and then carrying out hands-on work such as analysing data in Power BI, writing PowerShell scripts or creating project documentation.
I also enjoy the collaborative aspect of the work I do. Whether it’s working with teammates or engaging directly with clients, there’s always an opportunity to learn from others. I have been fortunate to work with people who are always willing to share their knowledge and help me develop my skills.
Did your responsibilities and workload change as the programme progressed?
At BearingPoint, I’ve always been encouraged to learn through hands-on experience and client-facing work. Being part of a small team meant I was trusted early on with responsibilities and given opportunities to make an impact, while still having the support of my colleagues around me.
As I’ve grown more confident in my role, my workload and responsibilities have naturally increased, progressing from supporting project activities to leading key client deliverables. I’ve also had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues at all levels of the organisation, from fellow graduates right through to directors and partners.
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Working with people from different backgrounds and experiences has taught me new ways of thinking and approaching challenges.
What skills have you developed since being part of the company’s programme?
My technical knowledge has grown significantly through hands-on project work, particularly in areas such as AI, data analysis and Microsoft technologies. I have had great opportunities to continue learning through certifications, training and knowledge-sharing from colleagues.
I have also developed my communication and consulting skills. I’ve become much more confident communicating with different audiences, whether that’s providing updates to my team, presenting to clients or explaining technical concepts to people from a non-technical background.
Learning how to adapt my communication style to different audiences has been one of the most valuable skills I’ve gained throughout the programme and one that I use every day.
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What have been the most challenging parts of working life since taking up this programme?
One of the most challenging aspects of my role has been keeping up with the pace of change in technology, particularly with the rapid evolution of AI. Working in this space means continuously learning, especially when you’re helping clients understand how these technologies can be used effectively within their organisations.
What started as a challenge has become something I now really enjoy. Whether it is writing a simple prompt to Copilot or building an advanced AI agent that can complete tasks on your behalf, AI is constantly evolving and there’s always something new to learn and experiment with.
It’s also been rewarding to share what I’ve learned with others and help build confidence in using these tools across different teams and projects.
Would you recommend the graduate programme at this company to others?
I would definitely recommend the graduate programme at BearingPoint. The combination of challenging work, learning opportunities and a genuinely supportive culture has made it a great place to start my career.
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I have had the opportunity to work on large-scale projects, learn from experienced colleagues and develop both technically and professionally. I really enjoy the strong social aspect of the office, with everything from sports and social events to charity initiatives.
Those experiences have made it easy to build relationships and have been a really important part of my time here.
What advice would you like to give to future graduates who are just starting out?
My advice would be to say yes to opportunities, even if they’re outside your comfort zone. This applies to projectwork, but some of the experiences I’ve learned the most from weren’t necessarily part of my day-to-day role.
Getting involved in different teams, initiatives and events has really helped me develop new skills, build confidence and form great connections across the organisation.
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For this year’s IEEE annual election, the IEEE Tellers Committee will recognize the Sections with the highest voter turnout (based on total eligible voters) in each Region with an incentive reward after the election results are accepted by the IEEE Board of Directors.The incentive initiative is managed by the Tellers Committee, which retains full authority over all rules, operations, and decisions regarding the program.
Incentive guidelines
The Section sizes and their respective reward amounts are:
Large sections consist of more than 1,501 eligible voting members. The top-performing large section in each IEEE region will be rewarded with US $1,000.
Medium sections consist of 501 to 1,500 eligible voting members. Each region’s top-performing medium section will receive $600.
Small sections consist of 500 or fewer eligible voting members. The top-performing small section in each region will receive $400.
A new report says Seattle’s economy “may not be in decline, but it is in danger.” (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
An independent study commissioned by the City of Seattle says the city’s tax structure is unique among its peers in the way it “specifically penalizes the hiring of senior, high-compensation workers,” with that penalty falling overwhelmingly on large tech employers.
Overall, Seattle’s business taxes are actually in line with competing cities, write researchers from the economic consulting firm Formation in the new report. But Seattle’s taxes are “particularly distortionary when it comes to hiring high-wage employees,” they add.
Mayor Katie Wilson helped design the tax, known as JumpStart, before taking office. But even the strongest supporters of new local and state taxes would concede that Seattle is “reaching the limits of how much it can tax the industries and people that it is depending upon to drive its growth,” the researchers write.
Another risk for the city is the resulting concentration of the tax base. Three-quarters of the payroll tax on large employers comes from 10 companies. Nine of them are in tech-related sectors.
A big company shifting 10,000 workers out of Seattle would cost the city about $50 million a year in payroll tax revenue, the researchers say in an accompanying slide deck, without naming Amazon explicitly. That’s more than a quarter of the $175 million deficit the city projects for next year.
In that way, much of the city’s financial future depends “on the marginal location and compensation decisions of a handful of employers,” the report says. Because much of the taxed compensation is vesting stock, it adds, the city’s revenue is exposed to “the single most volatile attribute of these firms — one the city has no ability to forecast or influence.”
Reducing that dependence through growth is the bigger point of the report.
The 127-page assessment, called “Seawall: Building a Resilient Seattle Economy,” goes well beyond the topic of taxes. The title refers to Seattle’s rebuilt waterfront seawall, engineered to hold back the water and also let marine life take hold. The researchers offer this as a model for protecting the city’s economic base while building a more diverse economy on top of it.
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A decade of growth lifted wages at every level of the income spectrum, the report finds. Few other U.S. regions spread prosperity as broadly. But the same growth made Seattle far more expensive, especially for families.
Fast-forward to today, and the report sees an economy that’s dangerously concentrated, “significantly more AI-exposed than the national average,” short of the electricity it will need, and no longer producing mid-sized companies.
In danger, not in decline: The report is also careful to point out the city’s unique position and strengths. Seattle’s tech workforce is “almost peerless,” it says: 23% of the nation’s AI engineers are based in the region, and output per tech worker is more than double the national average.
The region also has the rare combination of a big tech industry and a strong manufacturing base.
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Seattle “may not be in decline, but it is in danger,” the researchers write — “not because it is losing its place in the industry, but because the industry could undergo a radical change, and arguably already is.”
The concern that Seattle is becoming “the next Cleveland,” raised in a GeekWire column in February by Seattle tech veteran and angel investor Charles Fitzgerald, is “likely hyperbolic,” the researchers write. (They acknowledge that it “caused quite the stir this past winter.”)
The report points instead to Portland and Los Angeles as the more relevant warnings, citing Portland’s pileup of new business taxes and Los Angeles’ failure to turn a deep talent pool into jobs.
Fitzgerald responded Wednesday evening on his blog, Platformonomics, writing that the city “has finally acknowledged there is such a thing as an economy.” His main objection was who wasn’t in the room: “No businesses were involved, but that seems to be the norm hereabouts on economic matters.”
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The report’s acknowledgments list dozens of interviewees, including the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Washington Roundtable and the Tech Alliance. No large tech employer is among them.
Ryan Donahue, a co-founder and managing partner at Formation, said in an email that the researchers interviewed many business representatives but no large companies directly, saying he expected a predictable message from their government affairs teams.
The person who led the report’s tax and cost analysis previously ran Amazon HQ2 recruitment at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the agency that landed the project for Arlington, Va., Donahue said, providing insights into how firms like Amazon weigh those decisions.
A path forward: The report recommends that the city focus on five industries: artificial intelligence, cleantech, maritime, life sciences and space. Cleantech is the priority, the report says, because Seattle owns or regulates much of what the sector needs, from Seattle City Light to building codes, permitting and land use.
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The Seattle Office of Economic Development commissioned the report from Formation in 2025, under then-Mayor Bruce Harrell, to examine the drivers of the city’s business climate.
Harrell’s successor, Mayor Wilson, released the report Wednesday afternoon alongside an executive order convening a task force of business, labor, community and civic leaders, directing the city to improve permitting pathways, and calling for a proposal to create a Seattle Strategic Initiatives Fund.
In releasing the report, Wilson’s office said the findings “are independent and are not City policy.” But speaking on KUOW-FM’s Soundside as the report was released, the mayor called it “fantastic,” describing it as “super nuanced,” and urging listeners to take the time to read it.
The cost of a hire: JumpStart, the payroll expense tax, applies to large employers based on the compensation they pay to high-earning workers in Seattle. Approved by the City Council in 2020 and in effect since 2021, it was created to fund affordable housing, small-business support and climate programs, but the city has increasingly used it for general government operations.
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Wilson helped create the tax before running for mayor, saying on her campaign website that she “played an instrumental role in designing and passing” the payroll tax.
Under JumpStart, hiring a software engineer at $650,000 in total compensation costs about $17,000 a year more in Seattle than in Bellevue, the report says. For an employee earning more than $1 million, the difference exceeds $33,000. San Francisco imposes no per-employee tax at all, and New York City’s equivalent is less than $6,000, according to the researchers.
That $17,000 reflects the tax’s top rate, which this year applies only to employers with about $1.3 billion or more in Seattle payroll. Two or three companies at most are in that tier, the report says. At the city’s lowest rate for that pay level, the same engineer would cost about $11,800, according to Seattle’s published rates.
The rate rises with an employee’s pay, and a company that crosses one of the city’s payroll thresholds pays the higher rate on every qualifying worker, not just the next hire.
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“No other comparison city has a tax with both of these features,” the report says.
An issue of perception: Business leaders interviewed for the study described JumpStart as a problem “not primarily for its cost but because the process of enacting it communicated that the city’s governing orientation is fundamentally extractive.”
The researchers add: “Whether or not that characterization is fair, it is the operating perception, and perception shapes location decisions.”
But the researchers stop short of recommending a change. Taxes have “modest effects on firm location and expansion decisions,” they write, and Seattle is unlikely to lose its biggest employers to other regions, because the alternatives are either more expensive or have weaker talent.
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“The Eastside is the only real threat in that regard,” the report says.
The study is blunt about what is at stake in keeping those employers. “If they leave,” it says, “Seattle won’t become more equal, it will just become poorer.”
What to do about taxes? The report does not recommend raising or lowering that top rate. Research on how firms respond to local taxes draws on thousands of firms across dozens of jurisdictions, it says, and “cannot tell us how any one firm will respond to any one tax change.”
With two or three firms in the top tier and “one firm by far the most dominant,” the question “is fundamentally a question about how that single firm will react.” It adds, “That is not a question this report, or the literature it draws on, is equipped to answer.”
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GeekWire has contacted Amazon for comment on the report.
Other tax options that have been floated — vacancy taxes, wealth taxes, head taxes beyond JumpStart, expanded gross receipts schemes — are “either disallowed under state law or would, if enacted, likely push out the firms and workers Seattle most needs to retain,” the report says.
And once the state’s new 9.9% tax on income above $1 million takes effect in 2028, Seattle earners above that level will face a combined state and local marginal rate of about 10.5%. Pushing meaningfully above that, the report says, “would be a high-stakes tax experiment.”
Mayor Katie Wilson with business, labor and community leaders after signing an executive order on the economy Wednesday at the Seattle Office of Economic Development. (City of Seattle Photo)
Where Wilson stands: The mayor has already conceded the Bellevue point. “I don’t think it’s good that it is less expensive to do business in Bellevue than in Seattle,” she said in May. “We’re going to be taking that into consideration.”
She defended the tax in June, crediting it with helping Seattle recover from the pandemic and cautioning against blaming downtown’s problems on any single cause.
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Her relationship with the tech community has been rockier. At a Seattle University event in April, asked about that state tax, Wilson said concerns about wealthy residents leaving were “super overblown” — then waved and said, “the ones that leave, like, bye.” The moment drew national coverage and criticism from Seattle investors.
A bet on cleantech: Taking a step back, the report says Seattle’s best opportunity is in cleantech, a category it defines broadly to include clean energy generation, energy efficiency and sustainable production methods and materials.
The shift is already showing up in local venture funding. Cleantech and energy companies took 3% of the venture capital raised by Seattle-area private companies from 2016 to 2020, and 20% from 2021 to 2025, according to Crunchbase data cited in the report. Three companies — TerraPower, Helion and Group14 — account for 70% of that.
The city “should be most concerned about AI but most active in cleantech,” the report says.
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AI will ultimately be more important to Seattle’s future, the researchers explain, but the city has almost no ability to shape it. Cleantech is different: Seattle owns the electric utility, writes the building codes and controls permitting and much of the land.
The city can also use its own purchasing power to create a market for what these companies build, the report says, pointing to a New York program that used public housing demand to bring a new cold-climate heat pump into production.
To reach the top tier of cleantech ecosystems, the report says, Seattle would need a dedicated entity putting at least $5 million a year into growing the sector, funded through ratepayer charges, philanthropy, corporate sponsorship and competitive federal grants.
What’s next:According to the city, Wilson’s executive order calls for the task force to convene industry roundtables in the coming months. The report’s own first-year list runs to ten items, including a business-led commission on the city’s fiscal exposure, with an emphasis on AI, and structured visits with 50 companies across the five industries it identifies.
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Others include naming a senior staffer in the mayor’s office to run the city’s AI agenda, and a childcare cost-sharing pilot split three ways between employee, employer and city, with the city’s share paid out of JumpStart.
On taxes, the report’s primary recommendation looks beyond City Hall. It urges Wilson to build a cross-partisan coalition of mayors and county executives to press Olympia for new municipal revenue tools, including changes to the state’s 1% cap on property tax growth.
A caller on KUOW asked Wilson whether there’s a limit to how much Seattle should grow. She said she shares the concern, then pointed back to the report, which she said makes clear there is “no graceful path” for Seattle to cool down its growth.
Michael Jensen, left, and Steven Brugger are leading BrainChild Bio. (Photos via BrainChild Bio)
Seattle biotech startup BrainChild Bio has raised $116 million to advance an experimental CAR T cell therapy for one of the deadliest forms of childhood brain cancer.
The Series A financing will primarily fund a pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial of an investigational therapy being developed for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG. The rare brainstem tumor primarily affects children ages 5 to 10 and has few treatment options.
The financing was led by an undisclosed private family fund and foundation, with participation from BrainChild Bio’s initial investor, Seattle Children’s, and new investor WRF Capital.
BrainChild Bio is building on CAR T cell technology developed at Seattle Children’s and licensed exclusively to the company in 2023. The approach involves genetically engineering a patient’s own T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells.
The company says its new therapy has now entered its ILLUMINATE Phase 2 study, designed as a registration-stage trial that could eventually support an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
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DIPG presents a particularly difficult challenge for cancer researchers because the tumors grow in the brainstem, an area critical to basic functions, and the blood-brain barrier can limit the ability of treatments to reach the tumor.
BrainChild Bio’s approach delivers the CAR T cells directly into cerebrospinal fluid through an implanted catheter, allowing the cells to reach the tumor locally and potentially be administered repeatedly.
About 300 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with DIPG each year, a devastating brain tumor with no cure and few treatment options. Radiation is the current standard of care, but children diagnosed with DIPG have a median overall survival of only about 11 months.
BrainChild Bio also plans to use proceeds from the new financing to advance a CAR T therapy designed to target three different cancer markers, toward initial clinical testing in glioblastoma.
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The company was founded by Michael Jensen, who previously helped develop the underlying work at Seattle Children’s and was a co-founder of Umoja Biopharma and Juno Therapeutics. The CEO is Steven Brugger, who most recently served as founder and CEO of Affinivax, a biotech company which was acquired by GSK for $3.3 billion in 2022.
“This financing enables us to chart our path forward to serve the children and families afflicted with devastating brain tumors and represents a new paradigm for treating CNS brain tumors in children and adults,” Jensen said in a statement. “Our team at BrainChild Bio is steadfast in its commitment to harness CAR T cell technology in CNS tumors and we are uniquely positioned to do so.”
Coinbase engineer gives simulated insect $100 and lets its neurons make the trades
If you want to understand how 2026 is going, in March The Register reported that scientists had connected a simulated fruit fly brain to a virtual body and let it wander around a virtual world. Now another simulated fly nervous system is trading crypto.
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Behold Stonkfly, the brainchild of Coinbase software engineer Alex Wormuth. His X post boasted: “I gave the fly brain $100 to trade bitcoin. Dopamine neurons are stimulated when the fly makes profit. Neuron activity controls buy/sell decisions and makes trades on coinbase. Will the fly get rich?”
Keen readers will recall that researchers at Eon Systems took several preexisting components: a fruit fly brain scan, a tool for modeling neurons, a model of some of the fly’s muscles and body, and a very simple virtual environment. After connecting them, the team claimed that the result displayed some of the behavior of a real insect.
Stonkfly is different. It uses a model of a male fly’s brain and ventral nerve cord, rather than the female brain scan used in the earlier experiment. It has no body, and engineered interfaces feed it market information and translate neural activity into trading decisions.
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The explanation on GitHub – it is an open source project – makes clear that the model uses engineered reinforcement signals, not modeled pain receptors, while synaptic changes “do not establish that it learns to trade profitably.”
The underlying network is substantial, comprising 166,700 nodes, 25,582,938 directed connections, and 124,177,617 synaptic contacts.
Stonkfly in action
The project documentation nonetheless sets out criteria for what would qualify as successful learning, along with some careful caveats. “Compare to cash and simple exposure baselines as well: rising crypto prices alone can make any buyer look skilled,” the documentation says.
“No profitable learning, strategy improvement, biological replication, or live-funded performance has been demonstrated by this repository’s tests,” it adds.
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We call on Wormuth not to be so modest. Before the year is out, we expect Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh to be replaced by a disembodied virtual insect brain. It’s not even the end of September, after all. ®
Metal Gear Breakup: Hideo Kojima’s new game is still years away, but fans are eagerly awaiting the action-espionage blockbuster the Japanese designer is working on. Most likely, the game will not be a PlayStation exclusive after the Tokyo-based company decided to end its partnership with Kojima and stop funding his projects.
Hideo Kojima recently announced that his upcoming games have found a new home. The Japanese designer and auteur, together with his company, Kojima Productions, will partner with Microsoft and Xbox to develop and publish Physint, OD, and the other projects announced last year.
Kojima confirmed that Sony was going to cancel Physint, which is intended to serve as a spiritual successor to the legendary Metal Gear franchise. However, Physint is a project that both Kojima and his company were determined to keep alive. The team spent the past three months looking for a new business partner, which it has now found through a deal announced on Kojima’s official social channels.
Kojima Productions and Microsoft apparently share a common vision for the future of video games, so Kojima will now use Microsoft’s money to keep Physint, OD, and his other projects alive until release. Physint is poised to be a new genre-defining action-espionage title worthy of the Metal Gear lineage, Kojima confirmed.
While the designer announced the new partnership with Xbox, PlayStation confirmed the “difficult decision” to end its partnership with Kojima Productions. Sony is still looking to maintain a “strong” relationship with the Japanese studio, although it no longer wants to spend money funding its expensive gaming projects while they remain years away from release.
According to people familiar with the matter, Sony had indeed decided to pull the plug on the collaboration as a pure business move. The studio’s executives are now concerned that Physint will go significantly over budget, fail to generate sufficient returns, and cease to be a prized PlayStation exclusive after a brief period of time.
The executives were apparently unimpressed with the market performance of Kojima’s previous games, Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. The titles did not meet Sony’s internal revenue expectations, the sources said, and were later ported to other platforms by Kojima Productions. Official sales data say that Death Stranding has reached more than 20 million players worldwide, while the 2025 sequel sold more than two million copies after coming to PC earlier this year.
The Death Stranding games were not exactly a business failure, but Sony is having a pretty rough time right now and wants even more money to push its questionable live-service strategy. The company recently decided that exclusivity is a successful business strategy, although former executives are not in agreement with this new direction.
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Of course, Xbox has its own business issues to deal with. The company’s strategy of turning everything into a cloud service is failing spectacularly before the world’s eyes, and new CEO Asha Sharma is definitely using the hatchet rather than the chisel to try to steer the sinking ship back on course.
After Kojima’s announcement, Xbox said that the team was “honored” to partner with the legendary studio behind Metal Gear and Death Stranding. The Metal Gear saga helped Sony establish PlayStation as a major force in the modern gaming industry at the turn of the millennium, but Kojima parted ways with the brand’s owner, Konami Group, in 2015.
It says nothing good about America how easily Elon Musk convinced the press and public he was a supergenius engineer who could cobble together complicated rocket machinery wearing coveralls in his backyard shed.
Hindsight continues to illustrate how Elon Musk’s real skill sets are opportunism, taking singular credit for the innovations of real engineers, the manipulation of a very broken media, and taking legal, regulatory, environmental, labor, and consumer protection “shortcuts” wherever possible.
Enter the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is investigating Musk’s automated-taxi Cybercab deployments in Austin for violating public safety guidelines.
The Trump NHTSA is updating existing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to help companies speed toward automated cars and taxis. But until then our previous (already fairly lax) standards still apply. This being America, companies self-certify whether they’re adhering to the rules in order to get a two-year exemption (Amazon’s Zoox got approval last month).
“Ann Carlson, a former acting NHTSA administrator who is now a professor of environmental law at UCLA, says the investigation is likely “an indication that NHTSA is super frustrated with Tesla.” The agency made clear through the Zoox case that it expects driverless vehicle developers to go through the exemption process. “For Tesla to slap them in the face and ignore that—that is gobsmacking,” she says.”
It’s not really all that gobsmacking for a company run by a man who has been extremely proud about his clumsy role in fatally dismantling U.S. federal government functionality — particularly when it pertains to corporate oversight and public safety. This is always who he was. He has a twelve-year old libertarian boy’s understanding of what government does and why it’s necessary.
Of course, this isn’t the first time NHTSA has promised accountability and then delivered the policy equivalent of a wet farting sound. The agency announced it opened an inquiry last year into Musk robotaxis clearly failing to adhere to traffic laws and making constant navigation mistakes.
Apple has finally folded, literally, with the introduction of the iPhone Duo, its first foldable smartphone and arguably the most significant change to the physical design of the iPhone since the original arrived in 2007.
Starting at $1,999, the iPhone Duo opens to reveal a 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display while retaining a 5.4-inch outer screen for conventional one-handed use. Apple is positioning the Duo as a single device for communication, movies, gaming, photography and serious multitasking, rather than merely an iPhone with an expensive party trick in the middle.
It also arrives very late to a category Samsung, Google and several Chinese manufacturers have spent years refining. That means Apple does not get a participation trophy merely for discovering the hinge, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold already offer mature alternatives running on Android.
Two Screens but a Very Different iPhone
Closed, the iPhone Duo uses a 5.4-inch Super Retina XDR display that Apple says provides 90 percent of the screen area of the iPhone 18 Pro. Open it and the internal 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display becomes the largest screen Apple has ever installed in an iPhone.
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Both displays use the same aspect ratio, allowing content to scale proportionally as the Duo is opened or closed. Apple also includes ProMotion, Always On functionality and up to 3,000 nits of peak outdoor brightness on both displays.
The internal panel receives a nano-texture treatment designed to reduce glare and reflections while making the crease less noticeable. Apple also hides the inner FaceTime camera beneath the display when it is not being used, which is particularly relevant when the entire point of opening the device is to create a more immersive canvas.
Later this year, iPhone Duo will also support the USB-C Apple Pencil on either display, giving Apple an interesting advantage over Samsung’s regular Galaxy Z Fold8, which does not support the S Pen. The Duo will never replace an iPad Pro for serious creative work, but the ability to sketch, annotate or take notes on something that folds back into a pocket gives the design more purpose than simply making TikTok larger.
Is the iPhone Duo Better for Movies and TV?
For eCoustics readers, the iPhone Duo becomes especially interesting as a portable video device. Its 7.6-inch Super Retina XDR display provides considerably more room for movies, TV, sports, YouTube, and gaming than the 6.3-inch iPhone 18 Pro while still folding down into something that fits in a pocket.
Netflix has already optimized its app for the Duo, allowing users to browse Clips on the 5.4-inch outer display before opening the phone for playback on the larger screen. That suggests Apple and major streaming services see the Duo as a distinct viewing platform rather than simply an oversized iPhone.
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The obvious alternative is the $599 iPad mini, whose 8.3-inch display is larger and dramatically less expensive. For someone primarily interested in watching Netflix, Apple TV+, or downloaded movies, the iPad mini remains the better value; the Duo’s advantage is eliminating the need to carry a second device.
Apple rates the Duo for up to 31 hours of video playback using the inner display and 44 hours on the outer screen. Add the optional Duo Folio with its integrated kickstand, and the Duo starts to make considerable sense for frequent travelers who want one device for communication and entertainment—provided they can stomach the $1,999 starting price.
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For private listening, the iPhone Duo should also fit naturally into Apple’s existing headphone ecosystem, including AirPods 5, AirPods Pro 3, and AirPods Max 2. That gives travelers several Apple-integrated options for watching Netflix, Apple TV+, and downloaded movies without relying on the Duo’s built-in speakers, while keeping pairing, device switching, and playback controls inside the same ecosystem.
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iPhone Duo with Case
Built to Survive Folding
Foldable durability remains one of the category’s biggest concerns, and Apple has clearly spent considerable engineering effort trying to address it.
The iPhone Duo uses a Grade 5 titanium enclosure with a precision hinge containing more than 100 components. Ceramic Shield protects the rear, while Ceramic Shield 2 covers the outer display and offers what Apple claims is three times better scratch resistance than the previous generation.
The folding screen uses a custom polymer nano-textured cover layer, high-strength glass above and below the display panel, custom adhesives that allow the layers to move as the device folds and a titanium reinforcement plate underneath.
Apple has also achieved an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. That puts it alongside Google’s Pixel 11 Pro Fold in terms of the published IP classification and ahead of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8, which carries an IP48 rating.
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How all of that survives three years of people opening the phone 75 times a day remains something no launch event can answer.
A20 Pro Comes Along for the Ride
Apple did not give the Duo a reduced-performance processor simply because it bends.
The A20 Pro is the same 2-nanometer chip used in the iPhone 18 Pro models, with a 6-core CPU, 7-core GPU and Dual 16-core Neural Engine. Apple says the CPU is up to 20 percent faster than A19 Pro, while the GPU is up to 40 percent faster and more efficient.
A custom vapor chamber works with a redesigned chip package to manage heat across the unusual chassis, and Apple claims up to 35 percent better sustained performance than iPhone 17 Pro. A separate display engine drives both screens simultaneously and handles transitions between them.
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That additional performance matters more on Duo than it does on a conventional iPhone because Apple is introducing true Split View multitasking on an iPhone for the first time.
Users can run two apps side by side, open two instances of the same application, save application pairs and keep Siri AI visible beside another app. Netflix, Zoom and Slack are among the third-party applications already adapted for the larger folding display.
Cameras Take Advantage of the Fold
The iPhone Duo uses a 48MP Fusion Main camera with an optical-quality 2x Telephoto mode and a 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide camera, the latter shared with the iPhone 18 Pro lineup.
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The folding design creates several camera features that conventional iPhones cannot duplicate. Users can photograph themselves using the higher-quality rear cameras while framing the shot on the outer display, while Duo Preview lets the subject see the live composition from the opposite side of the device.
Smart Take uses on-device AI to recognize when subjects are ready and automatically capture an image, while Kid Cue displays Peanuts animations on the outer screen to encourage children to look toward the camera. Duo FaceTime can also use the outer display to include another person sitting beside the owner in a call.
The Main camera supports 4K video at up to 120 fps in Dolby Vision, along with Cinematic effects applied after capture at up to 60 fps. Apple has also upgraded Audio Mix so that voices and music can be separated more effectively from unwanted background sound.
Battery Life and Connectivity
Folding the phone created another engineering challenge because there is no single large internal cavity available for the battery.
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Apple uses a dual-battery architecture, placing one high-energy battery on each side of the device and managing them together through software. Apple rates the Duo for up to 31 hours of video playback on the inner display, 44 hours using the outer display or up to 24 hours of mixed use when both are used equally.
Wired charging can reach 50 percent in around 20 minutes when using suitable USB-C Power Delivery hardware. MagSafe or Qi2 wireless charging can reach 50 percent in around 30 minutes under Apple’s specified test conditions.
The Apple-designed N1 wireless chip provides Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6 and Thread, while Apple’s C2 modem handles cellular connectivity and adds mmWave support in the United States.
The iPhone Duo is also eSIM-only worldwide, rather than merely in selected markets. Apple says more than 500 carriers support eSIM globally.
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The Two Competitors That Matter
Apple is entering an established foldable market where two Android-powered products have been battling for market share.
Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8 is nearly the same size as Duo with 7.6-inch inner screen and a 5.5-inch outer panel, while also offering an anti-reflective main display with up to 3,000 nits brightness.
Google’s Pixel 11 Pro Fold is larger, measuring 6.5 inches externally and 8 inches internally. It also carries an IP68 rating, supports Qi2 magnetic charging and uses Google’s Tensor G6 processor with deep Gemini integration.
The iPhone Duo therefore does not win on screen size or price. Apple’s differentiators are its integration with iOS and the broader Apple ecosystem, the A20 Pro platform, Apple Pencil support, up to 2TB of storage, the nano-textured inner display and a collection of software and camera experiences built specifically around the two-screen design.
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Whether those advantages justify another $100 to $200 over two highly developed competitors is the $1,999 question.
Super Retina XDR folding display with nano-texture
Super Retina XDR
Super Retina XDR
Super Retina XDR
Super Retina XDR
Nano-texture display
Yes
–
–
–
–
ProMotion
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Always-On display
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Dynamic Island
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Foldable design
Yes
–
–
–
–
Case materials
Titanium frame and hinge cover
Aluminum unibody
Titanium frame
Aluminum frame
Aluminum frame
Front protection
Ceramic Shield 2
Ceramic Shield 2
Ceramic Shield 2
Ceramic Shield 2
Ceramic Shield 2
Back protection
Ceramic Shield back
–
–
–
–
Water resistance
Up to 6 meters for 30 minutes
Up to 6 meters for 30 minutes
Up to 6 meters for 30 minutes
Up to 6 meters for 30 minutes
Up to 6 meters for 30 minutes
Action button
–
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Camera Control
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Chip
A20 Pro
A20 Pro
A19 Pro
A19
A19
CPU
6-core
6-core
6-core
6-core
6-core
GPU
7-core with Neural Accelerators
7-core with Neural Accelerators
5-core with Neural Accelerators
5-core with Neural Accelerators
4-core with Neural Accelerators
Neural Engine
Dual 16-core
Dual 16-core
16-core
16-core
16-core
Ray tracing
Hardware-accelerated
Hardware-accelerated
Hardware-accelerated
Hardware-accelerated
Hardware-accelerated
Rear camera system
48MP Dual Fusion
48MP Pro Fusion
48MP Fusion
48MP Dual Fusion
48MP Fusion
Main rear camera
48MP Fusion Main
48MP Fusion Main with variable aperture
48MP Fusion Main
48MP Fusion Main
48MP Fusion Main
Ultra Wide camera
Yes
Yes
–
Yes
–
Telephoto camera
–
Yes
–
–
–
Pro camera controls
–
Yes
–
–
–
Super-high-resolution photos
24MP and 48MP
24MP and 48MP
24MP and 48MP
24MP and 48MP
24MP and 48MP
Smart Take
Yes
–
–
–
–
Duo Preview
Yes
–
–
–
–
Photographic Styles
Version 3
Version 3
Version 3
Version 2
Version 2
Apple Reference Image
–
Yes
–
–
–
Macro photography
Yes
Yes
–
Yes
–
Front camera resolution
12MP
18MP
18MP
18MP
12MP
Front-camera controls
Tap to zoom and rotate
Tap to zoom and rotate
Tap to zoom and rotate
Tap to zoom and rotate
Tap to zoom
Center Stage for photos
12MP
18MP
18MP
18MP
12MP
Center Stage for video calls
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Ultra-stabilized video
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Dual Capture
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
Under-display FaceTime camera
Yes
–
–
–
–
Optical zoom options
0.5x, 1x, 2x
0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x
1x, 2x
0.5x, 1x, 2x
1x, 2x
Variable aperture
–
Yes
–
–
–
Dolby Vision video
Up to 4K at 120 fps
Up to 4K at 120 fps
Up to 4K at 60 fps
Up to 4K at 60 fps
Up to 4K at 60 fps
Smart focus tracking
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
–
Cinematic mode effects
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
–
Improved low-light video
Yes
Yes
Yes
–
–
Next-generation portraits
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Maximum video playback
Up to 44 hours using outer display; up to 31 hours using inner display
Up to 36 hours
Up to 27 hours
Up to 30 hours
Up to 26 hours
Apple Intelligence
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Siri AI
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
USB-C Apple Pencil
Yes
–
–
–
–
The Bottom Line
The iPhone Duo is not revolutionary because Apple invented the foldable phone. Samsung and Google have already done years of unpaid beta testing on that particular idea, and both currently offer excellent foldables for less money.
What Apple has created is arguably its first iPhone that can credibly replace some of the reasons people carry an iPad. A 7.6-inch ProMotion display, nano-texture surface, Netflix optimization, Split View, Apple Pencil support and up to 31 hours of video playback make the Duo far more compelling for movies, television, gaming and travel than the 6.3-inch iPhone 18 Pro.
An iPad mini still provides a larger 8.3-inch display for only $599, and anyone primarily interested in watching movies should keep that rather enormous price difference in mind. The Duo makes sense for the user who wants one premium device that can function as a conventional phone until the moment more screen space becomes useful.
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Apple’s strongest argument is not size or value. It is whether the combination of A20 Pro, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence, Apple Pencil, Apple’s camera ecosystem and seamless integration with the devices and services millions of customers already own can make the Duo feel more cohesive than foldables that have been doing this longer.
At $1,999, it had better.
Price & Availability
Pre-orders start Oct. 16th 5am PT at Apple or Best Buy, which is one week before iPhone Duo becomes available in the U.S. on October 23, 2026 at the following price points in either Star White and Night Sky (dark blue).
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) has confirmed that its DAVID driver database suffered a data breach after the ShinyHunters extortion gang claimed to have compromised the system.
“On September 4, 2026, FLHSMV learned of a data breach conducted by an international cybercriminal organization,” the agency said in a statement posted to X.
“The data breach was quickly mitigated and no further breach has occurred or is ongoing.”
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FLHSMV says its investigation determined that the attacker used compromised credentials belonging to a single Plant City Police Department user that had been improperly stored on the employee’s personal electronic device.
The agency says it has notified the Florida Office of the Attorney General of the breach and is working with the Florida Digital Service and Florida Department of Law Enforcement as part of its response.
“As this is an ongoing criminal investigation, further information will be released at an appropriate time in the future,” FLHSMV said.
ShinyHunters claimed a different access method
FLHSMV’s findings are different from how ShinyHunters previously claimed to have gained access to the database.
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The hackers claimed they exploited a password reset flaw to gain access to multiple DAVID accounts, including accounts belonging to DMV employees and an FBI agent.
ShinyHunters said it then began iterating through DAVID record IDs and downloading associated HTML pages and images beginning on September 3.
As proof of the breach, the threat actors shared a screenshot of a DAVID record belonging to Jeffrey Epstein that contained sensitive personal and vehicle information.
ShinyHunters later told BleepingComputer that it had lost access to the system and believed the flaw was being patched.
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FLHSMV has not disclosed how many records were accessed or stolen during the breach and has not confirmed ShinyHunters’ claim that more than 200,000 records were taken.
Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been updated to clarify language about educator response.
The individualized education program (IEP) process generates a big stack of papers, full of terminology that parents may not understand. In response, some parents have begun using artificial intelligence to better understand IEPs and prepare for teacher meetings. Kimberly Morris, who taught pre-K through the 2025-26 school year, saw this firsthand.
Morris would set school goals in the IEP, “and some parents would then utilize AI as a way to create a home goal,” she says.
Morris, who is now a curriculum and instruction specialist supporting early childhood learning at Unlocking Children’s Potential of Central Florida, didn’t mind that parents were using AI to align home efforts with school goals. But as the conversation around AI use transparency grows in classrooms, some wonder whether parents should disclose if they used AI to prepare for an IEP meeting.
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How Parents Use AI
Concerned parents might use AI in several ways during the IEP process, says Elizabeth Laird, director of equity and civic technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “A parent might turn to AI to learn more about the process and what their rights are, what their child’s rights are,” she notes.
Laird thinks that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “AI can play a role in democratizing access to information about the process itself, as well as being a starting point for thinking about what types of accommodations parents may want to ask about,” she reasons.
For many parents, “just because you’re a parent of a child with a disability doesn’t mean you automatically understand all of these things related to your child’s IEP,” says Olivia Coleman, an assistant professor in the School of Teacher Education at theUniversity of Central Florida. “They’re using it to translate the jargon, any acronyms. It’s helping them to draft questions.”
Parents are putting their child’s IEP into AI models “and then having it put it into plain language, like, ’What is this thing and what does it mean?’” says Coleman, who is also a co-principal investigator at the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning.
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Morris, the curriculum and instruction specialist, sees an upside to parents using AI in IEP meetings. “They can become more of a team member alongside the teacher, occupational therapist, physical therapist and speech therapist,” she says.
But there are risks. For example, when a parent’s AI-generated contribution to the meeting sprawls to 20 or 30 pages, “it’s going to take a teacher the majority of their day just to read through a request,” says Phyllis Wolfram, executive director of the Council of Administrators of Special Education. “It will slow down the process.”
“AI is not an IEP expert,” Laird adds, noting that the AI’s outputs can be inaccurate. With that in mind, she counsels teachers and parents to reflect together on the AI’s findings. A key aspect of the IEP process, she notes, “is its emphasis on bringing different subject matters together to collaborate, to identify what is the best path forward for an individual child.”
With FERPA and IDEA as the legal backdrop, parents should not put identifiable personal data like medical diagnoses and legal documents into AI. The tool could potentially train on that data, which risks that information becoming publicly visible. The data also may be at risk of being exposed in a security breach, if the AI provider gets hacked.
Should Parents Disclose?
Some argue that parents need to be candid about their AI use for that collaboration to be effective. Some parents were upfront about AI when meeting with Morris. “When I would report on a goal, they also had input and would say, ‘Hey, I created something at home and I used AI for that.’ I thought that was really cool, that parents stepped out of their own mindset to think about how to incorporate those goals at home,” she says.
Even if parents don’t disclose, teachers and others could spot AI-generated text. “Right now, the information that parents are providing to school districts regarding their IEP meetings is much lengthier, and it carries some legal jargon that doesn’t typically come from parents,” Wolfram says. “Most educators will know when they’ve received something written by AI.”
If teachers do want parents to disclose AI usage, they can make a strong case for that, Laird believes. After all, in schools across the country, “parents are demanding from their school to know whether and how AI is being used,” she says.
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The key is to avoid being defensive if AI is being used in the IEP meeting, says Coleman. “We don’t want to pit anyone in the IEP team against each other. We want to work together.” For the IEP process to meet its intent, she adds, participants need to trust each other, and “transparency builds trust.”
Parents might consider using AI for a number of reasons as they prep for an IEP meeting:
To summarize IEP documents
To verify their rights against local state guidelines
To translate unfamiliar jargon or bridge a language gap
To formulate proposed goals
To generate questions to help guide the process
In all these cases, educators say they’d prefer parents disclose their AI use, so that everyone can align in what is supposed to be a collaborative process. Parents should also double-check with local and state rules to make sure they are allowed to use AI with their IEPs.
Crafting a Response
Morris counsels teachers to assume that some parents will use AI. “I have created the IEP and I know my role and goals as well as those for the student and parents,” she says. How the family responds is up to them, “and I’ve always kept an open relationship with the parents that I have worked with,” she adds.
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In the spirit of collaboration, teachers can model appropriate transparency and disclosure etiquette with parents. “We can’t make disclosure mandatory, but we can practice it and set an example,” Coleman argues. “Teachers can say up front, ‘We’re not against AI use, but we’d really appreciate you also being transparent, and this is why.’ We want to make sure we’re all on the same page,” she says.
With trust in place, Wolfram notes, the teacher can talk openly about the AI outputs a parent brings to a meeting. “The educator can say, ‘Let’s talk about those recommendations. Do you see those as different from what we’re already doing? And if so, let’s talk about why you think that’s needed,’” she says.
The AI discussion requires some finesse, but Morris thinks it’s worth the effort. “I want parents to be advocates, and to understand exactly what is being told to them on their child’s IEP,” she says.
Microsoft says threat actors linked to ShinyHunters, Helix, and other extortion gangs are using passkey and single sign-on-themed social engineering attacks to compromise corporate Microsoft accounts and steal data from Microsoft 365 services.
The activity has been observed since May 2026 and begins with the attackers researching targeted organizations and employees before calling or messaging victims while impersonating corporate IT help desks.
The attackers tell employees that they must urgently update a passkey, multi-factor authentication (MFA), or single sign-on (SSO) configuration to avoid losing access to corporate systems.
Victims are then directed to phishing sites designed to resemble legitimate Microsoft login pages, with links sometimes sent through SMS messages to employees’ personal phones.
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Microsoft says that while the lures frequently revolve around passkeys, the attackers are not attempting to enroll a passkey.
Instead, the passkey lures are used to trick targeted employees into signing in to adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing sites or using device-code authentication flows.
AiTM attacks allow the threat actors to capture credentials and session tokens. Device code phishing tricks victims into authorizing access to their account via an attacker-controlled client using Microsoft’s legitimate authentication pages.
Microsoft says the attackers conduct extensive research before targeting employees.
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“The actor appears to invest heavily in pre-attack research, likely gathering information about employees and organizational structure from public sources such as social networking and professional profiling platforms,” explains Microsoft.
The threat actors also register phishing domains that combine company names with words related to passkeys, SSO, key synchronization, account setup, and identity verification.
Some examples seen by Microsoft include: passkeyhelpdesk[.]com, secure-passkey[.]com, setupmypasskey[.]com, add-passkey[.]com, integratedsso[.]com, oktasession[.]com, keysyncos[.]com, and oskeysync[.]com.
The attackers commonly place the victim company’s name in a subdomain, such as company-name.secure-passkey[.]com, to make the phishing portal appear more convincing.
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Microsoft attributes the initial-access activity to multiple threat actors operating in the same extortion ecosystem, including groups it tracks as Storm-3121 and Storm-3032.
Storm-3121 is associated with ShinyHunters and Falcon extortion, while Storm-3032 is believed to be tied to BlackFile extortion group members that now work under the Helix name.
This activity overlaps with attacks previously documented by Google Threat Intelligence under the UNC6671 threat cluster.
Google previously reported that UNC6671 uses phone-based social engineering and passkey-themed phishing infrastructure to compromise corporate identities before accessing enterprise cloud environments.
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Google has also linked UNC6671 activity to the same extortion gangs, including BlackFile, Helix, Falcon, Pink, and Redact.
Mapping the Microsoft cloud after compromise
Microsoft’s new research gives a closer look at what happens inside Microsoft cloud environments after an account is compromised.
In one investigated attack, Microsoft observed a suspicious sign-in from an unmanaged device to a Microsoft 365 service identified in Entra logs as “OfficeHome.”
OfficeHome is associated with the Office 365 portal’s shared infrastructure, including Office applications accessed through a browser.
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After completing MFA, Microsoft says the attacker established a valid session and began checking what resources the compromised account could access.
Within minutes, the session was used to access My Apps to see what applications are assigned to the account, My Profile for organizational information, Microsoft Approval Management, account-management interfaces, and My Sign-Ins.
The attacker then accessed SharePoint Online, Outlook Web, Microsoft 365 collaboration and search services, an internal business application, and authentication flows associated with virtual desktops.
Microsoft says the session remained active for approximately one hour while the attacker listed sensitive files and internal applications.
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In another attack, the passkey social engineering attacks led to device-code phishing, where the victim was convinced to enter a supplied code into Microsoft’s legitimate authentication page.
Microsoft’s device authentication form
This issues an authentication token to the attacker-controlled OAuth application, allowing the threat actor to access the victim’s account without completing another MFA challenge.
The attacker now has access to all of the user’s resources and connected SSO applications, whether they be Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Google Workspace, Dropbox, Adobe, SAP, Slack, Zendesk, Atlassian, and many others.
In a third attack, the threat actor used previously compromised credentials for an account where it is believed an authenticator application had been registered days earlier.
Microsoft says the threat actors then performed reconnaissance using an automated Node.js system and Microsoft Graph.
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After gaining access, the attackers often gain persistence by adding an MFA method they control.
Microsoft says the attackers register new phone numbers, authenticator applications, and software-based one-time password tokens with compromised identities.
This allows the threat actor to satisfy future MFA challenges without the victim’s help, although Microsoft notes that the persistence does not survive a complete credential and session reset.
The attackers then use Microsoft Graph to enumerate the victim’s cloud environment.
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Microsoft saw Graph requests that enumerate:
Organizations, licenses, and enabled services
Users, groups, and group membership
Directory roles and privileged accounts
Registered authentication methods
Applications and service principals
OAuth permissions and application role assignments
SharePoint sites, document libraries, folders, and files
OneDrive resources
Mail folders, messages, and attachments
Microsoft says Graph requests such as /users, /groups, or /sites are common in enterprise environments, so they may not raise alarms.
However, the activity becomes more suspicious when the same account, application, or access token rapidly moves across different resources, checks privileges and authentication settings, and then begins accessing email, attachments, files, or documents.
After reconnaissance, the attackers move into cloud data collection from Microsoft 365.
“Microsoft observed high-volume access and download activity targeting Microsoft SharePoint Online and Microsoft OneDrive for Business, with some intrusions extending into Microsoft Exchange Online through REST API-based access to email content,” explained Microsoft.
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“Across SharePoint and OneDrive, the activity generated significant volumes of FileAccessed and FileDownloaded events, indicating systematic retrieval of cloud-hosted documents and organizational data.”
Microsoft says the activity appears automated, with connections using the python-httpx user agent during SharePoint and OneDrive access exfiltration.
The attackers also appear to avoid rapid “smash-and-grab” exfiltration to avoid detection.
Microsoft says the data theft instead lasts from a few hours to multiple days, with threat actors accessing fewer than 1,000 files or emails in a single hour to blend in with legitimate traffic.
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Microsoft recommends looking for unusual sign-ins followed by new MFA registrations, Microsoft Graph reconnaissance, and suspicious access to SharePoint, OneDrive, or Exchange.
If an account is compromised, administrators should revoke active sessions and tokens, reset credentials, remove any authentication methods or mailbox rules added by the attackers, and require the user to re-register their authentication methods.
Microsoft also recommends using phishing-resistant MFA, limiting sensitive cloud resources to managed devices, and disabling device-code authentication when it is not needed.
Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.
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