Page 46 - BusinessWest March, 21, 2022

— teaching people how to spot phishing attempts and e-mails from bad actors, and knowing what files are safe to open and download, and which aren’t. “That was important before the pandemic, but once people started working remotely, it added on variables to the mix.”
Mollison said a lot of IT security-tightening measures are being driven by the insurance industry.
“They’ve clamped down on organizations, requiring you to fill out a lengthy statement of your current security. That’s a big thing that’s hap-
“There are so many pitfalls, so much change. It takes a team
of experts who understand the technology, the security levels, who understand all the concepts and how they relate to a particular organization.”
pening, so there’s been a lot of discussion around that. A lot of times, folks come to us — they get that questionnaire and don’t even know how to answer it. They have an internal IT person, but it’s not their day job, just a hat they wear. So a
lot of times, they come to us to make sure their business insurance is going to cover them. Actu- ally, I’ve heard from a few firms that are paying
an additional premium because they don’t have basic security pieces in place.”
Besides security and maintaining the network, Northeast also works with clients on replace- ment cycles for hardware and technology updates. “When Windows 7 went away in January 2020, all our clients knew about it well in advance, and had years to prepare for it and make changes. Those are the types of things we’re continuously doing to put clients in the best posi- tion in regard to technol- ogy and compliance.”
All of this has become
increasingly difficult for
businesses to handle in house, he added. “There are so many pitfalls, so much change. It takes a team of experts who understand the technol- ogy, the security levels, who understand all the concepts and how they relate to a particular organization.”
Some services deal with the human side of IT and cybersecurity, Mollison noted.
“We’ve done training sessions with clients to go over common phishing techniques and what to look for to distinguish whether an e-mail is credible or not. Obviously, we promote spam fil- ters and other security measures, but we’ll still do a phishing campaign and training videos, making
Joel Mollison says helping clients navigate cybersecurity is part technology, part behavior training.
sure our end users are keeping up with what they may see in the real world. Even spam-filtering technologies are not foolproof — things still get through.”
Small businesses shouldn’t assume they’re not targets, Hogan wrote — quite the contrary, actually. “For most small businesses, their IT defense strategy is to simply hope they aren’t a target; however, as larger enterprises increase their spending and
become tougher to
break into, unpre-
IT Firms
Continued on page 48
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