Up Times • July 2024

Up Times

by Bryley · July 2024

ChatGPT at work

A peek behind the scenes at Google’s AI department.

As the use of AI grows, so does the accumulation of data — AI Large Language Models (chatbots) generate new data faster than people can, these can include modeling, market forecasts, content and more. And AI makes it easy to gather what can be an overwhelming amount of data from sources like networked devices, machine sensors and user interactions with marketing, including social media monitoring. And all this stuff has to be safeguarded. AI was not built to be secure, but to imitate human intelligence. Security seems to be always an afterthought. And maybe that’s the right way to think about inventing – and jumping onboard – technologies. Still our inability to see our own precariousness can be costly. (Bryley can help with a proactive approach to securely handling an increasing volume of data.)

Here’s an example of living precariously in the adoption of customer service chatbots. According to Anton Chuvakin of Google Cloud, unstructured data from chat applications or log files can cause significant headaches for organizations, especially if they unexpectedly contain sensitive data like PII [Personally Identifiable Information]. An example of this is customer support transcripts, because you never know what information people will submit. When someone chats with customer support, they could type, “I didn’t get my medications. Here’s my name, the medications I need, and my social security number.” That sensitive PII data is now in one of your databases which may not be appropriately secured and classified.

And, do you allow your employees to use chatbots like Google’s Gemini or GPT-4o? Open AI has had its data leaked. So what guidance do your employees get before using these? And is the guidance followed? Bryley’s training partner Knowledgewave provides courses to give some AI chatbot-use guidance (ask Roy about it).

Why Add an Outside IT Staff?

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

If you have an internal IT staff, those people may often be stuck dealing with day-to-day ‘putting out fires’ – like answering, ‘why can’t I print this?’ or ‘I erased a file.’ And then occasionally the IT staff has to deal with something really going wrong – like a hardware failure or cybercriminal disruption.

The staff also has to stay up-to-date with patching vulnerabilities and fulfilling regulations and industry compliancies, and similarly meeting the demands of a cybersecurity insurance policy.

These issues keep many internal teams from having the space to think about IT proactively. Dealing with issues limits anyone’s ability to stand back and see the whole picture.

Big-Picture Thinking

A deep external team is an ideal supplement to an IT team embedded in the business. First by adding outside support, you automatically gain perspective. The external team is situated to provide a view of your overall IT operations. This in itself can lead to more strategic decision-making. And considering IT strategically can clarify how you will achieve the business results you’re after … [4 min. read] Continue Reading >

Bryley Systems’ 10th MSP 501 Award

In a worldwide industry evaluation, Bryley is one of the top IT providers
Bryley has been awarded its 10th MSP 501 designation, an annual IT industry honor acknowledging 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.

The MSP 501 award translates to peace of mind for you

When a business is recognized within its industry, it’s easy to wonder what it would matter to your organization. Does it mean better service? Can Bryley meet your needs better than other MSPs? [4 min. read] Continue Reading >

Bryley-curated stories from around the internet:

The Value of the MOAB: the Mother of All Breaches – Earlier this year a 26-billion-record breach was discovered – that’s big, the biggest-ever accumulation of compromised data. It contained data that had been formerly leaked and new data, too.

A lot of the malware, a lot of the information stealers, will collect passwords or credit card information or bank details or things that would be in a data breach like … MOAB as an example, [which] could then really later be used for social engineering, according to John Hammond of Huntress (a Bryley partner).

For an example of social engineering, think of a person putting on a shirt with a locksmith company name on it and saying, ‘I’m here to fix the door,’ so defenses are lowered and sometimes access to a building is granted.

Or for a computing example, last year’s MGM Casinos hack involved bad guys searching social media for IT admin contacts at the company and for enough info on an additional employee to pretend to be that person; the criminal called the IT admin for a password- and MFA-reset.

A reasonable response to the MOAB? Dark Web Monitoring is designed to show your employees’ compromised credentials. Change any compromised credentials to something unique and complex … [5 min. read] informationweek.com

Google AI Work-Arounds – Google search now often gives an AI summary before the web results. If you find this annoying, you can turn it off by bypassing the new results page and going to strictly web results.

Avram Piltch writing for Tom’s Hardware offers both a Chrome extension that does the job – Piltch warns that Google may decide to block the extension down the road. So he also has settings changes that can bring you to strictly web results. The downside of the settings approach is that you won’t automatically see the video, image and shopping results we’ve been getting at the top of Google results the past few years … [5 min. read] tomshardware.com

Now What? – AI may destroy the world – as the Terminator movies have it – or it may go really well. University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom’s book explores what happens when AI just helps and helps, even displacing parents.

So when AI does everything better than people, what will it be like? [5 min. read] economist.com (registration required)

How are people commonly getting hacked now? – As this video from UK-based Rohit Satpathy aka the PC Security Channel shows, email is a big target.

One of the developments is the sophistication of email spoofing. Satpathy provides an example via a BBC-spoofed email that looks by its From: address to be legitimate. The language appears to have perfect grammar and spelling and was sent following a pattern of emailing that the BBC actually uses. And it contains a link that installs ransomware. Many of the usual clues we have been taught to look for have been circumvented … [9 min. watch] youtube.com

While Jobs and Gates wanted Star Trek, Kurzweil points to Jules Verne – Boston’s Ray Kurzweil published a science fiction reading list in the Wall Street Journal. It is notable for how far back it goes – to Alice in Wonderland and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Most people are thinking science fiction is modern, but Kurzweil shows the roots in Victorian England and its corollary Belle Epoque France.

[Verne’s] novels laid the groundwork for all science fiction and his imaginative ideas broke down barriers to creating real-world advancements … [5 min. read] wsj.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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