Hammer Weekly Update, week ending 4 January 2026

Week ending 4 January 2026 put attention on AI, security, infrastructure and cloud in UK and EMEA. We’ve boiled it down to the few stories with practical impact - and concrete steps partners can take this week.

Trump admin sends heart emoji to commercial spyware makers with lifted Predator sanctions

The Register (Security) reports: Trump admin sends heart emoji to commercial spyware makers with lifted Predator sanctions. Also, Korean Air hacked, EmEditor installer hijacked, a perfect 10 router RCE vuln… [1]

Expect pressure on rack density, GPU power budgets and memory bandwidth; design choices affect UPS/PDU loading and cooling headroom. Hammer can source AI servers and pre-stage delivery to match cooling upgrades, and translate model sizing into an orderable BOM.

Model peak rack draw; confirm UPS/PDU headroom for target density.
Benchmark NVMe throughput against expected inference concurrency.
Lock delivery dates for AI servers to align with cooling changes.

Palo Alto Networks security-intel boss calls AI agents 2026's biggest insider threat

The Register (Security) reports: Palo Alto Networks security-intel boss calls AI agents 2026's biggest insider threat. Lock 'em down interview AI agents represent the new insider threat to companies in 2026… [2]

Controls must stand up to real phishing and ransomware drills, not just policy-recovery points and identity boundaries are the failure points. Hammer can bundle Microsoft 365 backup and a managed SOC handover into a repeatable rollout plan with timelines.

Run a restore test from an immutable backup set and record RTO.
Map MFA and conditional access coverage for high-risk apps.
Stage a 30-minute phishing drill and time the run-book.

Bitfinex crypto thief who was serving five years thanks Trump for early release

The Register (Security) reports: Bitfinex crypto thief who was serving five years thanks Trump for early release. Netflix documentary part 2 in the works? Ilya Lichtenstein, who pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges tied to the 2016 theft of about 120… [3]

Tie architecture to measurable outcomes and test the thing you depend on before go-live.

Define the measurable outcome; ship the smallest change that proves it.

AWS Clean Rooms now supports detailed monitoring for collaboration queries

AWS What’s New reports: AWS Clean Rooms now supports detailed monitoring for collaboration queries. Today, AWS Clean Rooms announces the launch of detailed monitoring for SQL queries in a collaboration. [4]

Guardrails around identity, network and spend need to ship with the platform-landing zones and budgets should be codified, not manual. Hammer can package a baseline landing zone with budget alerts and ownership mapping so teams can deploy it the same way every time.

Codify a landing zone (identity, network, logging) and deploy to all accounts.
Enable budget alerts/anomaly detection and assign owners.
Right-size or schedule off non-prod instances before month-end.

Brit lands invite-only Aussie visa after uncovering vuln in government systems

The Register (Security) reports: Brit lands invite-only Aussie visa after uncovering vuln in government systems. Jacob Riggs is set to swap London for Sydney some time in the next year A British security researcher has secured Australia's strictest… [5]

Controls must stand up to real phishing and ransomware drills, not just policy-recovery points and identity boundaries are the failure points.

Run a restore test from an immutable backup set and record RTO.
Map MFA and conditional access coverage for high-risk apps.
Stage a 30-minute phishing drill and time the run-book.