Virginia’s Old Dominion University is registering something new for class.

About 20 rooms across ODU’s campus feature AI-enabled cameras that autonomously track in on professors; screens that display automatic transcription; a giant digital board for instructors; and a dedicated space to teach live classes over Zoom.

Behind all that cutting-edge technology is a familiar networking component: each room has a brand-new network switch, a pizza-box-sized device inside its audio/visual (AV) closet.

A digital transformation effort, it turns out, requires a lot of planning with the networking team—and sometimes a special delivery of a dozen or more tech components.

“Be ready.” That’s never the most assuring phrase for a network pro to hear, but that’s what Dwayne Smith, executive director of digital integration environments at ODU, told his networking staff over the summer, following a mandate to kick off the company’s “Forward-Focused Digital Transformation” project.

Time to switch.—BH

If deepfakes keep improving, cybersecurity professionals won’t be able to defeat them by asking someone on a video call to hold up three fingers or turn off filters—but nor can they check for a pulse like a harried physician in HBO’s The Pitt. What solutions can they turn to?

This deepfake evolution, with the accompanying need to boost fraud detection, according to two industry leaders, could happen within the next two years.

Right now, if someone is using a live deepfake to try and deceive an organization, humans can recognize inconsistencies; for example, deepfaked people can have distorted edges, depending on the lighting, or their mouth movement may not quite match their speech.

John Ansbach, managing director at LevelBlue company Stroz Friedberg, which specializes in digital forensic and security investigations, told IT Brew that professionals are rapidly approaching a time when automated tools will have to take over deepfake detection from humans.

Next up in deepfakes’ evolution.—CN

Skynet may have sent the Terminator back in time, but the all-powerful AI probably didn’t have to deal with something far more difficult: the headache of managing identity access for a hybridized workforce.

Today’s CIOs and sysadmins aren’t so lucky. They must navigate human and synthetic employee identities while ensuring inappropriate permissions aren’t granted to either. The rise of autonomous AI agents, which chain together processes and streamline workflows, has made it more difficult for humans to oversee these vital systems.

Some experts who spoke with IT Brew, like Avihay Nathan, SVP of product management, machine, and AI agent identity at Palo Alto Networks, endorse fully restricting permissions, or “zero standing privileges.” This is what you do for unpredictable outcomes, Nathan told IT Brew, both for anomalies in human behavior and for agentic actions that take place in digital space without oversight.

While implementing agentic AI is a goal for companies looking for productivity gains, CIOs and CISOs need to manage leakage and damage from misuse. It’s a delicate dance.

IAM AI agent.—EH

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