As the Trump administration gets increasingly keen on crypto, some security pros see both potential benefits and drawbacks for ransomware adversaries.

Crypto news from the White House so far includes an announcement of a Bitcoin Reserve, the appointment of David Sacks as a “crypto czar,” and an SEC dismissal of enforcement actions against the Coinbase exchange. There’s even a “$TRUMP” memecoin, and a new dollar-backed stablecoin.

Whether ransomware adversaries thrive or take a dive under a more crypto-friendly federal administration will likely depend on regulations against the virtual currencies that have provided ransomware perps plenty of profit and anonymity, two security pros told us.

“I think, ultimately, it’s going to come down to what the regulatory environment looks like there. If it’s an adjustment and a change to how we track these things, then there’s new [enforcement] opportunities. If it’s blanket cutting there, I do not see that as hindering ransomware payments so much as keeping them at the status quo,” Jason Baker, managing security consultant for threat intelligence at GuidePoint Security said.

Anon factor. Cryptocurrency, with its decentralized digital ledger known as the blockchain, has been tough for law enforcement to track, according to Johnathon Miller, VP of security operations at managed detection and response company Lumifi Cyber.

“There’s not a single authority that really controls it, and since they’re reported inside of the blockchain and the identity is not really tracked for the parties that are involved, it essentially keeps this layer of protection for those threat actors,” Miller said.

Read the rest here.—BH

What do university students and faculty want? A reliable, high-performance network connection while on campus. When do they want it? Now.

John Norris, CIO at Johnson C. Smith University (JCSU), recognized this. Last year, the CIO took on the challenge of looking for an alternative to its traditional wired and wireless solutions after students expressed their frustrations with the campus’s outdated network infrastructure.

“We had some students previously say that they felt like the technology was a hindrance to [them] completing their education,” he said.

Slow network connectivity was a problem for JCSU students and faculty due to the university’s legacy networking equipment inability to support larger bandwidths, a problem that escalated following the pandemic when students continued to enroll in online courses.

“That meant even if they were on site, they would still sign up for many online courses, which meant an additional strain on our network because frankly, it wasn’t built for that,” Norris said. There are around 2,000 users on the campus on a typical day, according to Norris, with peak times falling between 9am and 3pm.

Read more here.—BM

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are under threat from hackers—but some may not understand the extent of the danger and the importance of spending to solve it.

SMBs are often targeted by threat actors. In Coalition’s Cyber Threat Index 2025, the cyber insurance firm found that 60% of SMBs cite cybersecurity concerns as a top threat. Despite that, only 23% reported that they felt “very prepared” to manage the threat. It’s a disconnect that could have ramifications, Coalition’s principal security researcher, Scott Walsh, told IT Brew.

“You care about your data, and most of the attacks today are limiting access to your own data,” Walsh said. “The attacker doesn’t care really about what your data is beyond the potential to embarrass you, but you care what your data is, because that’s what’s required to actually run your business. So, it’s basic economics in what your data is worth to you.”

Data download. That’s what Mastercard found in a recent survey of 5,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the US, UK, UAE, India, and Brazil. Almost half of respondents—46%—reported that they had experienced a cyberattack; 18% of those filed for bankruptcy, and an overlapping 17% closed.

Keep reading here.—EH

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 50%. That’s the proportion of global data center CPU market share that chip design company Arm expects to to pocket by EOY. (Reuters)

Quote: “Well, this isn’t The Matrix. Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, in response to National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s claims that his phone number was “sucked in” to his phone before the subsequent Signalgate events (Politico)

Read: Microsoft celebrates the big 5-0 this week. Former employees reminisce on the tech giant’s early days. (the Seattle Times)