Arctic Wolf on Smashing Security

Graham, am I right in thinking that Arctic Wolf are sponsoring the show this week? You are right, Joe. They've just published a new report, 2026 State of the Cybersecurity Attack Surface, and they analysed over 800,000 real IT assets to find out how exposed organisations actually are. And I'm guessing everything is hunky-dory. Not so much. The reality is they found one in three IT assets is missing at least one critical security control. One in three? That's terrible. Isn't it just? 10% of assets have no endpoint security at all. 17% are completely invisible to the tools that are supposed to be monitoring them. So the tools don't even know those assets exist? Right. Ghost assets wandering around your network, unprotected, unmonitored... Like a retired geography teacher who's somehow still on the school network. Nobody added him, nobody removed him, and he's been quietly in there for 11 years downloading maps of Paraguay. Yeah, I guess so, Joe. The point is, your attackers will find him before you do because they are specifically looking for the forgotten, the unpatched, the invisible. That's the path of least resistance. So what does the report tell us to actually do about it? Arctic Wolf's report covers how to prioritise the exposures that actually matter, cut through all that noise and verify that when you fix something, it actually stays fixed. And the report is free to download. Free. I like that. Where do I get it? Smashingsecurity.com slash Arctic Wolf. That's smashingsecurity.com slash Arctic Wolf. And thanks to Arctic Wolf for supporting the show. And please keep an eye on your IT assets and retired geography teachers.