Trendz³ Newsletter: Biometrics, Rogue Bots, & the Dangers of GenAI

Happy October!

Deck the servers and firewalls. It's Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Okay, well, maybe CAM isn't the most fun and festive calendar event in Q4, but, for businesses in Northwest Arkansas and beyond, it probably is one of the more important. CAM is our annual chance to share a friendly but serious reminder...

Cyberattacks are a real and growing problem — right here in Arkansas.

According to the FBI, cybercrime losses in the state rose to $102.5 million in 2025, a 98.3% increase from the previous year. And those are just the reported cases.

So, "Be Hard to Hack, NWA." This October and well beyond.

Sincerely,

Rob Brothers
Founding Partner
TekTrendz

Trend¹ — "One after another": What's up with all the rogue AI bots (and why does it matter)? 

"In one alarming announcement after another," starts this AP article, "artificial intelligence companies in recent months have shared examples of their technology acting in ways that appeared to evade instructions from humans."

There's been a frenzy of news lately about misbehaving AI bots (bad bot, bad):

• July 21: An OpenAI system bypassed its sandbox to hack the servers of AI platform Hugging Face — yikes

• August 5: Meta's Muse accessed the live internet during a misconfigured test and hacked an external company. Not a great start, Muse.
• September 18: Google's Gemini hacked three companies using guessed or publicly exposed credentials. Bots can "guess"? 
• September 25: OpenAI agents unexpectedly accessed public data on the websites of the U.S. SEC and U.S. Census Bureau. Some light reading?
• October 9: Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted a false tip about an unsolved homicide to a police website during testing. After the reward money?

And that's just a selection of rogue AI-agent behavior. To quote Hocus Pocus here in October, it feels like AI models are running amok, amok, amok.

Why care? What's the NWA small-business takeaway? Might we suggest:

• AI agents can overstep. Clearly. So, give them only the access they need.
• Don't leave passwords and keys lying around in shared docs, old code, etc., because they can get scooped up faster than ever.
• Keep a human in the loop. Require approval for all agent actions.
• You can be impacted without using AI. Make sure your website forms and logins have spam and bot protection.

When it comes to AI behavior, what happens in the headlines impacts you, too.

Trend² — Pointing a finger at biometrics: How small businesses are adopting it 

From the phone in your pocket to the laptop in your hands, biometrics has become a prevalent part of modern life. And, some indications suggest biometrics — or the use of physical traits like fingerprints, faces, and voices to verify/identify folks — are about to become a bigger part of how small businesses operate, too:

• Door and building access to replace easily lost keys, cards, and fobs
• Biometric timeclocks to prevent the "buddy punching" of timecards
• Financial sign-off via face/fingerprint for vendor payments, payroll, and such
• "Liveness" verification to confirm customers, partners aren't deepfakes

And, of course, already in progress: fighting back against unauthorized access and cybercrime through biometric-powered passkeys and device unlock.

This is likely just the start, too. Developments in, for instance, "continuous biometric authentication" — think: face unlock on a workstation that continues throughout an entire session, not just at log-in — is likely coming to businesses big and small. 

A few top-of-mind thoughts as your SMB considers jumping on the biometric wave:

• Use what you already have. Most business laptops and phones support fingerprint/face unlock, and passkeys are built into Microsoft 365.
• Start with your challenge, not the shiny tech. Name the problem first: Lost keys? Payment fraud? What? Then seek the solution; possibly biometrics.
• Understand that high-tech doesn't necessarily mean high-cost. Manual options carry hidden costs. Over time, biometrics may be more affordable.
• Handle biometric data with care. Ask vendors how data is stored/protected. Get written employee consent, 'cause you can’t reset a fingerprint.

Maybe it isn't polite to point a finger, but expect more of it in SMBs. Because biometrics is becoming more commonplace in smaller organizations.

Trend³ — Gah, 1 in 39 workplace GenAI prompts is at high risk of leaking sensitive data

Does it ever feel like GenAI usage boils down to a give-and-take? That for every benefit it gives, it takes something back — and presents us a new challenge?

Apparently, it's not just perception either. According to Microsoft and its survey of over 1,700 security leaders, 32% of data security incidents involve GenAI.

Not all of that is hackers using AI, either. Some of it starts right in our own offices: employees pasting sensitive business and customer data into AI assistants.

• A spreadsheet of payroll numbers to “just reformat real quick”
• A too-long-to-read contract that needs instant summarizing
• A list with client details to, you know, just clean up

Here, too, we're not imagining it. According to Check Point, 1 in 39 workplace AI prompts in September carried a high risk of leaking sensitive data, and 89% of organizations that regularly use AI tools had at least one high-risk prompt.

Your employees aren’t trying to cause a breach. They’re trying to get work done. Here’s how to help them — the safe way:

• Pick an approved AI tool (or two): If you don't give them an option, they'll find one on their own. It's called shadow AI.
• Draw a line. Spell out in plain terms what never goes into a prompt.
• Write an AI policy. It should be brief — so folks will actually read it.
• Get specific. Use real-world examples in training employees.

Do these things to make sure GenAI gives your business more than it takes.

New Blog Series: The Log Files With TekTrendz IT Specialist, Nickolas Newnham

You can't spend your days working in IT without realizing that behind every technology issue or fix ... there's a story. And every IT story contains a practical insight for businesses of Northwest Arkansas and the larger region.

Which is why The Log Files, written by TekTrendz IT specialist Nickolas Newnham, is poised to become a must-read for local businesses ready to elevate their technology and cybersecurity — and, ultimately, grow their companies.

Each month, Nickolas will take you inside a real story behind a real IT fix. And he'll teach along the way, distilling practical lessons for your business.

It'll be entertaining and enlightening — so come along for the ride.

Read More & Subscribe

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month! Here's How to Celebrate, er, Observe the Event

Back in 2004, the National Cybersecurity Alliance, along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, decided that with the alarming rise of cybercrime, cybersecurity had to become everybody's responsibility.

Thus, Cybersecurity Awareness Month was born. Twenty-two years later, we're still observing CAM — with more in the balance than ever before.

Our encouragement this CAM is simple: "Be Hard to Hack, NWA."

To help, TekTrendz created a small but powerful CAM Success Kit for you and your team. Download it, share it, discuss it, but — most of all — put it into practice. The kit delineates four basic steps every business should immediately incorporate.

But don't stop there: as cybercriminals get more advanced, businesses must get more advanced, too. It's a real-time, high-stakes cat-and-mouse game. CISA recommends 10 steps in three tiers for a stronger cybersecurity program.

There's no better time to become "hard to hack" than right now.

Download the CAM Success Kit

Articles We're Reading...

Here's four articles we've read recently with important implications for small business — and their technology, productivity, and/or cybersecurity.

• 'This is a first for us': Attacker uses poem — yes, a poem — to infect thousands of servers with malware
• KNWA/FOX24: Fort Smith shares update on origin of August cybersecurity incident
• Be sure to save your .pub files: Microsoft is killing an Office app you’ve used for decades
• Teenager hacks open Microsoft database with 17 trillion total rows and 25,000 user accounts

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