If you’re in sales, then you more than likely have a prospecting routine. Mine involves certain churches in my area. Even if they’ve bought off of me in the last year or so, I like to swing by and remind them that I’m here in the case of an IT Emergency.
On one of these prospecting routines, before I had sold them anything, I had stopped into this small Lutheran Church to see how they were doing and if that church member who had been their defacto IT guy had become overwhelmed yet.
As is usually the case during cold calling, I happened to stop in at just the right time. They were having an IT Emergency.
“All of our members are getting spam emails from us! We can’t stop it,” the Office Manager was freaking out, understandably so. “They all seem to be coming from us.”
So, I asked the basic questions that I had asked at every visit previously. I already knew the answers, but this time, I was illustrating a point.
“Do you use antivirus software?”
She nodded, and rattled off the name of a generic free antivirus that most people wouldn’t trust to watch their cat on a long weekend.
“Do you have a firewall?”
She shook her head.
“Do you store your member data locally?”
She nodded and indicated the aged server in the corner of her office. Server was a generous term, as it was actually a repurposed Gateway Tower.
You remember Gateway, right? They painted their boxes like cows and then disappeared into the ether at about the same time that the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” guy was popular.
“Well,” I replied, “you’ve been hacked, and your member data was taken.”
The Office Manager was indignant at that point, and that’s when I can usually sympathize with Doctors, Mechanics, and Tv Repairmen. For reasons that I don’t understand, but am sure that I take part in as well, people take it very personally when you give them the diagnosis.
“Why would anyone want the member data of a church? We don’t carry credit card numbers.”
I shrugged. “A lot of reasons.” I started to count them off on my hand. “They could just be looking for emails. If they click anything in the emails they receive they might download dangerous software that could phish for the more important information. Maybe they didn’t know there wasn’t any money data on there.” I sighed. “It could be any reason. The fact is that it doesn’t matter why it was done, just that it has been done, and we can fix it.”
She was suddenly wide-eyed with hope. “How?”
I explained that she could start by sending out an email to the members explaining the situation and apologizing.
Then I quoted her a firewall and the time it would take to evaluate the network, clean any infected PC’s, and get her back up and running.
The point of all of this is two-fold. The first is that anyone can be a target, because the idea is to hit as many people as possible and collect as much data as possible. The second is that she didn’t know she’d been hit until someone in the membership called or emailed the church to complain.
Complain because nobody likes knowing that they are vulnerable, and the moment they have it blatantly thrown in their face, they become aggravated and angry.
Think about the last time that you saw a fraudulent charge on your credit card, or bought an item that you didn’t open until long after the return policy was up just to discover that it was broken. How did that make you feel?
Betrayed by the company you dealt with. Violated by the failure. Vulnerable because this company was supposed to protect you, and they failed.
Next time that email signup sheet goes around that church, how many people do you think are going to write their address on there now?
If you want your customers to stay with you, they need to feel happy and secure about that decision.
That’s why Network Security is important. Hunting for new customers is a part of business, but it does you no good if you can’t give them a reason to stay.
Still not convinced? Watch this Ted Talks video as a Cyber-Cop explains how different people were attacked, how he tracked the culprits down, and how not even the live audience listening to his story is safe from Cyber Threats.
The first step you can take to secure your network and your customers is to have someone look under the hood. My recommendation is that it be someone local and that you trust. That being said, how about a company in Clive that I happen to know of?
If you are interested in having a one on one chat with our Security Engineer to understand how you, specifically, could be at risk, email me here and I’ll set up a Zoom call to initiate that discussion.
A free conversation to check out how leaky your boat might be is a smarter idea that letting your boat sink.
Combined Systems Technology 