The Houston Tech Brief

BlackFog tracked 264 publicly disclosed ransomware attacks in Q1 2026. They tracked another 2,160 on dark web leak sites. Only 1 in 9 attacks ever becomes public. For Houston small and mid-sized business owners, the gap between what makes the news and what actually happens is the real story. In this episode, Shane Stevens of CinchOps breaks down the BlackFog Q1 2026 State of Ransomware Report thro...

Houston-area finance teams are facing a new, highly targeted threat: AI-powered business email compromise that mimics real projects, invoices, and suppliers and can include voice-cloned voicemails that sound like your CEO. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report shows BEC losses exceeding $3 billion in 2024, with 40% of phishing now AI-generated. Any AP team that processes invoices is at risk, and a...

A 2022 talk Shane Stevens gave to Texas A&M freshmen titled Winds of Change predicted that greater disruption was coming. Four years later, those predictions read underbid. This episode walks Houston SMB owners through what role compression actually looks like, why experienced operators now hold the edge, and what that edge means for the next generation trying to break in.   Read more: Winds o...

This episode explains four essential controls: patching workstations and servers, maintaining regular backups, testing backup restoration at least quarterly, and keeping one immutable copy in a separate location. Implementing these measures would have stopped most of the 2,135 incidents tracked and significantly improved resilience against data loss and ransomware.   Read more: What the Q1 2026 Ra...

CinchOps analyzed 3,800+ Google reviews across 120 Houston-area IT managed service providers and found striking trends: 94% of reviews are five-star, and the top 10 providers account for 54% of all reviews. Negative reviews cluster around three repeated problems - hidden billing, forced multi-year contracts, and service collapse after acquisition - showing that review counts alone don’t tell you w...

This episode explains how spear phishing differs from broad phishing: it’s targeted, researched, and built around a specific person at a specific company. Listen to real examples and learn how these tailored attacks are often the path ransomware takes — and what steps you can take to spot and stop them.   Read more: Phishing Attacks Targeting Houston Businesses Are Getting Harder to Spot   Connect...

Today’s episode uses a Houston IT due diligence guide from CinchOps to uncover invisible six-figure risks that often hide inside business acquisitions — from nine-year-old servers and dead backup batteries to unpatched systems, licensing true-ups and single-person knowledge silos. We walk through real scenarios and hard numbers: Gartner found 60% of acquirers see unexpected cybersecurity issues po...

If you run a Houston business considering or using AI, this episode highlights alarming results from the 2026 Writer AI Adoption Survey: only 29% report real ROI, 48% call their rollouts a massive disappointment, and 46% say AI is burning cash with no bottom-line impact. The episode covers cultural and operational breakdowns — 75% of leaders admit their AI strategy is for show, 78% report increase...

The QALYS Threat Research Unit studied over 1 billion remediation records from more than 10,000 organizations and found attackers are weaponizing critical vulnerabilities before patches exist — the average time to exploit is negative one day and 88% of dangerous flaws were exploited faster than they were patched. For Houston businesses in energy, construction, manufacturing, CPA and wealth managem...

On April 8, 2026 Anthropic launched Claude Managed Agents, a platform that slashes production AI agent deployment from months to days. These autonomous programs accept goals, plan steps, use tools, handle errors, and can run for hours without human input; companies like Notion, Rakuten, and Sentry are already shipping agents that write code, process documents, and automate workflows. For Houston b...

Anthropic has launched Project Glasswing, a $100 million AI cybersecurity initiative using an unreleased model called Claude Mythos Preview to scan critical software. The project has uncovered thousands of zero‑day vulnerabilities across major operating systems and browsers, including a 27‑year‑old OpenBSD bug no human ever found. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, and CrowdStrike are partne...

Anthropic's leaked Claude Mythos AI model sent cybersecurity stocks into freefall and put every business on notice. In this episode, we break down what Claude Mythos is, how the current Claude model already found 22 Firefox vulnerabilities in just two weeks, why Chinese hackers are already using AI in real-world attacks, and what Houston businesses need to do right now to prepare for AI-powered cy...

Houston construction companies are losing hours and exposing project data because of three fixable problems: unreliable job site internet, unsecured field devices, and no plan for trailer theft or flooding. The solution is a complete construction IT strategy: business-grade LTE, 5G, or Starlink with automatic failover; SD-WAN for secure site connections; standardized rugged hardware enrolled in mo...

Most Houston business owners know the term "managed IT" but not what it actually includes. In this episode Cinchop CEO Shane Stevens explains how a single ransomware incident can cost a small business $100,000–$500,000 in downtime and recovery. Managed IT replaces break-fix billing with one flat monthly fee that covers 24/7 monitoring, cybersecurity, helpdesk support, patching, backups, and strate...

Houston’s economy reached $758.3 billion in GDP, making it the sixth-largest metro economy in the U.S. with a 4.1% growth rate. Manufacturing topped $126.9 billion in output for the third straight year, and 683 new business announcements in 2025 disclosed $10.5 billion in capital investment. Cinchops CEO Shane Stevens says better tools, connected systems and IT infrastructure are driving this prod...

The Greater Katy Area now has over 340,000 residents and the construction cranes aren't slowing down. A $64.5 million Costco, a 10MW data center expansion on Franz Road, and a 125,000-square-foot medical building are all going up right now.   In this episode, we break down where Katy's growth is actually happening across healthcare, energy, retail, and construction, and what it means for the IT in...

March 31 is World Backup Day - and the numbers should stop every Houston business owner in their tracks. 60% of small businesses that lose their data close within six months. 93% that lose access for 10+ days file for bankruptcy within a year. Yet only 32% of organizations are confident they could actually recover their critical data when it matters. In this episode, we break down the 3-2-1-1-0 ba...

The Department of Energy's CSER Strategic Plan (2026-2030) sets federal timelines to harden energy infrastructure, including ranking and securing defense‑critical sites, rolling out AI Forts for sector-wide security, and launching Project Armor to boost grid resilience. Requirements extend beyond major operators to suppliers, manufacturers, and contractors, with oil, gas, and utilities facing new...

Anthropic accidentally exposed details of its unreleased Claude Mythos AI model through a CMS misconfiguration, triggering 4-9% drops across major cybersecurity stocks. CinchOps breaks down what this means for Houston businesses - from AI-powered vulnerability discovery to the shrinking window between attack and defense.   Read more: Anthropic’s Leaked AI Model Rattles Cybersecurity Markets – What...

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands added 126,720 residents between July 2024 and July 2025, making it the fastest-growing U.S. metro and pushing Harris County past 5 million people. Surrounding counties like Waller, Montgomery, and Fort Bend are growing even faster. That explosive population growth is driving higher demand for reliable, secure IT: construction sites need field connectivity, CPAs requi...

Google Research released TurboQuant, an algorithm that compresses AI working memory by six times with no loss in accuracy. The announcement pushed down memory chip stocks and signals significantly lower AI infrastructure costs ahead, which will drive cheaper AI-powered tools and services. For Houston-area businesses - energy companies, law firms, CPA practices, construction firms, and wealth manag...

Houston businesses rely on routers, printers, VoIP phones, and dozens of other connected devices every day - and most of them haven't been patched or updated in years. Forescout's 2026 Riskiest Connected Devices report confirms what we've been seeing across the Houston metro: the devices nobody thinks about are the ones attackers target first. CinchOps breaks down which devices pose the biggest ri...