Tech for Business

This week we are joined by Megan, Director of Design at Dupler Office. We learn how Megan’s passion for design evolved from rearranging her bedroom to a career in commercial workplace design. Megan describes discovering the field in high school through a craft mall job, choosing Kent State after learning interior design was more technical than she expected, and ultimately focusing on how built environments impact people at work. She explains why she prefers dealer-design work in furniture over A&D firms, citing variety, client engagement, and broad expertise. They also discuss her DIY hobbies and elaborate birthday parties, and preview attending the CET Designer user conference in Cincinnati with most of her team, including the event’s costumes and networking.

00:00 Meet Megan and Jason

00:17 How Megan Found Design

01:27 From Pillow Fluffing to Built Environment

02:14 Choosing Commercial and Furniture

04:10 Technical Creativity and Dealer Life

06:54 Dupler Showroom Experience

07:50 DIY Projects and Party Planning

09:30 CET Experience Conference Plans

11:43 Costumes Legos and Community

12:18 Thanks and Final Wrap Up

On the Tech for Business podcast, Megan (Director of Design at Dupler Office in Columbus, Ohio) and Jason (Director of Innovation and Solutions at CIT) discuss Dupler’s recent technology transformation and its impact on designers. Megan explains her hybrid leadership role and how her team relies heavily on CET, while Jason shares his long history advising Dupler and helping guide an IT overhaul. The company tackled multiple changes at once—showroom renovation, moving to a cloud-based platform to eliminate servers, supporting hybrid work, rolling out new laptops, and standardizing conference-room and workstation connection experiences. They describe how inconsistent setups, VPN/server issues, and unreliable laptops previously caused major downtime and client-meeting disruptions, and how the new environment made technology more “invisible,” improving productivity and confidence. They also note cost/value tradeoffs, collaborative vendor partnerships, team-based laptop setup sessions, and Dupler’s design-led sales approach with designers involved in most client engagements.

00:00 Meet the Guests

00:18 Megan’s Role at Dupler

00:59 Design Tech Day to Day

02:16 Jason’s Dupler Journey

04:16 Managing Change and People

07:04 Inside the IT Assessment

10:08 Standardizing the Workspace

12:02 Staying Productive Mid Overhaul

14:34 Cost vs Value of IT Upgrades

18:26 Rolling Out Laptops Together

19:53 What’s Next After the Upgrade

21:09 A Design Led Sales Model

25:09 Grand Opening and Wrap Up

26:33 Final Thanks and Subscribe

In the final episode of the AI starter series, the host is joined by Kyle, president and CEO, to discuss how to build an effective AI strategy. Kyle emphasizes that the biggest driver of successful implementation is the people side, training, creating forums for knowledge sharing, and identifying internal champions, more than platform selection. He notes he initially delayed buying key AI licenses due to cost concerns and would move faster now. They discuss keeping humans in the loop by assessing business risk and using narrow, well-monitored autonomous agents with audit trails and tripwires. For regulated industries, Kyle advises choosing compliant vendors, classifying and labeling data, and enforcing controls and reporting, noting these guardrails benefit both AI agents and employees. He urges organizations to start now with licenses, policies, committees, training, and data classification.

00:00 AI Strategy Finale

00:42 People First Rollout

02:14 Licenses and Champions

05:23 Human in the Loop

06:01 Autonomy and Risk

08:06 Compliance Guardrails

09:23 Data Classification Basics

12:56 Tracking and Controls

15:46 Start Now or Fall Behind

19:42 Wrap Up and Links

Catch the full webinar right here: https://www.citsolutions.net/events/webinars/ai-starter-series/

Kyle (CEO/president) and Matthew (senior developer) recap a technical webinar on building custom applications and how new tools and AI have made proving, validating, and delivering apps more accessible. Matthew’s key takeaway is boosting confidence for those intimidated to start, offering a primer on what questions to ask next and reminding viewers the team can help. They discuss when to involve more technical resources, especially before going company-wide, touching production data, or becoming part of a workflow, so risk, support, and maintenance are addressed. Common roadblocks include the learning curve, rapid tool changes, and needing enough foundational understanding even if you don’t read code. They note AI accelerates strong developers rather than replacing them, improving troubleshooting and output. They expect the webinar’s core principles to remain relevant as tools improve, and encourage experimentation and internal forums for sharing AI learnings.

00:00 Welcome and Introductions

00:08 Webinar Elevator Pitch

01:07 Building Apps Series Recap

02:17 When to Bring Developers

04:37 Common Roadblocks

09:25 AI as Developer Multiplier

13:15 Will It Still Matter

16:31 Just Start Experimenting

17:48 Build an Internal Forum

19:00 Wrap Up and Next Steps

Catch the full webinar right here: https://www.citsolutions.net/events/webinars/ai-starter-series/

Cole, CIT’s Power Platform Developer, to recap a recent Prompting 101 webinar focused on CRIT prompting—Context, Role, Interrogation, and Task—and why being specific in each area leads to better AI outputs. Cole explains each CRIT component, highlights common prompting mistakes like over-instructing the AI on how to reach an answer, and discusses how to address bias by explicitly naming it in prompts so the AI can avoid reinforcing it. He also answers how much context is too much, noting that while you can’t give too much in a single prompt, long multi-phase threads can introduce irrelevant context due to model limits. Looking ahead, Cole expects prompting to remain important while evolving toward reusable AI “skills” for consistent outputs such as CIT’s readiness assessment reports.

00:00 Webinar Recap Intro

00:24 CRIT Prompting Framework

02:28 Common Prompting Mistakes

03:37 Bias and Output Steering

05:12 How Much Context Is Too Much

06:21 Future of Prompting Skills

07:40 From Prompts to Skills

11:23 Wrap Up and Next Steps

11:40 Outro

Check out the full webinar here: https://www.citsolutions.net/events/webinars/ai-starter-series/

Ann, CIT’s Quality Assurance Analyst, recaps a recent webinar on what an AI policy is, why it matters, and how straightforward it can be to document, implement, and communicate to a team as “bumpers” for responsible AI use. She advises rolling out an AI policy like any other organizational change—routine, transparent communication that frames it as guidance and risk mitigation rather than a crackdown. Ann notes that even as AI tools and workflows evolve and reduce the human-in-the-loop, the core principle should remain: humans are ultimately responsible for outputs and must review results. She encourages leaders to define acceptable risk up front, communicate benefits, and revisit policies at least twice a year or after major changes, assigning ownership to stay ahead of evolving tools and compliance.

00:00 Webinar Recap Intro

00:38 Rolling Out the Policy

02:01 Keeping Humans Accountable

03:24 What Leaders Miss About Risk

05:08 One Year Later Outlook

06:37 Wrap Up

Check out the full webinar here: https://www.citsolutions.net/events/webinars/ai-starter-series/

This week we are joined by Michael Collins, Principal Consulting Solutions Architect at Barracuda, to explain what a web application firewall (WAF) is and how it differs from a network firewall. Along with Nate, CIT's Director of Cybersecurity, we explore how WAFs help defend websites, web apps, and APIs against threats like injection, bot attacks, brute force attempts, and DDoS, especially as AI “vibe coding” leads to insecure public-facing applications. The episode covers choosing basic vs enterprise-grade WAF protection based on business criticality and sensitive data, tuning to reduce false positives using detect vs block modes and staged deployment, visibility into daily attacks, geofencing and IP blocking, and how WAFs support compliance efforts like PCI and HIPAA as part of a broader security strategy.

00:27 What Is a WAF

03:58 Defining Web Apps

07:41 APIs and Vibe Coding Risks

11:12 Choosing the Right WAF

14:31 Tuning and False Positives

20:52 Onboarding Detect to Block

28:06 Compliance and Regulations

31:48 Visibility and Geofencing

38:13 DDoS Story and Wrap Up

42:54 Testing and Deployment Options

46:35 Final Thanks and CTA

Check out more from Barracuda

Nate, Director of Cybersecurity, recaps a webinar on how threat actors weaponize AI to run efficient underground businesses, using it to speed up phishing, malware creation, data parsing after account compromise, and to lower the skill needed for attacks, including deepfakes. He emphasizes AI itself isn’t “bad,” but intent matters, and the best protections are fundamentals: vigilance, validation, and strong financial controls. The discussion covers why deepfakes work—circumstantial timing and emotional manipulation—and why training should focus on core red flags rather than only deepfakes. Practical wins include two-person review for large wire transfers, moving to phishing-resistant MFA/passkeys, watching for “evil proxy” credential pages, setting AI usage guardrails to avoid shadow AI, and creating an incident response plan with clear contacts and insurance details. Nate also predicts maturing AI-driven defense tools becoming more accessible to SMBs.

00:00 Webinar Recap Setup

00:29 AI as Criminal Business

03:40 Deepfakes and Why We Fall

07:26 Quick Wins for Security

09:00 MFA and Evil Proxies

10:37 AI Guardrails Not Bans

12:15 Incident Response Planning

13:26 Future of AI Defense

16:28 Wrap Up and Resources

Check out the full series right here! https://www.citsolutions.net/events/webinars/ai-starter-series/

In this episode, Nate, CIT’s director of cybersecurity discusses proposed HIPAA Security Rule overhauls aimed at strengthening healthcare cybersecurity after major breaches and downtime incidents. Nate explains that the vote on the proposed changes was pushed back by one year (to 2027), but organizations should still start planning because implementation is typically required within 180 days of the final rule. Key shifts include moving many controls from “addressable” to “required,” enforcing multi-factor authentication for access to ePHI/EMR systems, requiring encryption in transit and at rest with no exceptions, and strengthening risk analysis and governance with formal documentation, asset inventories, network/data flow mapping, and executive engagement. The proposal also emphasizes incident response with a 72-hour service restoration plan, more frequent vulnerability scanning, annual penetration testing, and third-party assessments.

00:00 HIPAA Rule Update

00:22 Why HIPAA Is Outdated

01:58 Breaches Drive Reform

02:46 Timeline And Delay

04:14 Addressable To Required

04:57 MFA And Encryption Mandates

06:50 Risk Analysis And IR Plan

09:27 Cost And Budget Impact

13:08 Biggest Hurdle MFA

16:33 How It Compares To Others

18:15 What Might Change

21:58 Vendors And Education

23:23 Action Items And Wrap Up

Resource: https://www.hipaajournal.com/hipaa-security-rule-update-postponed/

On the Tech for Business podcast, the host talks with Kelsey, an AI operations coordinator, about the difference between automation and AI and why people confuse them. Kelsey explains that automation follows rules you provide while AI figures out the rules, using analogies like a dishwasher (automation) versus a cook (AI), and notes marketing has contributed by labeling many products as “AI.” They discuss when the distinction matters, focusing on outcomes, resource usage, and measuring impact through output quality and time saved rather than “using AI” as a goal. The episode covers where automation fits best (repetitive, predictable tasks) versus AI (judgment, messy inputs, agentic planning), and warns that adopting AI without documented processes and clean data can accelerate broken workflows, waste money, and create risk, emphasizing problem-finding over tool-chasing.

00:00 AI vs Automation Intro

00:31 Simple Definitions

01:14 Kitchen Metaphor

02:39 Why The Confusion

04:23 Does The Difference Matter

08:08 Automation In Business

10:36 Where AI Fits In

11:47 Using AI Without Automation

14:27 Overrelying On Automation

19:23 AI Without Groundwork

29:03 Human Context Still Matters

32:31 Find The Real Problem

35:28 Wrap Up And Next Episode