It’s 2025. Do you know where your VPN is?

IT teams considering remote network access have traditionally leaned toward virtual private networks (VPNs). But after a year that saw a number of attacks on the privacy architecture, some organizations are rethinking things, including moving to software-defined perimeters (SDPs).

Jim Coyle, US public sector CTO at Lookout, told IT Brew that the situation is complicated.

“There’s still a need, even in large corporate environments, for VPNs,” Coyle said. “It’s a very specific use case; if you have explicit trust, then a VPN can be utilized, meaning you know the user, you know the environment, you know the hardware that they’re on, and you run all of it.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that VPNs are secure, however. DH2i co-founder and CEO Don Boxley Jr. told IT Brew in November that he has concerns over how the attack surface has evolved due to the pervasiveness of VPNs, and urged a rethinking on how organizations approach virtual network security.

“The real issue for those large organizations is where they’ve got thousands of people accessing critical systems via VPNs,” Boxley said.

Read the rest here.—EH

DeepSeek and ye—if ye are a tech CEO—shall find a silver lining.

In last week’s earnings calls, leaders from technology giants Microsoft, Meta, and Apple showed commitments to capex and little fear about the arrival of DeepSeek and its claims of a cheaper, more computationally resourceful AI model.

The China-based company DeepSeek, which recently took the number one spot in the App Store, has touted low-cost, efficient advances in inference, which is how an AI model makes predictions. (The model’s accuracy, however, has come into question, following penetration tests.)

While the arrival created an early stock-market stir for AI-powering chipmakers and energy producers, Big Tech leaders appeared unfazed by the competitor and see efficient AI, generally, as a win.

“When token prices fall, inference computing prices fall, that means people can consume more, and there will be more apps written,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during a Jan. 29 earnings presentation.

Read more here.—BH

Most organizations still have cold feet over the future of their dependence on Oracle Java, two years after the IT giant made massive revisions to its licensing terms.

According to Azul’s 2025 State of Java survey and report, 82% of organizations had some level of concern around the pricing of Oracle Java following its latest round of pricing changes. Another 88% said they are considering switching from Oracle to an alternative Java provider, up from 72% in 2023.

The survey was administered by market research firm Dimensional Research and queried 2,039 Java professionals across six continents who were offered token compensation in exchange for their participation.

Keep reading here.—BM