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October 28, 2021

They Did it Themselves


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I really find it disturbing when clients act before asking questions. In this case they opened the door to potentially a whole slew of real trouble by not setting the wireless password.

There is real value an MSP can bring to the table for your business, but you need to engage with them when you’re about to make a change that could impact your network security or function – NOT AFTER! That’s what happened here with this client, they basically bought a firewall and never did any care and feeding, weren’t really interested in any kind of support and one day the wireless stopped working. So they what you would expect, they bought a $49 big box store access point and plugged it into the LAN.

Well, fast forward a few years later, they called and said they couldn’t access the internet and had no idea why.

You can’t afford to dabble in IT security

I am not one of those people that will tell you that “YOU NEED ME!”, if you feel you have the skills to protect your business with the $100 WIFI Router you have been using for the last X number of years, good luck (and I really mean that – good luck). I would suggest that you talk to the FBI and see how they did it or reach out to JBS Meat Packing to see what they had to pay out. Something I hear a lot is those are big company’s and I am just a small company. Well, basically if a tree falls and no one is around to hear, did it make a noise?

Small company breaches don’t make the news because it’s just not newsworthy and doesn’t impact the larger community. Ahh, well at least not those people’s community, it absolutely impacts your community and chances are about 60%-80% you will be closed within six months, if you even open back up after the attack.

Leave it to the professionals

The world of the cyber threat is changing every minute and there are literally thousands of new threats released into the wild each week and most are not specifically looking for you or your business. But, if you happen to have a specific vulnerability at the time these guys come knocking, well then lucky you.

Having an IT professional come do a brief inspection as well as have a discussion about, what they do and for you to ask questions, is generally a minimal amount or free. They are likely not going to reveal the deep secrets they uncover, but at a high level, the goal here is to understand your risk exposure and for you to understanding of how they can help.

Trust me when I tell you, this is no different than any other negotiation dance you do in business. The IT Pro wants to get your business and you need them to ensure you can continue to stay in business. I like to think of this as a partnership, and the goal is to make you trust their experience and hopefully they can build your confidence more and more over time. You can grab our 21 Things You Must Know about hiring an honest, competent, responsive and fairly priced computer consultant to get a better understanding of what you need to be ready to have that conversation.