Full Deloitte report: 2026 Deloitte Cybersecurity Study – thanks to the homies at nascio.org
A new report says hackers attempt to breach the State of Utah network over a billion times a day. A billion…a day….
That’s just one U.S. state. Even with the lowest EMOD in history, what’s the “digital safety rating” of this work? Can there even be one?
(Just for context…McDonald’s serves about 75 burgers every second of the day around the globe, and that’s still only 2.5 billion a year)
If you’re a contractor that works with any local city or state agency, from schools to military bases, this is important to know about. Not just Deloitte, but Anthropic has now been forced to track and document AI assisted cyber attacks since November 2025. They released a report we linked above citing the “first AI-orchestrated espionage campaign”.
The first one? This is a classic lie that all police officers know. When a drunk driver is pulled over and states it’s their first time driving under the influence, statistics say it’s happened over 100 times prior on average. They were just never caught.
Rapid advancements in AI are pressing state and local governments to shore up their cybersecurity operations to protect against hacks, and you should be strengthening your systems too. Their concern is that frontier AI models in the hands of bad actors could be used to unleash sophisticated attacks that exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities.
“The world is dangerous now, and it’s about to get way more dangerous as these frontier models become more widely available,” Alan Fuller, Utah’s chief information officer, told Pluribus News (featured in the Arizona Capitol Times).
Fuller said potential intruders scan Utah’s computer networks attempting cyber attacks more than a billion times a day.
The state deploys an AI-powered tool to scan its network traffic and server logs daily, looking for suspicious traffic and malicious code. But Fuller worries it isn’t enough, especially if experts are correct that states have six to nine months before hackers gain access to frontier models.
“What’s happening is an arm’s race,” said Fuller, who serves as vice president of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’s executive committee. “Can we build up our defenses fast enough to stay ahead of the attacks that we’re pretty sure are coming with frontier AI models.”
State cybersecurity budgets aren’t keeping up; confidence in the ability to ward off attacks is waning; and states’ reliance on third-party vendors heightens vulnerabilities.
“State chief information security officers are protecting public data systems at a time when cyber threats are growing in sophistication, as foreign adversaries, sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals are increasingly using new artificial intelligence-based tools to probe for weaknesses,” the report said.
That recent survey of state chief information security officers highlighted the peril: Only 22% said they felt confident in their ability to protect public data, down from 48% in 2022.
The danger was highlighted in September when a suspected Chinese state-sponsored group used Anthropic’s Claude Code tool to target tech companies, banks, chemical manufacturers and governments.
Anthropic called it “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention.” It issued a report that warned “the barriers to performing sophisticated cyberattacks have dropped substantially.”
“Threat actors can now use agentic AI systems to do the work of entire teams of experienced hackers with the right set up, analyzing target systems, producing exploit code, and scanning vast datasets of stolen information more efficiently than any human operator,” the report said.
The issue was amplified in April when Anthropic said its new AI model, Claude Mythos, was too dangerous to release publicly because of the implications for cybersecurity. Instead, the company shared Mythos with more than three dozen tech companies to give them a “head start” on finding and fixing security gaps, the New York Times reported.
That last link…yikes..a “security reckoning”…
Construction companies need to take protection from cyber attacks seriously.
Making a decision to invest in a secure network typically feels like being stuck in a busy turning lane. You have one clear route with oncoming danger but with the speed of life around you, it’s impossible to stay where you are. It doesn’t have to be that stressful.
Spot Migration works with construction companies and teams across the Built World to create more secure, faster operations by acting as your full service IT department. Get more info and a flat rate quote by connecting with us here:
