The battle lines against criminal cartels are shifting. No longer treated solely as criminal syndicates, these organizations have been formally designated foreign terrorist groups by executive order in early 2025 — elevating their activities to matters of national security. The move reflects a stark reality: cartels now operate with capabilities once reserved for nation-states, from drones and armored vehicles to sophisticated financial and cyber networks. For Cormac Meiners, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret who now leads federal engagement for I2 Group, the new classification underscores both the danger and the opportunity.

The United States has entered a new phase in its fight against transnational organized crime. When the federal government formally designated criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations by an executive order in early 2025, the move signaled that drug trafficking groups are no longer seen solely as law-enforcement targets. They are being recognized as highly capable non-state actors with advanced military-style operations. For Cormac Meiners, a retired U.S. Army Green Beret now leading federal engagement for the I2 Group, the implications are profound.

The operating environment for global organizations is undergoing a structural shift. Disruptions once seen as isolated anomalies are now recurring features of doing business — and their impact is compounded by interconnected markets, complex supply chains, and heightened regulatory scrutiny. As the cadence and complexity of these disruptions grow, the ability to detect, assess, and respond to critical events is emerging as an enterprise‑wide competency, not just an operational function.

In 2025, enterprise resilience has shifted from a defensive posture to a core strategic capability. A convergence of threats — from geopolitical instability and extreme weather to cyber incidents and shifting compliance mandates — is redefining what it takes to keep people, assets, and operations safe. Critical event management (CEM), once a niche operational discipline, is now emerging as a board‑level priority.

In today’s digital commerce landscape, every transaction matters. Merchants spend heavily to attract and convert customers — yet many lose legitimate sales at the final stage because a payment is wrongly declined. These false declines frustrate customers, damage loyalty, and drain revenue. Historically, they were accepted as an unavoidable cost of doing business, a frustrating byproduct of risk controls and fraud prevention systems. Recent advances in artificial intelligence, combined with payment orchestration platforms, are changing that narrative.

Digital payment systems are undergoing a significant transformation as artificial intelligence reshapes how merchants manage risk, recover revenue and improve the customer experience. For years, online commerce has been constrained by a significant occurrence of false declines, when legitimate transactions are mistakenly or inappropriately rejected by payment processors. Adding insult to injury, declines of legitimate purchases may account for approximately half a trillion dollars a year in missed opportunities, significantly exceeding losses that are currently attributed to actual digital payment fraud. 

Enterprises are racing to capture the benefits of artificial intelligence, but speed comes with risk. Business units now have the power to generate code and digital assets on their own, raising urgent questions about how to maintain control without slowing innovation. That balancing act is redefining the role of CIOs, according to Dan Priest, US Chief AI Officer at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

While the corporate C-suite is under mounting pressure to innovate at the speed of artificial intelligence, CIOs are struggling to respond to the imperative in a risk-adjusted manner that keeps governance, compliance, and strategic alignment intact. The challenge is no longer just about deploying technology efficiently — it is about enabling rapid experimentation while ensuring that new digital assets integrate securely into the enterprise.

This spring, Dr. Dani Bowie, Senior Vice President for Workforce AI at Aya Healthcare, released her book Reimagine Workforce Management with AI: A Roadmap for Healthcare Leaders. In a recent BizTechReports vidcast interview, she contended that technology can help organizations anticipate and adapt to demand surges, improve fairness in scheduling and ease administrative burdens that contribute to burnout. She was quick to add that adoption must keep the human workforce at the center of transformation.

Hospitals and health systems across the country are being forced to reconcile a stubborn reality: staffing shortages, rising demand and relentless financial pressure cannot be solved by incremental fixes. The question is no longer whether to rethink workforce management, but how to do so in a way that protects both patients and the people who care for them.

After decades in the background, high-speed aviation is drawing renewed attention from investors, manufacturers, and regulators. The convergence of global economic pressures, advanced materials science, and digital engineering is reshaping what’s possible for commercial and cargo at high flight speeds. While Concorde proved the allure of supersonic travel, it also revealed the technical,  operational and economic constraints that grounded the aircraft in 2003. Now, the next generation of aerospace innovators is targeting more sustainable, economically viable, and mission-flexible platforms.

After decades of false starts, high-speed aviation is moving closer to a commercially viable comeback — this time driven not by prestige or Cold War competition, but by structural shifts in global commerce, advances in propulsion and materials, and new approaches to financing large-scale aerospace programs.

The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) threat landscape is undergoing a radical transformation. No longer the domain of high-cost, high-complexity adversaries, the ability to launch sophisticated and disruptive DDoS campaigns has been democratized by artificial intelligence (AI). These capabilities are no longer limited to nation-states or cybercrime syndicates.

The rise of artificial intelligence is transforming the nature of distributed denial‑of‑service (DDoS) attacks, creating a new level of urgency for mid‑market manufacturers and industrial operators to strengthen their cyber defenses. According to Michael Honeycutt, who leads product marketing at Corero Network Security, the latest wave of AI‑assisted DDoS activity is faster, more adaptive, and more accessible to would-be attackers than ever before.

Healthcare organizations are grappling with an intensifying cybersecurity crisis. Sophisticated ransomware groups, vulnerable legacy systems, expanding digital footprints, and limited security resources have combined to create what some experts call a “perfect storm” of risk exposure. To explore how providers can better protect themselves, BizTechReports spoke with Vince Crisler, Chief Strategy Officer of Celerium, a cybersecurity firm focused on automated detection and surgical containment of cyber threats.

As digital transformation strategies mature across industrial sectors, the limitations of centralized cloud architectures are becoming harder to ignore. For critical applications in manufacturing, energy, finance, and healthcare, the need for real-time decision-making has propelled edge AI from a futuristic concept to a present-day operational requirement. Below are key takeaways from the webinar “Establishing a Framework for Transforming Industrial Operations with Real-Time Edge AI,” in which Penguin Solutions' John Chaves shared his perspectives on the emerging trajectory of innovation in industrial environments.

The life insurance industry is steadily overcoming long-standing friction to digital transformation as consumer expectations, regulatory demands, and operational inefficiencies converge with emerging technologies and viable AI-enabled business strategies. While historically slow to modernize—due in part to legacy systems, complex stakeholder relationships, and a risk-averse culture—the sector is now reaching a tipping point. Accelerated by the pandemic and reinforced by changing demographics, insurers are embracing tools that promise both efficiency and enhanced customer engagement. 

As AI workloads move closer to the data source, organizations are being forced to reassess how they structure infrastructure, coordinate operations, allocate investment, and govern change. This shift was explored in depth during a webinar hosted by Penguin Solutions (formerly Stratus Technologies) titled “Establishing a Framework for Transforming Industrial Operations with Real-Time Edge AI,”.

In this Q&A, Krauthamer explains the strategic context of the quantum threat, operational readiness challenges, cost dynamics, and how crypto-agility can serve as both a security enabler and a source of long-term risk reduction. Her insights are grounded in both national defense experience and enterprise adoption, making this conversation essential for cybersecurity and IT leaders navigating the quantum era in both private and public sectors.

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms nearly every industry, the property technology sector—PropTech—is seeing a surge in innovation across leasing, operations, asset management, and portfolio strategy. To better understand how AI is being deployed within commercial and residential property ecosystems, BizTechReports spoke with Carla Hinson, Vice President of Solution and Innovation at MRI Software. With nearly three decades of experience in real estate technology, Hinson offers grounded insight into how AI is moving from pilot to practice in a traditionally risk-averse industry.