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Top stories from January

What to Know About DeepSeek and How It Is Upending AI (New York Times)

U.S. Sues to Block Tech Deal in First Antitrust Action of Trump Term (New York Times)

Another Banner Year for Ransomware Gangs (The Register)

Crisis Simulations: A Top 2025 Concern for CISOs (Dark Reading)

Email Bombing, 'Vishing' Tactics Abound in Microsoft 365 Attacks

Top trend

The most potentially consequential IT news in January was the emergence of the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. Opinions differ on how real the organization’s achievement is, but the basic question is whether DeepSeek is actually able to provide performance similar to OpenAI and other current AI market leaders at a fraction of their cost. The overall AI frenzy has led to a flood of spending by the Magnificent 7 and other tech giants to build out AI-capable datacenters, largely powered by NVIDIA chips. News of DeepSeek’s price-performance led to a record-breaking drop in NVIDIA’s market value and huge questions across Silicon Valley about the value of their current AI investments. For IT decision makers, the news means they may want to wait and see if less expensive AI options become available in the near future.

Additional trends:

The U.S. Justice Department’s decision to take a hard line against HPE’s proposed acquisition of Juniper Networks is surprising to those who expected the Trump DOJ to be more lenient on antitrust than the Biden DOJ. In the meantime, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt around the prospects for this merger can be an opportunity for other players in the enterprise networking and enterprise wi-fi arena. (Upcoming ATM event: 3/21 EcoCast title: Solution Showcase Day: The Enterprise Wi-Fi Spectrum)

A new study shows a record number of ransomware attacks in 2024, with an increase expected for 2025. This threat is still incredibly dangerous. (Upcoming ATM events: 2/28 Expert Series on Preventing Ransomware Attacks and 3/28 Expert Series on Defending Against Double Extortion and Other Nasty Ransomware Tactics.)

CISOs are prioritizing crisis simulations in 2025, according to a new study. (Upcoming ATM events: 2/27 EcoCast on Minimizing RTO, RPO, and RTA: Best Practices for Bulletproof Backup and Ultrafast Recovery; 3/12 EcoCast on Building Cyber Resilience in 2025; and 3/19 MegaCast on Complete Data Protection: Security, Training, Backup, and More.)

Microsoft 365 is a target in a number of new attacks involving email bombing and vishing. More reason to help organizations with their overall Microsoft infrastructure security. (Upcoming ATM event: 2/19 EcoCast on Active Directory & Entry ID Security & Management.)