CyberConVA: Where CISOs and AI Took the Stage

RVA Tech hosted its annual CyberConVA on Feb 6 at the Dominion Energy Center in Richmond VA. Subtitled “Where CISOs take the stage,” the conference did indeed feature a roster of chief information security officers (CISOs). But also taking the stage was machine-learning (ML)-based generative (Gen)AI, the technology du jour. (Or de l’année? du siècle?) The CyberConVA opening keynoter was Carsten...
read more

Five Takeaways from TechExpo 2024

The SCTE held its annual conference and exhibition at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, September 24-26. It ended just as Hurricane Helene was slamming into Florida. That leads to a preliminary lesson: Check the weather. I hadn’t been following the news. It was only through exhibitors on the floor who were already talking on Day 2 about packing up that I realized Atlanta was in...
read more

The Power and Threat of ChatGPT

After a year and a half of using the free version of ChatGPT, I signed up for a paid subscription. This paid version, ChatGPT Plus ($20/month), has been around since February 2023, when it was launched to provide paying subscribers with better performance and priority access to new features. But now seemed like a good time to take the plunge. Why so? One reason is that in September, OpenAI...
read more

Starlink and 50-plus Years of Satellites

The sight is startling: Two dozen lights moving across the early night sky in a gentle arc. This is a “train” of Starlink low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, lit up by the sun and still aligned, before separating and rising to their designated orbits. Given some recent client projects, satellites have been on my mind. My exposure to space-based telecom and media infrastructure, however, has a...
read more

RSA Cryptographers’ Panel Weighs Quantum Risk

Several deadlines kept me from attending the RSA Conference last month in San Francisco. But having registered, I’ve been able to listen to recorded sessions, including ‘The Cryptographers’ Panel.’ Moderated as usual by Whitfield Diffie, co-founder of the Diffie-Hellman asymmetric key exchange, this year’s panel spent a lot of time on the threat of quantum computing. AI,...
read more

Tech, Healthcare, Me and You

One of my early encounters with technology and healthcare came at a cable industry event. It was the 2009 NCTA Cable Show in Washington, DC, if memory serves, in the early days of DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts. The demo was a live, two-way video with a doctor in Alaska. That iteration of DOCSIS could support some compelling new applications, including the remote delivery of medical service. A decade later...
read more