Entries by Lawrence Strauss

How an Email Compromise Attack Begins

Faced with the right con, we’re all vulnerable

–Tim Harford

On his Cautionary Tales podcast, Tim Harford told the story of an ex-con who put on an army captain’s uniform and an air of authority and proceeded to demand to inspect a military financial account and confiscate (that is, steal) the $250,000 it contained.

If your employee gets an email from an executive at your organization requesting urgent action, how does the employee respond? … [4 min. read]

A Review of 2023

Here are some notable events and stories from 2023:

A Guiding Principle

Bryley is a client of Bryley, President Garin Livingstone said in a 2023 interview. We have people at Bryley that need technical help. We also need to make sure that our computer systems are being maintained and updated. Among the benefits of adhering to this model?

  • Updates and patching are as minimally disruptive as we can get them.
  • New technologies are fully vetted before the tech is deployed

This principle of being one’s own client has been a standard that Bryley has observed over the course of its thirty-six years … [6 min. read]

Bryley Systems’ 9th MSP 501 Award

MSP 501 is an IT industry signifier that recognizes the MSP (managed service provider) industry’s highest operational efficiency and business models. The MSP 501 award is based on a sixty-point audit to verify the fitness and stability from which independent IT providers can serve their clients with dependable IT.

With its detailed questionnaire (over sixty areas of scrutiny) and the requirement to have financial results certified to the auditors, the MSP 501 award helps benchmark which MSPs are fit to earn their clients’ trust … [3 min. read]

A Few Minutes with Rylie, Field Technician

As researcher Sherry Turkle has observed, it’s in the awkward silent seconds that communication (which means, to have something in common between us) happens. We need those pauses in conversation to process what the other has said, to let the words and our thoughts about those words affect us, to consider a reply and then choose our words. These silences along with other non-verbal signals do the connective work when we speak to each other: you know you are talking to a real person.

Turkle’s work has been an inspiration to Field Technician Rylie. At the University of Rhode Island Rylie achieved a bachelor of science degree in Computer Science and became fascinated working in Python and C++ with Artificial Intelligence … [5 min. read]

Community Service Day

On October 23, 2020, Bryley volunteers (and sisters) Carol and Cathy joined the Corridor 9/495 Chamber of Commerce for their Annual Community Service Day on behalf of the Community Harvest Project [1 min. read]