IT OPERATIONS

Morning Brew Inc.

Mismatched socks? Sometimes okay, especially if they have a cute pattern. Mismatched configurations? Never cute or okay…

Configuration drift occurs when the settings of applications, networks, and other IT components drift from their baseline state. It’s a common problem for IT pros and one that can lead to a lot of headaches.

Causes. There are several reasons why a system’s settings may deviate from an intended state. Roman Sannikov, global threat research coordinator at iCOUNTER, told IT Brew that drift can occur when manual fixes and patches aren’t deployed in a uniform fashion, comparing it to a building with a leak in need of plumbing.

“Generally speaking, a building is not going to change all of their pipes just because there’s a leak in one pipe,” Sannikov said. “A plumber might come in and might patch that particular pipe, but there’s no guarantee that if they replace it, it’s going to be the same exact material, the same exact age, [and] the same exact size as the other pipes around it.”

Why drift is a serious risk.—BM

      

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IT STRATEGY

Manish Parashar

In February, Manish Parashar had his first day of school at the University of Utah—not as a student, but as the institution’s first chief AI officer (CAIO).

Parashar, who had previously served as the university’s chair in computational science and engineering, told IT Brew it was crucial for the university to hire a dedicated AI leader because of how quickly AI is evolving.

“We needed to incorporate AI holistically into the university’s mission,” Parashar said. “And so that’s why we created this role as a way to coordinate, to be able to develop guidelines, share best practices, provide upskilling enablement services, provide infrastructure and tools to the university community, so that we can use AI effectively, but also responsibly.”

Man with a plan. One can say Parashar was the right guy for the job. Prior to his current role, he said, he had served as the office director of the National Science Foundation’s office of advanced cyber infrastructure. There, he helped advance research and education in AI for the country.

Other universities have been hiring CAIOs, too.—BM

      

SOFTWARE

Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Summit Entertainment

Did you know Memento, Christopher Nolan’s noir thriller, is actually an IT movie?

The movie’s protagonist, insurance analyst Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce), can’t form new memories. Most times he’s read-only.

But that doesn’t stop Shelby from trying to find his wife’s killer, all while doing his best to hang on to the present moment via a reminder system of Post-it notes, tattoos, and legal pads.

Some moviegoers here may view Leonard as a character representing the all-too-human tendency to insist on a comforting story rather than face reality. But Guy Bourgault, head of agentic services at tech-services company Concentrix, sees something different—and surprisingly technical—in one of his favorite movies.

Leonard is built like an AI agent.

“He’s got a different operating model than the rest of us,” Bourgault told us during this month’s IT Brew Movie Club.

The similarities between Shelby’s tattoos and AI agents’ persistent memory.—BH

      

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 53.2%. That’s the percentage of executives who use GenAI, compared to 37.9% of employees who admit to using it. (CIO Dive)

Quote: “Rather than excess inventory, the decline in the third quarter of 2026 was driven by higher prices, vendor-led reprioritization of scarce components and a shift toward higher-priced configurations.”—Namrata Banerjee, principal analyst for research at Gartner, on why PC shipments have dropped in Q3 (ITPro)

Read: The gender pay gap exists in the agent world, too. (Futurism)

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