IT, AI & Telecommunications

Global – October 21, 2026 -- Attackers are now capturing valid multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes in real time, so a single phishing click can give them full account access and a path into an entire organization, according to Chris Bentkowski, Service Engineer at CloudFit.

Fake login pages harvest passwords and live MFA codes

The typical attack starts when a user clicks a malicious link and lands on a fake login page that mimics a trusted application. The user enters a username and password, then a valid code from an authentication app. The attacker can then complete authentication, capture session details and potentially reconfigure or take control of MFA mechanisms. Bentkowski calls the technique MFA phishing, or token/session capture.

Global – October 21, 2026 -- Buying Microsoft licenses directly from Microsoft can cost more than purchasing them through a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), because the company's partner network gives qualified resellers room to price competitively.

Microsoft passes administrative work and margin to CSP partners

Microsoft avoids handling every quote, subscription change, renewal and billing query itself. Qualified partners receive licenses at pricing that lets them resell competitively, and part of that margin can reach the customer as a lower price. The gap grows with scale: a small per-license difference matters little across a handful of seats, but compounds across hundreds of users, multiple products and recurring subscriptions.

NEW YORK – October 19, 2026 -- The four largest hyperscalers plan more than $700 billion of capital spending this year, and Egan-Jones Ratings expects mainstream support from both US parties to keep the AI buildout going despite public opposition to local data centers.

Gallup poll shows 71% of Americans oppose a local AI data center

Egan-Jones cites Gallup data showing 71% of Americans oppose a local AI data center, against 53% for a nuclear plant. Its commentary draws a parallel with drug makers, which have stayed unpopular for years yet kept bipartisan backing while leading all other industries in federal lobbying almost every quarter since 2010.

AI has also gained ground at the ballot box. The pro-AI super PAC network Leading the Future has raised $140 million for the midterms.

Teaneck, N.J. – October 19, 2026 -- Cognizant and Google Cloud are expanding their partnership with a new Gemini Frontier Capability Group backed by more than 18,000 dedicated Cognizant associates, a joint investment aimed at moving enterprise agentic AI from pilot to production.

The group builds on Cognizant's dedicated Gemini practice, launched in April 2026. It pairs Google's AI platform with Cognizant's domain, industry and engineering expertise.

Group targets four engineering areas first

The group will initially focus on legacy modernization, developer experience, autonomous business process agentification and frontier cyber defense. It uses Gemini, Google Cloud's AI platform for building, governing and deploying agents.

Austin – October 19, 2026 -- Digital Turbine (Nasdaq: APPS) will report its fiscal 2027 second-quarter financial results and operating progress on Monday, November 2, at 4:30pm ET (1:30pm PT) in a conference call and webcast.

CEO Bill Stone and Interim CFO Josh Kinsell host the earnings call

Chief Executive Officer Bill Stone and Interim Chief Financial Officer Josh Kinsell will lead the session. Investors can join by webcast or by telephone using separate U.S. and international dial-in numbers.

Webcast archive stays online for one year, replay runs through Nov. 9

A live and archived webcast will be available in the Investor Relations section of Digital Turbine's website. The webcast will be archived for one year.

A telephone replay will be available through November 9, 2026, for those who cannot join the live call.

United States – October 19, 2026 -- Six of the largest hyperscalers are on track to spend more than $700 billion on computing infrastructure this year, about double the record set in 2025, as gains from shrinking transistors fade and performance is bought by building bigger systems.

Brute-force scaling replaces transistor shrinkage as the main source of progress

The spending goes into new data center sites faster than the electrical grid can feed them. Progress now comes mostly from adding chips, memory, power and cooling rather than from smaller transistors. In AI, training compute has doubled roughly every six months since 2010, far faster than Moore's Law allows, and little of that growth comes from shrinking.

Cambridge – October 19, 2026 -- AI agents left alone on a virtual island for 30 hours outperformed fresh copies on a specific task, according to a new MIT paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed. The agents, copies of Claude Opus 4.7 nicknamed Eko, had no instructions beyond a prompt describing them as "naturally curious."

Researchers placed the agents on a simulated island loosely based on Roblox. Eko wrote instructions that moved its avatar and explored the limits of the world. It set its own goals, including climbing the map's highest point and testing how high it could throw a block.

Global – October 19, 2026 -- Tech stocks shed over $1 trillion on Friday as investors grew nervous that AI companies may not turn sustainable profits, NBC reported.

Microsoft also pulled out of a giant AI cloud deal in the UK, according to Gizmodo. The report adds to concerns about the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure.

China weighs curbs on overseas access to its AI models

China is considering restricting overseas access to its AI models, Bloomberg reported. Beijing is also looking at curbing the sharing of chip designs, among other measures. Any such limits would affect foreign developers and buyers that rely on Chinese models.

Hoboken – October 19, 2026 -- MiniOrange CEO Anirban Mukherji will tell small and midsize business executives on October 21, 2026, that stolen credentials, not malware, are now the primary entry point for attacks, as eMazzanti Technologies hosts its annual ASPIRE 2026 conference at the Microsoft Conference Center in New York City's Times Square.

Mukherji targets six operational and compliance pain points

His session will cover password fatigue, application sprawl, remote workforce security, regulatory compliance requirements, cyber insurance mandates and third-party access management.

He will present five technologies as ways to reduce risk while simplifying access to business applications: multi-factor authentication (MFA), single sign-on (SSO), adaptive authentication, identity governance and privileged access management.

Hoboken – October 19, 2026 -- eMazzanti Technologies, the Hoboken-based cybersecurity and managed services provider founded in 2001, has been named a finalist in the NJBIZ 2026 Business of the Year Awards, with honorees to be recognized at a live event on Dec. 8 at The Marigold in Somerset.

Panel of past honorees selects finalists on growth and innovation criteria

An independent panel of judges made up of previous program honorees chose the finalists. The program recognizes organizations for sustained growth, innovation, leadership and positive impact on New Jersey's business community.