The Dusty Switch in the Corner Every office has one. A small, slightly dusty network switch tucked behind a conference room display, humming quietly like it knows exactly what it’s doing. The lights blink with perfect confidence, as if the device has seniority over everyone in the room. No one remembers installing it. No one remembers approving it. Yet it sits there, plugged in, moving traffic with the authority of something that clearly belongs. The link lights glow green, the connection is stable, and everyone assumes green means safe. That little switch is harmless until it isn’t. It reminds us how comfort sneaks into security. Once something looks normal, people stop asking questions. The green light becomes the office version of a familiar face, trusted without reason and never examined too closely. The switch itself is not the threat. The risk is what it represents. Between the hum of routine and the illusion of control, we forget that most tools start watching too late. They wait for data to move or patterns to form. By then, the device is already alive inside the network. Security has become an act of faith instead of evidence. The truth begins earlier. It lives at the physical layer, where electricity tells the story. Every device has a rhythm in the way it wakes, draws power, and communicates. That rhythm is as unique as a heartbeat. It cannot be faked because it lives in the physics of the device. CybrIQ listens to that heartbeat—the moment a device connects, before trust is granted, before the network says hello, before the system decides everything is fine. The idea is simple. When a new device connects, CybrIQ measures its electrical signature and compares it to what is known. If the pattern matches, it joins. If not, it waits quietly in the corner until someone decides what it is. It’s the digital version of checking identification at the door instead of chasing guests once they’re already inside helping themselves to coffee. Every organization has a version of that forgotten switch. Maybe it hides behind a printer, under a desk, or in a wiring closet no one has opened since the last remodel. People assume someone else knows what it is. They assume it’s fine because it’s always been there. That’s how security becomes an inheritance of assumptions. We protect what we can see and quietly hope the rest behaves. Real trust starts earlier—before the device speaks, before the network welcomes it, before the green light convinces everyone to stop thinking. It starts with knowing the difference between something that belongs and something that simply fits in. The dust on that switch isn’t just dust. It’s complacency that builds over time, a quiet reminder of how comfort replaces curiosity. So next time you see equipment quietly blinking behind a screen, ask a question. The answer might remind you that in security, what you don’t see can still connect, and what connects without being seen might already be writing its own story.
The Forgotten Switch: A Security Lesson
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Is unreliable office Wi-Fi costing your team valuable time? Dropped calls and sluggish uploads can disrupt workflows and frustrate employees. Our latest blog breaks down practical solutions — from optimizing router placement to choosing between wired and wireless setups, plus when to invest in a professional Wi-Fi design. Read the full guide to ensure your office stays connected and productive: https://lnkd.in/eTqi_jAZ
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Your Office Just Moved or Scaled? Here’s a Checklist to Get Your IT Running Smoothly Moving Day Can Break Your Business (If You Don’t Plan Your IT) Whether you're relocating to a new office or scaling into additional space, the physical move is only half the challenge. The real chaos often happens when you try to get your devices, network, backup systems, and printers running—and discover something critical isn’t working. IT disruptions during office moves are more common than most business owners expect. Delayed internet connections, unconfigured laptops, power problems, or even forgotten cables can all bring operations to a halt. That’s why you need a clear checklist—and a reliable partner. Your IT Relocation Checklist (With Pro Tips) Here’s what every SME should lock in before move day to stay online and productive: 1. Network & Connectivity Setup Before staff walks into the new space, ensure routers, switches, and access points are ready. KG Sowers handles pre-move network testing and cabling, so your team can just plug in and work. 2. Power Backup That Doesn’t Fail Sudden power cuts during setup or in the early days can damage devices. We recommend APC UPS systems that are properly sized and installed to keep essential gear safe and running. 3. Workstation Readiness Laptops, printers, and monitors need to be tested and deployed fast. Need extra devices during the move or while hiring? Our laptop rental service covers short-term gaps without long-term expense. Related: https://lnkd.in/g-XCXdGA 4. On-Site Support on Day One When things go wrong, you need help now, not hours later. KG Sowers offers on-site engineers for move-in day, handling everything from network diagnostics to printer setup. 5. Data Security and Backup Transfer Don’t overlook your data. Ensure backup systems are verified, cloud syncs are working, and firewalls are in place to protect you from day one. Related: https://lnkd.in/gv4aJCcY Scale with Confidence, Not Stress We know how stressful a relocation or scale-up can be. That’s why KG Sowers brings together everything SMEs need: • APC UPS power protection • Device provisioning and rentals • Fast, reliable on-site setup • Post-move maintenance and monitoring With our tailored services, you won’t just move—you’ll move forward. Let’s Set Up Your New Space the Smart Way Relocating doesn’t have to come with tech breakdowns and frustrated staff. With KG Sowers, you’ll get IT support that’s fast, friendly, and fully planned out. Contact us today to start planning your IT setup—even before the boxes are packed.
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As more organizations are increasingly requiring employees to spend more days in the office, one of the biggest barriers to a successful return is the lack of privacy. The rise in video calls has only intensified the issue, creating a greater need for quiet, enclosed areas — spaces that many offices simply weren’t designed to accommodate.
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ASIS International: "Frictionless Access: Why a London Office Building Turned to a Mobile Wallet Solution As the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread, many London employers closed their offices and implemented remote work policies. Some of those policies continue today. But more employers are looking at ways to get employees back into the office, and office real estate owners are sweetening the deal by creating “best-in-class buildings,” says Mark Caldwell, asset manager, AshbyCapital. The JJ Mack Building in the Farringdon area of London is a testament to that philosophy. The 10-story multitenant building constructed in 2022 has more than 200,000 square feet of office space accompanied by several thousand square feet of patio and retail space—including a wraparound patio on the seventh floor with views of the Museum of London. Traditional access control systems have relied on key cards, badges, and fobs to validate that their carriers are allowed to enter certain areas of a corporate campus. But these credentials can be time-consuming to issue and unsecure, says Danny Venturelli, head of customer success at Smart Spaces, a smart buildings software provider that has worked with AshbyCapital for more than seven years. When the JJ Mack Building project came onto the horizon, Venturelli says Smart Spaces rolled out 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. The plus was no waste from plastic key cards and a less onerous deployment process, but a big drawback was the user experience. People complained that there was a delay in connecting mobile devices to the readers, the access control application had to remain open on the user’s mobile device, and keeping Bluetooth on continuously was a major drain on mobile device battery life..." https://lnkd.in/eHJcgHC4
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Specialising in the provision of future proof data cabling, fibre optics and wireless network solutions
Most people think all access points are created equal, but here’s what’s really happening behind the scenes when it comes to controlling your office WiFi. If you’re a facilities manager or IT lead still managing your wireless access points one at a time (or not at all), the hidden risks might be holding your business back more than you realise. It's an all-too-common scenario: A device disconnects, users start chasing their tails, and support tickets start landing with complaints about “the WiFi dropping out again”. The response? Someone jumps into a clunky old admin portal, tries to reboot a specific access point, and hopes for the best. By the time you figure out which one is actually causing trouble, productivity has already taken a hit. The real issue? Lack of visibility and centralised management. Let’s unpack why centralised access point management and real-time monitoring are essential for modern offices - and why "set and forget" quickly turns into "search and panic": - Fast Issue Resolution With centralised platforms, IT teams can instantly see which APs are active, overloaded, or experiencing interference - often before staff even notice a problem. This means less firefighting and less downtime. - Consistent User Experience Roaming across the office shouldn’t mean losing connection. Managed access points ensure seamless handoff between APs, giving staff reliable, blanket coverage wherever they work, meet, or collaborate. - Improved Security Unmonitored and unmanaged devices are a security risk. Central control lets you see every device on your network, quickly roll out patches, and spot unauthorised connections before they become a threat. - Scale Without Drama Adding a new meeting room? Moving teams to a new floor? Central management makes it simple to roll out new access points or adjust coverage instantly, rather than reconfiguring each one manually. In my experience, making the switch from piecemeal management to a unified WiFi platform transforms how smoothly an office runs - especially as demands on wireless continue to grow. Have you tried managing access points individually, or made the jump to centralised management? What challenges have you faced in keeping your office WiFi reliable and secure? Would love to hear your thoughts or answer any questions below.
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Time for the ContraOffice? The office has become one of the most contested ideas in modern business. We’ve spent years debating its purpose, its form, its location. We’ve tried hybrid, we’ve tried refreshes, we’ve tried rebrands. But the truth is simple: work isn’t working. We are still trying to run 21st-century businesses on 20th-century infrastructure. Stress, disengagement, turnover, wasted travel, clunky systems; these aren’t just symptoms of a temporary storm. They’re signals of a deeper design flaw. The office of today was never built for the work of today. And no amount of surface-level updates is going to change that. So where does that leave us? When I step back, one word keeps surfacing: contra. Against. Counter. A deliberate alternative. What if instead of defending or redesigning “the office”, we start asking what a contraoffice might be? The contraoffice would not be a facelift of what we already know. It would be a refusal to accept the office as the center of gravity and an invitation to imagine something bolder. If the office centralized, the contraoffice decentralizes. If the office enforced presence, the contraoffice amplifies trust. If the office delivered friction, the contraoffice delivers flow. What might that look like? Perhaps the true “office” is not a building at all but the laptop, plus the intelligent agents that live inside it. That is where identity resides, where decisions get made, where relationships are managed. Around that hub, we move between nodes: a home micro-studio, a coworking huddle bay, a client’s space, a hospital family lounge repurposed as a telehealth pod, a legacy HQ elevated to a social anchor, environments we have yet to imagine. Each node tuned to purpose, each place orchestrated as part of an integrated mesh of intentional experiences. These experiences are already visible in the adaptive ways we live and work. What’s missing is a language and a framework to guide the shift. Conventional industry experts often see the office as indispensable. That we need a central place for culture, for collaboration, for control. Maybe. (continued in comments) (ChatGPT 5 was my co-author.) Sam Sahni Henrik Jarleskog Chris Moeller Kevin Budelmann Ram Srinivasan David George Brian Elliott Phil Kirschner Nirit Cohen 🔮 Carl Wilhelm Hagander Emelie Hagander Jeff Frick Dan Smolen Scott Hartkopf Kay Sargent Anish Padinjaroote Rex Miller
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Case Study: BNY Modernises Office Access with Apple Wallet Globally BNY has partnered with HID and SwiftConnect to introduce a seamless, secure mobile access experience for its global workforce. Using employee badge in Apple Wallet, staff can now enter offices worldwide with just their iPhone or Apple Watch — a key step in the financial institution’s strategy of modernising the workplace experience and enhancing security across its 110 locations in 35 countries. How do you rethink and transform building access for a 241-year-old company? BNY started by asking employees. The response was encouraging. The BNY team found that employees embraced the concept of mobile access solutions. The thought of implementing access solutions was already being considered by the company and the team was excited about the idea of providing a modern experience that allows employees worldwide to conveniently access their building spaces with a simple iPhone or Apple Watch. “The whole idea of people navigating around our facilities globally — it just brings a smile to your face,” said Ken Damstrom, Global Head of Corporate Security at BNY. “But it really brings a smile to their face because when they come to work they come with their iPhone they don’t necessarily need to come with their ID badge and how powerful of a concept is that?” Getting Started With the Right Team To put everything in motion, BNY engaged connected access network provider SwiftConnect and mobile access provider, HID. Selecting experienced and reputable partners was important for BNY, along with the technologies that they brought to the table. For this project, those technologies included employee badge in Apple Wallet alongside HID’s mobile-enabled Signo readers and the reliability of the SwiftConnect connected access network. How Does the Technology Work? Two key components of BNY’s initiative were essential to its success. Employee badge in Apple Wallet, paired with HID’s mobile-enabled Signo readers gives employees and their guests easy and secure access to corporate spaces using only their iPhone or Apple Watch. Users can simply hold their device near a reader to access doors, turnstiles, elevators, spaces and more. SwiftConnect unifies identity and physical access into one effortless experience, connecting systems and spaces into a unified network. It supports on-demand access via mobile credentials and optimises existing methods like fobs and cards for secure, consistent access — replacing friction with fluidity at every interaction. What we learned by partnering with SwiftConnect and HID was employee badge in Apple Wallet was absolutely ready for prime time Making Mobile Access Technology a Reality With full support from their partners, BNY launched their new mobile access solution at their headquarters in New York City, then expanded to other offices in Boston, London and India, as well as others. They’ll continue until every BNY office worldwide is using the techn...
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Case Study: BNY Modernises Office Access with Apple Wallet Globally BNY has partnered with HID and SwiftConnect to introduce a seamless, secure mobile access experience for its global workforce. Using employee badge in Apple Wallet, staff can now enter offices worldwide with just their iPhone or Apple Watch — a key step in the financial institution’s strategy of modernising the workplace experience and enhancing security across its 110 locations in 35 countries. How do you rethink and transform building access for a 241-year-old company? BNY started by asking employees. The response was encouraging. The BNY team found that employees embraced the concept of mobile access solutions. The thought of implementing access solutions was already being considered by the company and the team was excited about the idea of providing a modern experience that allows employees worldwide to conveniently access their building spaces with a simple iPhone or Apple Watch. “The whole idea of people navigating around our facilities globally — it just brings a smile to your face,” said Ken Damstrom, Global Head of Corporate Security at BNY. “But it really brings a smile to their face because when they come to work they come with their iPhone they don’t necessarily need to come with their ID badge and how powerful of a concept is that?” Getting Started With the Right Team To put everything in motion, BNY engaged connected access network provider SwiftConnect and mobile access provider, HID. Selecting experienced and reputable partners was important for BNY, along with the technologies that they brought to the table. For this project, those technologies included employee badge in Apple Wallet alongside HID’s mobile-enabled Signo readers and the reliability of the SwiftConnect connected access network. How Does the Technology Work? Two key components of BNY’s initiative were essential to its success. Employee badge in Apple Wallet, paired with HID’s mobile-enabled Signo readers gives employees and their guests easy and secure access to corporate spaces using only their iPhone or Apple Watch. Users can simply hold their device near a reader to access doors, turnstiles, elevators, spaces and more. SwiftConnect unifies identity and physical access into one effortless experience, connecting systems and spaces into a unified network. It supports on-demand access via mobile credentials and optimises existing methods like fobs and cards for secure, consistent access — replacing friction with fluidity at every interaction. What we learned by partnering with SwiftConnect and HID was employee badge in Apple Wallet was absolutely ready for prime time Making Mobile Access Technology a Reality With full support from their partners, BNY launched their new mobile access solution at their headquarters in New York City, then expanded to other offices in Boston, London and India, as well as others. They’ll continue until every BNY office worldwide is using the techn...
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The smart access control market is shifting as small businesses are on the rise. Think home offices, gyms, clinics and retail shops — they need affordable, scalable and remote-friendly solutions. Want to know what small businesses are looking for and pitfalls to avoid in this market? Click here to read the article by Jason Fishbeck of Automated Environments: https://brnw.ch/21wWR14 #Security #SecurityIntegrators #AccessControl #SmallBusiness
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Solomon Security Dallas Launches Enterprise Access Control Installation Services for Multi-Tenant Commercial Buildings: Comprehensive Access Management Solutions Provide Secure Entry Control for Complex Building Environments DALLAS, TX – Solomon Security Dallas announced today the introduction of their enterprise access control installation services specifically designed for multi-tenant commercial buildings, corporate office complexes, and mixed-use … Continue reading → #Business #ProfessionalServices #RealEstate #Services #US
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