SMB Community Podcast

Host Karl caught up with Greg Edwards, founder of CryptoStopper, about the details of how Cryptoware works. He's a great source on this topic since he's built a product to stop ransomware in its tracks.

CryptoStopper creates randomly-named files of random sizes to monitor in key locations. Then, they monitor those files as well as other activities on your clients' computers. When CryptoStopper sees ransomware activity, they catch it much earlier than other monitoring services.

We dig into some juicy details about how their system works. And, of course, Greg gives us some great details about how the viruses themselves operate.

Greg has been a technology entrepreneur since 1998. Before he founded CryptoStopper, he started Axis Backup, a backup and disaster recovery company for the insurance industry. He saw firsthand the rapid increase in the damage cyber criminals were doing with debilitating malware resulting in high financial loss to vulnerable companies. Between 2012 and 2015, one in five of Axis Backup's clients was hit by cybercrime. Greg realized effective cyber security could save businesses from costly downtime and compromised systems. In 2015, Axis Backup was acquired by J2 Global, freeing Greg to create CryptoStopper and focus exclusively on cybersecurity.

Web Site: https://www.getcryptostopper.com/

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Sponsor Note:

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Host Karl talks to ASCII CEO Alan Weinberger about his new book - The Doctor's In: Treating America's Greatest Cyber Security Threat. Of course, we also talked about the state of the industry and what's ahead for IT consultants.

Alan book illuminate for the general public how important a Managed Service Provider is in maintaining the health of our economy and our infrastructure itself, in the new cyber security era.

Alan founded The ASCII Group in 1984 in Washington D.C. And, of course, ASCII is one of the premier communities for IT service providers, VARs, MSPs, and technology resellers all over the world. They host a series of virtual and in-person events. You can find out more at www.asciievents.com.

Misc. ASCII Links:

• https://overview.ascii.com/the-doctors-in/
• https://www.ascii.com
• https://twitter.com/asciigroup
• https://www.facebook.com/TheASCIIGroup
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/ascii
• ASCII Events – www.asciievents.com

Alan's Book is available on Amazon: - https://www.amazon.com/Doctors-Treating-Americas-Greatest-Security/dp/1636613438/

(This is not an affiliate link.)

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Host James Kernan interviews Dave Scott from Scott Digital Marketing.

Dave Scott is the Founder, President and CEO of Scott Growth Strategies. Dave has over 20 years of experience working with MSPs, Tech and IT firms and B2B companies. He pours his wealth of marketing knowledge into clients making sure they're seen, heard and valued in the current tech climate. In the end, Dave delivers digital marketing leadership, strategies and tools that lead to client success and prosperity.

Related links:

• https://podnutz.com/ppro332/
• https://www.sweetteasocialmarketing.com/episode191/
• https://www.scottdigitalmarketing.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/scott-marketing-llc
• https://www.facebook.com/scottdigmarketing/

As always, if you have any questions or comments, post them here.

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More and more every day, you need privacy policies on your web site. These requirements change every day. How can you possibly stay legal and up to date? The quick answer: You pretty much can't. That's where Termageddon comes in.

Host Karl interviewed Hans & Donata Skillrud from Termageddon.

Termageddon aggregates privacy policies and generates valid privacy policy text based on your business and location. When the law changes, so do the policies, keeping your company protected and allowing you to focus on more important things.

Find our more at www.termageddon.com.

We dig into the details here.

Guest info:

Donata and Hans are the cofounders of Termageddon. Donata is a licensed attorney and a certified information privacy professional. She also serves as the Vice Chair of the American Bar Association's ePrivacy Committee and has provided insights to governing bodies on how to write privacy laws. Hans is a former small business agency owner, who sold his 12 person company in 2019 to focus all of his attention on Termageddon. Outside of work, you can catch Hans and Donata hiking, gardening, or beekeeping.

Termageddon is a generator of policies for websites and applications.

Web site: https://termageddon.com

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Sponsor Memo:

MSPs do battle daily against cyber hostilities such as ransomware attacks and data breaches. Fight smarter. Call in the cavalry. Gatekeeper from Calyptix Security is here.

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Zero Trust access secures RDP and SSH connections with two-factor authentication. There's no need for open ports to the internet, client installs, or VPN. Plus, you'll enjoy audit-friendly access across all types of devices.

Learn more at https://calyptix.com/gatekeeper.

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Host Karl talked to James Norrie from CyberconIQ. CyberconIQ takes a new approach to educating users about security - based on their demonstrated behavior. As we've all seen, pure education has limited success. This program helps users alter their behavior.

Guest Dr. James Norrie is a Professor of Strategy and Cybersecurity and former Dean of the Graham School of Business at York College of Pennsylvania. He is the author of six books, multiple journal articles and is a sought-after expert, frequent media commentator and national newspaper op-ed guest writer.

Internationally known, his areas of research interest delve into the intersection of society and technology and the clash this can create, particularly as cybercrime has become a ferocious problem. In addition to his academic role, he is the Founder and CEO of CyberconIQ, a firm committed to changing the global cybersecurity conversation from fear to hope. He conducts, presents and publishes industry-related research and consults globally to prominent companies concerning cybersecurity, information privacy and security, and economic crime detection and prevention methods. He lives in York, PA.

cyberconIQ mitigates cyber risk by leveraging CYBERology™ – the intersection of cybersecurity and psychology, which is the foundation of our solutions.

Related Links:

• https://cyberconiq.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/cyberconiq
• https://www.instagram.com/cybercon_iq/
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/51683023/admin/

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Host Karl interviewed Rom Hendler, CEO of Trustifi Email Encryption Solutions.

We start our discussion discussing what makes Trustifi different from other email security solutions. Trustifi provides email encryption delivered on a software-as-a-service platform. They provide both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor.

Most email security systems address inbound traffic only. But as compliance expands across geographies and industries, we could see some real problems if we don't also manage the outbound traffit.

SMB MSPs and solution providers should begin to think of email encryption as a way to deliver control of email data back to the user, as opposed to simply screening threats as they arrive at the network gateway. Trustifi's one-click solutions leverage a breakthrough email encryption strategy. Rather than have emails pass through the recipient's gateway and reside on their server, Trustifi's solution encrypts messages before they go through the recipient's gateway.

Sent mail messages therefore reside on Trustifi's proprietary web-based cloud storage platform, as opposed to on the recipient's server. This allows messages to be accessed and recalled or altered as-needed, since they're still officially housed on the vendor's platform. Users can swap or remove attachments or reword text even after messages have initially been read. Similarly, this configuration allows the sender to remove or add recipients to emails after-the-fact—without alerting the other recipients.

When the sender has a greater ability to manipulate messages they've already transmitted, it gives them the opportunity to correct potentially debilitating missteps.

Related Links:

• https://www.trustifi.com
• https://twitter.com/TRUSTIFI
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/trustifi-corporation/
• https://www.facebook.com/trustifi

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Sponsor Memo:

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Host Karl interviewed Guillaume Boisvert, Director for Product Innovation at Sherweb. The topic of the day is: Take Office Security to the Next Level.

Guillaume has been instrumental in commercializing Sherweb's Infrastructure as a Service solutions for public and private cloud. He has more than 15 years of experience developing and marketing web services for both B2B and B2C platforms. Prior to his current position, Guillaume managed Sherweb's security and compliance product portfolio. He holds a degree in CIS, and has business training from McGill University.

The topic here is Sherweb's new Alliance program.

Sherweb's Office Protect has been around for quite a while. It adds a serious layer of security to O365/M365. The default Office configuration is designed for enterprise clients, and their defaults are good for a large slice of users. Office Protect fixes some obvious problems, such as turning on 2FA and logging. Both are off by default. That's great . . . until something goes wrong.

Office Protect basically implements a new set of "best practices" defined by you, rather then assuming that Microsoft is taking care of your best interest.

So what's new? The Office Protect Alliance offering actually monitors those logs, analyzes alerts, and even fixes problems. As Guillaume notes, they take over the problem-solving and you keep the client relationship (and money).

He also gives some great examples and information about how insurance companies and hackers both scan your web presence to see how professional you look on the security front. The insurance company wants to determine whether you're a larger risk; hackers are looking at the same information to determine whether you're a juicy target.

Find out more about Sherweb Office Protect Alliance at: https://www.sherweb.com/blog/security/office-protect-alliance/

Sherweb's Partner Blog is here: https://www.sherweb.com/blog/category/partner/

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Host Karl caught up with Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Technology Services. Tom runs a very successful IT consulting business - and uses YouTube as his primary marketing tool. That's a very rare thing, but Tom's been making videos since 2014. His channel has really taken off in the last few years.

The "Lawrence Systems" channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkYOD-3fZbuGhwsADBd9ZQ - and has more than 185,000 subscribers. But lots of people don't subscribe, so he has about 1.8 million unique viewers in the last ninety days. Most of them joined in the last two years!

Tom's philosophy for YouTube is very straight forward: He creates videos to talk about whatever is on his mind. Sometimes that's technology; Sometimes it's business. But he always puts in a plug at the end. "If you have a project we can help with, drop us a line." This is a great example of the philosophy that you should create content that you would like to consume. That will attract an audience that will find that content appealing.

Here's the bottom line on the effectiveness of this strategy: 349 businesses hired Lawrence Technology Services as a result of his YouTube channel!!!

Tom's approach is also a great example of the philosophy of, "Just do what you do." He doesn't worry about guru advice about length or format.

Lots of great advice and information here.

Catch Tom's channel here: - "Lawrence Systems" channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHkYOD-3fZbuGhwsADBd9ZQ

- Content Creation Ethics and Guidelines - https://www.lawrencesystems.com/content-ethics/

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Host Karl sat down with Kevin Coppins, President and CEO of Spirion. Kevin wakes up every day on a mission to protect what he knows matters most—your sensitive personal data. With a team of passionate data privacy professionals at his back, Kevin is working to re-envision the culture of entire industries, putting privacy at the forefront where it belongs.

One of the biggest problems today is that people "just do their jobs" everyday, and unwittingly expose sensitive data to the Internet. Sensitive data is being replicated thousands of times across databases, shared folders, and cloud servers around the globe—and all a bad actor needs to cause chaos is one opening. Spirion is attempting to change the paradigm of data security; not by building higher walls, but by radically shrinking the target. The COVID Data Explosion - As we work together to flatten the curve, organizations around the world are scrambling to adapt. IT departments have been so focused on making the shift to working from home, that they've left the door open for a new threat. We also discuss the Growing Compliance Problem, Solved - GDPR. CCPA. FERPA. HIPAA. More privacy regulations have been passed in the last two years than the previous hundred. This has led companies around the world to spend billions trying—and often failing—to stay in compliance with a rapidly shifting regulatory landscape. Finally, we address: Why Kevin Doesn't Want Happy Customers!

Links:

https://www.spirion.com/ https://twitter.com/ktcoppins

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Host Karl interviews Eric Anthony, the founder of the hot All Things MSP Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/allthingsmsp).

Eric also manages a YouTube Channel focused on his photography/videography hobby.

Eric has been helping people with technology since high school. He has owned his own break/fix and managed services companies, spent time in internal IT and for the last 7 years has been working for vendors in the channel. He also runs the All Things MSP Facebook group and YouTube channel.

On the professional side, Eric is the Director, MSP Director of Community and Partner Enablement at Egnyte. He is based in Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Area. He started as an MSP in 1992 and has worked for a variety of vendors.

Links:

• Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/allthingsmsp
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricAnthonyMSP
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/esanthony/
• Egnyte: https://www.egnyte.com/

More info coming soon on Egnyte's MSP Summit May 11th.

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