August 27, 2026

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Thursday! And also National Just Because Day. Use it to justify any spontaneous IT decision. Why are you refreshing the company’s laptops? Just because! Everyone will love it. Trust us.

In today’s edition:

🤖 Locked in, loaded

🔐 Only human

🪪 Boosting H-1B fees

—Patrick Kulp, Brianna Monsanto, Courtney Vinopal

IT STRATEGY

Stuck in a silo

Photo collage showing two hands pulling on opposite ends of a piece of string, which is tangled and knotted in the middle.

Illustration: Shannon May, Photos: Adobe Stock

When ChatGPT first spurred a run on enterprise AI licenses, Emmanuel Frenehard resisted the peer pressure.

Frenehard, the chief digital officer at pharmaceutical company Sanofi, said he didn’t want to get locked into contracts that would ingest the company’s lifeblood data. And Microsoft Copilot didn’t seem like much of a productivity boon for the cost at the time.

Instead, Frenehard worked with Snowflake and a Snowflake-backed startup called Elementum to build a central data lake and an internal AI system called Concierge. In the next two years, Frenehard wants 80% of the company’s IT tickets to go through Concierge.

But even given Frenehard’s efforts to avoid these contracts, moving away from outside vendors involves some tricky navigation, especially as each platform increasingly offers its own stable of agents.

Flip the switch.—PK

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CYBERSECURITY

Human nature

Office workers at a desk and floating passwords and medical symbols in between two large-scaled lock icons. Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock

Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: Adobe Stock

Good ol’ fashioned human error drove cyber insurance losses in the first half of the year.

According to a recent report from cyber risk management firm Resilience, social engineering was the culprit behind 85.3% of incurred losses in H1 2026, up from 17.7% in H1 2024.

Judson Dressler, director of Resilience’s risk operation center, told IT Brew that the rise in incurred losses driven by social engineering can be attributed to AI, which is making it easier for attackers to execute more convincing attacks.

“What we’re seeing is [AI] primarily acting as a force multiplier for the familiar human-enabled attacks,” he said.

Multiplying threats.—BM

IT STRATEGY

Prints charge

Photo collage showing the US Capitol building with sheets of paper and floating orbs around it, in shades of purple on a graph paper background.

Morning Brew Inc.

After a federal judge in June blocked a $100,000 fee that would’ve significantly raised the cost of H-1B visa petitions, the Trump administration is continuing to issue policies that may nonetheless make the sponsorship process more costly for employers.

On Aug. 10, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published a final rule requiring certain employers to pay fees toward a biometric entry-exit system in cases where they were previously exempt.

The rule, which takes effect Sept. 9, applies to employers with 50 or more employees who employ more than one-half of their workers on either H-1B or L-1 visas.

Since 2015, these employers have had to pay a $4,000 or $4,500 fee for H-1B and L-1 visa petitions, respectively. According to the DHS, the supplemental fees are intended to help the department implement an automated biometric system for immigrants entering or departing the US—a priority that dates back to the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

How hiring H-1B workers is getting more expensive.—CV

patch notes

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: $100 billion. That’s how much SpaceX intends to invest in a new “spaceport” on the Louisiana coast. (Ars Technica)

Quote: “If a company builds a system and that system causes damage, the company should own the outcome.”—Art Gilliland, CEO of identity and access management company Delinea, on the potential of AI agents to cause chaos (CIO)

Read: Bill Gates is really worried about AI preparedness. (Gates Notes)

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Quiz

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Amelia Kinsinger

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Written by Patrick Kulp, Brianna Monsanto, and Courtney Vinopal

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