Insightly_Ep17
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Alyssa McGinn: [00:00:00] Welcome back everyone to another episode of InSightly Podcast. We're so glad you're here. I think we're on episode 17 now, so we're past the threshold of when most people quit podcasts, so we're doing pretty good.

Jordan Walker: Wow.

Alyssa McGinn: We've at least had the grit to keep recording, even as people listen or don't listen.

But if you're new with us, this is your first time. Insightly is all about,

Talking about how businesses can use their data better. We truly believe and we're passionate that [00:01:00] data and using it effectively to make strategic decisions, to see how your business is doing in every aspect is key, Pivotable?

Pivotal to growth and staying competitively advantaged moving into the future. And so we talk about everything from innovation security and kind of everything in between so that you know how to either get your company started on a data journey or what to do in the midst of one.

Find the Questions that you should be asking, If

any other data nerds are out there, you just want to listen for fun. Great too. Welcome. Today we have a special guest with us. Tarek has been in the IT sector for 20 years. Almost as long as you're going to tell us that it's maybe been around.

He's worked in various positions throughout his career from help desk tech, system admin, network admin, project manager, security officer, and in the last eight years his focus has been on compliance.

So in 2018 he decided to start his own company, Ember [00:02:00] Technology, which focused on compliance and security, and was later sold to, how do you say, it,

Tarek: Soteria.

Alyssa McGinn: Soteria

Technology Solutions. And now Tarek serves as the Director of Security and Compliance.

Jordan Walker: Cool. I didn't know that. That's really neat. I didn't know that's Soteria.

Tarek: Yeah, we're right off of Central and 135. You probably see it. Yeah,

Jordan Walker: I see it all the time,

~actually. So ~

Tarek: ~what is that?~

Nice.

Soteria is really um, Greek goddess for protection.

Alyssa McGinn: Okay.

Tarek: So

Alyssa McGinn: So tell us a little bit about your I guess transition from doing some of these roles, help desk system admin into starting your own company.

I'm really interested in that

Tarek: I started out in IT, almost 20 years now. I started out as a help desk. I did my degree in software engineering, did not find a job in that. It just so happened that we here in Kansas, we're not big into the software side, or at least wasn't. I don't know what it is now. So I kind of [00:03:00] went into the help desk side of things and slowly evolved and started doing

everything that was needed.

They're like, hey, we need you to take over this. I said, okay. IT and technology became common about 30 years ago And I, I say that, I mean, technology has been in existence for a long time, but really, if you think about it, it was 93, 94 time, I think, is when AOL, it became more consumer.

It was available to consumers, let me put it that way, not that technology is 30 years old, but it's just that. So with that in mind, if you can imagine, if there's a 30 year old running around, Not understanding everything that needs to be in. And somebody that's been thrown in saying, Hey, start with the help desk and start doing this, this, this as it's needed, as we're discovering.

So the industry is still very, very young. And to give you an idea with that in mind, AI is a year and a half old. Chad GPT was released last March. It was in 2023, March, or April

So we are [00:04:00] really very young.

Alyssa McGinn: Before we started recording, you were telling me kind of a, Yeah.

analogy or picture that you have cyber so I'd love for you to share with us.,

Tarek: So the way I look at it is, you know, I know you have kids, but when you have kids, you really, we start with the idea of the terrible twos, because they get into everything, right. And then you start Plug in the power outlets, then you lock the cabinets and all these things, right?

Because you're trying to show the protection, and you're putting the gates that they don't roll down the stairs, right? You're, you're doing all those things. Then as they're a little bit better, you got the seatbelt, and you start walking, and you're like, Hey, this is the, sidewalk. You don't walk on the main street.

Then this is how you cross the street, look both ways. You know, those kind of things happen as somebody's growing. Then they grow into that and say, okay, they start running. They start, you know, doing more activities and by this time they have a guideline of sort and guardrails, so to speak. But in this world of cyber [00:05:00] and technology, it happened and everybody said, oh, this is amazing.

What can we do? And we started doing everything that we could imagine. So, and then the analogy that I was using is, you know, we're all on this highway trying to get things done at a super fast speed that Whatever you can afford to go as fast as you can. And then we are seeing accidents, which is the data breaches in a way.

Cyber somebody somebody not following the rules, and somebody taking advantage of it, right? If you really even think about it as saying, Oh, this guy didn't even have seatbelt, what happens if I hit him? Right? And they come out and, again, the analogy I'll use is, if somebody dies in that accident, that means the business is dead at this point, right?

Because they didn't have all the safety precautions at all. Then if you step back a little bit more, as I was mentioning, it's almost like we don't even have signals installed or crosswalks Mm hmm.

In the cyber world is how [00:06:00] I would like to put it.

Jordan Walker: I think that's really relevant, actually. I mean,

even outside of security and

compliance, You mentioned AI.

I mean, social media has been in the same vein.

Like, we loved the fact that social brought people together, and gave us that outlet to connect across continents. But now we're also looking at it as, but is it a really good thing for kids to be on it? We're backtracking on

things now because,

We've gone so far, but now we're starting to realize, implications of some of these

cool tools that we brought to the market.

Tarek: And I'll stay on the thing of the kids real quick, and then again, I have this habit of tangents, so I'll give you this example. I want to focus is, you know, one of the things that people always say, this new generation is all being raised by internet, With the technology, just to give you an idea, the people who were born in the 90s were kind of getting used to the AOL type of things, watching, getting on the internet.[00:07:00]

Then in the 2000s was more of the social media came in, if you think about it the Facebook was right around 2007, 2008 era that brought people together, And then slowly the tablets, the iPhone came in, tablets came in, and we started doing more stuff.

The transition that happened is in the 80s and 90s, prior to the 80s and 90s, kids grew up running around outside.

Jordan Walker: Right.

Tarek: Then came TV. So the TV somewhat became the babysitter. But you kind of still had a view on saying, hey, they're watching something. What are you watching? Turn it off or change the channel, kind of things, right? You had a little bit of control. Then came this tablets and phones. And then now it's so close.

Mom and dad are busy in their thing in the kitchen, setting up dinner table, whatever the kids are watching. You don't really know what they're

Alyssa McGinn: watching

Right, yeah.

Tarek: Even though technology brought us together, we don't really have those again. We completely forgot how to train the kids.

Hey, this is how you [00:08:00] do the

Jordan Walker: Well, a lot of the kids are training the parents now, you know? I mean I, I know my husband, he's like the go to phone call for his parents On any sort of issue.

Like I tell him he should make, write like a whole manual or just create all these like videos because there are things that he has to explain multiple times and so I think it would be, I'm not a parent, but I think it would be difficult to be a parent in this era where you not only have to keep up with different technology for your own business or your own career path, but you're also having to keep up with the technology that your kids are using. who are probably going to figure out loopholes and things like that a lot quicker than you.

Tarek: Definitely, yes, yes,

Alyssa McGinn: yeah. I mean,

my kids are still really young and we still have full like control

over their activity, but even we had to learn, like, okay, how do I go into Netflix and make sure that these things don't show up? I know that's a really simple thing, like, a permissioning and security, but, like, that's something, yeah, I have have had to learn, but it's also, like, shocking, we don't have to get into [00:09:00] this tangent, but shocking how native that is.

My younger son is almost two, and he can take my phone, swipe it up, turn on the camera, walk around, cheese, you know, and I'm like, okay. You're not even two years old yet, and he knows how to intuitively do this.

Jordan Walker: I was

amazed when my three year old niece had a tablet, and she was watching like, you know, Bluey or something on YouTube, right?

And knew that three second countdown before you could skip the ad. Oh, yeah, and so she's like, And then three, two, one, BOOP!

And she skipped it, I was like, How did you know how to do that?

Tarek: do that?

Alyssa McGinn: I think it's, the analogy comes full circle for

business owners and people who are

running businesses now that, there are these, guidelines and security that's trying to now come into place, but they've become so used to their way of doing things, just like kids, that they don't want to, unlearn

Tarek: Right.

Alyssa McGinn: It's not fun or exciting

anymore.

Tarek: anymore. Yeah. And then you can apply that exact same thing to the businesses, business owners. Right. trying to unlearn. I mean, even Netflix probably didn't think, oh, I need to [00:10:00] create a kids section and a portal even YouTube didn't have it

Alyssa McGinn: Right. for a long time, yeah.

Tarek: And now they're like, oh, wait, our algorithms are pushing this. They don't know the profiles. I mean, but anyway. Or a lot of. Slight tangents here, but

Jordan Walker: to the

business aspect of it~ with our previous interview, we were kind of talking about from at least a marketing perspective, there were a lot of pivots that have occurred, but like, ~I think entrepreneurs have had to go through

that as well.

Tarek: definitely, yes.

Jordan Walker: Recently I had to take a PCI compliance. Course, because I use Quickbooks

Tarek: Huh.

Jordan Walker: And even though QuickBooks is the secure platform for, and they handle really the security,

I had to take a course and become certified in it so that I understood the implications of me neglecting to review things.

Even though they're the tool in the platform, I still have some responsibility in it. And I remember getting that email. I'm like, I don't want to do this.

Tarek: ~this. ~Yeah.

Jordan Walker: And I know how important it is.

Tarek: yeah, definitely. I mean, it is, it is really.

Alyssa McGinn: No one wants. to, but then, And they also never think that it's gonna be them, right?

Like they're gonna be the one that gets [00:11:00] hacked or breached or whatever.

Jordan Walker: It could be me one day. And I, I mean, I don't, I'm a marketer. I use Google Docs for a lot of things,

~you know. ~I don't have

life or death, ~you know, ~scenarios. I don't have ~like, you know, ~million dollar privacy plans on my server. But I'm still like terrified that one day it could be me.

~Yeah.~

Alyssa McGinn: Well, speaking of that, ~um You know, ~you talked about data breaches,

~you ~

~talked about, ~and we see them, like, just on the news, even locally here in Wichita, like, businesses. WPD just got hacked. ~Yeah, hacked, and breaches. ~

So as,

I mean, you deal with that every day. ~what, ~what are your biggest concerns for businesses, like, as you look out at what's happening today?

Tarek: So in many ways, I think what the

basic understanding for a business, it needs to be, there's this mindset right now. is IT is a cost center.

Alyssa McGinn: that is

Tarek: Because it's a thing that is not tangible.

Alyssa McGinn: Mm hmm.

Tarek: What I mean by that is, when you think about it, is you have an IT person comes to the executive saying, Hey, we hired five people, so [00:12:00] I need money for licensing.

I need, you know, they need this, this, this. But you're like, no, to save money we did this, right? What's happening in that case is, on the flip side of it, same example, if the company has an engineer who says, Hey, I need a faster PC, they'll spend 3, 000 to 5, 000 on an amazing PC, a big monitor, because it's tangible.

They have no problem. But if an IT person comes and says, Hey, I need 5, 000 for this, they're like, Why? Is it really needed? Why should we, I mean, are you sure?

Alyssa McGinn: that more compliance cost?

Tarek: No, I mean it could be anything. I mean if the person wanted to say, Hey, I want to install something secure for emails for that matter, right? And he says, Oh, the cost is 5000 bucks, It'll keep us safe. They're like, Really? Do we need it? ~Are you Over some~

Jordan Walker: ~emails?~

~Yeah.~

Yeah. ~Right.~

Tarek: But when you have the $5,000 pc, they're like, oh yeah, this guy's using it. I can see it. He's printing these designs, or whatever he's doing. It's tangible things coming out. Whereas email security that you're implementing, whatever software that you may be implementing, [00:13:00] you don't see it.

It happens in the They're like, okay, And they're like, okay, I don't know. I guess we spend 5,000 for something. I'm not sure if it'll be. you know, helpful or is needed, but I'm going to take your word on it. So that mindset still goes like, ah, it's costing us more to do the business. So with that in mind, the reclassification of what you do in the business, what you have in the business and what you need that needs to happen first. Another analogy I'll use is, you know, ~if you, again, ~Dating myself 20 years ago, every office almost had a filing cabinet ~HR ~HR had their own, accounting had their own, engineers had their own. HR person didn't walk in to engineering said, let me see what you have.

They didn't care to. But in the internet, on the server, you have all these different files and folders. And, first they don't classify. HR doesn't need to see what's happening in finance. Finance doesn't need to see in engineering. So when that classification hasn't happened [00:14:00] yet, then everybody has access and the IT person is just kind of like, okay, what do you need?

You need this, this? Okay, I'm done. And he's busy Helping with, I can't print, I can't log in, right?

Jordan Walker: Things that are Google-able

Tarek: in some ways, yeah. So with that, so with the data breaches and data security, first this classification of what you have needs to

Alyssa McGinn: So it's almost like internal security.

Tarek: It's the first step, yes. Then you can say, okay, finance, these are the four people in finance.

They only need access to these four things.

Alyssa McGinn: Permissioning

Tarek: right? Role based permissions is what it's really called. So when you start there, now it's almost think of a physical part. Here's the office, I lock the key, and these four people have the keys to go check that. Where is the data stored?

Why do you need it? What that also does is if somebody breaks in, again, I'll use the physical aspect to translate that into cyber. If somebody breaks into the office, they're focused, I want financial [00:15:00] information, they will look for the finance office, they'll break into it. And you have the keys and you're locked in and all this, but if you don't, the minute everybody gets in, in the cyber world, they walk in, they have access to everything.

They're like, I'll sort it out later, let me grab everything that I can and steal it so they can't use it and encrypt that data.

Alyssa McGinn: And

Tarek: And let me figure out what I can do with it. And then I'm going to hold them hostage. me Send them a ransom note. Yes, exactly.

Alyssa McGinn: So if the internal security had been done first, they would have only been able to get into like one room.

One area. And that's like, I mean, still not great.

Tarek: No, but still you have limited. Correct. Limited. And

You're

not quite a hundred percent mitigating the risk, but at least you're reducing it. And now, you know, okay, I need to do this.

Alyssa McGinn: Are businesses resistant to that internal classification process?

Tarek: I think the challenge is they don't know they need it.

Alyssa McGinn: Mm-Hmm. Okay. The education.

Tarek: Education. A lot of it, again, coming back to this baby is only 30 years old [00:16:00] we're still understanding. What can we do? What do we have? What do we need? And so everybody's so busy like, oh, this is amazing.

We can do this. Great. Let's implement it. And now we're going backwards.

~Mm.~

Jordan Walker: Yeah.

Tarek: Do you need it? Oh, why does he have it? Why doesn't he have it? And people are like, I want to see what happens. Can I do this with mine? And you gave access to everybody. Therefore, you lose the security Mm-Hmm. in that part.

Jordan Walker: ~part. ~So, I have a question because we've talked about data governance in some of our episodes. And kind of that important piece of if everyone has access to data, they have more opportunity to innovate within their roles. But That almost sounds like it goes against security in this case. What are your thoughts around data governance as it relates to like, role based permissioning and things like that?

Tarek: I think you could give the freedom to what you need, and so if you're in the marketing side, you can have all the access you need for all the marketing [00:17:00] folders, marketing responses, and I think this is the other piece that doesn't happen as often is in companies, we don't have conversations.

Jordan Walker: Yeah,

yeah.

Tarek: obviously the COVID also didn't help because everybody's working remotely in some ways and all those things. So what that does is the transfer of information is not there. Mmm-hmm..

But, and I'll use your role here as a marketing, you're like, Oh, I wonder. What cool stuff engineering has done. Have they done something new?

And you just go roam around on the server, click on the files. Oh, this is a nice part. Maybe I should put it up. Talk about what it is. Then you call somebody that, you know, an engineer like, Hey, I want to talk about, we can do this. We can make this. Right. But you already explored. You went and grabbed the stuff you need.

But what that does is, it's almost like you have left all the doors and windows open for somebody to come in, see what you want. So, from an [00:18:00] attacker's perspective, they have all access.

Alyssa McGinn: So, in theory, we, what could have and we don't have to get too

technical here but I think I hear what you're saying in terms of like, you just start opening doors to raw data and like, very proprietary information, But what can be done is that data can be flown through to an analytics layer Yeah, and that can be governed differently. Yeah, because we start talking about like silos and what you're explaining is the definition of silos. ~Yeah ~You're

siloing the data, and that causes

problems because I

think what even what

Jordan maybe think is,

like well, marketing doesn't need to know just marketing.

like

Tarek: need to know other

Alyssa McGinn: ~right? ~Yeah, And

so I think ~that's a ~that's a common problem, is like, Marketing doesn't know what sales is up to, and sales vice versa, or engineering, like, what are we

working on? What are we innovating? Like, there needs to be communication but

I think that data can be rolled up, combined, ~and ~and visualized, and then the dashboards or analytics can be then governed to who needs to see them.

Jordan Walker: Well, I like that you brought up the conversation piece, because that's something that we've talked a lot about as well, [00:19:00] and that's actually one of the key reasons why I even started my business, is that I wanted more of the opportunity to collaborate with Cross functional departments and not just marketers because marketing is just the outlet to talk about what we do.

You have to understand the business and the business needs in order to know how to do that effectively. But that collaboration piece is so

important.

and so That's why I brought up

data

governance because ~if you, ~if you can at least like have that outlet to say, okay. Here's how productivity is performing internally.

Here's how it's influencing like our customer experience. How can I use that as like positive messaging

out there? Right. But

it takes like at least having that like baseline data set, but even as like, if I were looking at something from that perspective, I would still want to get around the table

with all of the key players, just to ask them about their perspectives, because that's where you get like the, the actual meat of what's truly [00:20:00] going on.

~Data doesn't, ~Data gives you the starting point of a

story. But from a marketer's perspective, it's not the story.

Tarek: Yeah. I'll add more to that. Here's the strange part. You're talking about silos, right? We don't need silos. Is what you're saying when it comes to data. Because you can paint a picture of what's happening. On

the governance and security side.

And then on our physical side. It's, we flip that way because the marketing department is kind of going, I need to focus on this. Engineering is like, I'm here, I don't need to talk to marketing.

And the sales guy is like, well, I need to get an input from this engineering guy, can we do this? And And they only go to each other when they need it.

But they don't ever talk about, hey, these are the amazing things we're doing. Which a company should say, every quarter, ~Have a pizza party and talk about, ~hey, this is the amazing stuff I am doing. This is the cool sales opportunity I had. Can we do do this? Then you could say, okay, let me share what I have.

Then you can [00:21:00] build sharing of the data exactly the way you want it. And this is where your governance will come in. But that communication piece is not happening in a lot of places. And people working from home are even more isolating themselves in their own departments.

Alyssa McGinn: And I don't think that necessarily opening up the data

Tarek: data Nope, yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: ~Level is going to foster ~

~communication, right?~

It's not a problem of the actual data being siloed. It is a product of lack of collaboration and communication. So it's more of a conceptual silo than it is a data silo, but I think sometimes it can flow down.

People can be frustrated that they don't have access to see what other people are doing.

Jordan Walker: I think in some cases, like what We've experienced is that data governance gets tied to or the ability for data to be utilized.

gets tied to security in a way where it gets communicated internally as you're not allowed have that.

But the conversation about like, well, I'm not going to hand over raw data, of course, like, [00:22:00] accounting should only have this raw piece of data, right? But I should be able to visualize, like, if we're taking the example of, like, what Infofluency does, you know, I should be able to see, okay, well, how is revenue impacting productivity, how is all of that, you know, impacting customer, blah, blah, blah. but I think sometimes those terms internally with those that maybe aren't as familiar with data infrastructure, security, compliance, it automatically gets tied to, Well, in order for you to have data means that we're not secure, or we are so secure that you're not allowed to have it. ~Yeah. But those, ~But what we're talking about here is that that shouldn't actually be a barrier.

There are ways to keep it secure, but also have that collaboration.

Alyssa McGinn: Because in all reality, like, there are some things that you don't want certain people in the company to see. right? Yeah, I mean, HR

Jordan Walker: can't share anything that they

have with everyone.

Alyssa McGinn: Right, You know, like. Even the finances. It's like,

some people, some companies, the executive team, like, They don't want,

Tarek: don't want to

Alyssa McGinn: down

to see the P& L, right?

Tarek: Right, Right,

Alyssa McGinn: there are some that's good.

Tarek: So I think that's where that governance piece needs to [00:23:00] happen. Even if a mature business, you need to have that conversation about that. And I think it's because we are so connected, so much online. I don't think there's any more, as they called it, the water cooler talks anymore.

Jordan Walker: Yeah, that's true.

Tarek: Because that's how you had information from each other's departments. People would hang out in their break room, talk about this, that, the other. Do you know what they're doing? You know, those kind of things. And people socialized a little bit more. And we don't have that. And that helps the governance of the data as well, right?

In many ways, because you're like, oh, here, You know, so and so is doing this, and they're like, Oh, I didn't even know you could do this. Our company has the capability. All of a sudden the marketing and sales people are like, Wait, wait, what? I can go sell this? We can do this? We didn't know, right? So we don't have those conversations.

And everybody mentally are working in the silos and leaving the data in non silos, I guess. And the IT person is just trying to accommodate everybody, [00:24:00] right? If you think about it.

Jordan Walker: people are just

like, what, I'm trying to give you what

you want.

Tarek: And mean, and you know, and I, again, side tangent on this part, but what I'll tell you is, this is the phrase that I personally don't like, and a lot of IT people are not going to like what I'm about to say.

Which is, we always talk about the human element and the human error that causes the breaches, okay? I think it's the IT people.

Jordan Walker: Mmmmmm.

Tarek: The reason I'm going to flip this because it's, and I'm going to use again another analogy, is all of a sudden, let's think of a castle, and then you have this one little guy was told to secure the whole castle, which is the IT guy. Because people don't understand.

Jordan Walker: Right.

Tarek: So now he has all these different gates that he has to guard. And he's like, I'm going to hold it. I have the keys to the castle. I'm not going to give it to anybody. But he also ~kind of way ~made himself [00:25:00] indispensable, but at the same time, he's not working 20

Jordan Walker: hours a

Tarek: a day because he has to do a perimeter check, walk around, right?

And then when something happens, he is,

Jordan Walker: At 3 in the morning,

Tarek: right? And he's himself trying to defend it or recover it. But the idea, so my thing is for IT people saying, Hey, We have engineers that are amazingly putting stuff in the space and creating amazing things. So they're smart. Don't call them, you don't understand technology.

They'll understand. Trust me. They went to a four year college and a six year, you know, master's. Finance people, oh my god, they go through the tax codes every year. Trying to figure out, right? So they're smart people in the company. So don't tell them they don't understand this. Yeah. So really recruit all these lieutenants for yourself and explain and come back, talk about the governance.

~What do you need, what you don't need? ~So in some ways, IT people have kind of became [00:26:00] those guardians and everybody started dumping it. Oh, it powers on and off, so it must be your thing. Figure it out, right? I mean, really, if you think about it, that's the mindset that we're in.

Jordan Walker: Yeah, we just had a short episode. where we were talking about the evolving role of a cTO and how it's just a unicorn role now because of how much is involved. In technology and how it has a component of analytics and data in it now. But one of the points that we were talking about is that, if you

have like the full ~like ~gamut of

it are also kind of in charge of implementing that data driven culture.

Tarek: Mm-Hmm.

Jordan Walker: ~it's, it was~

Talking about exactly what you're just describing is it's not just that individual or that team's role anymore. Like they should set the vision. They should set the stage. They should provide great direction, but it can't just be like, everybody has a responsibility in understanding this now to a certain extent.

And so I'm glad that you mentioned that cause we were just [00:27:00] talking about that a couple of Weeks ago.

Tarek: Yeah. I mean, ~it, ~it's really one of those things that everybody's mindset has to change a little bit. Mm-Hmm. . ~Yeah. ~I think it's not just the IT people, it's not just the CEOI think everybody has to kind of reframe

Alyssa McGinn: And I mean I think we've talked about innovation like this is almost like a small way like we need to innovate the way people learn about IT.

Tarek: Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: And learn about data security things that are wah wah wah

but are really important longevity and security of the business. And I think that's what everyone wants, right?

It's like, you're an engineer. Your designs and innovations can't go to market or can't flourish if we get hacked.

or whatever. And so it's like, everyone has to see and understand, ~like, ~the implications. But, like, what's traditionally been done, I feel like, for anything is ~like, ~Let's roll out a video course to the company and have them watch it and learn stuff. It's like

Jordan Walker: And then take this

10 question quiz.

~and ~Get the certificate to put on your cubicle.

Alyssa McGinn: And I'm like, that is [00:28:00] not the way to teach people That are not inclined already about it and data and security.

But we need to like innovate and I'm not saying I have the answer, but just ~like ~innovate in the way that approach that.

Tarek: so one of the things that I try to talk to the it folks is whatever your budget is.

It doesn't matter, but I want you to, based on how big the small company is at the bare minimum, at 100 a month, so you can gather everybody up, throw a lunch party, whatever it is, right? And just talk about what's happening everywhere. What are we seeing? Just educate, saying, hey I'm here trying to protect this whole castle, which is a billion dollar business, or a million dollar business.

I mean, even if it's a small business here locally, it could be a million dollar business, and you're paying this guy 50, 000 to protect a million dollar business. And he doesn't have the support. He doesn't have it. So the idea is for the IT people to come out and say, Hey, let me share with you what's happening.

[00:29:00] I need your help. ~you ~Right? So that's where I think a two way street conversation needs to

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah, I heard someone say one time in a different context was like you should just do the opposite of what people expect. And it's like IT people are expected to be

Tarek: boring,

and like, just

Alyssa McGinn: things like this

Tarek: this kind

Alyssa McGinn: you know? No offense.

Because I mean, we're all in that, you know, nerdy space. But like how can we do the opposite of what, people like a

Tarek: ~like, ~Expect,

Alyssa McGinn: out there is listening to this. How can you do the opposite of what

people expect? ~Yeah, And it's like, I don't know, throw a rave. Well, I've ~

Jordan Walker: ~always often ~

~been kind of disappointed in the stereotype of IT people ~

~just being ~

~like, the little Gremlins that ~

~hang out in the basement, you know, I I'm glad one that you ~

~started this conversation with talking about how IT is a cost center ~

~because ~

~marketing is also just a cost ~

~center in a lot of people's minds.~

~So I'm glad ~

~that like, I now see why ~I've actually become buddies with IT people in almost every like corporate job I've had because I have had more fun being in the basement with the IT people, understanding like, okay, what is our infrastructure? If I want to bring these tools into the company, like you I have to work with I. T. in order to get those vetted and approved, but also I have learned so much from I. T. people on how to roll it out appropriately to the organization, where a lot of times like I want to just be like we've got this tool let's do a [00:30:00] training we're gonna do it and then I've had ~like ~colleagues

that work in our IT that say hey here's my experience in rolling it out that way you're going to have a lot greater success if you actually start with like a beta group and then

you do And I have learned so much more about

how to, like, work in our office politics from IT teams than anyone else because

Y'all have had to navigate that for the last 30 years.

Tarek: Yeah, and at the same time, you know, IT people happen to walk into everybody's office. Yeah. Or touch people's PCs, so they kind of hear stuff Yeah. Right? Yeah, you

Jordan Walker: are kind of like the little silent spies.

Tarek: And they're kind of in their own world, they know what's happening in the company, but they can't speak.

Yeah. And people keep them in the basements, they don't come out. I

Jordan Walker: give it people windows

Tarek: They want to see

Jordan Walker: natural light.

Tarek: right.

Jordan Walker: right.

Tarek: uh, I mean, it's really a collaborative effort in many ways. And I think the more technology has been in place, the less collaboration is what's happening. [00:31:00] And people are coming back into the silos,

Jordan Walker: ~cycle. ~So don't remove the human element, is what we're hoping to inspire.

Tarek: Yeah. Personally, I think so. I mean, you know, we're talking about, probably we'll transition more into that. It's the governance side of things, right? We now have All these compliances coming out. Be it, you know, healthcare came out with this, the FCC for the communications, GDPR, the California, right?

The challenge is everybody thinks, oh my god, here's another regulations. They're telling me to walk in a straight line. I don't want to, I'm having too much fun. Right? So the businesses are going here goes, the, the, the government wants to get into my business and tell me how to do it. Yeah,

Jordan Walker: when it's actually driven by consumers.

Tarek: Consumers,

Jordan Walker: ~desire. Yeah, ~

Tarek: ~really, ~right. So we need to, how to protect the data, how to protect ourselves. ~And I can tell you, it's, it's I'm gonna say, ~I'm gonna go on a leap and say 99 percent of the people don't even read the terms and conditions, right? And we are giving away everything, ourselves. So there's no governance.

The product, who are making the product, they don't have [00:32:00] guidelines. Or they're not following the guidelines because they want to get out and ~then ~put the product out there. So ~now there goes, ~now we're kind of backtracking saying, wait, here's a crosswalk. Wait for the walk sign. Right? Put a pause. a

Alyssa McGinn: That's what you're saying like that's what the regulations now coming out are trying to do.

Yeah, okay, make street everybody's going

Tarek: because everybody's going everywhere.

~I mean, if you think about it~

the data that our personal data. And we have become complacent in many ways, because we've had so many breaches. You're like, ah, everybody has my social security number now.

Jordan Walker: I mean, that data breach just happened, and and it was like, no one even blinked an eye. I was Like, well, there goes my social security, like what am I supposed to do about that? Yeah. You know, get a new one?

Tarek: So, on that note, ~right, ~my advice really is, take control of your stuff. Take control of the data. Don't share it. I mean, I actually This, this will sound funny. I have AT& T. AT& T hack happened [00:33:00] almost a year now.

My debit card was compromised and I went changed it, paid the bill, compromised again. ~So ~in one month, I had to get three debit cards. After that, I said, I'm done. So now I just do everything on cash.

~I was like, I~

~said, you know what? Yeah. And then ~if I need to, I go to the bank and say, Hey, I need a money order for this person.

~I have but~ I need to change it because I'm stuck in there for a little bit because I'm paying on the phones.

Alyssa McGinn: I'm not putting my card information back in there.

Tarek: not anymore. Yeah. So now I kind of go and then I pay bills making checks or, or yeah, ~because I figured ~because it happened like, you know, and then really that frustrated me because AT& T had no solution.

~For it. Oh, data is breached. I'm sorry. Here here's your protection Well, and it's~

Jordan Walker: almost like it's become so common that when that stuff happens now, it's now just they release an apology and say, hey, just need you to be aware this has happened.

Have fun. We're gonna go back over here and we're, we're doing these things to make sure it doesn't happen again.

But there's no like landing page for you to go and see, like what's [00:34:00] your progress on that. Like there's

Tarek: customer

Jordan Walker: customer service person or like team that you can directly call to talk about it. It's just ~They sent you an alert, ~they did the press release media announcement, you're like, well, it happened again, and then you went on with your life.

~Like, ~

~we've, ~we've become very complacent, not just with ~like, ~where we're letting our data go, but also, like, we're not holding anybody accountable to it. ~either. ~

Tarek: ~So, on that similar note, on the accountability part, ~ Government is coming out with regulations, but there's nobody coming out and saying let me see if you've done it.

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah

which that's a big thing with CMMC

right? ~Correct ~

Tarek: ~and I think so CMMC is CMMC is one of the new things that a lot of Challenges ahead business owners are not happy ~ So one of the things that has happened in 2016 really what? Any company that does work with defense a military

Jordan Walker: Okay, have actually keep going

Tarek: ~ You have to comply by saying, I'm going to keep this secure.~

So in 2016, it was implemented. ~A lot of businesses, I'll use the term, pencil whipping. They would say, yep, yep, yep, submit it, and all these things. ~Two or three years into it, we realized China built our own F 16 from all our designs and everything. They built a helmer, they built some other weapons, because we didn't protect the data.

Mom and pop shops are just like, ah, I don't have anything, what are you going to take from me, right? That mindset is there. So [00:35:00] now, finally in 2020, DOD said, okay, we need to put some restrictions on it. Let's come up with their accountability part. So they established a third party organization who's going to come out and do audits.

Then they came back with, okay, for doing the audits, we need to figure out how to do it, who's going to do it. So they set up all the training programs and all that. So now, just two weeks ago, it cleared all those things. It will be presented to the Congress to make it a law, where any, so moving forward March of next year, anybody that supplies anything to the DOD, you are either level 1 or level 2, and the contracts will start showing that, starting March, for level 1.

That for example, if you're, I mean this is crazy, but it needs to happen, which is if you are selling, let's say our Air Force Base here, any supply chicken to them. It's a common thing you can buy anywhere, but ~they need to be level one. ~They need to safeguard that information [00:36:00] because our adversaries can use it saying, Hey, I've been watching their order 50 pounds of chicken every week.

This time it's 200. What's going on? Is there deployment? Is there somebody visiting? Is there a opportunity to attack the base. So we Right? So we need to safeguard even that basic information. ~So that's like that. ~So level two, we'll start seeing that part. Like when somebody is making design or a part or, you know, something.

Now they have a blueprint of certain things. So they need to safeguard it. So they're now one level up and that will start implementing next year. Probably October time is what they're expecting. So if you don't have certificates, you're not getting the award. ~And to implement, That's, ~

Alyssa McGinn: ~I mean, that's incentive right there.~

No more money for you.

Tarek: Yeah, it's almost like pay to play kind of thing, but you're also safeguarding. You're showing and following your rules. For following the rules, I get the contract. ~If I don't follow the rules, I don't get the ~

~Is kind of what, how this is happening. ~Because even if you look at HIPAA, it's been in place, but there is no, it's self governing and they report it only if something happens.

In Wichita, there's been multiple health care facilities that happened this too.

Jordan Walker: it's like HIPAA only [00:37:00] gets, the main compliance with HIPAA is just don't share with, I'm a doctor, I saw you as a patient, I'm not going to go and tell someone else about you as a patient. Like that's like the main thing that you hear people actually complying with, but again, there's no accountability of like, oopsie daisy, All of our like, patient data just got released. It's just like,

Tarek: I mean, again, ~you know, ~you have to have somebody who can come out and say, Hey. I'm going to check, did you implement everything to keep it secure? Are you leaving the data without the classification, who should have access, right? Role based access, are you doing that?

Somebody needs to come out and do that. You have FCC for the communications, there's the same way. You have, PCI compliance, a lot of people don't even know what it is. They kind of go through yes, yes, yes, or whatever it is, the answers, and think they're compliant. And they don't know what they should be doing in backend.

Alyssa McGinn: Yeah,

And one of the main things too, is there's just a shortage of people that know how to audit and you know, make [00:38:00] sure that people are compliant And there's also a lack of tools and I mean, ironically, technology capability to quickly audit a business and tell them where they can't, where they're falling short. And I think that's a, I mean, we're talking very simplistic, but there's some businesses where they have on premise servers. they have tons of computers and Point I ip, not, IP, what is it? Is that,

Tarek: IP connections. Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: Addresses. um, You know, there's just so much complexity. It's not just like,

Tarek: ~yeah.~ to add a little bit more to it, as you say that reason healthcare. gets attacked easily. They have so many devices that are connected. ~I mean ~you think about your patient's bed, nurse monitoring system, they're monitoring right?

They have

Alyssa McGinn: scanning the bracelets.

Tarek: to get the medication, right? Right? So they're doing all these things and that what that means is they have that many doors and windows for attackers to get in because it has an IP address. Therefore, if they get in one door, [00:39:00] then they're, they're good, right? So healthcare, with that in mind, like you said, there's so much devices attached now, we're connected so much, it's, it's hard to say what would happen.

I mean, one of the cases if I remember, forget the city a hospital had a ransomware. They had to turn away the patient, the ambulance, and the patient died on the way to the other hospital. Yeah. ~Yeah.~ So then who do you blame? ~And, ~and the people wanna sue the hospital because saying You should have followed the guidelines.

Yeah. You should have had it up because you could not provide the care because you didn't have access to the system.

Jordan Walker: And you have a building full of healthcare individuals who are like, I simply just really want to help people.

But they exist in this system that is now super complicated. . ~and ~A business within its own,

~you know, ~

right, as well, and so, ~yeah, like, that is such a, ~that is literally painting the picture of a life and death scenario and how, ~like, ~data and cyber security is so important in this, ~of, you know, like, ~think [00:40:00] about that in a case of, what if ~you know, I mentioned a little bit ago, ~our Wichita Police Department got hacked.

~and so ~unfortunately, like anybody who's been in our jail system or got a ticket or whatever, like, ever, I mean, I've got three tickets

from previous, like I'm out there now too, you know?

So we've had that, but let's say like, okay, I need to call 911. Their system has been hacked. I don't get EMS or I don't get fire or I don't get police.

I get some automated ransomware saying, sorry, and my house is burning down behind me, you know, like that. I mean, that could be a very

Tarek: real situation.

With, with that in mind, I think I'll ask you how many phone numbers do you know?

Do you, have you memorized?

Jordan Walker: Oh, gosh, I only have like my husband

Alyssa McGinn: ~yeah, my husband. my mom. ~My home phone that doesn't exist anymore growing up.

Jordan Walker: ~Yeah, ~I still have my home phone two of my home phone numbers.

Alyssa McGinn: my mother in law.

Tarek: Okay.

Alyssa McGinn: And my dad. ~So five. No, I~

Jordan Walker: only know my husband's. ~Like, and that's just ~

~so if I have to get bailed out of jail.~

Tarek: Right. Well, Let's not go to [00:41:00] jail yet, ~but, ~but let me just put the same scenario right ~what you just put in. ~You had a car accident, your car, your phone got crushed. You can't call anybody. Somebody comes up like, hey, here's my phone. Use it. Call whoever you want. You're like, I don't know who to call. Who do I call now?

You don't know the numbers anymore. You can't even call a tow truck to come out, right? I mean, we are so connected and we don't even have that, you know, As you're talking about data and the security and availability and how crazy it can get for ourselves, right? So and I actually on purpose Don't have people's names.

I don't have a name next to yours, but I know the number I was like, oh until I get it after a few times like oh, yeah, I know this number. I know this person I can call them later when I need to then I add the name

Jordan Walker: Interesting, okay, ~yeah.~

Tarek: ~Because I tell the same thing to the kids. ~I'm like, yeah, even if you get stuck on the side of the, ~you know, ~highway, you ran out of gas, who are you going to call?

You don't have a number, your phone's not charged. ~I mean, what do you do? ~Somebody comes by, what do you need? Here's a phone, call them. I don't know the number, right? ~I mean, that happens. ~I mean, that's a [00:42:00] scenario. ~Okay, ~

Alyssa McGinn: OK, so we're getting into thee last kind of

piece, which is a perfect segue. ~And this, we said, you know, this is kind of a ~

~spooky episode. ~Data breaches.

Yeah.

Halloween esque. So, can you talk to us about some of the most, like, scary situations that you've been in, or worst case scenario for a company being hacked or breached or ransomed? What is it called? When they're, like, held hostage for their data?

Ransomed? ~yeah. ~

Tarek: I mean there's multiple cases. One of the manufacturing companies were got a ransom where they were down for almost 10 days. They paid a ransom of like 250, 000 or something like that.

They got the data back, but now trying to figure out if the data is correct or not took over 6 or 8 months. Because it's unstable, because they had locked it and unlocked it. So a lot of the data, in unencrypting it, messed up. You don't have it. During this time, your production downtime. Now you have to pay overtime.

And then for those two ~couple ~weeks or so until they got the data back, [00:43:00] nobody's working. Factory is just quiet. So now I think about, it's no longer just that two weeks. Oh, absolutely. I mean, three years ago, or four years ago, Dallas County was hacked. And I know our, Wichita as well, has had that happen.

We will hear more about it in two years. Dallas County, when that happened in 2020, I think, ~as far as I remember, ~or 2021, even now, they're trying to figure out, because some of the property tax information is no longer there. When somebody's trying to sell the house, they're like, oh wait, where's your property?

~What happened? ~Because they thought they're functioning and all this is great. But when they try to pull it, oh, that data was corrupted. We don't have it. So they're still, in many ways, cleaning up the aftermath of it.

Jordan Walker: you think about that now being several years later. Four years ago. Yeah.

So

Tarek: ~if, ~if you search, you know, Dallas County hack, you'll read about that exact same thing.

Now, you know, one of the other things, the scary part is the painting a picture or worst case scenario, right? Let me, our state of [00:44:00] Kansas, we are big agriculture ~and, ~and beef exports and things of that type. ~Yeah. Yeah. ~We have automated a lot of that. In the agriculture world, the ~water~ watering of the fields and all these things.

~And, ~and you kind of check how the moisture of the land ~Mm-Hmm. , ~and those kind of things are kind of being implemented. ~Mm-Hmm. ~and the cattle world as well. They're kind of keeping track of who's eating, how much is it, right. Time to cut, ~you know, ~slaughter them and all that stuff. And then the automated system that slaughters them, cuts and all these things.

It's not really as many people that are there. Right. And these things are vulnerable. And if you can imagine, ~in, ~in Florida, two years ago, somebody hacked into a wastewater treatment plant, messed with the pH levels, made the water poisonous. It just so happened that the person who happened to be like, oh, this is strange, what is this?

And the water did not get released to the public.

Jordan Walker: that one person.

Tarek: Yep, ~he, something, yeah, he, ~he was not even a tech. He ~was, ~happened to see some irregularity and stopped it. Now, if you can imagine that happening to the state of Kansas. Uh All your crop is messed up. You have animal, cattle. [00:45:00] We no longer have anything we can export.

Cattle has died. It's poisoned. Right? ~I mean, if you, yeah, because it's poisoned. Yeah, you can't, ~I mean, it has to go through a couple cycles to rebuild it. I mean, that's really the picture of, you know, our grid of power system. That is vulnerable. If you look back and then kind of do a search, it's called Sandworm is a book.

It talks about how Russia attacked Ukraine and crippled their infrastructure before the war, in 2014, 2016 time. And they had turned off the electricity for them, multiple times. And you can imagine, if it happens to us, how vulnerable we are.

Jordan Walker: Well, every apocalyptic movie out there, ~so again, ~when this episode airs, it will be spooky season, officially. And so, everybody's gonna be watching all of the halloween movies.

If you watch any of the zombie apocalypse ones, it always starts with the grid going down, like outside of people going nuts, it starts with the grid going down because then that makes people go more nuts.

~Like, ~

if you can't, because we're so connected, you can't call your family to see if they're okay, you can't turn your lights on, ~I mean, ~

[00:46:00] Wichita is having a hard enough time right now ~is ~conserving water, so, like, I gotta water my lawn, you know, No, you don't. but anyway,

like, we, we are so used to these benefits of the grid that when we don't have them, we don't know what to do. And

that When you're painting that kind of a picture and noting the vulnerabilities, I mean, even. Government is so, like, our government has the worst systems in some cases, you know? And it's

Tarek: archaic, a lot of the systems to upgrade, yeah.

Jordan Walker: But, ~that, like, ~that is real,

~like, ~war does not have to happen necessarily with physical people and weapons anymore.

It can happen with messing with people's minds in these ways, and then we go crazy and we just go after each other.

Tarek: I think, if you, let's just not even worry about somebody attacking us, if you think of a storm that takes out power. If there's a storm and you don't have power, you don't know how to function.

Alyssa McGinn: Do you guys watch 24?

Throwback

Tarek: yeah, I've seen it. [00:47:00] Yeah.

Alyssa McGinn: There's one season, so it's

Always like 24 hours of a day

Tarek: Yep. That he has to solve the problem. ~Yeah. Some Yep.~

Alyssa McGinn: But There's one season where someone hacked into like a power

plant ~or a ~and it was gonna go nuclear,

Something

like~ that.~

I don't know if That's even possible. But it was like gonna melt down basically and like release a ton of toxins. into the air.

Oh, great. ~Yeah. ~Yeah. And like that's a real, that was like probably hacked.

Tarek: through system some sort of

Jordan Walker: Well, these things don't get super duper made up without some sort of ~like ~basis of it, you know?

like foundation of like, could this be possible?

Alyssa McGinn: But that's scary, like, that, something nuclear, like, exposure, ~like, ~happening at a grand level, ~like, ~to a city or a metropolitan area, ~like,~

Tarek: I mean if you think about it, Kansas has that big nuclear power plant

Alyssa McGinn: hmm.

Tarek: ~Southwestern,~ Manhattan yeah..

Think about it. If somebody hacks into it. ~Yeah, there you go. ~Yeah, it would and you'd be affected and we don't know how to function. I think that's the bigger concern that I have is how do we function?

Because people don't think about how everything works. We are so much into I need it now.

Jordan Walker: I trust it.

Tarek: And ~I, ~I book my flights. I order my food. ~I, you know, I don't even want to deal with this. ~But everything [00:48:00] is happening automagically.

Jordan Walker: working with a chatbot instead of an actual human.

Tarek: And automatically you're like, oh, the food is delivered. Groceries are delivered.

Everything's happening. When you expect, if something like this happens, how do you function? We're back into, in the physical world, where we're running into each other and accidents happening because we don't know, right? Because we have not been outside the house driving or knowing those rules, right? In a way.

And like I said, any of those shows in the movies always show that. We go crazy, we attack, we have accidents, because everybody's in it. ~Crazy Harry. ~One of the other pieces that if you want to think more on the personal level, there was a show called Person of Interest.

~yeah. Mm-Hmm. . If~

If you haven't watched it, if you watched it, it ~shows, ~talks about how vulnerable we are as people.

How much our data is available. People can hack into the security cameras, look at what's happening. You know, one of the pieces that I think a lot of things that businesses, and I guess we'll bring it back to business real quick, they want somebody else to [00:49:00] take this. with and you always hear Ah, we don't really want to buy a server, let's just do the cloud.

Jordan Walker: Right.

Tarek: But they don't ask the right questions. And I come back to the basic human element of saying, Hey, before you put your baby into a babysitter daycare, you want to check them out. Check their website. Do they have any complaints? Do they have license? You go visit the place. You go ask them, Hey, how fast was your response time?

My baby's sick. Something happened. ~In What do you call, here's my numbers, right? ~You go through this interview process of putting a baby in a daycare. And your data is your baby.

And Wherever you're putting it.

Alyssa McGinn: I'm convicted. I did that due diligence that due diligence for my kids yet for my own data

Tarek: I think businesses don't ask that question, putting your baby, because your data is your baby and really the lifeline of your business. And you're not talking about how to raise this baby, go from 1 million to 2 million without classifying the data, without giving the right access, right, training to people who's going to [00:50:00] take care of it, right?

~And that's kind of what You bring it back to the business side of things, what do we need to do? Have those conversations. you It is scary. I mean. What's your final. ~

Alyssa McGinn: Is that your final word or do you have any last minute piece of advice for business owners

Tarek: I want them to kind of rethink the business structure.

Don't think of the cyberspace as somebody else's issue. It's your stuff. Make sure where it's going, who's using it, who has access to it, and how could it be weaponized, so to speak. When a ransomware hack happens, you have to worry about your own employees data that has been misused, or your vendors information, your banking information, people stealing your intellectual property.

~I mean, there's bunch of things if you think about it. ~So businesses need to really kind of reclassify and think about their own data, what it is, and don't stick with this idea, I don't have anything. You have something.

Jordan Walker: I think if businesses and, I mean, ourselves included, if you can kind of put it in the perspective of ~if, ~if worst case scenario were to

happen. Do you really want to be the person to stand up in front of everybody to say it happened.

Do you want to have to go to employees to tell them that their data has been hacked? Do you want to have to go and call [00:51:00] your most important clients? And grovel because of something that you could have been a lot more prepared over.

And I think, ~again, ~from ~like ~a marketing perspective, whenever you're like in a company, you always want to try to have ~like ~a crisis communications plan.

Like what if something were to happen to the CEO? ~what if ~You have to have backups there, ~you know, ~that way you're not scrambling at last minute to put something out.

~Same scenario ~

Tarek: ~scenario. ~On that similar note, you said crisis plan, right? As many companies I've dealt with, they don't have what we call in this world is an incident response plan. They don't have it. What's funny is the school started and everybody did a fire drill in the school for the kids. But we don't do it with cyber stuff. Yeah. Do you have a plan? Who do you call?

Alyssa McGinn: Run fire drills for

Tarek: ~Yeah, you have to. ~We call, it's called tabletopic tabletops is what it's referred to in the cyber, yeah. If it happens, do you know who to call? Who's going to do what? ~Yeah. ~Do you have the numbers? Oh, it's on my phone,

Jordan Walker: That'd be a fun workshop.

At some point.

Tarek: Tabletops, yeah. It's one of those things after you create an incident response plan, then you do a tabletop [00:52:00] exercise. To see ~if you know what you're supposed to do, ~if you know what you're supposed to do. Did you print out your insurance guy's number and vendor's information? Because your data is no longer accessible.

Jordan Walker: You don't have their number. You can't

Tarek: number. You get their number out of your phone. that's the, that's really the idea of what you called it as a crisis incident plan. It's really the incident plan that every business needs to have one and exercise it quarterly or if not, annually at least so everybody in the company knows what they're supposed to do. ~Sorry, I know we were talking about the last word but it keeps going but~

Alyssa McGinn: I feel like we got some spooky episodes. Thank you so much, Tarek, for joining us. Yes, And shedding a light and making it I liked all your analogies, like helping kind of bring this to the common person, business owner who doesn't know much about

Cyber, IT, and can just kind of think it's

someone else's problem, right? So for enlightening us. I learned, I learned a lot. ~Yeah, and even though we did talk~

Jordan Walker: about some scary scenarios, I actually feel like this is, it's palatable. It is something that any role within a company could engage in, and we need to keep worst case [00:53:00] scenarios in mind.

That should motivate us. But I appreciate the human element that you've also brought into this because that complacency level with like tools and technology I do think is very important in this conversation because if we treat it as complacency then we're gonna make ourselves, we make ourselves more vulnerable.

Alyssa McGinn: ~Yeah. ~

So if anyone wanted to reach out to you or get a hold of you, how could they do that?

Tarek: I'm active on LinkedIn. ~I'm not, ~I don't have any other social media.

Alyssa McGinn: OK. it! LinkedIn!

Tarek: LinkedIn is the best place. I mean you can find it Tarek, and then you'll find me in the Wichita area, ~but~

Alyssa McGinn: Okay, perfect. Reach out on LinkedIn if you have any more questions because, Probably Jordan and I can't field your cybersecurity IT questions, we will just say go ask

Jordan Walker: them.

Yeah, and we might bring back a part two if you have a lot of these questions.

Yeah,

Alyssa McGinn: and reach out to us directly if there is anything that you would like to hear covered or any additional topics at hello insightlypodcast. com or just want to drop us a hi, hello, how are you doing? We'd love to hear from [00:54:00] you.

~And ~stay spooky, we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you.