You're not a big Indy car though, guy, are you? really. Not really, no. But I did bring some gifts
for one, for each of you, Oh boy. oh yes. are fucked up puss. So you can set them on your desk or
wherever you want, and you flip someone off eight times right when you see 'em. I mean, helps, uh, brain my day
when someone walks in and notices it And we need like about 30 more I can make a bigger one if you want. I mean, it's Did you print this yourself? yeah. It'd be great make a huge one. had lik
e a huge suction cup on it. I could Just, Just throw it, yeah. kind went. I like it. Thank you. Yeah. So if you need, if you need a
bigger one for, you know, a worse day, I can make that happen. big's a printer. got a this is 3D printed. Yep. Yeah. We've got a partner that's building
one the size of like a, uh, parking spot, A car parking spot. So is that like 20 by. 15 or something. I'm not, flipping you guys off, by the way,
just so you can actually see it. Yeah. that's a new hashtag that, a n
ew tag that we haven't used in a while Yeah, I know. It's, uh, it's pretty, uh,
frequent in the vocabulary, so. I like it. Well, Thank you. That's perfect. for a Friday. Mm-hmm. Yeah, That's what I thought. You know, keep it light that it people how you feel. Eight times. Yeah. Um, I wasn't ask you about, or were you
excited to see the, any cars on the track yesterday for the open practice, but that's not, yeah, it's not, not much. I don't, I don't do much into racing. I've, I've thought about t
rying to
get more into, uh, formula One and there's the whole, what was it? Drive to survive on Netflix. Everyone says like, if you're gonna
wanna get into it, that's a good show to watch to kinda, but it's just not, Well, if you liked Full Swing, I think you might Yeah. Yeah. There's the common interest of golf
in full swing helps out for me though, so like I'm not buting the, the, into
the world of sports ball in general, basketball, football, any of that. So golf and being a nerd is
basically
what I got locked down. I don't, I don't follow. You're a pro nerd most days. Yeah. I I don't really follow f1, but I, I enjoyed
watching that series. Just, yeah. The personalities that We've got, we've got someone on our team
that you both know Ben, uh, Timberman. He, uh, big into f1, big F1 guy. And so I've, I've talked to him. Uh, he and his friends have a Discord
server that they'll like chat about the different races and stuff like that. And they have a one buddy that's way
too into it, fr
om what I've gathered and has put like a how to get into f. Guide together. She's like, well, if you're interested,
I could share that with you. I was like, that's a lot of commitment. So turn race on. Watch start of race. Yep. Watch who leads going
into turn one, turn off. Resume nap. Okay. I could get behind that. That, that makes it a lot easier. Yeah. Yeah, it's fair. What, are the, what's the percentage of whoever
leads the first LAP wins the race in f1? I don't know. Um, But I, I think I w
ould probably,
I love the technology of f1. I like the manufacturers that are in f1. Um, but I, I, whether it be f1, indie car,
any sort of open wheel racing, the, um, road courses and even some street courses
are just like, eh, to me, some are really, Some, I just don't think they
think are conducive to racing. Like Monaco is the hollowed ground for
the race, but it's from pure racing perspective, not very good racing. Very few passing points. And of course, being an indie guy
and growing up wi
th the 500 and indie carp back in the day, it
was such an oval racing series that that's just, I guess, what. when you're raised watching something,
you're sort of ingrained with that. Yeah. Um, but even some, even non oval
people will then counter argue that, oh my gosh, oval racing is so boring. They're literally just going in circles. Yeah. You know, it's like, I get it, but there's
also a really good racing in that as well. Yeah. It's just a different aspect of it. Yeah. I, I think the thing
that would, um,
intrigue me about F1 is the stats that go along with it and kind of
the points race and things like that. And I, I think there's still a lot of
that within IndyCar too, but that's just, I, I don't know if it's as pronunciated
as it is within like the F1 genre of people following it and things, I think you've cut like some level of
rivalry that's created and it's like, and then big F1 fans like to like
trash Indy car and, and vice versa. And it's like, but there's more
in common
than there is different. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not, it's not so
different from a technology standpoint. Yeah. There's some technological differences
and some, some philosophical differences when it comes to that, but pure. Breaking, uh, you know, power
steering versus non-power steering. You know, who's working harder,
who's not working harder? They're all working hard. Yeah. You know, they're all fast. They're all breaking hard. They're all turning hard. Yeah. I mean, I just, I think it's
all pretty
good racing if you are into auto racing. Yep. Yeah. Well, it's Tony's last season, so maybe I should this month we will go
out there for a practice session. We can talk about it stuff while watching cars go two 20 plus. Oh, I'll check out their wifi
and see how good it is. Yeah. I don't, I don't know who runs. Im S'S wifi, but maybe there's not def it's not not me. I can tell you that much. All right. Well, let's get rolling. Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode
of the Industriou
s Podcast. Thank you all for joining us from wherever
you get your podcast, or if you're tuning in on theesa YouTube channel. Thank you for doing so. Um, if you're looking for something
free, which is few and far between in this world, hit that subscribe button. If you haven't already done so,
hit that little notification bell so you can be alerted when
new episodes like this one drop. We'd greatly appreciate it, and
again, it is absolutely free. Um, today we are joined by Mr. Daniel Abdullah fr
om the Brookfield Group. Daniel, welcome to the
Industrials podcast. You're welcome. Uh, thank you for the fuck up puss, by the way. You're welcome. I just wanna be able to say that again. Yeah, Well see how many times we can work that right? need some, I might need
some clarification. And, and a, an annunciation. Yes. Um, why don't you give
everybody a little introduction. So, yeah, I'm Daniel. Do, I'm the CO c o, the Brookfield Group. Really fancy title made
up, made it up myself. Um, and we'r
e MSP manage service
provider doing it support, technology consulting, software development
for small, medium, and some large business, uh, in the Indianapolis St. Louis and Olympia, Washington Markets. Been doing it for a while. Um, I think. Technically, some might
call it, uh, child labor. When I started running cable
at seven years old for my father who started the company. Um, did that for a while. Worked through high school, so kind
of been in the IT world for a while. Um, went and got elec
trical
engineering degree. Went and worked on
industry for a little bit. Uh, decided I wanted to be
maybe more of a more involved. Building a business than
being an engineer and a chair. And, uh, at that point, um, the
Brookfield Group had done a handful of acquisitions and we needed to, um, maybe. Uh, focus more on some of the engineering
and solution, uh, architecture that we, that we need to bring for our clients
as things were changing came over. Um, started doing that. Getting to know some
of the
clients that I'd known for a while, SASA being one of them. Cause I think I helped install
computers when I was in high school and replaced them when I was in college. And then I think I sold you one
like yesterday or something. So, You know, there's a, yeah, sorry. I mean, uh, so being, being able to
work with clients that long has been really cool and, uh, has helped me,
I guess, give a, a different view on engaging with clients for a longer term
basis than, um, outselling the churn in
some ways that I think a lot of,
uh, Not a lot of business, but some businesses are just a focus on those top
end sales metrics and we really focus more on the partnership aspect of it. We want to build those
long lasting relationships. So What, uh, you guys do a, a
couple of different things. What is your primary focus or
business segment, um, at this point in time? um, taking managed services, which is
the term for what we are managed service provider and taking over the IT services
and IT con
sulting for small to medium businesses is our, our primary focus. Um, we have added on different skill
sets over the years, adding voice software development to round out
the offering so that way companies. One throat to choke, one hand
to shake when they come to us. Whether that's us doing it internally with
our people, our product ourselves, or is that finding the right partner on behalf
of a client and bringing it together, putting it on one piece of paper. So it's a smooth and easy engagemen
t. Yeah. Um, as you mentioned, we've
been working together with you guys for several years now. Um, what I wanted to really
focus on with this episode was if you were going to talk to someone starting up a
business today, um, what I, it's fairly broad topic these days, but
even an indu industrial segment vastly. Yeah. Not just for, um, running the
business, but maybe also how they go to market depending on what, what, what it is they do. What is the, I'm gonna say singular hot button,
even thoug
h I'm sure there's multiple, but what is the singular hot button
right now that you would want to address with someone either starting
a business or an existing business owner that maybe negligent in some area of it. Yeah, I think there's kind of
two things that go together there and, um, it's productivity and
security are the, the two pieces. I mean, um, we were actually joking
about it when we came in and, uh, you even brought it up, um, is. Like chat g p T, right? How can AI and this new worl
d of
conversational AI models be brought into help make people and employees
more productive, do more with less? Um, in some ways, how does it
help someone kind of maybe punch above their weight class on. How they speak, how they integrate, um,
interact with a client or a customer. Um, a lot of really cool things. With that, everyone's jumping onto it. Microsoft did a huge
investment into open ai. The, the creators of chat, G P T,
which is probably the biggest hot button conversational I AI righ
t now. Um, and they're bringing that
into the Microsoft Product Suite and they're calling it co-pilot. It's starting in one small segment. It's gonna be moving to teams, office
365, helping to be more product, uh, more productive, more engaged, but. What does that mean from
a security standpoint? Um, especially in the world of,
um, proprietary information. Um, I know my wife works for a
large, um, manufacturing company and, uh, they had to send out a
whole memo about it, uh, saying. You know, yo
u can use chat e b T,
here's how we would want you to use it. Here's how we do not want you to use it. And by no means put any sort of
proprietary code, software development, or anything into that model because
it's all aggregated together, right? So when you're talking about, um, you
know, trying to be more productive and using these tools that are kind of popping
up outta nowhere and open AI has a open API to be able to pull those things in. There's a ton of tools and a ton of
people doing dig
ital marketing to put it in front of people like us that wanna
say, Do more with your time, make more money for less, whatever it is, right? But then you have to think about what
are you putting into those engines and what are they doing with it on
the back end, and what does that mean? And so a lot of that comes down to
just general, you know, knowledge, security around a business as well
as training and teaching employees on what they should be watching for,
what should they not be watching. A
long with, um, phish attacks are
getting more and more, uh, sophisticated and one of the telltale signs a few
years ago was maybe a language barrier. There'd be a, an average use
incorrectly or some sort of preposition. That was kind of weird. That doesn't sound like someone would
write that normally right now they can throw it in the chat, e p t and write just
as anybody else, copy, paste, drop it in. It can be a very sophisticated attack. So I think the two pieces
right now that are. Maybe ini
tially look independent to
each other, but that those productivity tools that are coming up, and then how
do you make sure they, they stay secure? And what does that mean for
security in general for a business? Do you think that when it become,
like as you said, Microsoft acquired open AI and as they introduce that,
that's more of their products to, to really as you call it, co-pilot. So to really coexist with their primary. Tools, the, the, um, outlook,
the teams, et cetera. Do you think that t
hey'll
create security around that? I mean, obviously you still
have to be careful on your own. I mean, every user's gotta work within
their own guidelines, but do you think that they'll create a layer of security
around that outside of what, you know, some of the other AI tools out there Allow
in terms of whatever you put in is, like you said, going back into their search
engine just to help build out their. Yep. Content better. it. Yeah, I Um, I will be really interested to see
the fine print
that comes out with the launch of copilot in the Office 365 stack. I don't know how many business users
are on Microsoft right now, but by all metrics, they are the leader in
business productivity tools from teams. They've, you know, they've surpassed Slack
many years ago who kind of kicked off this whole intercompany chat solution. Um, but they're, you know,
millions of users on it every day. So it'll be interesting to see. Um, is the most interesting things
in my opinion about Microsoft are wh
at they hide in the terms
and service of their products. Um, there's a lot of
products that we sell that. Are directly in light of things
that they carve out or they do not include when you get down to the
nitty gritty of what Microsoft will, will, and will not protect you from. Um, and so I'll be interested
to see what that is. My hope would be that they would
understand and have, um, kind of a, a. A business duty, if you will, to try
to make those things as secure as they can and put the safeg
uards in place. I think they've done a pretty good job
of showing that they're trying to do that by what they've done with integrating the
chat, GP chat g p t engine into Bing, for instance, um, as a conversational AI to be
able to help you search for what you want. When they initially launched it,
they didn't have enough guardrails in place, and that version of chat,
G P T has access to the current internet, whereas the current model
only has access up until 2020, so it doesn't have the most re
cent events. Right. Um, How it integrated with Bing does
and uh, when it first went live, the people got that, got the early preview. There was some wild stuff that people
were being able to kind of break the bounds, if you will, of it. And being able to have it either
give them information that was really weird or coming back with
some interesting conversation or interesting, um, worldviews on things. And that's because it has
access to the open internet. And so what they did to combat that was
. They actually just limited
how many questions you could ask it about a specific topic. So instead of being able to
just go and, you know, you keep asking questions to skirt around,
okay, well I hit a wall here. Um, it's like, torr is illegal. Okay, well what website should I avoid
if I don't want to torrent something? Oh, well, you should avoid these Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so you just keep asking these
questions to get the answer you want. So they've limited it. They said you can ask five
questio
ns and on a specific topic, and then it just basically, Yeah, so I think they're
trying to figure it out. Um, you know, some of the rumors
on, uh, some different people that I listen to and I follow are that, um,
you know, internally at Google, they didn't release some of the stuff that
they had because they didn't have it fully, you know, bounded and were afraid
of kind of what could happen with it if it went fully out into the world. Um, part of me feels like that's a bit of
a PR stunt, but, u
m, I'm excited by it. In general, I use chat G p t. Um, I've used it to save me time
on a lot of different things from writing an email to kind of reviewing. Um, I used it the other day to
create a job description, just help me go through and do it and just,
um, save me 10, 15, 20 minutes. And so there's definit. A lot to have, a lot of
benefit to be gained from it. And I'm very excited about what
they're looking to do with co-pilot, um, inside the Microsoft 365 stack. I think it'll be really in
teresting. Yeah, it is cool. I mean, whether it be chat, G B T or
which I've used for only maybe a few days now to not even a week, uh, to, to
Jasper, uh, you know, writing content from marketing, things like that. I mean, just, just yesterday
I was using chat, G B T. Four, the newest one,
and I actually used it. Instead of Googling something and I'm
researching and then going through and finding the hits that help me answer
the questions I have, I actually just. Typed in, write me an article
on
why I should do this. Yeah. You know, like investing in
X, Y, Z for example, like the benefits or the tax offset. And it just, then it just wrote me, yep. About a five, six paragraph article
that I was like, okay, I feel like I just aggregated all that. I would be searching through on the
internet and now I have it in one article and I could just copy and paste
that over and save it if I wanted, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. Um, now, and I also know that you can
take, like, you can sho
w it images and. Sort of decipher and, and feed. Give feedback on that. Like I can show, take a picture
of four ingredients and it'll tell me all the things I can
make with those four ingredients. Now I'd like the next iteration to be,
I show a picture of ingredients and like it teleports already made food onto my the table like ding in the kitchen. It's done. tell me when we're at
that Jetsons experience. Yeah. Jetsons is a cartoon, by
the way, from the old days. You probably were too young for
that. I think I remember
reading about that once. Yeah. You should put it, you check AI on that. Yeah. You can Google that. Okay. I'll, I'll use my. Yeah. I think that show was off the air before. Was he? he was born. That's why I was, uh, referencing. you know, we had Boomerang. I, I'm familiar with at least that Yeah. What goes around comes around. Yeah, exactly. There's Yellowstone Park, or Jellystone
Park or whatever that with the bear. Oh boy. Yeah. Yogi. Yeah. That one. Yeah. Just, I just
know Smokey,
you know, so I don't the Bear or the guy from. Well, I, no comment. Chris Tucker Yeah. Uh, you know, I was in a meeting yesterday
and we're talking about, um, AI in general, and one of the questions came
up, and you kind of touched on it a little bit with your, with your comment
about Google, and that is, it's a, it is gonna be really interesting to see
how ai, which is evolving at warp speed, um, how, where the, the companies that
are in that space, whether it be the behemoth like
Google and Microsoft, or. I don't wanna say startups, but
I guess you could say startups, where the line comes in on business
ethics and morality and where governments come in on regulation. Because you know, if you go back, you
don't even have to go back 10 years. You could go back more recent
than that and watch like sci-fi movies where they're using ai. As sort of a theme of something
that doesn't exist in the real world, it's just in Hollywood
on the, or on the movie screen. And you're like
, oh my gosh. Like those are prophecies,
like they're coming True. And at one point do you suddenly
have like, like, yeah, tens of thousands of robots coming in, like
war fighting machines coming in. Like it's, you know, like there're
a bunch of droids or something. It's like, There's, if you, if you had,
if you were in the Wild West and there's no regulation, like that's a reality. Yeah. That robots exist. Those things could actually, uh, be real. Where do agents, you know, whether it be
govern
mental agencies or just businesses in general, draw the line of creating
some sort of rules of engagement? Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, it's, You bring up the movie, the two movies
that always pop into my head whenever I, I think about these kind things,
minority Report, which I think was one that, you know, touched on a lot of
these different things and some of the stuff, you know, I don't remember the
last time I watched it, but it's like, oh, well that's not, some of these
things aren't too far o
ff anymore. Right. Um, and then iRobot, right. Just the everything. And so the one that really stick
the combination together that really scares me is Boston Dynamics. If you're not familiar with 'em,
they have a terrifying robotic dog. And, um, chat, G p t having some
sort of monster child together. Right. And we getting That's what I was just thinking about was our last episode with Marco from chla
talking about the automated equipment and how production lines are
obviously moving to more auto
mation. But when you, when you take the
robotic aspect of that and marry that with ai, then what happens is these
robots start to have a mind of their own. Yeah. Based off of, I mean, I have one word, Avengers. Yeah. Right. yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's, uh, there's obviously
a lot of bounds that can be put into place for those things, and like some
of those, the automation within the machinery and things like that is like,
okay, using AI image processing, right? So to be able to identify
a
human hand from. Well, rather than just using a line brake
laser, say, oh, you crossed the line. We need to shut the machine down. Right? So where are these applications
where you can get more specific on how things work together? Because you have these engines that
are working like a actual mind that I could see a world, and this is just my
own personal opinion, where if the, if the processing power's there and the
engine's there to recognize it enough. Human hands and robotic hands could
work
more closely together because there's a better distinguisher
between what's happening, more predictability and things like that. So, um, personally, I, I kind of
embrace it more than maybe most would. Um, I'd like to see more just from a
personal perspective, the more I could use a tool or a robot or some, or some
sort of software technology to make my Job more consistent or more or, or easier
or train my people better or reduce errors are all things that are interesting to me. But I think the,
I think. Understanding the oversight of it in
general is a key piece of making sure that it doesn't get used, uh, inappropriately. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, just in general over
the last few years, not just on AI side, but tech in general is, is
under a bigger microscope on, okay. How are these things
influencing our lives? How are, how is it influencing, you know,
um, people's livelihoods and the kids that are coming, you know, that are growing
up with this different version of the internet that's mo
re, you know, highly
marketed and targeted for certain things. And, um, I think oversight is good. Um, But trying to make sure you
don't lose that, that innovation that comes with it as well. I mean, you know, we've, we've come a long
way in the last 10 years even, and a lot of these different pieces, and some of it
might be because there was less oversight, but what has happened in the background
that we don't have any purview to, that these things have been used for, you know,
horrible acts or
something like that, that We'll, never, know. just, I mean, what scares the, the
hell outta me is something that would exists, which is the, you know, I, I
can't think of the word off the top of my head cause I'm too tired, but like,
the overlay of someone else's face Oh, oh. Um, deep fakes. Thank you. D defects. Yeah. Like how that's playing a world
in the world, not just a politics, which I despise all things politics. Um. Sort of in, in PR
marketing communications. Mm-hmm. Which a allow that
right now
is through trying to sway, you know, almost like DevOps. Like how can I create this BS and
yeah, I know I might not fool everyone, but I don't need to fool everyone. I just need to fool someone. Yeah. Um, that's, that to me, that's really Yeah. And what, like, what ultimately what
the consequences can be on that. Yeah. I think that coupled with, um, a
language model like chat, G B T, where you can say, I am talking to the
controller of a manufacturing company based in Indiana and I wa
nt to send
an email to them as a vendor posing to update their, our billing information. Write me a script on what to say to them. Right. Um, now you would have to word it
correctly cause I think there's probably some bounds in there that the chat
e b T engine is trying to look for words to say, oh no, we can't do that. But if you break that, that prompt
into multiple small chunks and you do three or four different questions, you
can probably get the answer that you. You couple that with going t
o, uh, an
ai, um, image generator and you say, I want to create a logo for a, you
know, fictitious, you know, vendor. Have it come with up with the logo,
the name, the title, an email address, all of those things you can do and
never spend a dollar on, right? Mm-hmm. Send an email, go into LinkedIn, say,
oh, okay, here's so-and-so company. Here's their controller, here's their,
you know, staff, accountant, whatever. Right? And you send them the email,
send it as a text, email. You send it as a f
ully
set up email address. You do all of these things that
traditional security tools, um, aren't gonna catch it. There's no malicious file embedded,
there's no malicious email set up. There's nothing along those lines. Probably gonna make it
through unless someone reasons like, this is really weird. Or, or if the controls aren't in
place internally for someone to say, okay, well it's a new vendor. I need to get cleared by
this and talk to whoever. Right? There's a high likelihood that's gonna g
et through
and it's gonna get into their hands, and then the question becomes, Do they respond
back like, oh, okay, well just send me your updated banking information, right? Mm-hmm. And then once that happens,
again, it's a text. It's just text back and forth in an email. Nothing malicious about that, but
the act of it and how they got there used all these different tools that
are, that are readily available now. Those are the things that
kind of, that scare me because quite honestly, I don't h
ave. Silver bullet to protect against it. I don't have a something to do other
than trying to train the person sitting at the keyboard better to understand
it and trying to say, here's what are some controls and policies that we may
need to talk about putting in place. There's nothing, there's nothing
that really, that can stop it immediately unless they screw up
somewhere and they, they make it look malicious or they do whatever. Um, and that's where on the other side of. You have these tools t
hat are starting
to realize, okay, is this AI generated? And they're looking at how things like,
you know, essays and things like that are like, so does that start to get integrated
to the front end of a spam filter? Something like that, to start
combating the AI that's being used. But those simple if we're circling back to the security topic. Yeah. If you were advising a, a
new customer or client on, uh, or someone starting up a
business, what, what security pieces should they have in place? Wh
at are those things? Yeah, so I think the, the core one's
always a good antivirus, anti malware. Um, it a, um, something that
we've added on recently is an endpoint detection and response. So it's like a managed piece where
it's watching for hacker footholds and seeing what happens to be able to do it. That's something that's, that's great. And then a robust email security platform,
um, not just, uh, from the standpoint. Spam filtering, but um, intent
and sentiment analysis on it. So how is some
one talking to you? How do you talk with them normally
and watching those things? Um, um, I had one other,
I just, I just blocked it. There's, there's just so many
pieces and the, the biggest thing about security, there's no one
thing that's gonna stop everything. It's just about creating enough layer. In the way that you catch
as much of it as you can. Mm-hmm. Um, and hopefully you take the target
off your back when someone, um, sees it. Like they're, too much effort. I'm gonna move on to the n
ext guy. Yep. It's a crime of opportunity. a list, right? Everybody's going after. They're, they're not just. You know, these, they're, they're
not making these attempts one at a time for the most part. It's out to the masses. Yes. And then they, it's all
probably all computerized. It's almost like AutoD dialing. Like it just keeps dialing a
hundred numbers till one picks up. Yep. Yeah. Yep. It's, um, it, it, you know, you made
the, you made a comment about training and education and, and it is,
it is
all about educating your people over and over with, with repetition and it. It's, it's no longer the threat of,
Hey, I need you to go keep this a secret and go get me $500 worth of gift cards. Yeah. Like it's, that is a, that
is like elementary these Yes. Yeah. My question to you is, um, We, we are
moving more and more into electronic payment, both receipt and making
electronic payment like ach, for example. Yeah. And as recent says, this morning we
had a customer call and say, Hey, can y
ou send me your making information
so that I can pay you by ach? Yeah. And it's like, okay, we have that
drafted on a letter that has our, you know, account number, routing
number, bank name, all that good stuff. And then you either fax that to 'em. Mm-hmm. You email it to 'em. What's faxing fax by email, I I guess. Yeah. like, depends on who the recipient is. Like how do you outside of, outside of
having a secure email, uh, service, which then would require the people on the
other end to have s
ome sort of a login, which is not the most convenient for them. What are some opportunities to send
that kind of very private information in a manner that's convenient yet more
secure than just firing 'em an email that if someone were to get into your email Yep. could have access. Yeah. I think the, the, the easiest solution
there and, and the one that's probably the best from a customer facing perspective is
having some sort of client billing portal. Where, um, it integrates with, you know,
wha
tever tools you're using on the backend from a, a billing perspective where they
can log in, they create their account, they put in their information for it. So it's not a exchange over the wire of
Hey, here's our info, here's our info. And someone can, might
be able to pick that. It's log into the portal and force two
fa when they create their account and you set up all the permissions and. You know, most of those have an added
benefit of, like, they can see all their previous invoice history,
they can
see their order history, they can see, um, you know, different pieces of it. We, we have one that we're, you know,
we're still working on rolling out to clients that we have, you know, we,
we get paper checked still every day. Um, and it's a client portal that we can,
then all we can put invoices are there. We can push tickets to it. We can push a lot of the tools
and services that we have. So it gives us a. Client billing portal of
like a bigger company, right? And then we don't ever h
ave to have
any of the, um, responsibility for owning that credit card information,
exchanging of that information. It's all inside that portal, all on them. Um, and that's, that would be my
recommendation, just because it's, it's easier for the client and
it's easier for, um, you know, the business to be able to also manage it. And then it's just ties into the
banking from that standpoint. Because, yeah, I mean, that, that's, I,
we've had, we've had plenty of customers that have, you know, Hey,
I changed
my routing number or, um, you know, I want my deposit to go someplace else. Like, we, there's one that, um, employee
the other day, um, sent me an email. I was like, Hey, I, I need to update my,
um, billing in routing information or my, uh, direct deposit information and. No, usually, usually
those don't come to me. So this is weird. And uh, luckily they were in the
office, so I just went over to their desk and like, Hey, did
you actually send this to me? Like, is this from you actual
ly? And uh, she was like,
yeah, that's from me. I was like, okay, just, just
wanted to, to make sure. Um, funny you say that. Cause I got one from one of our sales reps
saying, Hey, I need you to help me update my baking information for my deposits. And I was like, it was one of
those, like, it was written weird. Mm-hmm. Like odd spacing is in the words. I was like, okay, this
is, this can't be real. And then I went and clicked on the email
address to then get to full right out. I was like, oh y
eah. Something like, you know, it's gibberish. Yeah. I was like, okay, this is like, you know,
my sales rep via like, Russia, China, Yeah. You, it's your outsourced sdr, Yeah, exactly. And I was like, all right. You know, junk mail. But it, yeah, that was, it. was just hit the nail on
the head with that example. Those, those are the things though
that, you know, I've been conditioned, I'm you've been conditioned now
obviously to kinda watch out for, right? Oh yeah. The, the next iteration is,
wh
at's the next thing that, that gets their foot in the door? It's, it's actually kind of, we
were, we do like a Friday lunch with a group of the, the team just
like impromptu get together, go grab lunch, and we were sitting at the
table and, uh, one of our new hires. She was talking about where she
came from previously and that they would get the credit card scam or
the gift card scam all the time. So we were just having a casual
conversation about it while we were sitting at the table, she recei
ved a
text and said, Hey, um, are you free? Can you gimme a call? I've got something important. I need your help with. Signed Daniel ab. It's like, sweet. I've made it. They're impersonating me now. I'm, I'm important enough
to be, to be impersonated. But it was so strange that we
were just having this random conversation sitting right there
and we, she received that message. And so, um, I, you know, we blocked
the number or whatever the next week, same lunch, same time talking
again and receive
s another one. Signed Fatty Abdullah, my dad. What is going on? So I'm convinced there's someone screwing
with her that was at that lunch table. Now I just haven't been able
to pinpoint who it is, but tho that's, I mean, the first one I
was like, wow, that's really weird. You know? But that, that happens. I get the, I think the texting
is the one that's probably the most annoying to me now. I get those all the time. I don't know about you too, all the time. It, it is so Something to just say, hi
. Yes. I'm like, Yeah. Every now and then I get one with
like a photo that I shouldn't have. I'm like, Huh. Um, I don't know who this is, but like
one of the two things that's gonna happen, my wife is gonna see it and be
like, who are you getting photos from? Yeah. I'm like, I swear this is like spam. Yeah. Or it's gonna be something where
someone's gonna come back, like, we need to look at your, like your history. You deleted this, you've got
like, you know, child porn on your phone or somethin
g. Like, was just a text. The ability with, with deep
fakes and, and technology to. Put someone at a scene of a crime
that they weren't at, and then for them to defend themselves
if they're suddenly on tape. Yeah. You know, because you can't, how
do you know if it was real or not? Like it's that, that guy is
what freaks me out a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it is a, I think there is,
there, obviously with, with any, any piece of technology, there's
always, you know, a, a danger to it. Right.
Um, you know, any computer can be
used maliciously, any cell phone can be used in a way that it shouldn't. But right now, the, the
ability to do things. Has been brought down to a level, um,
with some of these conversational AI where people, how do I fix this bug in my coat? Or how do I write this script
or how do I do these things? Um, I think in that light recently in
the media, um, Maybe not in general media, but in the media that I surround
myself in, um, which is tech world. There's this ki
nd of, almost
like a, kind of like a kid's toy. It's called a Flipper Zero. It's just a little, um, um, battery
operated micro controller that ha, that can read like R F I D
cards and wifi and sub gigahertz frequencies and all these things. So again, if you have a non rolling
code, um, garage door opener. You could sit outside someone's house
when they open up the garage door, pick up the code, and then be able
to open, close your garage door. Right. But it's, it's kind of like a, it's a,
um, I
guess a, a hacker educational tool. It's a very, um, successful
Kickstarter campaign. They shipped it out. They did all, all the piece of it and
it on social media, it all of a sudden became this thing that was like super
nefarious and, um, people were blowing what it could do way out of proportion. And at the end of the. Sure it, it can do these things,
but the stuff that it can do has been available since, you know, um,
like Defcon like 2007, they came one as a guy, one, a prominent hacker
the
re, showed off a product that he built, which is called RF Box. I think that could steal your, um,
car key FOB information, then be able to emulate your, your key. And so all these things are out there. They're just not in the
same light that they are. I would personally love for. 16 year old to go, I one of these,
slipper your zeroes and show me a. In a very innocuous way of saying
like, oh hey, your door was unlocked. Effectively, you should go fix that
by using this little toy rather than a p
erson with a specific purpose. Do it. So some of these things that are happening
now, I think will also start to help us understand how we should protect against
the future and what, you know, just open doors we have laying around everywhere
because we have people that are. Maybe not trying to do anything nefarious
or wrong, they're just exploring. And if I would, again, I'd personally
be love to be told by a 16 year old, Hey, I got into your wifi, you should
probably tighten that up rather than
someone who's actually after
something doing something way worse. Yeah, right. So I, I'm hopeful that. you know that, back to that kind of oversight,
guidance, there's a a point that gets put into place to protect as much as we can. Right? Um, but not take away from that next
generation of maybe finding that next big thing that, that helps continue to
move us along that innovation timeline. Um, because there's some cool stuff
that I've seen, you know, different YouTube videos of, or, or, you kn
ow,
kids doing things with some of these, these tools and services are like, wow,
I never would've thought of that, but I'm totally gonna copy what you just did. Yeah. So what I hear you saying is whatever
thing, whatever things you've done to possibly digitize your house,
just go back to analog, everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lock and you pull in your driveway, get outta
your car manually lift your garage door door open. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I would, are there one tip on that is,
uh, you know the, the
little string that hangs down from the garage door that
she used to pull to override the motor? Should zip tie that string like that,
handle, zip tie it up, because you can take a coat hanger up through the
gasket and grab that and pull it down, and then just open up your garage door. So Okay. CB four. Hey, you know, for? Are you Young Cell block four? Sorry. It's a movie. Chris Rock you to see that I didn't see that one. No, Um, so in, in summary, um, what I hear you basically saying
is what yo
ur recommendation would be is to make sure you had a manage
service provider who can help. assist with all that so you
can, focus on your business. Yep. Just trying to keep
track of all this stuff is, well, that is, I mean, that's a
fair question that is, is sort of a business plug if you want it to be,
is how does, you know, you guys focus on small to medium sized businesses? Most small to medium sized bus businesses
don't have internal IT departments that are, you know, not only just doing
net
working and, and all the normal stuff, but all of that, all of the
uh, higher altitude IT strategy and. Mm-hmm. What are the things that an MSP
should be doing, uh, or, you know, are doing in that regard for the
small and medium sided bus businesses that they may not be thinking about? Yeah, I think the biggest benefit,
um, to having an MSP partner is the amount of knowledge that we gain
from a wide variety of clients. Um, one client may go down a path of
getting some sort of certification that
we're involved with helping them with, and
there's something that we learn from them. We say, oh man, we should
do that for other people. Or, we have this other client
that's in a similar industry. Maybe we need to talk to them
about some of those things. So that shared knowledge that we get
from a, a wide landscape of different users, different problems that come up. I mean, there's a lot of
different tools over the years. We've brought on because we
see a need somewhere else. And then, okay, t
his is a wider need
everywhere for, for our clients in general or certain tools that we've,
um, changed in the past because something happened with it and we just
taken on ourselves that hey, this is a core offering of us, but we need to
pivot to this tool because of security reasons, functionality, whatever it is. Um, and those are decisions that,
you know, we kind of can make. On the benefit of, of
the, the, our customer. Um, I think that's a, that's a big one. Obviously, you know, there's a l
ot that
goes into it anymore and there's a lot of different pieces and there's a lot of
research and certifications and all these things that you have to keep up on to
be able to advise appropriately, um, and not knocking on the, you know, single IT
or small IT departments and companies. Uh, at all because they probably have the
hardest job in a lot of situations because they're the only one that you call. They're the one that's responsible
for everything all the time. And, um, We help augment t
hat. We help bring that kind of idea
to a company at a fraction of fractional cost, um, to be able
to give all those pieces to making sure that things are running better. And just really the, I think the
biggest differentiator is, is that idea that, um, we get a lot of different
information from different places and then we have a larger buying power. A lot of times then an individual
company would be to go to an enterprise level tool. So we, we always try and do,
uh, best in class solutions. So
we'll look at antivirus, anti malware,
who's in the magic quadrant for that, which is the term of the industry. Um, And we'll say, okay,
here are these three. Let's evaluate them. We'll usually use them on our
cells first for a trial period. Check 'em out, see which one we like
the best, which one works, which one doesn't, which one does not. And then we'll go back and say,
Hey, we were using X, Y, Z. We've tested, we've found
that it's, this one is better. Here's where it is. If there's. Reall
y no price difference. We just swap it and say,
Hey, we're changing it. Here's what's, here's how
it's gonna affect you. Here's, it's not, in some cases, obviously
there's, you know, price has changed. Then we have to have those
communications and we, we have to effectively sell the, the reason why. Right. Um, and, but being able to go to a
company and say, Hey, we've got thousands of endpoints under a management. That allows us to negotiate better prices. And that's probably the,
the secondary
benefit. The next biggest benefit of an MSP is
being able to look at those products and be able to find the best one
and, and being able to kind of amor, amateurize it across a customer base
rather than saying, yep, you gotta pay full bore because you're only 10 people. Right. So, um, I think those two
things go together pretty well. Gotcha. Yep. All right. Perfect. Well, Thank you. Thanks for coming in and sharing that information. with us and everybody who's tuning in. We hope you guys found s
omething
useful in this, uh, this conversation. Thank you for joining us on this
episode of The Industrious Podcast. From wherever you guys get your
podcast, or for those of you guys watching right here on Theesa
YouTube channel, thank you for doing so, and we will see you next time. And don't forget, be industrious.
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