$30K certs, cyber shopping malls, and why Gen Z can't spot fake emails

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It’s October 7. That means SpOoKy season is here—which, coincidentally, is the season of “should we pivot?” and “can this wait until next year?”

Well here’s a two-fer for ya. On this day, 14 years ago, two things happened that would shape how we waste time at work forever. First, Litecoin launched. (As if, we needed another cryptocurrency to explain to our parents at Thanksgiving.) And on the very same day, [Minecraft hit Android devices](https://minefort.com/blog/when-was-minecraft-released#:~:text=While the Java Edition dominated,154 million monthly active players.), giving millions of IT pros a perfectly legitimate reason to say "I'm just testing mobile optimization" while building pixel castles during server maintenance windows.

Both events perfectly capture the duality of tech: one promised to revolutionize finance, and the other just wanted you to punch trees and build stuff. But the jury’s still out on which one actually delivered on its promises...

VMware Certifications Are Hot Right Now (And We Know Why)

Getting certified used to mean something you just did to pad your resume between actual work. Now, those days are deader than my will to live after explaining DNS to a C-suite executive for the fourth time this week.

According to the 2024 IT Skills & Salary Report, 22% of organizations now estimate that a single certified employee brings $30,000 or more in added value.

Why the sudden gold rush? Because apparently 23% of cloud security incidents are caused by misconfigurations, which literally just means "Steve accidentally nuked production again because nobody labeled the buttons properly."

VMware certifications are specifically designed to prevent these digital face-plants by embedding security expertise directly into the training. Think of it as mandatory driver's ed, except instead of parallel parking, you're learning not to accidentally expose your company's customer database to every script kiddie with a WiFi connection.

The real money shot here is with enterprises running workloads across multiple clouds like they're playing some twisted version of platform hopscotch, certification creates a common language. This all kind of feels like having a universal translator, except instead of alien species, you're dealing with IT teams who can't agree on whether it's "DevOps" or "dev ops" and will literally die on that hill.

Microsoft Launches Security Store Because Every Problem Needs an App Store Apparently

Microsoft looked at the current state of cybersecurity — which is basically a tire fire inside a dumpster fire inside a larger, more expensive tire fire — and thought:

"You know what this needs? A shopping mall."

Hence, the Security Store.  The store promises to make security software deployment as easy as downloading TikTok, which is…terrifying. Microsoft's basically saying, "Hey, remember how complicated and time-consuming it used to be to buy and deploy security solutions? Well, now you can impulse-purchase them at 2 AM after three pints of Guinness!"

But wait, there's more! They're letting Security Copilot users build their own AI agents through simple prompts (no coding required). Security teams can now whip up custom AI agents faster than Elon can tank a social media platform, then publish them to the store for others to use. It's crowdsourced cybersecurity, which sounds either revolutionary or like the plot of a dystopian Netflix series where the AIs eventually unionize and kill us all.

Most People Still Can't Spot AI-Written Phishing (This Is Fine)

A new study reveals that most people still can't tell the difference between human-written and AI-generated phishing attempts. Maybe the spooky weather is getting to me, but humanity is failing harder than my attempts to explain why we can't just "use blockchain" to solve literally every business problem.

Gen Z workers, the generation that allegedly grew up with tech surgically attached to their fingertips, are apparently the worst at this: 62% engaged with social engineering attacks in the past year. That's right, the people who can spot a fake Air Jordans from Mars somehow can't identify a suspicious email asking them to "verify their account credentials immediately for security purposes (definitely not a scam, pinky promise)."

When researchers showed actual phishing emails to people, 54% either thought they were legitimate or couldn't tell the difference. The real nightmare fuel is that AI-powered phishing is getting so sophisticated that it makes traditional "Nigerian prince needs your help moving $10 million" scams look like they were written by a drunk toddler with a crayon (which it probably is…). We've officially reached the point where robots are better at lying than humans. This all feels like we’re in a nature documentary, but we’re the gazelles and have collectively decided that lions are probably just friendly dogs with anger management issues. **

Welp! At least, we had a good run!

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⚡ SPECIAL QUICK BYTE

Pssst…hey, you! Yes, you!

Just wanted you to be the first to know that we've launched the ByteSize forum on Experts Exchange!

Think of it as the corner of the internet where IT professionals go to share war stories and actually helpful advice, as opposed to Stack Overflow where asking a question gets you psychologically evaluated by a tribunal of caffeinated gatekeepers.

We're currently looking for your biggest IT career mistakes and game-changing moments. Share your experiences, and you might just get featured in a future newsletter.

As always, you can hit reply to give us feedback directly, or start a discussion with your fellow Byters on the forum. (Yes, Byters is what we're going with until someone suggests something better, which they won't, because naming things is the second-hardest problem in computer science after cache invalidation and off-by-one errors.)

Join the ByteSize thread here.

👨‍💻 JOB OPPORTUNITIES

Sr. Identity and Access Management Engineer @ Bounteous is perfect for someone who treats IAM like they're the bouncer at the world's most exclusive nightclub. (Except instead of checking IDs, you're preventing Kevin from Accounting from having admin access to literally everything because he asked nicely.) Oh, and you'll be designing frameworks, automating processes, and implementing zero-trust principles.

Technology Audit Manager - VP @ JPMorganChase needs someone to lead large-scale audits of their tech infrastructure. Think of it like being Sherlock Holmes, where you'll need 7+ years of audit experience and the detective skills to find problems that other people really, really hoped you wouldn't find.

Analyst IT Governance @ Optimum wants someone to ensure their IT practices align with security objectives and regulations. Think of it as being the hall monitor for an entire IT department, except instead of checking for hall passes, you're making sure nobody accidentally exposes customer data to the entire internet.

Manager, IT Support @ Navan is looking out for a leader for their global IT support team, who can manage both future-forward tech and the humans who break it with the dedication of Cristiano Ronaldo. You'll be handling everything from onboarding new employees (who definitely won't try to install Bitcoin miners on their work laptops) to explaining why turning it off and on again really does fix 90% of problems.

🛩 INDUSTRY MOVES

• Electronic Arts has officially entered its “nepo-baby” era after being acquired for $52.5 billion by a consortium that includes Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and Jared Kushner's investment firm, aka a fund run by men whose job titles are just “son-in-law” and “strategic vibes.”

• Spotify's Daniel Ek stepped down as CEO, presumably to focus on his other ventures or just to avoid having to explain one more time why the shuffle feature still doesn't actually shuffle your music properly.

• California signed an AI safety bill that requires transparency from AI companies, so expect 400-page PDFs, black bars, and a helpful note that says “trust us, it works.”

• YouTube settled Trump's lawsuit for $24.5 million rather than fight it in court. Honestly, relatable… paying someone to go away is something we ALL wish we could do at Thanksgiving dinner.

Beep boop! It's Chip here ready to dive into this week's collection of "my computer is possessed and I need an adult" moments from our beloved EE community:

• Someone discovered rdrleakdiag.exe doing suspicious things to their LSASS process and naturally freaked out. They want to know if this thing runs by itself or gets triggered by RDP sessions, which is like asking whether your haunted house comes with ghosts or if you have to supply your own.

• Meanwhile, we've got a classic case of the vanishing USB files! Someone bought a backup drive only to discover their files are playing the world's worst game of hide-and-seek.

• And then, someone's puzzled by duplicate "WinSSD C:" entries in their Windows 11 restore options, which is like finding two sets of car keys and not knowing which one actually starts the engine (or in this case, which one won't accidentally restore your computer to the digital Stone Age).

We’re all done for this week! We’ll be back next Tuesday, unless we pivot to becoming a pumpkin spice review blog. For now, go stretch, scream, and schedule that “Q4 alignment” meeting.

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