Up Times
Software purchasing (at Micro Center [still a store in Cambridge I found out]) as it was just a little over ten years ago.
All I want is the truth – A local laboratory supplier found that their ability to function was hampered by their growth into larger and larger warehouses: they were getting spotty wifi, inventory scanners dropping communication with the database, which meant inventory counts were unreliable and the staff was troubleshooting connectivity instead of filling the orders.
Fixing these physical gaps in coverage involved a better product (Meraki), but also the knowledge that it would fit the environment and be installed correctly.
Security gaps may look entirely different, but security often fails in the same way – gaps happen when software and machines are applied without understanding.
That’s why Bryley starts with an assessment of what you use hardware- and software-wise and the exposures your organization has. Generic, off-the-shelf answers are everywhere and cheap. Generic doesn’t know your setup. Bryley will give you answers grounded in your system knowledge and with 39 years of seeing what works, what breaks and why. That costs more. For routine things, an off-the-shelf answer may be fine. For the ones where a wrong move can be costly, we’ve found generic usually isn’t fine.
Microsoft’s offices in Cambridge
The Road to CMMC
What is Microsoft 365 GCC High?
Everyone in the defense industry or who wants to be in the defense supply chain knows CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification). But unless you’re compliant or in-the-process, chances are you don’t know what it’s like on the ground to be held to such standards of security. Microsoft 365 GCC High gives a window into what CMMC will be like for users … [4 min. read; audio available] Continue Reading >
CELLTREAT’s Ayer warehouse
Keeping pace with a laboratory supplier’s growth
Case study: CELLTREAT Scientific Products
Rich and Shirley Happell bootstrapped CELLTREAT Scientific Products along its growth path. And as demand for its laboratory supplies has increased, so has CELLTREAT has repeatedly outgrown its commercial spaces, absorbing whatever square footage neighboring tenants vacated before eventually relocating to Ayer, Mass.
As the company continued expanding, employees and management found themselves splitting time between running the business and managing IT. Until the Happells made a deliberate decision: interview outside IT firms and outsource the function entirely. They chose Bryley, a managed IT provider they had already worked with on smaller projects.
The Challenge: Consistent warehouse connectivity
In 2022 CELLTREAT acquired VistaLab Technologies, a lab equipment design operation based in New York, adding a second facility to manage. At Bryley’s recommendation CELLTREAT adopted Microsoft 365 and cloud-based Active Directory to keep its multi-site workforce connected. Shortly after, CELLTREAT moved into its new Ayer headquarters.
The Ayer facility exceeds 100,000 square feet and serves as both its corporate hub and central distribution center. Because of its size and wifi interference from the physical structure and equipment, the facility needed a reliable way to keep wireless barcode scanners in continuous communication with CELLTREAT’s database software. A lost connection between a scanner and the database breaks the workflow, can introduce errors and undermines the backend system the company had invested in.
CELLTREAT turned to Bryley Systems for a recommendation … [6 min. read; audio available] Read the case study >
There’s been a change in a compliance phase deadline for military suppliers.
CMMC compliance regulation change
The NIST framework is still being enforced
On July 13 the Department of War suspended the approaching November deadline for requiring third-party assessments of CMMC compliance. Meaning, per this memo, that self-attestation of the standards will continue to be honored.
From the memo: During this interim period, the Department will enforce cybersecurity compliance with the NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 standard through self-assessments and select government-led assessments, focusing on tangible cyber hygiene rather than administrative overhead … this action does not eliminate the requirement for companies to protect federal data. All defense contractors and subcontractors remain contractually obligated to safeguard covered defense information in accordance with DFARS clause 252.204-7012.
The goal appears to be to further postpone the costs associated with third-party audits for Defense Industrial Base suppliers. The security obligations remain; the onus for compliance remains on the manufacturers and related businesses themselves. Primes (larger companies that contract for components from smaller parts makers) may still require a third-party audit … [2 min. read] war.gov
Cameras seem to be headed for the Bay State
Privacy advocates don’t like them – and they introduce security concerns
Connecticut’s driving speeds have dropped dramatically since implementation
Cameras everywhere seem to curb people’s behavior (as George Orwell’s 1984 foresaw) and seems to be coming to a stop light (and school bus?) near you. Cameras are already on front doors and accessible to law enforcement sometimes without a warrant. Connecticut and Rhode Island have them.
From Bryley’s point-of-view networked cameras are IoT devices that can be hacked – in point of fact IoT (Internet of Things) devices, because they are each unique – they’re not running Windows or MacOS – have been among the least patched networked devices. This makes them especially vulnerable to abuse by criminal and/or nation-state actors (who’s looking over the shoulder of the speeding-ticket issuing organization?).
Once in a while people rush ahead with tech without understanding what they’ve invited in. An advisor you trust can help sort out IoT pros and cons and cut risk (try Bryley) … [3 min. read] axios.com
Do you feel strongly about discussing such things?
How would you make a computer seem to be intelligent?
Travel back to 1966 (kind of) and meet Eliza
Sometimes a question turns out to be the answer.
Notice how chatbots – some more than others – end their lengthy answers with a leading question? like from Gemini: “are you looking for instructions on how to run a vintage terminal emulator?” Not sure I even understand that question, but it’s there to give the appearance of a conversation – and based on the model that Eliza creator MIT Professor Joseph Weizenbaum came to regret having stumbled on: the computer is a particularly seductive instrument because it offers immediate feedback [and] the thing that binds you to [keep engaging with it] is that whatever the computer is doing is under your control.
Eliza was Weizenbaum’s 1966 computer program therapist that can be thought of like an ancient LLM. Eliza was named for My Fair Lady‘s Eliza Doolittle – who was considered by Professor Higgins a naive waif he would shape to fit London society.
(July’s Up Times featured footage of Claude Shannon’s mechanical mouse [didn’t realize that the Claude chatbot is named for Prof Shannon]) … [Not a read, an Eliza emulation] google.com
GPUs can keep a cat comfortable.
SHRM report shows a lot of chatbot use
And not a lot of oversight
The LLM surge that began three-and-a-half years ago is bringing an odd trend.
For instance this report from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) surveyed 5800 US workers about AI practices in their workplace and the results show upper management using LLMs (Large Language Models like ChatGPT) the most (63%, compared to 50% of managers and 34% of others).
And it’s entry-level workers that most report feeling pressure to adopt AI (45%).
A potential upshot of the upper management behavior is unchecked bosses’ content (the report refers to unchecked LLM output as AI slop) as LLMs rattle on without actual knowledge.
And if the youngest don’t really know the field, are they getting their information about it from chatbots, and passing this along as accurate? And are they working at appearing productive by chatbot use instead of doing their actual work? What are the institutional costs for these practices?
The findings show an overall thoughtlessness: 44% of all workers think they’ve been producing slop. This risks, among other things, carelessly putting confidential company data in the insecure environments of commercial LLMs – as has been shown in other reports.
Bryley is here to help you navigate integrating chatbots effectively, responsibly and securely … [Executive summary is a 4 min. read] shrm.org
Julie Averill: What strategy sits behind [companies’ reliance on slapping on the AI] abbreviation?
A powerful tech’s hype and reality
AI is a genuinely powerful technology that still needs people, and putting it to use is slow, human work. The sooner we are honest about that with our boards, our employees, our investors and the public, the sooner we can stop performing AI and start building something with it, Julie Averill wrote for the NY Times.
Averill, former CIO of publicly traded retailer Lululemon, was pressed by her board to integrate LLMs. Averill wanted the LLMs to work as much as the next person, but the results were the same almost every time. The demo looked like magic. But the tool wanted clean, connected data and decisions made in consistent, repeatable ways. [Lululemon’s] lived in a dozen systems that did not agree, layered with decades of exceptions and workarounds.
AI wishing, as Averill has coined it, is the belief by company leaders that … you can wave [AI’s] wand toward a hard problem and skip the work of solving it. [AI wishing] is sincere, and that is what makes it dangerous. I continued to meet with the stream of AI vendors, all promising their tools would be game changers. Collectively, the hordes introduced chaos into teams already stretched thin.
As a business that has used AI with strategic purpose long before LLMs, Bryley can help you develop and implement an AI strategy … [5 min. read] nytimes.com
Note: The section directly above is Bryley’s curated list of external stories. Bryley does not take credit for the content of these stories, nor does it endorse or imply an affiliation with the authors or publications in which they appear.
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