In prepping for this episode, I ran a quick survey of those who work from home. There was a consistent theme: the flexibility is nice but the loneliness is real. Here's how to help your team deal with the challenges while ensuring security and productivity.
Creators & Guests
Host
Bryan Lachapelle
Hi, I’m Bryan, and I’m the President of B4 Networks. I started working with technology since early childhood, and routinely took apart computers as early as age 13. I received my education in Computer Engineering Technology from Niagara College. Starting B4 Networks was always a dream for me, and this dream became true in 2004. I originally started B4 Networks to service the residential market but found that my true passion was in the commercial and industrial sectors where I could truly utilize my experience as a Network Administrator for a large Toronto based Marine Shipping company. My passion today is to ensure that each and every client receives top of the line services. My first love is for my wonderful family. I also enjoy the outdoors, camping, and helping others. I’m an active Canadian Forces Officer working with the 613 Fonthill Army Cadets as a member of their training staff.
What is UnHacked?
When Russian hackers break into your business’s computers, what will they find and how much will it cost you? How long will it take you to recover? Can you recover? Here’s the sad truth: 97% of breaches could have been prevented with basic security measures; but once you’ve been hit… you can never get UnHacked!
UnHacked is a weekly cybersecurity podcast for SMB business owners and leaders that helps them sort through the overwhelming security costs and recommendations, and focus on the best practices that give the highest ROI.
Welcome everybody to episode 25 of UnHacked. You know, this podcast, Brian, I think, I think you put together a little tagline where we empower busy and overwhelmed business owners. We're concerned about cybersecurity to outsmart Russian hackers. Are those your words? Are they kind of a mixture?
Bryan:Probably chat g p t to be honest, maybe.
Justin:Oh, you you you AI'd that thing
Bryan:to you.
Justin:But, I I do like it, you know, because, overwhelm is probably the theme of my life. And I do believe it's also the probably the number one reason people get breaches. We all just live in this world of overwhelm. So 100%. Yeah.
Justin:So we'll, we'll break down the best ways to outsmart these little bastards, and, hopefully, we can keep our money. We can keep our businesses intact, and we can live good lives. So, I'm Justin Shelly, CEO of Phoenix IT Advisors. I work with businesses in the Dallas Metro, also Northern Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. I'm just just trying to take over the world, like Pinky and the brand.
Bryan:Not not not Niagara, though. Right?
Justin:Not Niagara. We're gonna stay out of Canada, and we're gonna stay out of the northeast so that you and Mario don't get, I I mean, I wouldn't wanna put you guys out
Bryan:of business. One day anyway.
Justin:So Yeah. I mean, you know, they're they're our worst. So yeah. So, Brian, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, which you
Bryan:Brian Lachko with, president and cofounder of B4 Networks, based out of the Niagara region in Ontario, Canada. I always like to describe myself, people I meet as a technology whisperer. We help our clients remove the headaches that come with dealing with technology in a business landscape.
Justin:I like that a technology whisperer. If I, if you find that on my website, I made it up myself. I got it from chat GPT. And then we are also joined today by our good friend, Mario. Oh, wait a minute.
Justin:Mario's sitting on a beach somewhere. Yeah. I don't know what he's doing, but he's on vacation, that little bastard. And, you know, we're here slaving away. In fact, was it yesterday or the day before I was sitting on my porch swing day was over, and I was home and I had a cigar, little bourbon, and a magazine with Mario's face on the cover of it.
Justin:That guy's just gone famous, Brian. I don't know if you know this, but we're rubbing elbows with the rich and famous I'm
Bryan:okay with that. Ever be the smartest person I'm Correct.
Justin:None. I've never been accused of that.
Bryan:You and me both. Anyways, shout out to
Justin:our buddy, Mario, who's, having a great vacation, or we hope it's a great vacation, and he should be back with us next week. So let's get started. In today's episode, we're gonna talk about working from home. This is kind of a touchy subject lately. I don't know if you, read comments on Reddit or Facebook or whatever, but, there's some angst.
Justin:Right?
Bryan:There's some angry people, angry business owners, angry employees. Everybody's angry about working from home or not working from home. I mean, we found out we could
Justin:do it and then we're like, well, why don't we keep doing it? And, we're gonna talk about why we do, why we don't. So we'll talk about security. We'll talk about productivity. And then really for me, my passion is the culture behind it because I, I think that's what's really most at risk here is you can lose that company culture.
Justin:That is really, I don't know if it's hard to create, but you have to do it deliberately if it's gonna happen. And so this just adds a new challenge to it. So, on top of that, we are going to break down at a very, very, very high level, the largest ransom ever paid. And then we'll wrap it up with our normal formula for how to protect your business from the infamous Boris, the Russian hacker. Let's go ahead and jump in.
Justin:So, do you know much about this breach, Brian? I know I kinda just threw this at you last minute, but, have you heard
Bryan:of it? No. It was first time that, is. Okay.
Justin:Okay. So before we go there, I want to talk about this cybersecurity firm that I recently read up on, and this was the language on, on one of their websites. They have a couple. Here we go. We are an international team of technical specialists conducting research in the field of information security.
Justin:Our main goal is to make the world secure. Yes. Security costs money and so does our time. That's why we offer our services on a fee basis. That's all sounds reasonable.
Justin:Right?
Bryan:Pretty noble type. Yeah.
Justin:Yeah. Help the world. Types of services we offer, security breach investigation, protection against information leaks, and recommendations to protect networks and secure storage information. Sounds like a mess. Great group.
Justin:Sounds I am thinking like I I wouldn't be surprised to find that on my own website or to pull up your website and see it. Now, Brian, you might be shocked to learn that this is from the website of a cybercrime group called the dark angels, and they are responsible for the largest breach to date. Yikes. Help me help me draw the line between what I just read about these guys and this ransom note that says, hello, dear management of Johnson Controls International. If you're reading this message, it means that your network infrastructure has been compromised.
Justin:Critical data was leaked. Files are encrypted. Backups are deleted by Dark Angel's team. The best and only thing you can do is to contact us to settle the matter before any losses occur, and then I'm sure there's an evil laugh at the end of that. So
Bryan:So it sounds like their security breach investigation is doing the breaching, which probably happened to be how? And then they do it. And the protection against leak is pay us or we leak the information. Does that sound about right? And the recommendations, maybe at the end, they say, here's how we got in, how's you can here's how you could stop that.
Bryan:Yeah. I don't
Justin:know. Lessons learned like we always end the podcast. Right? Lessons learned. Yeah.
Justin:It's Next time next time, dumbass, don't leave, I I I don't know. Don't work from home. Oh. Oh, maybe that would be some of the lessons they learned. Maybe.
Justin:Some of the advice they give. One thing that I did find interesting about this group though, is that they are they're low key. They don't want to be in the headlines. And so they're very selective about whether they encrypt or do not encrypt people's data. They might encrypt just enough to let you know that they are in there.
Justin:Their big game is yeah. Yeah. They want you to keep running because they don't want you to be crippled to the point where you're making headlines. Like, I mean, it wasn't a ransom or even a security event directly, but the one we talked about last week that just took down half of the world. They don't wanna be that.
Justin:Right? They don't wanna be in the headlines. Their big game is exfiltrating data. Just tons and tons of data. And And holding it.
Justin:You know, I was reading Holding it
Bryan:Yeah. Not ransom, but, like, you know, pay us or we release it type of thing.
Justin:Yeah. Which, I mean, kind of is a ransom. Right? It's it is a type of, extortion. Right.
Justin:You know, maybe we'll just call it extortion. So interesting. And and this is one I like the subject just because it shows us, you know, this problem's getting worse from a financial standpoint. I don't like it because I don't have a lot of information. Lessons learned is like, guys, we just gotta get our shit together.
Justin:That's lessons learned because this is problems getting bad. Inflation, we all are dealing dealing with inflation. Right? That's that's kind of a another big headline. Brian, if you had to guess, do you know how much the average ransom payment increased just in the last year?
Justin:We're sitting here in August of 2024. So if we just averaged it out, go back a year.
Bryan:Yeah. I mean, we're talking deflation is what, like 7, 8%. So maybe that.
Justin:Would you be shocked to learn that it is, let me let me reveal it here. Whoops. I I I messed that up. I'm trying there we go. The average last year was 400,000, and the average today is 2,000,000.
Justin:So 5 times 5 times.
Bryan:Well, you know, maybe my bread went up 5 times in the last 20 years, but definitely not in the last 1 year.
Justin:Yeah. I mean, that's that's nuts. That, that's crazy. So,
Bryan:do you think that has a lot to do with insurance though? Because insure the most insurance policies have a $2,000,000 payout. Right? And maybe it has to do with that because I do know from our previous podcast that the packers will actually find your insurance documents and basically ransom you for the most that you have in your policy.
Justin:Yeah. And I'm I'm frantically trying to find, because somebody actually broke down in one of these articles I was reading, the the percentage paid by insurance versus the actual, organization. And it's it's actually the larger here we go. I think is this it? No.
Justin:Yes. Okay. And and also this is the I'm gonna read this whole quote. So this is from Sophos. Do you use Sophos Firewalls by chance?
Justin:Okay. So do I. So this is a Sophos report, state of ransomware, and they found the average ransomware payment had increased 5 fold in the past year from 400,000 in 2023 to 2,000,000. Sophos says that in more than 4 5ths, 82% of cases, funding for the ransom came from multiple sources. Overall, 40% of total ransom funding came from the organizations themselves and 23% from insurance providers.
Bryan:That's
Justin:it. So they're only paying about half of what the organizations are paying. Yikes. And we're still have my my, on the spot math says we're still missing 40, 50, 63. So 37.
Justin:37%. I don't know where that is getting, you know, who where they're pulling that out of, but anyways, Police agreements.
Bryan:Yeah. Right. Monthly services.
Justin:Insurance companies insurance companies are paying less than the organizations themselves. So Incredible. It is. I I don't know if that's because I I really wish I had more information here, but I do think it's this is why it's so important to know your insurance company, know your, you know, your what your policy is. Make sure that your IT company and your insurance policy are synced up, so that they you know, you don't have a chance of them not paying you.
Justin:So if I had to guess, this is an aggregate. You know, you've got some that aren't being paid by insurance, some that are, and you've got some that, you know, whatever. So my thoughts on the matter. What, what say you, Brian? Where where,
Bryan:Well, you mentioned that that this one was the largest one payout, but I don't think you touched base on how much it was. I'm curious now.
Justin:Oh, I probably didn't.
Bryan:I'm curious, like, if these these Dark Angels guys, gals, guys, gals, like, what was the payout? Like
Justin:75,000,000.
Bryan:That's a pretty
Justin:And and I think the previous largest it's almost double from what the previous largest was because I believe it was 38. It might have been 40, but it was in that range. Million. So we've damn near doubled the the previous record. Yeah.
Justin:I guess. It's crazy. I mean, you know, we're getting to the point where prevention is expensive. It always is. But man, with the cost of of these breaches, it continues to climb 5 times.
Justin:You know? And listen. I don't think that your clients, certainly not my clients, are going to be paying a $75,000,000 ransom out of pocket. Right? So we can say that to our clients, and they're just, you know, glass over whatever.
Justin:This this doesn't apply to me. But what does apply to all of us is that percentage increase, that inflation, if you will, of around
Bryan:What I would say to our our clients and our listeners would be, listen. You're not too small to be breached and have your systems ransomed. You're just too small to make the news. Right? Correct.
Bryan:And so Yep. You're not going to make big headlines across the world. Most of the breaches that happen don't. It's only these big ones that seem to make it. But if you were to talk to 10 business owners in a room, highly likely, 9 out of the 10 of those people have been breached, and the last person have been breached, and they just don't even know it.
Bryan:Right?
Justin:Right. Yep. Yeah. The statistics are not or the odds are not ever in our favor, shall we say? It's it's it's bleak.
Justin:God. I'm choking up here. It's because I'm so sad. It's bleak out there. Yeah.
Justin:I mean, it I'll I'll be I mean, I I joke about that, but it it really is tragic to me. You know, I say frequently that my passion is business. I love technology, but my true passion is
Bryan:business. Agreed.
Justin:You know, my parents owned a motel when I was, in my early teenage years, and they lost everything. Now it had nothing to do with cybercrime, but I watched firsthand that total devastation of a family's finances, and it's just heartbreaking. And so when I see stuff like this that, you know, it's not even that you could argue was a mistake they made. This is just flat robbery. I mean, it's it's criminal.
Justin:It's just it's it's horrible. So
Bryan:They'll blame they'll blame you, not the perpetrator. I know. Right? They'll be like, well, why didn't you why weren't you better? Why didn't you put more systems in place?
Bryan:Why didn't you put more protections in place? How how silly were you? And maybe they won't use the word silly, but you know?
Justin:No. If you if you ask our mentor, they'll call you stupid or irresponsible. Right? Irresponsible. Yeah.
Justin:Which isn't? It's one of the
Bryan:things breach you, will they call you stupid or irresponsible?
Justin:Or, will they call you stupid or just irresponsible? Yeah. They aren't gonna call you a victim. They aren't gonna call you a hero. They are not gonna call you anything good.
Justin:Nope. And so we are left with this battle, though none of us wanted. We're engaged in a faceless criminal, and these people, they're they're smart. They're well armed. There's tons of them, and some of them are state sponsored.
Justin:So this is a tough battle.
Bryan:So I know,
Justin:it's one that we I
Bryan:like to say to everybody, though, like, listen. It's just like bear in the woods. Right? If you wanna get away from the bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than the guy next to you.
Bryan:Right? Maybe even trip him on your way by. I'm just kidding. So, you know, how can we
Justin:Never never say that in a public forum, Brian. Jesus Christ.
Bryan:How do you protect yourself? Well, you just have to be slightly better than the guy next to you because then the criminals will go after them. Right?
Justin:I mean, it's true. It's true. Hey. Listen. I've I've said this before too, but I used to work, at a company, an armored car company, carrying money, and we carried a gun.
Justin:And when we went to training, that's what they told us is make it happen to somebody else. You're never gonna stop it. It's gonna happen. Don't let it happen to you. So, you know, and that is we'll we'll kinda conclude with this too.
Justin:But in this case, I don't have a lot of lessons learned, but what can we tell people about how to make these breaches, these ransoms happen to somebody else?
Bryan:Well, 1, if it does happen to you, keep a fake, you know, insurance policy in your files that say you only have, like, you know, $10 of coverage or that you were denied.
Justin:And it's expired. It's expired. Yeah.
Bryan:No. But in all seriousness, it's just, don't be the low hanging fruit on that tree. Right? Just, you know, put in the basics. You know, the the the things that we all should be putting in place, lock your doors, you know, close your windows, lock those 2.
Bryan:And, you know, the criminals will come by. A lock only keeps honest people honest. Right? So
Justin:Right. Yeah. I mean, you've got we call it industry standard. You can call it best practices, but, there is a set of things that we should all be doing. And that's kind of why we offer these assessments for free to anybody listening to the show here.
Justin:We can go in and we can measure your, your security posture against what the best standard best practices are and tell you where your gaps are and show you how to close those gaps. So and then wrap that up with a an insurance policy and and good policies and procedures, documentation. So,
Bryan:alright.
Justin:Let's let's jump off of that and talk about our weekly cybersecurity tip. We we opened with this. We're talking about working from home. When COVID hit, there was this massive rush to work from home. Do you know do you were you aware of either something you dealt with personally or even just something you heard in the news that was a work from home caused data breach.
Justin:Do you have any examples of that?
Bryan:Don't know. I I do remember I do remember selling a lot of laptops, though.
Justin:Yeah. And a lot of VPN setups. And, how come my VPN doesn't work and how come I can't print from home with a VPN? And we'll, we'll come back to the technical side of it. But, one that, so back then I was doing similar podcasts, different title, different, hosts.
Justin:But we did an episode on that, on this work from home concept and near as we could tell. So I don't, I can't document it. I can't prove it, but what the information that we dug up alluded to the fact that, because Garmin had a great big breach. I wear a Garmin watch for when I go running and everything quit working.
Bryan:Oh, no.
Justin:And this was a, a major, major outage on Garmin's part. And that's what we determined or or what we dug up is that it was most likely caused from that rush to work from home without contemplating security first. And somebody from home, their home computer was breached. They had a VPN right back into corporate network and, just opened up the whole world.
Bryan:I was very fortunate. I had, a wonderful, COO working with me, who, the moment that we heard about all this stuff happening, immediately said, we have to set up our clients to be able to work from home. And this was about a month and a half before, our government in Canada shut everything down, which was in March, I believe.
Justin:Really?
Bryan:And so in January, late January, Amanda was like, let's let's get our other clients set up in advance. And I remember emailing our clients, and my clients were applying back being like, do you really think this is necessary? I'm like, you know what? No harm, no foul. We get it set up.
Bryan:If you don't need it, you don't need it. Whatever. On the day that they we were shut down, I remember just having to send an email to everybody saying, yeah. Here's the instructions on how you can connect. It's already all set up.
Bryan:Everybody in your organization's ready to go to work from home, and all our managed clients were like, holy crap. Thank you so much. Right? And then we were able to help, I don't know, probably another 20, 30 organizations that weren't our clients, get set up to work from home as well. Because we already done.
Bryan:We already done with everybody.
Justin:Right. So Right. That that is fantastic. I mean, that's some serious foresight. I hope your clients appreciate and understand, you know, who who they have running the show here.
Justin:So
Bryan:I hope so. It
Justin:Hat tip
Bryan:to you.
Justin:Hat tip, seriously.
Bryan:The reason I brought it up was because a lot of organizations weren't in the same position, and they had to rush. They had to get things done fast. And in in doing anything rushed, you always make mistakes. Right? You can get things done cheap, fast, or good.
Bryan:Or no. What what is the triangle again? Cheap, fast
Justin:Or convene convenient.
Bryan:So, anyway, you can pick 2, not all 3. So, you know Right.
Justin:In
Bryan:this case, I guess a lot of people were doing it on the cheap and as quick as they could and the quality wasn't there. So
Justin:Maybe it was quality, cheap, fast, and cool and good quality. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. Hi.
Justin:Okay. So lessons learned, though. So you guys, you got everybody set up. What were some of from a a security standpoint, what were some of the lessons we learned back then or that we're still learning today from working behind, working from home? And again, this is specifically cybersecurity.
Justin:Security.
Bryan:I would say right now, the biggest lesson is everybody has a home computer. Most people have a home computer. And, you really ought not be using your home computer to do anything for business because, a, you've got a lot of personal things on there. Your kids are using it. They're downloading things they're not supposed to.
Bryan:They're trying to, you know, download, you know, the latest game illegally and and and, you know, playing, with software that might come from sources they ought not to. Anyway, point being is a lot of people using that computer or or if you have each have one. Point being is you're you're probably not putting as much effort into those devices as we would as IT providers protecting the devices that we issue to our clients. And so using your home computer, probably not a good idea to connect to business and or commercial resources. I would say that's the biggest lesson from my end anyway.
Justin:Yeah. And, you know, we we could I was gonna say take it a step further, but maybe an alternative to that because if if they are going to use here's the problem with what you just said that I've heard, you know, pushback I've got is that if they have a space set up on their home computers on it, they don't really have a desk for another computer. Mhmm. And they prefer to use their own. They're comfortable with it, whatever.
Justin:And so if that is the case, then we still need to secure it like we would any other, and they just have to agree with it. So it's a Yeah. It's a BYOD policy or, you know, you you gotta get the documentation in place first because you are going to take control and responsibility of somebody else's computer.
Bryan:What we ended up doing is we extended the our, some of our security tools to people's home computers to an extent. We we can't do too much because then when problems occur, then they'll blame it on us. But right. And we we wouldn't we weren't in a position to be able to support home computers because those things I don't know if you were you know, but, man, is there ever a lot of problems with home computers. Yeah.
Justin:There's a reason most of us don't handle that, that type of work.
Bryan:You know? The computer computer you you you touch the computer, the fridge stops working, and all of a sudden, you know, you're responsible for that. They're connected through the power. Right? Uh-uh, Justin?
Bryan:Right.
Justin:Yeah. Right.
Bryan:Yeah. They're part of the same grid, so you must have done something wrong.
Justin:You know, it's a stupid side note, but I hate it so bad when I'm on the other side of that. And I'm just absolutely positive that a technician of whatever sort did in fact cause a problem. But I I know this side of it, and I know that side of it. And so a lot of times, I'm I'm hesitant to even say anything.
Bryan:Bring your car in for for an oil change and you you drop it away and all of a sudden, your your, you know, radiator's overheating. And you're like, what the hell just happened? Yeah. It's never been a problem before. Be the guy at the station.
Justin:Oh, the game of fixing stuff. So alright. So we had this massive rush to work from home. We learned some lessons immediately. And then kind of what we're learning right now is that we opened a can of worms and we're, we're let the cats out of the bag or whatever phrase you wanna say.
Justin:And we're trying to figure out how to get, reverse this. Right? How do we get the cat back in the bag? Brian, have you ever tried to put a cat in a bag?
Bryan:I have. I would. I have not. But if I did, I'd make sure it was declawed first
Justin:Or or put the toothpaste back in the tube where it's it's not going back in. You know? And again, I It's not happening. I mentioned it before, but it's I mean, there's just constant outcry of employees who are being told to move back into the office. So let's talk a little bit about, this debate.
Justin:Now I put out on Facebook yesterday, you know, we have our little unhacked Facebook group, and I I made a quick little video and I just said, hey. If you've ever worked from home, tell me pros and cons in general and then specific to technology. And and I'm gonna go through some of these and then I wanna discuss them. And there's a few I'd I'd like to call people out by name just because I appreciate that they took the time to respond. So we'll give them a little shout out.
Justin:So I've got a Melissa who said, generally, I loved being able to be with my dogs, take breaks, and clean and do laundry. The flip side, sometimes I made any excuse to get the house perfect before I could dive into my work. So that that theme kinda comes up in a lot of these. It's your home. There's convenience to it, but there's also a lot of distractions.
Justin:And then Melissa said, my Internet and cybersecurity was fine. Some days, I I just wanted to see people, but most of the time not. So now we've got this kinda conundrum of, do I really wanna be with humans or not? We do want that social thing. I think when we're working on company culture, we kinda need it.
Justin:But, also, it's kinda nice to just, close your door, close your windows, and and be alone and get stuff done. So, I can relate to kinda all sides of that. Any thoughts on that one, Brian?
Bryan:Yeah. That I mean, the the social aspect was pretty difficult, like, not being able to to see people that you're used to seeing. I mean, yeah, there's so much to to to unpack there. I I
Justin:don't Yeah. Yeah. Alright. We've got, Terry. So distractions were hard when I was working from home.
Justin:I'd want to get all my household chores. I mean, like I said, this this thing comes up. Household chores done before starting on work. Cybersecurity was also an issue. You don't worry about it much when you work for a company, but when it's your own computer so Terry was, self employed.
Justin:When you work, when it's your own computer, you feel more susceptible. My laptop did get a virus when I worked for myself, and I didn't know what to do. So, that's and, honestly, that's something I hadn't considered because most of the time we're talking to larger organizations. But this does kinda leave people out in the cold who are, you know, what sometimes referred to as solopreneurs, you know, the the 1 or 2 person shops that don't have good IT. So, that was kind of an interesting comment.
Justin:Alright. Next up, Hank said, Hank, the separation of workspace from living space was hard to keep. Working from home was hard on the body, much more sedentary. It highlighted the need for good self care around body and socialization. A few minor password leaks, they just use 2 factor and and fix that problem.
Justin:So, I I mean, that's the sedentary thing, that's gotta be huge. Right?
Bryan:Yeah. I remember, I would take the kids because I have 2 boys, and I don't remember their ages back then, but, because I I blocked COVID that year in
Justin:a whole I think we all lost that year in our brains.
Bryan:So, anyway, I I remember taking the kids, for runs in the morning, and we would go for a run up the street and down the street. And I heard of people literally getting in their cars driving, you know, like, around the block a couple of times and then pulling into their driveway. And then, like, that way, they was like that was my commute home. Right? Or commute to the office.
Bryan:And when they walked in, they were, like, in a separate separate area of the of of of the of the house so that they they they had that separation.
Justin:Interesting. But Yeah. That's actually really interesting. I've I've read some, you know, psychological benefits to having, when I read it, it was it was I think they called it a pause button. You know, when before you walk in the house, you just sit there and reset your brain and and kinda remind yourself that you're you're now home.
Justin:Yeah. Off the clock, you'd leave your your work shit at work, and you now come in and focus on your family or your, you know, personal life or whatever.
Bryan:I couldn't do it. Like, personally, I couldn't do it. I I came into the off like, I lasted maybe a week working at home, and then I was the only weirdo coming into the office because we were we were considered, essential. So we were allowed to go to the office, but we most of our staff could work from home, and so we were like, yeah. Work from home.
Bryan:It makes sense safety wise. So I would be one of the there was 2 of us. 1 guy who who couldn't work from home because, I can't remember the his reasoning why, and and then me. And I came in. I would lock myself in my office, and and I had that commute to the office still, and I still had my commute home.
Bryan:And and, like, from my perspective, it COVID wasn't great, but, man, was the drive in ever good. Right? Nobody was on the road.
Justin:No traffic. No traffic. I know. It was beautiful.
Bryan:Transition between home and work, like, you often don't think about it, but that drive in is like a reset. Right?
Justin:It is. Yeah.
Bryan:Obviously, you don't wanna have, like, a 4 hour drive. I only had a 10, 15 minute drive, 10 on on a good day when I'm speeding and breaking the law, and 15 when I'm not. So
Justin:Yeah.
Bryan:Yeah.
Justin:Alright. Let's read another one from Diana. I've got I work as an NP remotely during COVID. I guess it was worked during COVID during, doing mental health. Yeah.
Justin:As far as remote work, I loved being able to have no commute. Take a walk or do chores on my lunch and be more present with my kids. Technology worked well. No security breach as I worked for a hospital that had solid system in place. That's good.
Justin:What I didn't love was sometimes it was hard getting patients checked in and out, which was because coordinating with other staff who were also remote was a bit difficult, on communication. We, oh, we weren't able to just talk to each other in the hall, etcetera. So that you know, coming coming back to the culture thing, that's really not culture, but kind of, you know, just the communication aspect. People were talking Yeah. Right.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan:What we did what we did there because we we recognized that pretty quick that, people were disconnected. We we set up 2 things, and one of them we're still doing to this day. 2 things. We set up a morning huddle on Zoom, and we would all get together in the morning and spend 15 minutes, and we would just ask silly questions, you know, just to so people can get to know each other. We can have a little bit of socialization.
Bryan:It was the whole company. There's 20 20 something of us, every time. And then, as we found that people were not communicating very well and and things were getting disconnected and disjointed, we actually set up an open Zoom room, and we thought, okay. People would jump in, you know, once in a while. We always had a rule.
Bryan:1 of the leadership team had to be in there. So if there was questions, and we we just thought, you know, people would come in once in a while. No. No. No.
Bryan:Everybody joined the Zoom room in the morning, and they left it on almost all day. And it was quiet 90% of the time. Nobody was talking. But if somebody had a question or somebody had a comment, they would just ask, and then, like, 4 or 5 people would jump in and answer. And if they were on a call with a client, they would just mute the Zoom room and and do their call and then come back.
Bryan:And it was just fascinating to me that all these people would join, and there was a couple outliers who didn't wanna social. But most people would just enjoy being in a room knowing that they can communicate if they wanted to just like if I could turn around with my colleague and have a conversation next to me. I thought that was fascinating, and it seemed to work really well.
Justin:I love that. Was that your idea?
Bryan:Gosh. No. I'm not that I'm not that smart. No. That was that was probably that was probably Amanda and or another one of my leadership team's ideas or possibly one of our team team themselves.
Bryan:Yeah. Ideas come from everywhere.
Justin:That's I
Bryan:believe in leadership at all levels. So somebody somebody somewhere came up with the idea.
Justin:Yeah. No. That that's that's brilliant. I love that one. I have to rat on myself a little bit here.
Justin:You said you've told me this several times. And somehow in my mind, I'm like, yeah. But how would you know anybody was talking? Because I'm picturing, like, a conference room with a Zoom meeting up on the wall and everybody at the office, and you could run into the conference room if you wanted to talk to somebody because I'm a dumbass. And I didn't realize they just had this thing open on their workstation.
Bryan:They're just at home, and they're just, like yeah. They were just all connected to
Justin:So if anybody talked, you're gonna hear them. Okay. Yep. Okay.
Bryan:Yeah. I'm I'm I'm Yeah. I was fascinated by it because a lot of our work Yeah. I I would say 90% of our work is is done individually independently where we're not actually talking to a client. We get the request.
Bryan:We remote into their computer or we we investigate. And a lot of that of the investigation is done, you know, outside of a conversation with a client. It's just happening in the background, right, where we're trying to fix things. And and it's a lot of trial and error. So 90% of the time, we're not on the phone with anybody, and so this Zoom room seemed to just hit the spot with people.
Justin:Oh, yeah. I love that. Yeah. So I actually do still have some employees that work from home, and I don't do that. I don't do a zoom room, but we do, we at least do a, a chat so that, you know, using teams in the morning, what are you up to?
Justin:What's on your, you know, high level overview of your calendar and do you need help with anything? Are you stuck anywhere?
Bryan:Right.
Justin:And then kind of a sign off before they go home, which is, you know, similar. What did I get done? Is there anything that I was trying to get done that I didn't get to? I think I think that that's kind of the Yeah.
Bryan:Like a brief and a debrief.
Justin:Now one thing I did notice though is that that interaction started dropping off. And if I didn't start the conversation, they would conveniently, you know, sign off and be gone for the day and forget to check-in Yeah. Both morning and evening. And so being a technology guy, I went in and figured out how to automate a, hey, guys. It's time for a check-in.
Justin:Here's what you need to check-in about.
Bryan:You have 10 seconds to comply. Yeah. Because you should be at your desk. So I'm just kidding.
Justin:So I don't know that, they appreciate it as much as I do because I have to kinda push the issue. But, like I said, culture is important, and I do think that we need to maintain, lines of communication. And maybe it feels a little big brother y of the you know, of me. I don't know. But it's it's as much for each employee as it is for me.
Justin:I want everybody to know we're all here. We're in this together. We're working even though we're not sitting here face to face all day long. So, alright. Let's let's roll back to some more Facebook comments.
Justin:Jeff said that he missed interaction with people, some personal issues with computers, but he's learned a lot. Cyber is a constant issue no matter who you are. Spam emails and text messages are my biggest enemy. God, I can relate to that. The text messages have gotten crazy lately.
Justin:And then Kara said I work from home 4 days a week, one day in the office. I love it now, but it took a while, started with a lockdown. And I love this line right here. She said I had to realize this was my job, not my purpose or my life. I get outside when I need a break and I work on my laptop on my patio when the weather is too nice to be inside.
Justin:So, I I love that that, you know, her job is not her purpose or her life. And I think I like that because sometimes I get wrapped up in that myself where I do kind of believe that my job is my identity. I
Bryan:think most entrepreneurs do.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway
Bryan:because you live and breathe. Right? You wake up in the morning. You're like, oh, you know, business. And then you go for dinner and or driving around like, oh, they could be a client or, oh, they could be a client.
Bryan:Right? Like, it's just constantly there.
Justin:Right. So I
Bryan:think from an entrepreneurial point of view, yeah, a lot of us are always on. Always.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. So it was interesting. Again, I I'm not surprised, but I am intrigued by how much of this did come down to the the social and maybe even I think mental health gets overused, but the, you know, the emotional toll that this can take, you know, both good and bad.
Bryan:Yeah.
Justin:From technology, Kara just said that updates were, were her problem. And, and Brian, I'm sure we can tell our own stories. That's a problem on both sides of the equation.
Bryan:Yeah.
Justin:Getting getting, remote users' laptops to update is,
Bryan:I've yeah. We just I know I know that it happens, for our our clients, in the background, and then it and then they get a message. And they may not like the message, but it's basically, you got x amount of time to reboot.
Justin:Right.
Bryan:Right. 4 hours, you could you can snooze this, but eventually, it's gonna do it. So, you know, kinda figure it out.
Justin:No matter what. Yeah.
Bryan:Yep. Yeah. Not all updates nowadays, though. It's 4 years later. Right?
Bryan:So not all updates today require update or reboot. So it's a lot better now than it was once upon time.
Justin:Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Let's see. Another one, David, he said same thing.
Justin:Separating home life and and work life can be difficult, but he liked the short commute. So, you know, it's it's just it was there wasn't a lot of difference in these posts, just maybe different perspectives on kind of a recurring theme of technology. Wasn't the biggest problem from an end user's perspective, which is good. From our perspective, it it definitely could be a challenge, right? Making sure that, things were secure.
Justin:But, you know, tying into, because I wanted to start including a weekly business tip in these podcasts, even though we're talking mostly about cybersecurity. How frequently do we as business owners? And I think you and I could probably say we do, but, how frequently do we contemplate the the social, the emotional, and the cultural effects of of the decisions that we make. Oh, boy. How would you answer that, man?
Justin:I and I think you do a great job because I know a little bit about your company and your culture. And I would say that you do actually a phenomenal job. But what are your thoughts
Bryan:on that? We believe, before culture is everything. How how we we run the company is paramount. Like, we involve all of our team members and all of our annual, quarterly, and weekly, and and monthly planning sessions. And we'll run by we so we have team leads, and we'll run by a lot of decisions we're about to make through the team leads to to get their gauge because they're a little closer to to people.
Bryan:But in general, you know, from my perspective, it is easy to find a client. And I don't say that, like, you know, it's easy to get clients because client getting clients is still difficult. But it is a lot harder to find the right person to work with you in your organization that has the same level of, culture, the same level of knowledge that you need, and just the passion to be able to get things done. Right? And so once we find those people, we wanna do everything we can to keep them.
Bryan:And we can't always, as MSPs, do that with dollars and cents because at the end of the day, private corporations, governments I mean, governments, for sure. I mean, they're using my money and your money in order to pay, you know, a higher salary than we could ever afford. And so, you know, we can't compete against, you know, the the cities and the and the and the and the municipalities. But where I can compete is creating an enjoyable workspace, creating a a a workplace that people love coming to. And and I think we've succeeded because most I I would say 99% of our staff, you know, out of the 21, 22 people that work here, maybe there's one that would wanna work from home.
Bryan:Everybody else wants to come into the office. They all wanna be here around each other, which is fascinating to me because a lot a lot of organizations, people don't wanna see each other. They're like, yeah. These people are not my friends, but all of our team, they seem to get along. In fact, they play games with it you know, computer games after hours with each other, and it's like, wow.
Bryan:That's awesome.
Justin:I mean, the truth is we're social creatures. You know, there are outliers in every, generality, but we as humans need and crave that, interaction with other people. And it's, you know, it it's I love the feedback that we got on Facebook because when I'm talking or or listening to this debate that's been going on for quite a while now about, you know, how angry people are that they're being called back into the office, If we're being honest with ourselves, we we do want and need that that social interaction as well. So, no easy answer, no good answer to this. I don't think.
Justin:But, you know, I I think these are some good tips on on ways to keep the, you know, keep the culture intact.
Bryan:And we gotta find balance. Like like, if somebody's not feeling well, they're just like, oh, I've got a little bit of a cold or they can work from home. Like, we in fact, I I we always tell our staff, like, if you're not feeling well and you but you feel well enough to work, but you you don't feel well, work from home. Like like, I don't want you in the office because then you're just gonna infect the rest rest of the the team, and then they're not gonna feel well. Right?
Bryan:And so but if you're not feeling well and you can't function, then just, yeah, stay home and take the time off. I'm I'm not looking to chastise anybody for not feeling well, mental health or otherwise. Yeah. It's all important. So
Justin:I wanna bring up one more thing, and I will make this pretty quickly because I think this is really where the debate is fueled, and it's in the subject of productivity. So from, from an employer standpoint, you and I know that, you know, time is money and if, and if people are screwing around and, feeding the dog and doing laundry and whatever, when, when we're paying them to, you know, do billable work, I mean, we realistically, we can't give them the same salary. Right? Or or we're gonna, you know, the business can go under. There can be other other challenges there.
Justin:But how did you either for yourself or recommend to your clients that they maintain a, you know, an adequate level of productivity? Whether it's the same or not, I don't care. But how do you keep it adequate? What what was your recommendations?
Bryan:Well, here's the challenge. There's 2 types of businesses out there, and this is where I think a lot of the the the the debate is being fueled. There's 2 types of businesses. There are or or I would say jobs because one business could have multiple types of jobs in it that that could work. Some people can work from home, and they could work after hours.
Bryan:They could work in the middle of the night. They can work, you know, during the day. It doesn't matter when they work. They could get the job done. And then there's other industries like ours where our help desk, they have to be on the phones from 8 till 6.
Bryan:Because they're not on the phones from 8 till 6. They could be on the phone all night long. It won't help me at all. Like, it won't help my clients because my clients aren't there during the night. They're there during the day, and that's when they need help.
Bryan:And so you've got this dynamic where there's 2 groups of people, and it's almost as if they're fighting with each other because they're not understanding that there's there's more than one type of work out there. Some things are time based that you have to do it during specific times of the day, and in some cases, you have to be in the specific location. Like, you can't be a janitor and work from home. Right? Like, there's some jobs that have to be done on-site.
Bryan:There's some jobs like, I can't fix somebody a client's computer unless I I mean, sometimes I can fix it remotely, but sometimes I have to go on-site. Right? So there's there's different types of jobs for the organizations. Just to answer your question directly, for the organizations that can work at any point in time, you judge how much productivity they're doing by the work that they they provide. Right?
Bryan:So did they were did they did they write the report, and was it on time? When they did it, who cares? Right? Then there's organizations like ours, like I said, with the help desk. The only way to measure that is were you on the phone and were you available and were you closing service requests Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.
Bryan:And how many were you doing? And so for my organization, I was able to say, well, before the pandemic, you were closing 8. Now you're closing 6. Before the pandemic, you were spending on average of 15, 20 minutes on a service request, and now you're spending an hour. Like, there's a disconnect between the 2.
Bryan:And so we treated every person as an individual and said, you're personally not as productive working from home than you are here at the office. So we're gonna ask you to come into the office now. But if somebody's like, we had a couple people who were just, like, they were monsters. They were just, like, closing service requests. They were helping clients.
Bryan:They were doing good. We're getting a lot more done at home. Hey. You wanna work from home? Have at her.
Bryan:I don't I don't care because the productivity was level was there. Not every organization is that fortunate. In some some places, they have no way of judging whether somebody is is functional, like, being as productive from working from home or not. And so there are software we could put on place, not necessarily big brother type of software, but just, you know, what application are they in, how much time are they spending in those applications, where are they spending their time, you know, and and those are types of things that you can't you can't put, like, an Autobot that moves your mouse. Right?
Bryan:Because
Justin:I was just gonna say, I'll fight you with my, mouse tiddler.
Bryan:Well, that that won't work because it'll just show that, you know, your mouse is moving back and forth, but nothing else is happening. Right?
Justin:Yeah.
Bryan:And so there there's there's technology there out there that that allows people to judge productivity. But at the end of the day, is is the job getting done to the satisfaction of what you're looking for and have people report back on what they're doing and when they're doing. Kinda like what you're saying. What did you do today, and what do you plan on doing tomorrow? Right, as a as a as a wrap up at the end of the day.
Bryan:And that, to me, is what the recommendations we're making to our clients is that they have people report back what they were what they did. And then you can gauge the the level of productivity based on was that work did that work take that long in the past compared to today? And, did they get the stuff done tomorrow that they said they'd get done today? Right? Or sorry.
Bryan:They said at the end of the day that they would get done tomorrow.
Justin:Right. I, just just random musing. Right? When when this first I guess before the debate really ensued, the first thing I started hearing about were people that had 2 jobs.
Bryan:I heard that too.
Justin:2 full time jobs, and they're working them simultaneously.
Bryan:Are outliers. Honestly, that was, like, the they are outliers. Absolutely. And those people, you just when you find out, you fire, move on. Right?
Bryan:Like, it's it is what it is.
Justin:Yeah. I mean yeah. So that but I do think, you know, that you you have some level of, maybe dishonesty, maybe just taking advantage of a situation that can be frustrating for an employer. So I'll I'll relate to that as an employer. And then at the same time, I'll just tell you.
Justin:But personally, when I've got a date and it's slow, there are not a lot of requests, you know, service requests on the ticket board. And, I don't have other things that need to be done. I actually like it when my employees can take a break.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Justin:Absolutely. I like it when when we have a slow day and I'm not gonna check-in on them. I don't care if they're if they're out shopping or walking the dog and my clients are happy and taken care of. Good for them. Good for all of us.
Justin:Right? So I actually I like that thing, you know, that that side of working from home for for my techs to do that.
Bryan:That's funny because I'm I'm, I'm with you on that one, but at the same time, we being that we we have, we we call them quarterly rocks because we follow traction. You know, we have these objections objectives that we have every quarter for all of our team members. And so when they're not working on something for a client, there's usually always something else for them to work on as a side project. Right? Is.
Bryan:And it's not mind numbing or hard or or anything like that. It's just when there's nothing because it happens sometimes where there's a slow day and no no calls are coming in. I mean, you know, knock on wood. It should hopefully happen more often, but it doesn't. Anyway, they have a side project that they can work on when, you know, that that and it's to help improve the organization and help improve efficiency and help make it so that there's not as much stressful things going on.
Bryan:Right? I'd much rather put out a fire by preventing it from starting in the first place than having to call the, you know, the the fire department to come put it out. And and I use that analogy. You know, when I say fire, I mean, like, technical issues. Right?
Justin:Yeah. And I'll just defend myself by saying yes. And I agree a 100% and, and, not, but, but, and this is a high burnout industry. So so where we're talking about retaining talent and keeping employees happy and, and even a culture, I've always been an advocate of taking time off.
Bryan:Yep.
Justin:So, you know, I, I encourage my guys to take at least a day off every single month, in addition to an annual vacation. And then I'm not gonna come out and just say, Hey, if there's nothing to do, go home or, you know, take actually, I have done that before. But, you know, generally speaking, this isn't something I would tell my technicians. But secretly behind the scenes, I'm like, good. You know?
Justin:I I hope you get a break, and I hope you love the job, and I hope you go tell your friends. Yeah. I can sneak off and go to the Walmart. Why won't you? You know?
Justin:As long as the things are getting done, both the clients and as you mentioned, the, you know, the internal projects and stuff. As long as all that stuff happening, I do still kind of champion the cause of letting people have their maybe just their control over their own lives or their own spaces.
Bryan:Adult? So
Justin:let them adult. Yeah. If you can get shit done and I can make money, you know Yeah. We're all happy and the client's happy.
Bryan:Yeah. Making money is not a swear word.
Justin:Correct. But I think this is a this is a debate that's nowhere near the end. I, I think we we opened a can of worms. It's gonna be open for a while.
Bryan:Yep. So Agreed.
Justin:That's that's all I've got on the work from home challenge, debacle, whatever we wanna call it. So we're gonna go ahead and move to wrap ups. Brian, do you have any key takeaways, any final thoughts? And then I'll go ahead and close with our normal formula, and we'll Yeah. Check out for a week.
Bryan:Couple key takeaways. Sounds like culture came up a couple of times during the call. So as much as possible, try to work into your culture, and and try to make it so that you'll find ways to keep people happy within your organization. But don't let people work from home with unsecure systems. Right?
Bryan:That at the end of the day, we still gotta make sure that we keep things protected. So at the very least, have the basic layer of protection, like industry standards. And if you're wondering what that is, reach out, call us. We can we can certainly walk you through that. And, as my, you know, regular, tip, that is try as much as possible to be 1% better every day regardless of what you're doing.
Bryan:You are responsible for cybersecurity in your company. Regardless of who you are from top level CEOs all the way down to, you know, the the the lowest paid worker within the environment or whoever that might be, you are responsible for cybersecurity and take ownership over that and try to put as many things as you can in place 1% at a time. You're not gonna get it all done right away. But if you improve every day and you make it a habit of trying to put something in place every day, whether that be for cybersecurity or something else in your company, get 1% better.
Justin:Yep. I love the 1% better thing. I'll just add, or maybe maybe, reaffirm. You know, when we're working from home or working from the office, it doesn't matter. Cybersecurity just has to be a priority.
Justin:It has to be from the top down all the way through the the ranks. We all have to fight this battle because we are fighting monster criminals, monster crime rings. It's not child this this isn't like, you know, playground, bullying. This is this is real stuff. It's war.
Justin:It's like fucking war. We are fighting Russian criminal, Russian crime rates.
Bryan:We have to be right a 100% of
Justin:the time. Say that lightly. You only have to be right once. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin:So, get everybody involved from the top to the bottom. And, you know, I I had this really profound thing I was gonna say after that, which I completely forgot. So, wrap it up with our formula, industry standards, best practices, whatever you wanna call them. That's where we come in. This is the free audit that we're talking about.
Justin:We'll come in. We will measure your network, your data, your technology, your best practices against what the industry says we should be doing. We're gonna then that'll always leave some amount of gap because 100% isn't a real thing in cybersecurity. It's just a changing game. It's a moving target.
Justin:So we're gonna take that. We're gonna cover our asses with policies and procedures that we, we use, we train, we educate our employees on, and then we're gonna get a good insurance policy and make sure that we're following all of their recommendations. That brings us, at least in my mind, to a 100% protection. And that is my sign off for this week, guys. Thank you, Brian, for being here.
Justin:Thank you, Facebook audience for participating. Brian, just just heads up. I've got, Liana on the team now working with me, and she did what I've been trying to do or or talking about doing for quite a while, which is just go out and invite all of our friends to our Facebook group. So, help us spread the word. Go to unhacked.live.
Justin:Go to our Facebook group. Reach out, and we'll schedule one of these assessments for you. Whether you're a company big or small, we all need it, and we'll give you the formula. That is all I've got. Take care guys, and we'll see you next week.