Category: Tech Insight
Tech Time Warp: FBI releases its first warning about a computer virus
Twenty-six years ago, on March 28, 1999, the FBI took a historic step: Its National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) issued its first warning about a computer virus. The NIPC had “received reports of significant network degradation and email outages,” and...
Pioneers in Tech: Joan Clarke, Bletchley Park codebreaker
The stories of the women of Bletchley Park—the secret British codebreaking facility during World War II—are only now becoming known, much like those of the “hidden figures” of NASA. How women helped break the unbreakable Thousands of women worked at...
Tech Time Warp: It’s MyLife, the email worm of spring 2002
The year was 2002 when this week’s Tech Time Warp was born. Email and the internet were still enough of a novelty that unwitting computer users were duped by an email worm promising fun screensavers. In multiple variants claiming to...
Tech Time Warp: TJX hack exposes the depth to which consumer data is at risk
These days, one expects to be notified one or two times a year about potential exposure in a data breach. Nineteen years ago, that wasn’t as commonplace—and we were learning just how widespread the problem could be. In January 2007,...
Why sovereign clouds are becoming a massive growth engine for MSPs
Early indicators suggest that MSPs guiding customers toward sovereign cloud solutions could be heading into a period of strong growth. Worldwide spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure‑as‑a‑service is expected to reach roughly $80 billion in 2026. This represents over 35 percent...
Tech Time Warp: The fascinating world of phone phreaks
“If we hadn’t made those blue boxes, there would be no Apple.” This quote from Steve Wozniak is an intriguing teaser into the fascinating world of phone phreaks—the hackers of the late 1960s and 1970s, who managed to place calls...
Survey: IT teams relying on third-party expertise for agentic AI
A survey of 625 IT professionals with cloud computing expertise finds that well over two thirds (69 percent) plan to source agentic artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities through IT or consulting service providers—second only to agentic AI platform vendors, which came...
Pioneers in Tech: Frederick McKinley Jones, inventor of mobile refrigeration
We can thank inventor Frederick McKinley Jones, for the proliferation of food choices we enjoy on a daily basis. The modern grocery store—which houses tropical fruits, exotic imported cheese, and frozen sushi-grade fish—was first made possible by Jones’ 1941 invention,...
Wave of AI agents creates major new opportunity for MSPs
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) agents is unlike any past technology shift. It creates a significant opportunity for managed service providers (MSPs) to expand and enhance their offerings. AI agent adoption accelerates at unprecedented speed A survey of...
Tech Time Warp: The unifying nature of Unix time
As this Tech Time Warp is being written, the current Unix epoch time is 1770344462. That means one billion, seven hundred seventy million, three hundred forty-four thousand, four hundred sixty-two seconds have passed since midnight GMT Jan. 1, 1970 (not...
