Billy Hurley

New York

Reporter at IT Brew

Reporter at Morning Brew

Reporter @ITBrew/@MorningBrew, All-Time Leader of the 6-Like Tweet

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Articles

How to prepare for when quantum computers break encryption

4 days ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

Not to ruin the party like it’s 1999, but there’s a looming Y2K-like technology threat that IT pros need to prepare for before it’s too late: quantum computing. The promise of quantum computing and its problem-solving prowess also poses a glaring threat to old encryption methods like the RSA algorithm.
Want an agent? IBM guides clients through AI guardrails

1 week ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

Consider this: You’re looking for a water bottle that exudes your style. Gatorade currently allows you to custom design your water bottle with a prompt of “anything you can imagine.” (“A panda flipping pancakes,” the site suggests.)What could go wrong—besides that proverbial first GenAI pancake? At a June 12 meeting in IBM’s Manhattan headquarters, the company’s agentic experts considered the disastrous outcomes in a custom-bottle scenario—with no technical safeguards in place.
Want an agent? IBM guides clients through AI guardrails

1 week ago | flipboard.com | Billy Hurley

5 hours agoIBM Gears Up for First Quantum‑Centric Supercomputer in 2025IBM Fellow Jerry Chow talks IBM’s expansion of the Quantum Data Center in Poughkeepsie, installing Heron processors that deliver utility‑scale performance. 4 hours agoPope Leo XIV Urges Tech Executives to Come Up With an Ethical AI FrameworkThe Pope is sending a message to tech executives about necessary AI guardrails.
How to keep track of legacy IT that goes AI

1 week ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

So, you woke up and your favorite SaaS tool now has an AI capability you didn’t ask for. An attendee at our recent IT Brew virtual event asked how to track the legacy IT that suddenly gets AI-ified: “Should we be evaluating these tools differently?”We posed the question to IT industry pros, including Eoin Wickens, director of threat intelligence at HiddenLayer, and Peter Eichelberger, director of IT at Altamont Capital Partners, who spoke with us during the May 2025 presentation.
The flash crash of 2010 offers warning as AI automates

1 week ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

On May 6, 2010, at 2:32 pm, stocks and stomachs dropped. An unexpected sell-order of 75,000 contracts (worth $4.1 billion, according to an SEC report filed a few months later) led to a chain reaction of buys, sells, buybacks, sellbacks, and panicked exits. In the span of about 10 minutes, in what became known as the “flash crash,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which today includes companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple) fell by about 9%.
How GenAI has impacted the role of the pen tester

2 weeks ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

After a long week of hunting for misconfigurations in a company’s infrastructure, Aaron Herndon, penetration tester and principal security consultant at Rapid7, frequently spends a Friday writing out the team’s discoveries. A 40-day assignment may mean a digest of 120 pages, Herndon said; even limited findings require an analyst to show their work. “Writing is the worst part of this job,” he told IT Brew.
How to prepare IT teams for social engineering attacks

2 weeks ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

While some recent cyberattacks targeting retailers—like Victoria’s Secret, Dior, North Face, Adidas, Whole Foods, and the UK’s Co-op—have involved moves like credential stuffing and network reconnaissance, some cyber tactics are more theatrical than technical. A data breach of UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S), its CEO said, reportedly involved social engineering and tricking a third-party provider into providing access.
To meet massive compute demands, OpenAI calls on Google Cloud

2 weeks ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

It’s almost like Hobbs and Shaw—two heavyweights putting rivalry aside and teaming up against a common enemy: computing power. According to a June 10 Reuters report, OpenAI plans to add Alphabet’s Google Cloud service to its list of compute providers. The cloud support will assist OpenAI in training its AI models and meeting the massive computational demands for its jobs, sources told Reuters. The move raised eyebrows from analysts, given the two companies’ competition.
How to handle ChatGPT fever

2 weeks ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

Who needs chatbots when you have a panel of IT pros to ask your burning security questions? We asked practitioners: How do you ensure data is secure when everyone is hooked on ChatGPT? Babson College Chief Information Officer Patty Patria shared how the Massachusetts school enforces restrictions on certain LLMs and trains employees on acceptable use.
When everybody’s using ChatGPT, how do you know your data is safe?

3 weeks ago | itbrew.com | Billy Hurley

Any professor who holds office hours knows: College kids have lots of questions. Patty Patria, chief information officer at Babson College, knows, too, that students may now save their quick queries for a chatbot. Currently the team has visibility, she said, into the many AI tools being used on the school’s network. Babson IT employs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to view AI-related activity, like suspicious prompts and data leaks.