Host: Jeremy Cherny interviews Roger Heindl, Owner of Tech Lab, Inc.

“We're an IT support company. We provide home and business support for companies in Southeast Wisconsin. I've been working in IT for almost 20 years. We have four tech people that also work with me at Tech Lab, and I've been interested in computers probably since I was a teenager. Our first computer was actually an Amiga, which we later upgraded to a Mac. And then I ended up buying a PC to go to college. So I've been interested in tech for a very long time.”

Why is security important to you?

There’s a lot of companies and even home users that are getting scareware and ransomware, and that really costs people a lot of money. And the hacker is just trying to get money out of the person or if it’s real ransomware that actually locks down important data - say healthcare or a law firm - it can prevent people from doing the work that they need. It creates a lot of anxiety among customers - so for me, it’s really about helping people navigate through the world of tech and keeping them safe.

How do you stay on top of the latest security threats?

I follow a bunch of tech news sites and also encourage my staff to follow them as well because those are good sources of information on what’s currently happening. We also attend DEF CON in Las Vegas every year. DEF CON is an annual security conference that tech people, government officials, and, potentially, hackers all attend to increase their security awareness. I believe a lot of that is happening online this year - with all their training and presentations.

How do you address security awareness training for your team?

Security awareness training is something that we’ve been pushing more and more over the past couple of years. A big one that we do is help people learn about social engineering because there are so many phone scams. We also do online training and classes through our partner organizations to provide our customers with the ability to do things on their own time. As a team, we also meet and do a weekly review of everything that’s going on where we also sneak in a lot of talk about the latest security issues that come up with different customers. We really make it a point to stay on top of it as best we can.

What are the most important things people can do to protect their data online?

For us, the number one thing is to be aware of what you’re clicking on. We work with a lot of people that work in stressful environments so they click without fully reading or understanding what they’re clicking on - and that is the number one way we find people getting in trouble. When someone clicks on something it often spirals them into a stream of very bad things. 

Where do you think the future of information security is headed?

We’ve been starting to see third party reviews of trusted authorities. You can’t just go out and pick the first tech solution provider that comes up because, for all you know, it could be a scam from India. So it’s becoming more important to show value to customers that you have other people reviewing.