Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

If, like me, you’re continuously striving to keep pace with the ever-evolving world of artificial intelligence, you’re probably hearing a lot about how Ambient AI is poised to dominate discussions and developments throughout the second half of 2025. Ambient AI refers to artificial intelligence systems that operate unobtrusively in the background of our daily environments, constantly sensing, analyzing, and responding to various inputs without explicit human interaction.

Back in 2018, I wondered (perhaps loudly if SD-WAN was just IT’s hype-of-the-year, destined for the same eye-rolls as signature-based antivirus and GDPR compliance drives. Even then, I knew we couldn’t let messaging fatigue blind us to real technology shifts. Fast-forward to 2025: SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) not only stuck around, but became the springboard to something far bigger – SASE (Secure Access Service Edge).

A recent BBC article, “Weak password allowed hackers to sink a 158-year-old company,” outlined a serious security lapse. This case reinforces the message that we, at Teneo, advocate every day: true resilience comes from defense in depth, i.e. policy, product and process, not just tools at the edge. In a recent customer engagement, we discussed a transition from VPN to ZTNA. While ZTNA offers enhanced security including continual checking, improved segmentation and a minimized attack surface.

Yesterday, like many others in the tech community, I found myself pausing to fully grasp the implications of the Microsoft SharePoint hack. As one of the most widely adopted document management and collaboration platforms globally, SharePoint’s compromise inevitably sends ripples of concern through businesses everywhere. This news reminded me of a conversation I had just last week with an enterprise customer. We were discussing how one might approach cybersecurity from a hacker’s perspective.

The recent launch of Grok 4 has set the AI community buzzing. With an impressive score of 73 on TLDR’s AI benchmark, Grok 4 edges ahead of OpenAI’s O3 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro, both scoring 70. Elon and the X AI team deserve praise for this breakthrough, reinforcing Grok 4’s status as potentially the most powerful LLM yet.

It’s only a matter of time. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in 2024 that he thought this could be achieved by the end of 2026. Personally, I feel this is a little optimistic; however, based on the evidence I’ve seen, it won’t be long after that. Consider Telegram: a global messaging giant with just 30 employees, already achieving a remarkable $1 billion in revenue. Or Midjourney, revolutionizing creative industries with only 40 employees and generating an impressive $500 million.

The conversations around artificial intelligence (AI) typically revolve around its vast potential: writing applications, automating tasks, or transforming entire industries. However, despite the excitement around AI’s potential, the more pressing issue for many organizations is how to manage the risks of deploying it at scale across the enterprise. This is where AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) comes into play.

In recent months, my conversations with fellow technology leaders have consistently revolved around two key themes: how we leverage AI to drive innovation and efficiency, and how we mitigate the inherent risks associated with AI. However, I’ve noticed a concerning gap – while enterprises are busy strategizing the adoption of AI to enhance productivity, reduce costs, and outpace competitors, very few are addressing how AI is being actively used today by their own teams.

Like many shoppers in the UK this week, I found myself staring at half-empty shelves in my local grocery store. In a small but frustrating twist, my usual sandwich, chicken mayo on malted bread, was nowhere to be found. The disruption wasn’t just about lunchtime preferences; it was part of a broader impact from cyberattacks that hit major UK retailers, including Co-op and Marks & Spencer.

Last night, over dinner in Canary Wharf, I found myself catching up with a former colleague who is now leading investments at one of the big banks.