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The Trump administration's plans to convert some 50,000 civil servants into at-will employees has some worried that essential government functions will be politicized.

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This year's NATO summit opens Tuesday, attended by a disengaged United States, which seems bent on fighting its own battles, rather than helping European allies with the increased threat from Russia.

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President Trump ran on a pledge to end "forever wars," so what comes next is pivotal. Here are five things to watch.

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The Trump administration said its strikes were intended to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Now, Iran weighs a response against what it called an "outrageous" military operation.

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The hype around generative AI (GenAI) is impossible to ignore in most industries, and cybersecurity is no exception. The potential for cybercriminals enhancing their attacks with AI looms large in industry discussions. At the same time, the security world is gripped by the promise of faster, smarter defenses, from AI-powered EDR to co-pilot-enabled SOC teams.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: none of it matters if your patching is months out of date, your cloud assets are misconfigured, or your employees freeze under pressure. The security fundamentals are still what really makes the difference in preventing a breach.

While security teams race to bolt on the latest GenAI tools, basic cyber hygiene is in danger of being overlooked.

So how can organizations ensure their cyber skills are up to the challenge in the age of AI?

GenAI is making the basics more urgent - not obsolete

It’s easy to assume that the widespread use of GenAI requires an entirely new approach to security and it’s undeniable that AI-assisted threats are evolving fast. But the real danger isn’t that GenAI changes the game, it’s the way it accelerates the same tactics that already work.

Attackers are primarily using GenAI to scale up familiar playbooks. Social engineering, reconnaissance, and privilege escalation aren’t new, they’re just happening faster and at greater volume.

In many cases, using AI tools can also be a security risk in and of itself. Immersive’s research found that 88% of users could fool a GenAI system into leaking sensitive information, with the machines being surprisingly vulnerable to human psychological tricks. As with any other software tool, misconfigurations and poor access controls also expose GenAI to greater exploitation.

Rather than replacing hygiene, GenAI makes it more essential. If anything, organizations need to double down on the fundamentals.

Cyber hygiene is still the frontline defense

The security landscape may be changing rapidly, but the fundamentals aren’t. Most breaches today still stem from issues that are entirely preventable: an unpatched server, a poorly configured firewall, an admin account with excessive privileges. These aren’t sophisticated zero-days that require experienced threat actors to exploit. They’re hygiene failures.

Yet too many organizations treat cyber hygiene as a legacy concern, something solved once they’ve rolled out the latest AI-powered tools. That mindset is dangerous because hygiene fundamentals aren’t something you graduate from; they’re the baseline that allows advanced defenses to function effectively.

If core defenses such as access permissions and configurations are weak, AI-powered tools are just watching the breach happen in high definition. Security starts with doing the basics well and doing them consistently.

Why poor training is the real weak link

If your security fundamentals are slipping, it’s worth asking: is the problem your tools, or your training?

For most organizations, it’s the latter. Legacy training still dominates, often reduced to short videos and multiple-choice quizzes that check boxes but fail to build capability.

The issue isn’t that people don’t care about security. It’s that they’ve been taught to memorize, not to respond. Training is too often generic, passive, and disconnected from the reality of a live incident. As a result, critical cyber hygiene habits like patch management or recognising phishing attempts fall apart in the moments they matter most.

These issues are intensified when a crisis rears its head. It’s no surprise that teams struggle to respond under pressure, because most have never been given the chance to prepare in a meaningful way.

If we want better outcomes, we need to stop blaming individuals and start fixing the systems that fail to prepare them. No amount of AI will compensate for a team that doesn’t know what to do when the alert goes off.

Drills build muscle memory and enforce hygiene

We wouldn’t expect someone to be ready to fight a fire or fly a plane just because they’d watched a video and taken a quiz, and the same is true for responding to a cyberattack.

This is where cyber drills come in. Unlike traditional training, drills place people in realistic, high-pressure scenarios where they must act, not just observe. They test judgment, coordination, and the ability to follow protocols under stress. Crucially, they reinforce both crisis handling and the importance of essential cyber hygiene through repetition and lived experience.

Cyber drills also expose weaknesses that would otherwise remain hidden. A playbook that looks perfect on paper might collapse under real-time pressure. A confident team might struggle when roles blur in the heat of an incident.

Real cyber readiness isn’t achieved through once-a-year compliance exercises, it’s built into the daily rhythm of how teams work, communicate, and make decisions. That requires more than technology. It takes culture.

Don’t bet everything on the shiniest tools

GenAI is continuing to change the security landscape in unpredictable ways, but it hasn’t changed the fundamentals. Most breaches still come down to human error and poor hygiene, regardless of the tools surrounding them.

Advanced tools won’t protect you if your team isn’t ready. True cyber resilience means training for the basics, testing under pressure, and building a culture where readiness is second nature.

We list the best endpoint protection software.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 23.

Siarhei Tsikhanouski is almost unrecognizable. Belarus' key opposition figure, spent years in solitary confinement. He credits U.S. President Trump in aiding with his release over the weekend.

(Image credit: Mindaugas Kulbis)

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has just released some of its first images. Its powerful new telescope will be able to quickly spot previously unseen astronomical objects.

(Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

Police described the suspect as a 31-year-old white male with no known connection to the church. His motive remains unclear.

(Image credit: Paul Sancya)

Led by point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league's Most Valuable Player, the Thunder outlasted the Indiana Pacers for the team's first title since moving to Oklahoma in 2008.

(Image credit: Julio Cortez)

A federal judge in Tennessee ordered Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released on bail while he awaits trial on human smuggling charges. But ICE has indicated it may arrest him if he leaves prison.

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Pep Guardiola's reigning champions head to Atlanta to take on UAE Pro League team.

The Trump administration is doing a victory lap after a surprise attack on three Iranian nuclear sites Saturday. The White House is also facing pushback from some lawmakers.

Hadeel Al-Shalchi speaks with Israelis on the morning after the U.S. bombing of Iran; one man said his ruined home was the price for destroying Iran's nuclear program.

Satellite imagery shows trucks at two key sites the day before the American strikes, suggesting uranium could have been moved.

• Kali Linux 2025.2 brings powerful new tools for experienced penetration testers
• Offensive Security realigns Kali’s interface with MITRE ATT&CK - finally, structure meets hacking function
• New BloodHound tools hint at deeper Azure and Active Directory targeting than ever before

The newest update to Kali Linux, version 2025.2, introduces over a dozen new tools alongside enhancements to user experience and platform support.

Offensive Security, the developers behind the Debian-based distribution, announced its general availability with a clear focus on aligning the system with the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The restructured Kali Menu is now tailored to make tool discovery more intuitive, but whether this structural change leads to meaningful workflow improvement remains to be seen.

Thirteen new tools for advanced offensive capabilities

Included in the new release are 13 additional tools, many of which are specialized for advanced offensive operations.

Tools like azurehound for Azure directory data collection and bloodhound-ce-python, a Python ingestor for BloodHound CE, appear to target complex enterprise environments.

Meanwhile, binwalk3 expands firmware analysis capabilities, and bopscrk enables custom wordlist creation based on intelligent algorithms.

Some additions, such as crlfuzz, which is “a fast tool to scan CRLF vulnerability written in Go,” and donut-shellcode, which lets users “generate position-independent shellcode from memory and run it,” suggest the release continues to cater to skilled practitioners.

Kali Linux 2025.2 also adds chisel-common-binaries and ligolo-ng-common-binaries, both of which offer prebuilt binaries aimed at tunneling and pivoting, activities common in red teaming.

In terms of enumeration and lateral movement, tools like ldeep, described as “an in-depth LDAP enumeration utility,” and rubeus, focused on “raw Kerberos interaction and abuses,” contribute further.

While these tools may appeal to ethical hackers, the level of expertise required to operate them effectively can act as a limiting factor for beginners.

Among the most visible quality-of-life improvements is the integration of the new GNOME VPN IP extension, which allows direct viewing of the VPN IP address from the panel.

Though this feature is convenient, it is not spectacular, and it best remains a fringe addition.

This new update also supports GNOME 48 and KDE Plasma 6.3 desktop environments.

Raspberry Pi users now have a new update that combines some Raspberry Pi OS images, eliminating the need for a separate image for the Raspberry Pi 5.

This update also introduces Kali NetHunter CARsenal, a dedicated suite for automotive security analysis.

While it remains one of the best Linux distros for ethical hacking, some users may still prefer Linux alternatives that lean more toward security or integrate more seamlessly with network monitoring tools.

Via 9to5linux

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