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Elon Musk Champions AI Regulation in California: Is that Good, Bad or Ugly?

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AI

In a significant development for the AI sector, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of the social media platform X, recently voiced his support for California’s proposed SB 1047 bill. This bill aims to enforce stricter regulations on advanced AI models, particularly focusing on safety testing conducted by tech companies and AI developers. Musk’s endorsement highlights a pivotal moment in the ongoing dialogue about AI regulation, given his previously more skeptical stance on such measures.

California’s legislative session has been marked by a flurry of AI-related proposals, with 65 bills introduced, many of which have already been shelved. Among these, AB 3211, which calls for the labeling of AI-generated content, has garnered backing from tech giants like Microsoft and OpenAI. This bill seeks to address the growing concerns about the impact of AI-generated content, from harmless memes to potentially harmful deepfakes influencing political landscapes, especially as several countries prepare for elections this year.

Andreas Hassellof, CEO of Ombori, a company with a strong presence in UAE and at the forefront of responsible AI development, shares his perspective on this evolving situation. “Elon Musk’s recent endorsement of California’s SB 1047 has sparked a crucial conversation within the tech community. I believe this debate represents a critical juncture in the evolution of AI technology and policy,” Hassellof comments.

He notes the surprise within the industry at Musk’s shift in stance on AI regulation. “Musk’s support for this bill underscores the complexity of the issues we face as we push the boundaries of AI capabilities,” Hassellof adds. While his company supports the need for regulation to ensure AI is developed and deployed safely, Hassellof expresses concerns about the bill’s approach, particularly its potential limitations on compute capacity. “While the intention behind SB 1047 is understandable, we worry that restricting compute power could inadvertently stifle innovation without effectively addressing the core safety concerns.”

Hassellof emphasizes the importance of open-source development in AI. “The collaborative nature of open-source development has been a cornerstone of AI innovation. Many ventures, including potentially Musk’s own xAI, have thrived in this ecosystem. We must be cautious not to implement regulations that could hinder this vital aspect of AI development.”

He also highlights the global perspective on AI regulation, noting that regions like the UAE, with a strong support for innovation, could emerge as new hubs for AI development if they adopt a more balanced regulatory approach. “Rather than imposing broad restrictions, we advocate for targeted regulations that address specific high-risk applications of AI while still promoting innovation and collaboration,” Hassellof suggests.

As the AI sector continues to advance, Hassellof calls for a nuanced approach to governance. “The future of AI is too important to be decided by hasty legislation or blanket solutions. We must work together—policymakers, industry leaders, and the tech community—to create regulations that protect against genuine risks without sacrificing our innovative edge or the spirit of open-source collaboration that has driven so much progress.”

Hassellof reaffirms the company’s commitment to responsible AI development and stresses the need for ongoing dialogue to shape a future where AI benefits everyone. “We believe that open dialogue and collaboration are key to crafting regulations that ensure AI’s potential is realized responsibly,” he concludes.

As the debate over AI regulation continues, it’s clear that finding a balance between safety and innovation is paramount. The growing support for regulatory measures like SB 1047 reflects a recognition of the need to address potential risks associated with advanced AI technologies. However, the challenge lies in crafting regulations that are both effective in mitigating risks and conducive to fostering innovation.

As we move forward, the question remains: How can policymakers design AI regulations that safeguard against genuine threats while preserving the open and collaborative environment that has driven so much progress in the field? The answer will likely involve a thoughtful dialogue between regulators, industry leaders, and the tech community. Only by working together can we ensure that AI’s development is guided by principles that protect society without stifling the innovative spirit that has propelled the industry to new heights.

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NETSCOUT EXTENDS ADAPTIVE DDOS DEFENSE PROTECTION TO ADDRESS THE RISING BUSINESS COST OF WEAPONIZED BROADBAND AND IOT DEVICES

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NETSCOUT® (NASDAQ: NTCT), a leading provider of observability, AIOps, cybersecurity, and DDoS attack protection solutions, today announced an extension of its Adaptive DDoS Protection (ADP) solution enabling service providers to automatically detect and mitigate outbound DDoS attack traffic. By extending protection from the attack target towards its source, NETSCOUT helps operators prevent compromised subscriber devices from disrupting their own networks, consuming costly capacity and attacking customers and organizations across the internet.

Consumer broadband routers, cameras and other IoT devices are increasingly being weaponized by Turbo-Mirai class botnets capable of generating multi-terabit attacks. These outbound attacks have already caused costly service outages, reputational damage and customer loss, and damage to peering relationships risking a large increase in transit costs at service providers around the world. By detecting and mitigating malicious traffic generated by compromised device populations before it leaves their networks, service providers can reduce abuse complaints and infrastructure costs while protecting their own networks and services and helping lower subscriber churn and regulatory risk.

“The combination of higher-speed broadband connectivity and vulnerable IoT devices has been weaponized by a new class of massive DDoS botnets,” said Patrick Donegan, founder and principal analyst, HardenStance. “Source-side mitigation, or attack suppression as it’s sometimes known, is a critical part of the equation. NETSCOUT’s approach, backed by its ATLAS Intelligence Feed (AIF) and ASERT analysts, gives service providers the tools they need to detect and stop attacks before they have an impact, protecting their customers and the broader internet from the large-scale DDoS attacks we have seen.”

Using AI-powered threat intelligence and automated detection and mitigation, NETSCOUT’s ADP solution, an addition to its Arbor Sightline and Arbor Threat Mitigation System:

  • Automatically detects and mitigates ever evolving attacks through dynamic detection, intelligent redirection and adaptive mitigation.
  • Extends these capabilities to outbound traffic, combining enhanced, customized detection with comprehensive threat intelligence tailored for each ISP.
  • Uses NETSCOUT’s proprietary AI/ML-powered DDoS detection to analyze massive volumes of outbound internet traffic to uncover attacks designed to hide within legitimate flows.
  • Draws on unique global real-time intelligence of DDoS activity covering approximately half of all internet traffic to rapidly detect and mitigate DDoS attacks and pinpoint the responsible, compromised devices.

“We are extending DDoS defense from the target to the source,” stated Darren Anstee, CTO, Security, NETSCOUT. “By using our internet-scale visibility to derive localized threat intelligence for our customers, NETSCOUT can identify and precisely suppress attacks at their origin, before they cause problems locally or at their target. This capability gives our customers a new level of comprehensive defense across their peering, transit, cloud and customer edges.”

This expansion of capabilities demonstrates how NETSCOUT is applying its global threat visibility and proven ADP solution to meet emerging service provider challenges. By extending an established inbound DDoS workflow to outbound and cross-bound threats, NETSCOUT enables operators to improve network-resilience, cost-controls and revenue protection through its proven Arbor Sightline and Arbor TMS solutions.

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Illumio Named Leader and Customer Favorite in Forrester Wave for Microsegmentation

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Illumio Inc., the breach containment company, today announced it has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Microsegmentation Solutions, Q3 2026  report. Illumio received the highest scores among all evaluated vendors in both the Current Offering and Strategy categories and was named a “Customer Favorite” for its outstanding customer feedback among evaluated vendors. According to the report, “Repeat customers indicate their satisfaction with the consistently high quality of technical support, regardless of the personnel assigned to their account.”  

The report evaluated 10 microsegmentation providers against a comprehensive set of criteria covering product capabilities, strategy, innovation, and customer experience. Illumio received the highest scores possible in 10 evaluation criteria, including areas related to visualization, host-based enforcement, product security, vision, and innovation. According to the report, “Illumio excels at essential microsegmentation functions.”

“Illumio was founded on a simple belief: breaches are inevitable, but cyber disasters are not. We have been singularly focused on one objective — reducing lateral movement and attack surface, and increasing resilience in every organization,” said Andrew Rubin, CEO and Founder of Illumio. “Being named both a Leader and a Customer Favorite reflects to us the strength of our technology, vision, and even more importantly our ability to deliver real outcomes and risk reduction, which is the foundation of the trust our customers place in us every day. In the model threat world we are all now entering, defense must be coupled with resilience. Recovery is the new defense — and the new cyber.”

According to the Forrester Research report, “Organizations with large, heterogeneous environments focused on improving cyber resilience should consider Illumio.”  The report also recognized Illumio for:

  • “Illumio has articulated a vision for microsegmentation as a core element of security operations.”
  • “Illumio is bridging the gap between its traditional users and other parts of the security organization by delivering agents mapped to personas from other teams.”
  • Its UI provides easy access to information that supports both access control and incident response use cases.”

The recognition follows continued innovation across the Illumio Platform, including Network Posture, which helps organizations understand security posture based on real-world traffic and prioritize risk reduction efforts. These capabilities support the growing need for visibility, cyber resilience, and regulatory readiness across complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Designed for operational simplicity, the Illumio Platform combines Illumio Insights and Illumio Segmentation to help organizations identify, assess, and contain cyber risk across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Security teams can uncover high-risk exposures, visualize potential attack paths, and implement segmentation policies from a single platform to contain threats and improve cyber resilience.

The platform is trusted by some of the world’s largest organizations, including BNP Paribas, eBay, and Microsoft, the latter of which has deployed Illumio Insights and Illumio Segmentation across its entire corporate IT environment. Igor Tsyganskiy, Global CISO of Microsoft, said: “When we needed to bring these capabilities into Microsoft, Illumio was the only segmentation solution that would work at the scale of Microsoft and deliver in our environment.”

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Rentify Introduces the First AI Workforce for Property Managers, Expanding Earn AI with Renewal Command Center

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Earn AI grows into a team of specialised AI agents that help property managers scale operations, automate renewals and embed financial services while keeping people in control of every decision.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Rentify, a cutting-edge fintech & proptech startup, announced the launch of Renewal Command Center, the third specialised AI agent within Earn AI, its AI-native operating system for rental operations.

Today, Earn AI supports property portfolios representing more than AED 22 billion (USD 6 billion) in real estate assets and over AED 1.3 billion in annual rental value, demonstrating how some of the region’s largest property portfolios are already adopting AI-native rental operations.

Unlike traditional software that only records information, Earn AI detects what needs attention, prepares the required work and coordinates execution. Property managers can upload spreadsheets, lease agreements and fragmented portfolio information and see it transformed into a live, structured portfolio view in under 60 seconds.

Each specialised Earn AI agent has a clearly defined responsibility while operating within approval workflows that ensure property managers remain in complete control of every important decision.

AgentCore Responsibility
Intelligence AgentTransforms spreadsheets, lease agreements and fragmented property data into a structured intelligence layer across an entire portfolio.
Collections AgentAutomated rent collection, payment coordination & portfolio-wide management
Renewal Command Center (NEW)End-to-end renewal workflow that includes lease generation, prepares tenancy agreements accommodating tenant intel, insurance, Open Banking & payments across all Emirates

Nearly 80% residential tenants renew their tenancy agreements each year, making renewals one of the largest recurring operational responsibilities for property managers. Across the real estate industry in the UAE, experienced property managers are expected to oversee larger portfolios while managing renewals, collections, tenant onboarding, documentation, compliance and financial coordination across multiple disconnected systems. As portfolios grow, operational work grows faster than teams.

Through Rentify’s product Rent Shield in partnership with YallaCompare, landlords and tenants can seamlessly access rental insurance during the renewal process. Integration with Spare, a leading open finance provider, enables Open Finance-powered affordability assessments and Pay-by-Bank payment orchestration that supports Rentify’s existing digital payment infrastructure. The platform will also make rent renewal seamless with embedded financial services.

Rajneel Kumar, Co-founder, Rentify, said, “We built Earn AI around a simple idea that technology should handle the operational heavy lifting so property managers can focus on outcomes for landlords and tenants. For decades, the only way to scale was to hire more people, but AI changes that. Renewal Command Center takes that idea into one of the most repetitive workflows in property management, connecting renewals, tenant intelligence, Open Banking, embedded insurance and payments in a single flow, with every critical decision still made by a person.”

Rashed Hareb, Co-founder & CEO, Rentify, said, “Property managers don’t need more dashboards. They need greater operational capacity. Over the next decade, every major operational function  within the property management business will gain a specialised AI counterpart. Our role is to build an operating system that enables those teams to work together seamlessly.”

Rentify believes the future of property management is not about replacing people with artificial intelligence. It is about giving every property manager a specialised AI workforce that quietly handles repetitive operational work, allowing people to focus on relationships, judgement and portfolio growth.

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