The rapid rise in popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) with emerging capabilities has spurred public curiosity to evaluate and compare different LLMs, leading many researchers to propose their own LLM benchmarks. Noticing preliminary inadequacies in those benchmarks, we embarked on a study to critically assess 23 state-of-the-art LLM benchmarks, using our novel unified evaluation framework through the lenses of people, process, and technology, under the pillars of benchmark functionality and integrity. Our research uncovered significant limitations, including biases, difficulties in measuring genuine reasoning, adaptability, implementation inconsistencies, prompt engineering complexity, evaluator diversity, and the overlooking of cultural and ideological norms in one comprehensive assessment. Our discussions emphasized the urgent need for standardized methodologies, regulatory certainties, and ethical guidelines in light of Artificial Intelligence (AI) advancements, including advocating for an evolution from static benchmarks to dynamic behavioral profiling to accurately capture LLMs’ complex behaviors and potential risks. Our study highlighted the necessity for a paradigm shift in LLM evaluation methodologies, underlining the importance of collaborative efforts for the development of universally accepted benchmarks and the enhancement of AI systems’ integration into society.

This comprehensive survey explored the evolving landscape of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a specific focus on the recent technological breakthroughs and the gathering advancements toward possible Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). It critically examined the current state and future trajectory of generative AI, exploring how innovations in developing actionable and multimodal AI agents with the ability scale their “thinking” in solving complex reasoning tasks are reshaping research priorities and applications across various domains, while the survey also offers an impact analysis on the generative AI research taxonomy. This work has assessed the computational challenges, scalability, and real-world implications of these technologies while highlighting their potential in driving significant progress in fields like healthcare, finance, and education. Our study also addressed the emerging academic challenges posed by the proliferation of both AI-themed and AI-generated preprints, examining their impact on the peer-review process and scholarly communication. The study highlighted the importance of incorporating ethical and human-centric methods in AI development, ensuring alignment with societal norms and welfare, and outlined a strategy for future AI research that focuses on a balanced and conscientious use of generative AI as its capabilities continue to scale.

Ransomware has grown to be a dominant cybersecurity threat by exfiltrating, encrypting, or destroying valuable user data and causing numerous disruptions to victims. The severity of the ransomware endemic has generated research interest from both the academia and the industry. However, many studies held stereotypical assumptions about ransomware, used unverified, outdated, and limited self-collected ransomware samples, and did not consider government strategies, industry guidelines, or cyber intelligence. We observed that ransomware no longer exists simply as an executable file or limits to encrypting files (data loss); data exfiltration (data breach) is the new norm, espionage is an emerging theme, and the industry is shifting focus from technical advancements to cyber governance and resilience. We created a ransomware innovation adoption curve, critically evaluated 212 academic studies published during 2020 and 2023, and cross-verified them against various government strategies, industry reports, and cyber intelligence on ransomware. We concluded that many studies were becoming irrelevant to the contemporary ransomware reality and called for the redirection of ransomware research to align with the continuous ransomware evolution in the industry. We proposed to address data exfiltration as priority over data encryption, to consider ransomware in a business-practical manner, and recommended research collaboration with the industry.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) and persistent empirical gaps are reshaping the cyber threat landscape faster than Zero-Trust Architecture (ZTA) research can respond. We reviewed 10 recent ZTA surveys and 136 primary studies (2022–2024) and found that 98% provided only partial or no real-world validation, leaving several core controls largely untested. Our critique, therefore, proceeds on two axes: first, mainstream ZTA research is empirically under-powered and operationally unproven; second, generative-AI attacks exploit these very weaknesses, accelerating policy bypass and detection failure. To expose this compounding risk, we contribute the Cyber Fraud Kill Chain (CFKC), a seven-stage attacker model (target identification, preparation, engagement, deception, execution, monetization, and cover-up) that maps specific generative techniques to NIST SP 800-207 components they erode. The CFKC highlights how synthetic identities, context manipulation and adversarial telemetry drive up false-negative rates, extend dwell time, and sidestep audit trails, thereby undermining the Zero-Trust principles of verify explicitly and assume breach. Existing guidance offers no systematic countermeasures for AI-scaled attacks, and that compliance regimes struggle to audit content that AI can mutate on demand. Finally, we outline research directions for adaptive, evidence-driven ZTA, and we argue that incremental extensions of current ZTA that are insufficient; only a generative-AI-aware redesign will sustain defensive parity in the coming threat cycle.

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly employed within Security Operations Centres (SOCs), including SOC for Digital Risk Protection (DRP), yet their outputs often exhibit partial coverage, hallucinations, verbosity, and lack of localized insights. This article proposes a hybrid reasoning pipeline that combines multimodal LLMs with stable human-curated references to mitigate these issues, and is distinct from standard retrieval-augmented generation because offline, human-curated references are applied as an explicit decision-time override rather than used solely as supportive retrieved context. We introduce a step-by-step process that incorporates multi-vantage crawling for evasive content, deterministic prompts to manage inconsistency, and a structured approach to override or refine the model’s classifications when local brand knowledge contradicts global assumptions, together with an analyst-governed escalation loop that records when and why overrides occur in external-SOC DRP settings. Empirical evaluations with multiple commercial and open-source model providers show that this method significantly boosts scam detection accuracy, lowers token costs through caching, and reduces misleading outputs by adopting curated domain data, including comparisons against a RAG-only configuration and classical non-LLM baselines. Results underline how offline reference injection fosters a reliable collaboration pattern that harmonizes automated tasks with human expertise, thereby enhancing scalability and trust in real-world SOC environments.