Introduction: Welcome to the entrepreneuring show, where we strive to provide insights and stories for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, where innovation meets inspiration led by veteran entrepreneur and tech founder. Here’s your host, Jill Button.
Jill: All right, we are live. Today’s episode is brought to you by Armour Cybersecurity. Armour Cybersecurity protects organizations and their data from multi faceted and ever changing cyber threats. They provide end to end cybersecurity services backed by top global talent and a comprehensive ecosystem of leading technologies.
Jill: Armor security is your one stop shop for all things cyber helping clients reduce business risk associated with business threats in a timely and cost effective manner offering advisory professional managed and incident response services To learn more about armor armor cyber security or to join our thriving procure hub community of entrepreneurs.
Jill: Procurehub. ca for more information And check out our show notes for more links Today, my guest is David Chernitzky, the CEO and co founder of Armour Cybersecurity. He is a visionary serial entrepreneur driving business growth and scaling successful ventures. His expertise lies in business and technology, enabling digital transformation.
Jill: Fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration, strategic partnerships, and philanthropic engagement are essential aspects of his leadership style, reflecting his commitment to making a positive impact on society. Welcome to the show, David.
David: Hi Jill. Thanks for having me here. I’m excited and looking forward to our conversation.
Jill: Yes. We’re very excited to have you as well. I’m excited because cyber security is such an important topic for small and medium sized businesses. And I don’t think people truly understand what it means. So, I want to first of all, can we talk a little bit about your background and experience? What prompted you to become an entrepreneur?
Jill: And in fact, you’re a serial entrepreneur. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
David: Sure. I’d say. If we’ll have full two hours to talk about that, I’ll give you the full story, but I’ll try to summarize and to a compact it to a, to a shorter answer. A, I actually was born in a, a former Soviet union. And as you know, it was a almost colony set up where a.
David: People have very simple lives and they at the time of
David: Perestroika, it’s a 1985. I’m just disclosing how old I am I I remember things started to get changed and I seen a lot of people going Into business. I start to do business with west and they it was fascinating for me as a kid. They a as a kid all this business forward and how to do business how to create value and Well, fast forward.
David: They had the many years after that, when they came to Canada and I eventually worked for big corporations, but I always wanted to do something off my own. And at age of 42, maybe it was midlife crisis. I’m not sure.
Jill: you and me both, David.
David: me and my business partner, we went on a tough hike in Newfoundland.
David: And we climbed on a mountain that, only then I realized that my business partner did not do the proper research. It’s a, it’s one of the toughest trails that you can find in this neck of the woods. And we started four people. We had to call chopper for two of our friends. to evacuate in the middle of the trail.
David: It was a 80 kilometer slope, no marked trails, nothing, nothing, nothing. And eventually after we finished, it was one of the moments I said, okay, it’s if we did that, we can do anything. And since then we left our cushy jobs in the enterprise. We actually started three businesses since 2018 because I felt the say hunger of doing more and conquering the world.
David: There is so much opportunity out there. And they I think now six years after I. Became entrepreneur and the business owner. I still have this hunger, but now I’m much more dialed on [00:05:00] how to execute it. We are smarter. We learn. So in a nutshell, this is how I became an entrepreneur.
Jill: So, so basically you had a midlife crisis, atop a mountain, and you decided you needed to do something that would seize the opportunity, control your destiny, and here you are.
David: Exactly, exactly. And you know, looking, looking backwards, it’s totally a rational decision, but I think every person has his or her own. Point that they’re ready to jump into the water. And they, I like to use this, say Nike slogan. You need just, just do it. It’s the right time. Now it is never right. Right.
David: And as a matter of fact, I’m extremely happy for my brother. He’s a 12 years younger, and that was brainwashing him to become a. Entrepreneur. And he recently just purchased a business as maybe you heard like baby boomers retiring, and there’s a lot of businesses are available for sale. And he actually bought a very nice business.
David: And I think it’s not for everyone, but for those people who have this say. Tickle to do something they want, not just wake up and every day to go to the office for all their life to the same office. Sometimes it’s not exist anymore, but, you know, proverbial office and just sit and complain for those who are some people like it.
David: No problem. But those who complain and say, Hey. Life is beautiful. You just go and do something. And they, I think obviously this hike in Newfoundland, it was a, there was a lot of black flies, actually, you know, that they have swarms of black flies and we survived that. And he said, after that, we can do it.
David: But I Was the last mile in multiple people that I went through my career. Like I met a lot of people that are deep, deep, fantastically. And some people fail, but you learn from these people and you listen to the universe and it leads you to the point that you’re saying, okay, now I’m ready to jump to the water and just do it at this point in time.
Jill: It’s interesting because we share a bit of a background in terms of, you know, our desire to leap off the corporate ladder myself, similar to you. I was in a corporate role. I had a really good job, good paying job, and I had that itch as well. I felt like there needed to be, There was something different, something I had to do.
Jill: I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do, but I, I actually leapt off the corporate ladder when I was I think I couldn’t have been the entrepreneur that I am today without that experience. It really led me to what I think is my destiny. And, you know, it’s an, it’s an incredibly rewarding career being an entrepreneur, but man, it’s scary.
Jill: There’s a lot that I think people. You know, they glorify what it means to be an entrepreneur, but the realities are incredibly different. So thank you for sharing sort of your origin story. Before we get into more questions, I just want to remind our listeners that you can ask a question of David, whether it’s about his background of being an entrepreneur or.
Jill: Or if you have any questions about cybersecurity, ’cause we do have a cybersecurity expert here today. Just pop them into the, the comment section and we’re gonna get to those later in the show. So speaking of some scary challenges, can you tell me what has been for you, one of the biggest obstacles?
Jill: Like what has been that thing that has really given you the biggest challenge?
David: Again, we need two hours only for that section, but I’ll try.
David: The biggest challenge, I think it is a And and by the way, just to give a bit of background that how we started our more cyber security We are totally privately owned. We are Not the typical cybersecurity company that usually people will think, okay, let’s go and look for investment from someone so we can start.
David: So, so obviously before we started, our challenge was, okay, how do we find the year one? And I I’m telling today to all entrepreneurs that think about jumping into the cold water and starting their own business, ensure that you can survive year one, because. You, you have a lot of hopes. You are sure you’ll be successful.
David: This is the right set of mind. But reality is reality. And, and the year one, usually it’s a trial period you’re trying. And sometime I’m a joking like I’m telling everyone that my mom wanted me to be a doctor. I did not become a doctor, but at least I did enough human trials in year one to try to see what works and what is not working.
David: And today, six years after after the beginning of first business I’m actually in a category that it’s a very interesting to see that I’m in 2 percent of companies that survive five, five, five first years, a lot of absolutely. And the only thing that made us to get there as a team here, it’s be constantly adjusting and adapting.
David: Like you have your ideas, you, you have your plans. reality happens and you need to adjust to reality. If you’re ignoring the reality, it will kill you. Simple. So again, the challenge of the, I think, I think what I’m trying to say that you constantly need to adjust. Also, if your gut feel says that, Oh my God, I wanted to do something else, but reality happened.
Jill: You need to adjust. And I think it’s the biggest biggest trait of any, any successful entrepreneur that people need to adopt and listen to the market, listen to their clients. What are the biggest gaps? What need to be solved? And that that magic is happening. Good. Very good. So the resilience, the adaptability, listening to your customers in the market.
Jill: There’s a question coming in from Susan. She says, great to see you. Why did you choose cybersecurity as your calling? What was it about cybersecurity?
David: Yeah, so it’s actually a great question. Thanks, Susan. After after a Iron Curtain fell in the former Soviet Union, my family actually immigrated to Israel and they spend a about 15 years in Israel, 12 out of which 12 I spent in the Israeli military and the majority of it.
David: I’ve been serving in a in a intelligence core corpse elite unit. They dealing with cyber. So for me, picking a cybersecurity as a business was a natural choice and be in around 2013, I started to look at the market and to look, what could I do as a, as an entrepreneur? And I seen huge gap on a cybersecurity, even bigger organizations.
David: been breached and struggling. Once we started to look deeper and me and my business partner, we seen huge gap that called in cybersecurity in small and medium businesses and small and medium businesses are representing today in Canada around. 99. 8%. This is statistics Canada. It’s not my numbers. And once we started to look at this segment, we seen that usually these guys left alone and not getting access to cybersecurity resources.
David: So it is really. I think cybersecurity was the end result of trying to get into multiple businesses. Say, for example, I, my, my, my, actually my own first business, I had small retail shop for furniture because it was cool. It worked. We sold it online and then it happened. It, this business died, but it’s again, it, again, it was a lot of experiments until you find the right fit and say, Hey, here, I can bring value.
David: And and kind of it was no brainer. And I know it sounds almost way too easy, but I believe that universe aligns people with what they’re good at. And you know, this Jim Collins book that I’m big believer in, you need to be good at something you need to be passionate about. And you need people to meet. It should be a real problem that need to be solved.
David: And I think in my case, Three things aligned together.
Jill: So, so it’s really interesting that you were, I would say a bit ahead of the curve. So large corporate organizations, certainly we’re dealing with cybersecurity, but small and medium sized businesses, not so much. They really aren’t thinking even today about cybersecurity and the importance.
Jill: So Susan’s asking as well. So when should a business start thinking about cybersecurity? Like how small is too small? Tell us a little bit about that and our listeners would love to know, like, should they be thinking about that now? And has the threat really increased exponentially? It seems like it has.
David: So it’s a great question, and it’s a very heavy question. I’ll try to unpack it in a couple of layers, and everything is strung back together. So cybersecurity today is an ever evolving, rapidly, domain. And it’s, unfortunately, it’s always behind cybercriminals. Last year, damages due to cybercrime ended up at 7.
David: 5 trillion globally. I’ll repeat 7.5 trillion.
David: 2022 ended up in December with 4 trillion in damages. So it’s almost doubled over, over, over, over, over one year. This year we are, we’ll be around nine and a half to 10 trillion. And this is again, not my numbers. I just quoting is a staggering, very reputable research houses. Now, this is very lucrative business for criminals, and we see a shift from state level actors that are funding their wars through the cybercrime.
David: So I organized cybercrime, organized crime, move to cybercrime because it’s way easier than smuggling drugs, guns, or doing human trafficking. And eventually all of that fueling cybercrime and it’s virtually not enforceable today. A lot of good people trying to fight the, across different ages, agencies across the globe.
David: But it’s not enough and it’s not even scratching the surface. So this is, this is the biggest motivator for cyber crime to be one step ahead of cyber security. Now, if you look at cyber security and you are, you are saying, and I have those conversations all the time Oh, I’m too small. I’m not the target.
David: No, there is no such a thing for someone sitting with a keyboard somewhere around the globe and targeting organization. If they can make. A thousand dollars and it’s easy. They will do it and they’re everyone. Everyone is a target A director muller of fbi. I think it was around 2015 or 16 coined this term There is two types of organizations in this world those who got breached and those who will be breached
Jill: Yes, and people that ignoring it basically
David: They’re not ready for next cyber attack and many times, especially in small and medium business segment is it cost them a business in the U. S.
David: They have this statistic that 60 percent of businesses hit by significant a cyber attack going out of business in six six months after this attack. And if you layer it up with the fact that there is 4000 technologies built predominantly for large enterprises, Those guys have deep pockets. They can hire people.
David: By the way, there is three and a half million people missing in cybersecurity industry today. And most of them be guys grabbing. We see the factor today that we’re going to small and medium enterprises. Organizations up to 500, 600 people. Usually they have just 80 people working for them. They don’t have experts that know how to set up proper cyber security, a protection for this organization and all these factors, too much technology, not enough experts, everything interconnected because of digital revolution, everything on the cloud and high motivation by criminals creating perfect storm.
David: That’s small and medium businesses getting killed and you don’t hear about them because only one out of seven breaches are actually reported and usually only bigger guys report the reality is, unfortunately, it’s much more for lack of better word uglier out there and the people don’t realize that, you know, maybe just to finish one sentence.
David: I always think cyber pain Whoever experienced it, he understands it. He or she understands it. But many times it’s like, I’m asking people, do you know how to ride a bicycle? Person say, yeah, of course. I say, you remember when you’ve been a little, you fell once or twice, you scraped your knee. It hurt like hell.
David: You understand now physical pain. So next time you’re very careful. Cyber pain is just new type of pain that people don’t get. And until they going through that, and sometimes it’s way too late if they’re not prepared properly, but this is a reality.
Jill: I think that’s so true, right? So a lot of times you actually have to feel the pain of, of something, whether it’s cybersecurity or, you know, in my line of business, it’s procurement and contracting, and, you know, you need to feel the pain in order to really appreciate what, what you’re doing.
Jill: What needs to be done, the cure, so to say, so to speak. So for entrepreneurs, though, you know, yourself that being an entrepreneur is, is incredibly challenging and we just don’t have a lot of time and we sure as heck don’t have a lot of money. So how big. Should you be before you start really taking cyber security seriously?
Jill: Don’t wait for an attack. Like, is it two people? Is it three people? Is it 1 million? Is it 5 million? When should entrepreneurs really take seriously budgeting for cyber security? What size organization?
David: Eh, it’s very simple problem. You need to build your business. The fact that today, regardless what is your vertical, be you extremely high tech focused organization or manufacturing, low tech manufacturing organization, everything interconnected today.
David: Oh, most probably your, your email is in the cloud. Most probably you have ERP. You have website, this is your face. And the question is that there is a gap, educational gap that we spend in our business today, our real goal is to educate, to explain how much it will cost you if everything is gone, can you, can you recover and continue operating?
David: What is your reputation is damaged to the level that you will lose everything. Six months from now, you’ll lose 60 percent of your revenue. Of course, everything costs money, but it’s not about the cost. It’s about risk management, how much you can lose versus how much you need to spend a little to protect yourself right now.
David: So you will become less attractive target. And by the way, attacks will happen on any size of the business. It’s guaranteed. We cannot prevent it. What we can do, we can manage the risk, how well you’re ready. For next cyber attack. So they will come and they try to knock on your door and say, well, this organization protected, let’s go to the neighbors and the answer is you need to think about it from day one.
David: And there are ways how to measure it and right size it for a specific business size. This is what we specialize today. We, we have very large clients, but majority of our clients, small and medium enterprises spread around the globe today. The problem is very common anywhere from Mongolia and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia all the way to Hawaii and anywhere from northern Canada to Argentina.
David: Same problems everywhere. And we right size it for the risk appetite that organization has. And this is the biggest, by the way, it’s the biggest difference. A lot of people confusing, oh, I have my IT guys. Yeah, your IT guys dealing with IT security. What we do, we’re managing business risk. associated with cyber threats.
David: And of course, it touches technology at the end of the day, but it’s much bigger and much broader picture that you need to think about. Okay. So what I’m, what I’m hearing is you’ve got to build it into your business model from the beginning. You can’t afford not to, and that if you really are looking at growing a business, this has to be a priority.
David: It can’t be wait until you experience your first attack and then figure out how to budget, because it could be catastrophic. It could be the end of your business. Correct. Correct. And if you look to that U S actually, they currently working on promoting initiative that every company that has boards shouldn’t, shouldn’t have board Cybersecurity expert on a sitting on a board that advising them on how to protect the business.
David: This is for, typically for larger organizations, but they, we have like, maybe I’ll give you a real life example. We have a startup out of Montreal. We started to work with them. They’ve been three people and they’re in a very specific very heavy, high tech environment. They’re building their platform on a cloud.
David: Service in certain industry, they grew today to 50 people organization. And the multiple times we get in a feedback that guys, if you would not lead us through that way, that you protected our platform [00:24:00] from day one, you put proper processes and controls in place. We will give up and we’ll go away. It’s not a, in 2024 in a digital world where everything interconnected, it’s not an option you have otherwise other organizations that did it will survive and you might, you might not.
Jill: So it’s interesting that you talk about large organizations and the imperative. I know that large organizations around regulatory in particular, do you have certain obligations around risk, especially around the protection of, you know, personal identifiable information, confidential information. How does that apply to small or medium sized businesses?
Jill: What sort of obligations did they, do they have that maybe entrepreneurs just don’t know about?
David: Yeah. So, so, so again, it’s a, it’s a great, a great question. And every jurisdiction behaves slightly, slightly different. And they, but if you’re familiar with GDPR from Europe, obviously, and they, I think it became to be.
David: The fact of golden standard or master plan that a lot of jurisdictions across America, and I’ll talk about the North and South America replicated this model and basically implement a different form in different forms. This regulation where basically regard, regard, regardless how big are you, and if you have your clients, data, personal, identify, identify, identifiable data.
David: If you have your employees, a personal identifiable data. You have to protect it. If, if and some, some industries are more regulated, some industries less regulated. But, but at the end of the day, you have to have this accountability to protect this data. Having said that we see different jurisdictions that have more these two regulations some of them less.
David: And they obviously be guys compliant with that because there are big targets that it is easy to go after them if they’re not compliant. If you look at small to small and medium enterprises, some of them ignoring it because there is not enough enforcement or teeth from regulation side. And I hope one day that regulator will actually put some re and enforce.
David: By the way, in Canada, we, we have regulation. Did you ever heard about someone penalized because they are not following regulations as a small and medium business? I didn’t hear about it. We need to, we need to have firmer hand on enforcement. It will be better for everyone.
Jill: I think it’s good advice. And again, I think that there’s such a lack of understanding and knowledge in the SMB space around cyber security and the obligations as a business to ensure that you have the right protections in place.
Jill: So it’s really helpful for you to share that knowledge. What can you share with us in terms of your domain expertise? Obviously, with many, many years in cyber security, what are some of the things that businesses can do and understand they could hire an expert? What are some of the things that entrepreneurs, small businesses, medium sized businesses can do practically to protect themselves?
Jill: What are some of those tips you could share?
David: Jill, thank you for asking this very heavy questions. And again, I can spend very long time just talking, talking about every topic, but let’s try to dissect it and the just to make it very practical and what we see today that some people over simplify and it’s getting them a compromise and some people are completely ignoring.
David: If you ask me those like if you ignore problem, it almost kind of deserve it, right? So we always like to take people that understand that this domain need to be dealt with and and then you just need to deal with what are the most critical, critical pass for compromising your business. And many times we’ve been playing this game and I’m coming to the business owners, Hey, you know your business the best, what, how, if I’m criminal, let’s play a game.
David: You are a criminal right now and I criminal, we are a team, how we will compromise your business. And usually people were naming very quickly, three, four. Key areas that will, will hurt them the most. So it’s okay. Let let’s zoom out and let’s just start building logical. What is your top priorities? Let’s put best practices around it.
David: And you need to have a, unfortunately there is no way around the, you need to have expertise on, to know how to deal with different type of problems. It’s a, think about simply like if you have a car. And you can go into any car wash, yeah, it will be clean car. But if you have a mechanical problem that you need expertise to fix it, you need to work with experts.
David: There is no way around it. And, you know, I always talk to IT folks, and I spent many years in the IT industry, and I always say we are like two doctors. There’s a general physician, and you have specialists, let’s be cardiologists, right? If you have problems with your heart, yeah, your GP can talk about those problems in general.
David: Would you let your GP to do open heart surgery on you? To date, I didn’t find even one person that would agree. And again, it’s, you need to, even though you’re a small, small organization, you need to have generalists and specialists working together. It’s, it’s not same set of skills. It’s maybe it’s overlapping a little, but it’s complimentary.
David: And they, this is true for a, for any size of organization. And then there are luckily, you know, there, there are a lot of companies today that provide access to expertise, even to small and medium guys. We are, we are growing and we are getting bigger and bigger, but. Again, we understand the problem in this specific segment.
Jill: So your advice is don’t do it yourself. You need to hire an expert. People need to hire the expertise in order to do it right. That actually takes us to the, a good question from Brock. So Brock says, do you work with MSPs, managed service providers who May not have the right expertise and server security and the tools that they need.
Jill: Do you work hand in hand with them? So that doctor and doctor are specialists and specialists. Do you work with MSPs?
David: This is actually a great question. As a matter of fact, yes. And they, one of the key growth factors for us, we have IT managed services providers from around the globe that they realize that they don’t have.
David: Breads and dabs of expertise that they be as a pure cybersecurity player company do do. And it’s one of the best sales channels for me as a business today. It’s my ITMSP partners that we empower them to get access to the best expertise, best technology wrapped up as a service. And they can together, we basically providing much more value to their clients.
David: Great question.
Jill: So ProcureHub, we actually have a number of IT, peer, peer play IT support organizations as well as yourself as, as cybersecurity expertise. So for those who are on ProcureHub know that Armor Cybersecurity is available to partner. So that’s, that’s great. That’s good news. And I love that.
Jill: I love seeing the community collaborate, learn, and support one another. There’s another question that’s, I think really great. So how is ai or machine learning impacting current cybersecurity defenses and threats?
David: I, you know, AI is all the rage. Everybody’s talking about ai, ai talk about that as it relates to cybersecurity. So, so you, you know, I, I’m. Getting called today to multiple public speaking opportunities around the globe. And the first time I’ve been asked to speak on the stage in front of 800 people, I think it was last August. And they basically asked how AI impacting the cybersecurity world. And as a company, we created this presentation that talks about how AI fueling cybercrime and the.
David: a propelling forward cyber security since then I did four more engagements and every time every two months or so that I make doing new engagement I’m updating the deck and it is incredible to see the progress a AI at the end of the day generative AI and we’ll talk about generative AI today it’s a purely productivity tool unfortunately it’s a productivity tool and tool that allows to invent novel attacks also for hackers and they absolutely love that technology they’re adopting and they we can see new types of attacks we can see a malware that can before that you need to have to have highly qualified the person with many times with years of experience that Could create malware that can get, could get to any environment.
David: You have something called the malware GPT that you basically give a parameters of the target environment. And we’ve seen the scripts generated that basically allowed to breach you. It allows you a deep fakes, a deep fakes is amazing. And this year started with the bank this bank in Hong Kong lost 25 million because The boss of the guy got on the call with him was sitting there and it was a C fall of the bank Employee just wired 25 million dollars never been Recovered and I can go with examples of types of attacks that we never seen before be as humans Have harder and harder time to identify what is real or not for you.
David: So cybersecurity responding Leveraging AI as well trying to match the stance and they to provide decent protection Having said that like I mentioned before we always playing a catch up game because there is a big big money to be made on cybercrime People are very creative. People are using new technologies You We as an industry unfortunately playing a catch up game and It’s only will get worse in upcoming years.
David: We need to get ready.
Jill: Yeah, it’s really scary. I mean, you know, AI has the power to do good in the world, and it really is about who is wielding that tool, the ability to, you know, improve productivity, the ability to alleviate some of the challenges, even from an entrepreneur perspective, you know, leveraging AI in your business.
Jill: And helping to improve your ability to respond and create content and, and create strategy even is, is incredible. But, you know, it is very scary how AI can be used as a weapon in this manner. And it’s, it’s scary as an [00:36:00] entrepreneur. How could an entrepreneur, I know I asked you this before and, you know, hiring an expert is, is, is obviously the best route, but what can an entrepreneur do if they, if they have a limited budget to work with, what are some of the things that they can do just simple things to protect themselves, especially from, from, like you said, deep fakes can you give us any insights in that?
David: Yeah, absolutely.
David: So see, there’s a lot of resources available online as well. There’s always a route that you can spend time and learn. The question is, how do you balance What you are good at and you need to spend time there versus basic needs. You know, it’s like muscle ladder of needs, like cyber slash physical.
David: Like I’m always adding to that classical model, like physical safety, but I’m adding cyber safety because it can become physical, right? You can do as a small business, let’s say you just started, you just have your email, you just have some some online systems that you use like CRM or like whatever SAS platforms use password managers, use MFA everywhere, backup your data.
David: And there is very specific ways. Again, I will not get to details how to backup your data, but a lot of people Think, Oh, I have a, my data on my computer and then I just copy it to one, one drive or my Google drive. It’s not the back that there are dedicated backup solutions that. You need to have agent with MFA and you need to have some offline copies.
David: So, protect your and Jill, Jill, just two simple things. Protect your computer. MFA.
Jill: What is MFA? For those who don’t know what I know what MFA is, but explain what MFA means.
David: Sure, sure. So, MMFA think about it, it’s a, as a secondary authentication method, or it’s MFA stands for multifactor authentication or it many times it’s called secondary authentication.
David: So you have your password, thank you, which have to be, by the way, longer than 12 characters should have uppercase, lowercase, special characters, numbers, anything lower than that statistic showing that this a password cracker. It can be cracked in a matter of hours, many times. So use strong password, use unique password.
David: Every service you use, use very different password that not similar in any way or shape to previous password, plus have second factor authentication. Many times it’s Google authenticator. For example, it’s a free app that basically have every 30 seconds. It’s six digits rotating and you just need in this point in time to insert for this specific service this specific number that you see that makes it much harder for attacker to manipulate.
David: Is it 100 percent safe? Unfortunately not, but in most of the cases, yes. And again, it’s Bay. If attacker has motivation, they will go through MFA. They will find the way. But again, for most of the people today, strong passwords, unique passwords, MFA on all services, proper EDR. It’s not antivirus. They’re like, there are way better technologies today than traditional antiviruses on your machine.
David: Protect your email. Backup your data, you will survive. It might hurt, but you will survive. And again, you can start building up from here. I know it’s very technical, but this is the world we live in. And like you said at the beginning, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. Don’t understand it, but you have to be aware of that.
David: You don’t need to understand, but you need to understand that you need to manage those recently. Yes, yes. And you know, I, I am, I’ve been around the IT world for quite a long time. So through Osmosis, I’ve learned all these acronyms and I’ve helped many organizations buy technology for the last 35 years.
Jill: So. I can imagine how daunting it is though for an entrepreneur who hasn’t been right. So, you know, getting that information out to them is important for me. Getting that information to, at a level of detail and understanding is really important and I appreciate you helping. So, you know, you talked about the basics.
Jill: Those are the basics that people need to have. You know, multi factor identification can be a pain for a lot of people. I know they try to bypass MFA or they reuse their passwords. On a regular basis. Don’t use your maiden name, your dog’s name, your cat’s name. It has to be unique. So I appreciate you sharing all those.
Jill: I do know that your organization as well provides free consultation. So, so I know that that’s one of the things we’re looking at providing on ProcureHub is to give To make it more accessible to people who are looking at cyber security, looking at taking it serious free consultations to discuss cyber security needs.
Jill: And you also provide education, which I think is really important because, you know, there’s this. Do it with you versus do it for you. So helping people, you know, don’t do it yourself. Like you said, early on is not a good idea, but doing it with them, helping them, giving them consultation and education, I think is a really great option for those who are maybe struggling with a budget and not sure how much they should allocate, you know, asking the questions, talking to an expert is a really great first step.
Jill: And the consultation is. free. So that’s awesome. Is there anything else you’d like to share with us? I’d like to talk a little bit more about again, being an entrepreneur, right? Cause this is the entrepreneuring show. Let’s, let’s sort of spin it a little bit. What’s the most rewarding thing about being an entrepreneur that you really love.
David: That I actually was preparing for that question. I have a hundred percent ready answer. A lot of people thinking that Being an entrepreneur, it is absolute freedom. It’s not true. It’s the only freedom we have as entrepreneurs is what we can do. And with whom we are doing that it be it’s your business partners, be it.
David: People that you’re hiring, people you work with, and I think this freedom is a, it’s an ultimate freedom. I’m still working in business and they, you’re building it up that eventually team is growing right now that I bring in very strong people that I really enjoy to work with. And visit time. I want to zoom out and deal more with business development and let business grow, grow farther.
David: But, but again, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I will do as an entrepreneur. It is who are the people that you work with people inside of your company, your partners, your providers, your clients, that’s it.
Jill: I find that really rewarding myself. I think that’s one of the things that I really enjoy most about being an entrepreneur is helping amazing clients.
Jill: We actually share a mutual client, which we won’t name, and they’re my favorite client of all time. They are incredibly smart. They make decisions. They’re very practical and the ability to work with clients who appreciate what we can do as experts yourself as a cybersecurity expert and help them and see that appreciation.
Jill: Is it just makes the job all that much better. And I find that one of the best aspects as well. And it seems like you do as well. So, you know, I would add to that.
David: You asked me about the entrepreneur as a cyber security professional seeing client. Attacked and we deflecting this attack and then their peers say actually going down and they didn’t do anything again.
David: It’s such situation for the for the company that got attacked and not survive. But knowing that we did write things for our clients, it’s obviously as a cyber security professional, it’s a very rewarding. But as a human being, entrepreneur, The freedom of working with good people and doing good is, I think, it’s the ultimate reward that I see.
Jill: The freedom to choose who you want to work with, when you want to work with them, how you want to work with them. The team for me, I have an incredible team as well, and that for me, again, is one of the most, like, without the team, there is no client. So. I appreciate that as well, is, so it’s been an amazing conversation.
Jill: We’re actually coming up on almost an hour. Is there anything else that you’d like to impart, either as being an entrepreneur or as a cybersecurity expert? Anything else you’d, you’d like to add?
David: You know, I, I, I, I want, I want to go back to a, to where we started. I think the situation is bad, but not everything is lost and they just having proactive.
David: Approach to cybersecurity. Pragmatic, not, not ignoring the reality. I think we can survive even the rise of the AI these days. And regarding cybersecurity, but for those who might be watching and the contemplating from their enterprise desk, maybe I should do something. I’ll get back to basics.
David: Just do it. There is no right time. If you find, found something that you you love, you think you can be good at it and people really have this problem that you can solve, just jump into the water and they, I happy to chat. And I, I, I having a lot of conversation like this with a lot of people that I see there.
David: Still didn’t get to their new Newfoundland hike and they didn’t get this to the tipping point, but they again is sitting for a long time. I think I had this thought before I started. I could still see it for 6, 10, 15 years and complaining that I want to do something and not doing it. I think. Looking backwards, it’s never irrational, but just do it because it’s, it’s incredible freedom feeling.
Jill: Fantastic advice. What are the biggest rewards we already talked about? So. Fantastic advice. It’s been it’s been a real pleasure, David. Thank you so much for joining me here today and sharing your journey to become an entrepreneur and that sort of pivotal moment out on the the rough, the rough hills of, of Newfoundland.
Jill: It was a gross morn by the, by any chance that you guys were, were climbing.
David: Oh, okay.
Jill: My family’s from Newfoundland. I’m actually half. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been, it’s been really great to get to know you a little bit better and I truly appreciate you sharing with our listeners all of your incredible expertise and insights about cyber security.
Jill: So with that if you’re interested, thank you. If you’re interested in, in more cybersecurity and want to know more about their services, you can visit procure hub. ca that’s www.procurehub.ca or you want to become a member of the procure hub community. We’d love to have you join us. If you want more information about the Entrepreneuring Show or have an idea for the show, or want to be a guest on the show, visit us at ww dot the entrepreneur show.com, or you can send us an email to info@procurepro.ca.
Jill: Until next time, entrepreneurs, just keep swimming. Thank you.