When it comes to AI and bandwidth, you could say there’s a bit of a…disconnect.

That’s the concern about how AI is affecting network connectivity, according to new research from connectivity firm Expereo and polling company IDC. In its Enterprise Horizons 2025 survey, which polled IT leaders from the US, Europe, and Asia, the role of AI in connectivity was cited as often more a challenge than a benefit.

That’s because of how the technology can affect the infrastructure, Expereo CIO Jean-Philippe Avelange said.

“AI starts putting strain on the network because it’s much more data-intensive,” Avelange told IT Brew. “Each affects each other, because the increase of load affects the latency.”

Heavyweight. Further, many networks aren’t capable of managing the additional load necessitated by AI projects. Limitations include scaling, performance, bandwidth, and reach—and only single-digit percentages of those surveyed reported that their networks were ready for major AI projects.

How can companies battle bandwidth bounds?—EH

The Department of Education was subject to a phishing campaign that targeted the agency’s G5 portal, which handles its grant management system.

BforeAI, a company that provides predictive intelligence for attacks and digital risk protections, identified the campaign on July 15 according to a report released by the company. The cybersecurity group found that there were “multiple lookalike domains” attempting to spoof the G5 login page to harvest login credentials.

Lead researcher at BforeAI Abu Qureshi told IT Brew that the company was tracking the bad actor that had been targeting insurance and HR agencies in the US, but pivoted to ED as the group started doing work to take the campaign down. Qureshi said that the phishing attempt is “very timely” with the recent layoffs from the agency.

“It’s not uncommon for actors to try and exploit these reductions in force in big companies or layoffs in [the] public sector as well, especially because the view from the attacker perspective is that public sector is not very well staffed internally to begin with for cybersecurity,” Qureshi said.

Phishing is still a popular tactic.—CN

The healthcare industry experiences hundreds of cyberattacks each year (725 breaches of more than 500 records in 2024, to be exact).

In that hotbed for hacking, where sensitive patient data is at risk, the average cost of an attack for a healthcare organization is $9.8 million, making it more expensive than any other industry, according to a 2024 IBM report.

Meanwhile, new generative AI technologies are being introduced to healthcare each day. Among them are agentic AI agents, which are designed to act like humans, autonomously making multistep decisions. These tools can even talk on the phone with patients in human-like voices for scheduling and billing.

But these AI agents also present an additional risk for cyberattacks, experts say, in an already targeted industry.

“There’s an obvious, massive upside to embracing AI, but with that comes a huge amount of risk as well,” Jimmy White, chief technology officer at software development company Calypso AI, told Healthcare Brew.

AI is making healthcare cybersecurity complicated.—CM