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79% of former employees say a work account kept working after their last day (Sagiss, vendor survey: a signal, not a measurement). Open last week's spreadsheet. Name a backup for your 5 critical rows. Name who shuts off access when anyone leaves. 10 minutes.

Microsoft offered buyouts to 60,000 people. Your team noticed. Book 20 minutes with each person this week and tell them what AI changes about their role. Source: BNN Bloomberg (AFP), Oct 26 Book a call: viewson.com/calendar #FractionalCTO #FounderTips #StartupLeadership #BusinessStrategy

79% of former employees say a work account kept working after their last day (Sagiss, vendor survey: a signal, not a measurement). Open last week's spreadsheet. Name a backup for your 5 critical rows. Name who shuts off access when anyone leaves. 10 minutes.

2 years. That's how long a pair of critical PHP bugs sat unpatched. Now CISA says hackers are using them, and PHP reportedly runs 70% of web-facing servers. This week, ask your web host which PHP version your site's on and if it's patched. Source: TechCrunch, Oct 27

OpenAI's new AI can type your invoices into your books. On OpenAI's own trick-prompt test, it still gets 16.7% wrong at low effort. Before you switch it on, name 1 person who checks its entries every week. Source: OpenAI, Oct 26

Meta plans to raise $95B for AI. Its own release says "high-margin" twice, both times about selling AI services to businesses. Nobody's promising today's AI prices will hold. Ask for a 12-month price lock before your next renewal. Source: Meta via PR Newswire, Oct 26

63% of small business owners plan to exit within the next decade. Only 6% have a formal succession plan. CFIB puts more than $2 trillion in business assets at risk. (CFIB, Oct 22)

A succession plan isn't a legal binder. It starts as one question: if you left, what would the next person need to run this place? A buyer or a successor inherits what's written down. They can't inherit what you know.

48% of breaches now involve a third party, up 60% in a year (Verizon). Open a spreadsheet. List every vendor with a login. Add a named owner to each. 10 minutes. Do it before November.

Awareness Month tells staff to spot phishing. It skips the owner's job: write down what you run, who owns it, and who has access. You can't patch what you never listed.

Exploited flaws now start 31% of breaches. Stolen passwords start 13%. Awareness Month teaches your team about passwords. Your bigger exposure is the system nobody listed. (Verizon 2026 DBIR)

31% of breaches now start by exploiting a software flaw. Stolen passwords start 13%. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the advice about passwords, MFA, and phishing is good for your team. The owner's job is different: write down what you run, who owns it, and who has access. You can't patch what you never listed. The fix takes 10 minutes and a spreadsheet. Read the full issue: CTO on Call LinkedIn Newsletter, link in bio Book a call: viewson.com/calendar Which part of your business has no named owner? #CybersecurityAwarenessMonth #FractionalCTO #AssetInventory #SmallBusinessSecurity #TechLeadership

Docs everyone assumed were still true. youtu.be/TK9pv88s2oE?si=6Oxk… via @YouTube

CTO on Call Vendor Ownership youtu.be/4jVaiF1r8oY?si=Q0di… via @YouTube

Check out the latest article in my newsletter: 89% Of Former Employees Still Have Access To Something linkedin.com/pulse/89-former… via @LinkedIn

Q4 budget meetings are coming. The default move is to take last year's total and add 10%. That locks in whatever waste was already there. Teams that audit first recover $6,800 in year one. Check renewal dates before you add the 10%.

Your technology budget problem probably isn't the total. SMB tech spend is up 7% this year and most companies aren't overspending overall. They're spending on the wrong quarter of their own stack and have never checked which quarter that is.

27% of the average small business's software budget is wasted. Not one bad purchase, 28 separate subscriptions that each looked fine on their own. The average team runs 28 tools now, up from 19 three years ago. Nobody's checking back in on any of them.

10-minute fix, costs nothing: write one rule that no direct deposit or payment change gets processed from an email alone. Require a phone call to a number you already have on file first. Defeats the fraud even if the mailbox is fully compromised.