Megan Brandow

A guide for IT and security leaders navigating modern transformation initiatives   Every year, IT and security leaders are asked to do more with less — modernize infrastructure, stop cyber attacks, harness the power of AI, and keep the business running without skipping a beat. Yet one foundational security measure consistently lags behind: data encryption. Not only encryption at rest or in transit, but also the encryption of data in use. This gap is where breaches happen, where compliance erodes, and where digital transformation initiatives quietly stall. Paperclip SAFE changes that equation. Built on modern searchable symmetric encryption, SAFE enables organizations to work with fully encrypted data without ever exposing it in plaintext. The result is a security posture that supports every major initiative on your roadmap. Recent research from a top analyst firm pinpoints the top IT and security spending priorities for organizations in 2026. Here is how SAFE […]

Thirty-five years is a long time in any industry. In tech, it’s practically a lifetime. As Paperclip Inc. marks its 35th anniversary, it’s worth pausing to ask: what does it actually take to not just survive, but thrive through three decades of vast technological changes while keeping your customers happy? The short answer, according to Paperclip CEO and co-founder William Weiss: integrity, accountability, and a relentless commitment to evolving to meet the needs of your customers. “Staying still is going backwards,” Weiss says simply. It’s a philosophy that has guided Paperclip since day one, and it’s why companies that started working with Paperclip more than 20 years ago are still customers today. From File Cabinets to the Cloud: A Problem Worth Solving When Weiss and co-founder Mike Suleski launched Paperclip in 1991, the problem they set out to solve seemed simple: companies were drowning in paper and businesses needed an […]

Production data is the most valuable thing your operation possesses and the most valuable thing an adversary can steal, control, or manipulate in the AI age. Static, “at rest” stored data is like milk in the fridge: it matters, but it does not get more appealing over time. Production data is a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies: everyone wants it, and they want it while it is warm, useful, and ready to monetize. If you’re renewing legacy database encryption, the question is no longer whether you encrypt, but whether you’re prioritizing the correct encryption approach. If your production data is still readable during use, the answer is obvious. Legacy encryption protects where data rests, while attackers win where data becomes money: in production plaintext. If “encrypt at rest” solved this, we would be writing victory laps, not breach reports. Legacy database encryption and compliance was built for a simpler […]

The Growing Threat: Silent Data Exfiltration Through Valid Credentials Your security team receives an urgent alert at 3 a.m. A CISA field agent warns that threat actors claim access to your environment. Within minutes, your team confirms the worst: credential theft through vishing led to months of silent data exfiltration through legitimate API calls. No ransomware. No alerts. Just clean, authorized data extraction of your most sensitive customer information. This scenario is playing out across enterprises worldwide, and traditional encryption methods aren’t stopping it. Why Traditional Encryption Fails Against Modern Data Breaches Attackers no longer need to break encryption when they can simply use stolen credentials to access plaintext data during normal operations. Recent high-profile breaches demonstrate this vulnerability: Major Data Breaches Caused by Plaintext Exposure Snowflake Customer Incidents (2024): Threat actors used stolen credentials to access customer environments and exfiltrate data for sale Ticketmaster and Santander Breaches (2024): Both […]

Why the content layer is the fastest path to modernization for carriers, brokers, and distributors 2026 is the collision year for life and annuity operations: higher volume, tighter budgets, accelerating AI and agentic AI expectations, and more governance scrutiny, all at once. Market momentum increases the operational load. MAPFRE Economics projects global life insurance premiums to grow 6.5% in 2026, and LIMRA projects total U.S. annuity sales to remain above $450B through 2028, even as expected rate cuts may dampen fixed annuity sales gains in 2026. At the same time, AI outcomes are inconsistent when the underlying insurance content management and workflow controls are not production-ready. Gartner predicts at least 30% of generative AI projects will be abandoned after proof-of-concept by the end of 2025 due to issues such as poor data quality and inadequate risk controls. The fastest way to deliver trusted outcomes in 2026 is to modernize the […]

For the past decade, organizations have repeated the same story: “We encrypt data at rest and in transit. We’re secure.” In 2026, that narrative is crumbling. What once seemed like comprehensive protection now looks dangerously incomplete. Data is more dynamic, more frequently exposed in plaintext, and more vulnerable than ever before. The startling breach statistics, their impact, and the mounting costs of exposed data tell an undeniable story. Without fundamentally rethinking our approach to encryption, we’re facing a cascade of consequences: multimillion-dollar losses, skyrocketing insurance premiums, and the continued erosion of consumer trust. Perhaps most critically, organizations are leaving unrealized value on the table. The landscape has shifted dramatically. AI systems and agentic AI agents are routinely pulling sensitive data into prompts, embeddings, vector stores, and autonomous workflows. Shadow AI projects are quietly scattering critical information across unvetted SaaS platforms. Meanwhile, regulators have moved beyond being impressed by “AES-256 at […]

The data and analytics landscape is rapidly evolving to meet the demands of agentic AI and intelligent automation. By 2026 and beyond, enterprises will shift from centralized, gatekeeper-driven models toward federated, real-time data architectures that prioritize agility, governance, and trust, according to the 2026 IDC FutureScape Report: Worldwide Data & Analytics 2026 Predictions1. The same report states that by 2027, growth of AI agents will push 50% of CIOs to restructure and automate identity and data access and authorization management to reduce misuse and leakage as part of a zero trust architecture In the near term, AI agents will be essential for scaling cybersecurity, triaging alerts, and quantifying risk in business terms — because human capacity alone cannot keep pace with escalating threat volumes. At the same time, governments are asserting sovereignty over data and AI systems, embedding compliance and residency requirements into the foundation of enterprise architectures, according to […]

It’s 8:12 a.m. on a Monday. Your AI pilot is queued for the board this week. Security has flagged three issues. Finance wants the true total cost of ownership. Your data team is quietly exporting fields into a staging area because the application can’t run its lookups without plaintext. None of this is unusual. It’s the modern enterprise, where ambition outruns guardrails and where one question hangs over everything: how do we protect what matters without slowing down the business? IDC’s latest C‑suite snapshot highlights the same tension: protect sensitive data while enabling rapid AI‑driven objectives, with complexity and cost close behind and compliance cited by a much smaller share of respondents. This is the design center of Paperclip SAFE® (Searchable and Fast Encryption). SAFE keeps high‑value data encrypted not just at rest and in transit, but during searches and processing—what’s known as encryption-in-use. Applications and AI agents can match, […]

A practical, slightly wry narrative for database security leaders. The recent EY data breach exposed a critical gap in database security best practices: a 4-terabyte SQL Server backup containing unencrypted data was accessible on the open internet. This incident highlights why traditional database encryption methods—encrypting only at rest and in transit—fail to prevent data breaches when cloud misconfigurations occur. For CISOs and database administrators, the question isn’t if misconfiguration will happen, but when. The solution lies in encryption-in-use technology that keeps sensitive data encrypted throughout the entire data lifecycle, transforming potential breaches into manageable security audit findings. CISO’s Log: Turning a 4-TB Headline into a Non-Event with Encryption-in-Use It’s 7:12pm and the message comes in via an alert text. A researcher claims a 4-terabyte SQL Server backup is reachable on the open internet, DNS pointing straight at our brand. Deja vu. The situation mirrors the recent EY incident covered by […]