June 7, 2024 - This week’s notables

Infrastructure & Support  

This past weekend for the INW team was bustling with activity and collaboration. Ilya and Richard shared their cultural weekend experiences, from enjoying a martial arts festival to hosting an open house at The Long View Gallery. Excitingly, we're partnering with a new printer as an enhancement for art|Works Initiative member artists. Meanwhile, Ryan introduced us to the intriguing "My Vampire System" book series, and Taylor celebrated a successful house sale and landscaping efforts. 

In the realm of business, Richard and Ilya tackled billing and outlined key upcoming tasks, such as reviewing monthly cybersecurity reports and sign-in logs and preparing for our NIST quarterly reviews. On the tech front, Ilya and Ryan led discussions on PC replacements and the importance of recycling, recommending Staples for the task and discussing how to assist clients with their recycling needs. Additionally, we're progressing with the SharePoint migration projects we’ve been working on and have identified the need for a comprehensive user map. 

Devices 

This week at inWorks LLC, we've had some lively discussions on our devices front. Ilya shared insights on our network improvements at the barn, expressing concerns over the performance of the Meraki devices and considering their return. Alternatively, we’re exploring options to enhance our network's reach by working with Verizon for an additional wired access point. Additionally, we delved into the exciting realm of sustainable energy, discussing a revolutionary nuclear generator cube capable of powering individual homes. 

In other hardware updates, we evaluated the Surface Laptop 6 for its AI capabilities, deeming it a potential premium offering for our clients. Preparations are underway for an access point installation next Thursday at a client location in Philadelphia. On the software development side, Ilya and Taylor made headway on the warehouse request app, with the focus turning toward analyzing additional forms for other departments. 

Information Radiation

Our team had a productive discussion about information Radiation on several key topics. We discussed our ongoing intranet migration product and how to leverage ShareGate for content migration, and the need to simplify the site hierarchy to improve navigation. On the security front, we examined a sophisticated phishing threat: Netskope Threat Labs has identified multiple phishing campaigns exploiting Cloudflare Workers, employing techniques like HTML smuggling and transparent phishing to evade detection and capture sensitive information. These campaigns have targeted users globally, particularly in Asia, North America, and Southern Europe, with a focus on stealing Microsoft login credentials. The report emphasizes the importance of direct URL access for sensitive sites and recommends organizations to update their security policies to combat these threats. 

Operations & Growth

We explored the variety of Surface AI PCs, examining costs and features to help us make smart decisions. A small issue with a purchase order was quickly resolved, thanks to Ricky and Ilya's sharp eye for detail. On a happy note, we warmly congratulated Ilya, whose son reached a milestone with his high school graduation. 

In our effort to understand more about the new Surface AI PCs, we contrasted the Snapdragon and Intel Core Ultra chipsets, assessing the performance advantages for both the consumer and business versions of the Surface Laptop 6. Based on benchmarks we’ve seen to-date, it seems that the consumer version outperforms the business in all categories, and is much less expensive, both on the hardware and warranty side of things – even including the required upgrade to Windows Pro (the consumer version comes with Windows Home, which lacks enterprise features that are truly necessary for business environments).