CyberWire Daily – "Cyberattack in the fast lane."

Date: January 7, 2026
Host: Dave Bittner (N2K Networks)
Guest: Deepen Desai, Chief Security Officer, Zscaler
Main Theme: The far-reaching impacts of recent cyberattacks, vulnerabilities and breaches in critical sectors, and a deep dive into how enterprise AI is evolving and what organizations must do to secure their AI infrastructure in 2026.

Episode Overview

This episode delivers a comprehensive briefing on major cybersecurity events from around the globe, including the business fallout of major cyberattacks, government and corporate responses, and evolving risks in both consumer and enterprise technology. A core highlight is the guest interview with Deepen Desai, CSO at Zscaler, on “what’s powering enterprise AI in 2026,” shadow AI risks, and actionable strategies for defense.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Impact of Major Cyberattacks on Global Businesses

• Jaguar Land Rover:

  • Reported weak Q3 results due to a major cyberattack in September (03:00).
  • Wholesale vehicle volumes dropped by 43.3% year-on-year, retail sales fell 25.1%.
  • Attack forced weeks-long production stoppages and delayed global distribution until mid-November.
  • Ripple effects included a need for £1.5B UK government support, and Tata Motors estimates direct costs at around £1.8B.
  • Attack attributed to scattered Lapsus$-type group; prompted concerns of long-term economic impact.

• Gulshan Management Services (Texas gas station chain):

  • Data breach affected over 377,000 individuals; involved names, SSNs, IDs, and financial data (06:30).
  • Disclosure delayed by more than three months, now facing lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny.

2. Geopolitical Cyber Risks

• Surge in Attacks on Taiwan’s Energy Sector:
  • Taiwan’s National Security Bureau: cyberattacks from China on energy sector up 1,000% in 2025 (08:00).
  • Tactics include vulnerabilities exploitation, DDoS, malware during software upgrades.
  • Main competitors: BlackTech, APT41.

3. Critical Vulnerabilities & Industry Alerts

• Google Chrome Update: Patch for high-severity flaw in WebView—users urged to update now (10:00).
• Veeam Backup Software: Multiple high-severity vulnerabilities fixed—no evidence of exploitation, but organizations warned to patch quickly.
• D-Link Routers: End-of-life routers exposed to an active command-injection exploit—users strongly urged to replace unsupported routers.

4. U.S. Cyber Trust Mark Uncertainty

• Consumer IoT Security Program:
  • UL Solutions, main administrator, has withdrawn, creating program uncertainty (13:00).
  • Follows security review for potential foreign influence, now lacking clear leadership.

5. Google’s AI Search Reliability Push

• Google signals intent to improve AI-generated answers, posts jobs for “AI Answers Quality” (14:15).
• Media and public scrutiny over misleading or fabricated AI-generated content.

Featured Interview: Deepen Desai (Zscaler) on Enterprise AI in 2026

The Reality of AI in Enterprises

“AI usage in enterprises is no longer a speculation, it's a reality. It's grown significantly. And then the cyber risks that comes with it are also real because we're starting to see more and more reports of things that are happening in the wild.”
— Deepen Desai (15:55)

- Annual AI Security Report

• Analysis based on Zscaler’s vast cloud security data.
• Organizations no longer merely testing AI—it’s now integral to operations.

Concentration Risk in AI Supply Chains

“The vendor concentration risk is a real problem because if you're relying only on one vendor for all your needs, you will have issues if that vendor has a bad day, both from security risk perspective as well as from business continuity perspective.”
— Deepen Desai (17:07)

• Most enterprises rely on a handful of large LLM vendors (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, etc.).
• Real risk of “hidden” dependencies via supply chain partners employing the same AI vendors.
• Outages or compromises affect both direct and indirect (embedded) use cases.

Departmental AI Usage Breakdown

• Engineering: 47% of observed enterprise AI traffic is from engineering—mostly due to AI-powered coding assist tools (copilots, testing automation) (19:06).
• IT, Marketing, Customer Support: Follow as leading consumers of AI apps.
• AI usage is pervasive, but most transactions are code- or data-related tasks.

The Challenge of Shadow AI

• Ongoing struggle for CISOs: unsanctioned (“shadow”) AI apps are proliferating, extending data risk (21:05).
• Recent example: compromised NPM packages affecting code agents using open-source libraries.
• Visibility and policy enforcement are paramount:

“It is absolutely prevalent… the biggest investment a lot of the CXOs are doing right now is to have a proper observability tooling and then the policy enforcement tooling.”
— Deepen Desai (21:20)

The Velocity Problem: AI vs. Human Adversaries

• AI-driven threats act with speed, scale, and persistence beyond human attack capability (23:53).
• Key contrasts:
  • Humans: “Periodic bursty activity... limited parallel workloads... minutes to hours reaction.”
  • AI agents: "Constant, tireless, adaptive... millisecond feedback loops... massive parallelism... no cognitive limits.”
• AI can orchestrate sophisticated, multi-stage attacks without human weaknesses.

Practical Defensive Steps for Enterprises

“You need to know... have that observability [and] policy enforcement. Just like a zero trust exchange for all your AI needs, you need a good handle on having a governance in place and that starts with the observability piece…” — Deepen Desai (26:32)

• Visibility and observability: Know all AI usage (sanctioned and unsanctioned) in your environment.
• Zero trust everywhere: Can’t meet AI-speed risks reactively—must proactively shut down attack vectors via least-privilege and strong authentication.
• Governance and Policy Enforcement: Rapidly identify, manage, and restrict unauthorized or risky AI applications.

Memorable Quotes & Insights

• “The biggest investment a lot of the CXOs are doing right now is to have a proper observability tooling and then the policy enforcement tooling.”—Deepen Desai (21:20)
• “When an AI agent is involved in the attack and acting in an almost autonomous fashion, it will be constant, tireless... well beyond human capacity.”—Deepen Desai (23:53)
• “Prioritizing a zero trust strategy everywhere is critical. Because you essentially cannot fight AI driven attacks in a reactive manner because of how fast and how scaled these attacks will be.”—Deepen Desai (26:32)

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment Description | |----------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 03:00 | Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack fallout | | 06:30 | Gulshan Management Services data breach | | 08:00 | Taiwan’s NSB: Surge in Chinese energy sector attacks | | 10:00 | Critical vulnerability: Google Chrome | | 11:30 | Veeam and D-Link vulnerability updates | | 13:00 | U.S. Cyber Trust Mark program uncertainty | | 14:15 | Google’s AI reliability/quality hiring push | | 15:55 | Interview: Is enterprise AI here to stay? | | 17:07 | Concentration risk in enterprise AI supply chains | | 19:06 | Departmental use: Engineering's dominance in AI traffic | | 21:05 | Shadow AI: The unsanctioned AI risk | | 23:53 | The velocity problem: Human vs AI-driven cyber threats | | 26:32 | Actionable defense: Observability, governance, zero trust |

Brief Note: Creative AI in Weather Forecasting

• National Weather Service’s experiment with AI-generated graphics produced imaginary towns—(“Orange Tilled,” “Waterboard”)—prompting official clarifications and caution about AI’s place in authoritative public-facing content.

“AI can help fill gaps, but inventing towns is probably not the kind of innovation anyone had in mind.” (28:33)

For more details, reference links, and daily coverage visit the CyberWire Daily Briefing.