On July 24th, 2025, Infotex celebrates its 25th anniversary, a milestone not just of longevity, but of transformation, resilience, and vision.

That alone is worth a moment of reflection. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working alongside Dan Hadaway all these years, it’s that anniversaries are not just for looking back. They’re for sharpening our vision forward. We honor our legacy best when we apply it as a lens to interpret what’s coming next. Because at infotex, we’ve never just marked time, we’ve used it to prepare.

Dan’s retirement and his powerful final piece, Banana Trap Too, reminded us that our greatest defense has always been awareness. That seeing the trap, and having the courage to let go of what no longer serves us, is often the difference between resilience and regret. I’m proud to say that legacy is not fading with his departure. It’s being carried forward, adapted, and scaled to meet a new era of risk. We aren’t replacing what Dan built, we’re evolving it.

We’re Still Defending Awareness, But the Battlefront Has Changed

The traps haven’t gone away. They’ve just evolved, and in many ways, they’ve become harder to see.

Shadow AI is already in the wild, users deploying AI tools without oversight, teams integrating automation without vetting, and vendors embedding decision-making algorithms into systems with no visibility into the logic. The banana isn’t just appealing now. It’s invisible. And when technology is this seamless, the risks become subtle, and more dangerous.

But as Dan so eloquently argued, the answer is not fear. It’s awareness. And awareness, at scale, requires observability. You can’t protect what you don’t see. You can’t assess what you don’t understand. You can’t mitigate what you don’t even know exists.

That’s where we’re focused now.

• We’re embedding machine learning into our SIEM to spot behaviors, not just signatures.
• We’re integrating telemetry from sources that didn’t exist when we launched: EDR tools, SaaS logs, and soon, drone swarms and IoT sensors.
• We’re preparing to detect the subtle tells of synthetic activity, because soon, our adversaries won’t be people. They’ll be models, evolving faster than any human threat actor.

And with that shift, awareness itself must become smarter. Faster. More scalable. It’s not just training and policy anymore, it’s sensors, algorithms, data flows, pattern recognition, and automated response. We’re building for that future, now.

We’ve Led Before, And We’ll Keep Leading

Infotex didn’t wait for industry buzzwords to chart our course. We were already rethinking detection before detection matured. We took our early IDS tools and turned them into IPS before that distinction had a name. While others were logging, we were reacting. While others were drafting policies, we were piloting pretext calling. We were building the first generation of proactive controls before the market caught up.

Our Rogue Device Detection platform has been ahead of its time for years and continues to outperform more recent models. Our Clients still tell us they haven’t seen a better blend of clarity, customization, and actionable visibility. It’s not flashy, but it works. And when you’re managing risk, function matters more than flair.

Then there’s the Daily Reports, and the Acknowledgement System that powers them. These aren’t just compliance checkboxes. They’re accountability engines. They instill rhythm and structure into security teams and help leadership connect directly with emerging issues. Awareness is a cycle, and we’ve built the cadence.

We’ve even had to improve other vendors’ tools, because sometimes, the platforms our Clients rely on don’t deliver usable information. From MDR dashboards to XDR reports, we’ve helped extract clarity from the chaos. Our visualizations, summaries, and interpretive guidance have become the missing piece between detection and decision.

Tools Are Evolving, But Our Ethos Isn’t

Infotex has always believed in pairing tech with trust. We don’t believe in wizardry; we believe in clarity. We lead with people. We explain things in plain English. We answer the phone when our Clients call. We don’t just support, we collaborate.

That’s not changing. If anything, it matters more now than ever.

Because no matter how smart our systems get, they’re still tools. And tools don’t protect people. People do.

Even as we automate, we emphasize understanding. Even as we build dashboards, we write guides. Even as we secure networks, we strengthen relationships. That’s the Infotex way, and it will be our compass going forward.

The Next 25 Years Start Now

As I help guide Infotex into its next chapter, I’m not trying to fill Dan’s shoes. That would be impossible. Instead, I’m carrying his torch, and helping aim it into the future. Because what he started was never meant to stop. It was meant to grow.

We’re building a security program that anticipates.

We’re creating space for practitioners to think deeply.

We’re helping our Clients stay grounded in what matters most:

• Risk understood.
• Tools trusted.
• People aware.
• Decisions defensible.
• Innovation meaningful.

The future is coming fast. AI is here. Regulations are tightening. Attention spans are shortening. Attack surfaces are expanding. But if we stay focused, on awareness, on innovation, on community, we won’t just keep up.

We’ll lead.

And we’ll do it the way we always have: thoughtfully, collaboratively, and with our Clients at the center.

Here’s to what’s next, and to the next 25 years of building what’s needed before the industry knows it needs it.