Cybersecurity expert Joel Hawbaker discusses the essential intersection of leadership and cybersecurity. Hawbaker, who operates his IT consulting business from a farm in Eastern Tennessee, underscores the misconception that only large businesses are cyber targets. He passionately clarifies that all businesses are vulnerable, emphasizing the critical need for proactive cybersecurity measures.

Hawbaker shares personal anecdotes and professional insights, illuminating the broader implications of cybersecurity on leadership and legacy. He stresses the importance of comprehensive security systems that go beyond mere technology, incorporating human elements and constant vigilance. His approach not only safeguards businesses but also cultivates a leadership style that prioritizes integrity and foresight.

Listeners gain a multifaceted understanding of how leadership extends beyond business operations to impact broader community and personal legacies. Hawbaker's dedication to living out his values as a follower of Jesus Christ and his commitment to impacting lives positively shines through, offering a compelling model for leaders everywhere.

Want to learn more about Joel Hawbaker's work? Check out his website at https://valenture.com.

Connect with Joel Hawbaker on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelhawbaker/.

Key Points with Timestamps

• [00:01:55-00:02:06] Joel Hawbaker discusses his vision for leadership and legacy beyond business achievements.
• [00:07:05-00:08:47] Hawbaker explains how cybersecurity is a critical aspect of modern leadership.
• [00:09:13-00:10:47] Discussion on the vulnerability of small businesses to cyber threats.
• [00:28:24-00:29:53] Hawbaker shares his personal philosophy on leadership and the impact he aims to have beyond his professional life.
• [00:31:04-00:31:57] Closing remarks by Craig Andrews, encouraging leaders to participate in future podcast episodes.

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;30;20
Craig Andrews
I was in a coma for six weeks while the doctors told my wife I was going to die. When I woke up, she told me the most fantastic story. My team kept running the business without me. Freelancers reached out to my team and said, we will do whatever it takes. As long as Craig's in the hospital. I consider that the greatest accomplishment of my career.

00;00;30;23 - 00;00;51;10
Craig Andrews
My name is Craig Andrews and this is the Leaders and Legacies podcast where we talk to leaders creating an impact beyond themselves. At the end of today's interview, I'll tell you how you can be the next leader featured on the show.

00;00;51;28 - 00;01;20;15
Craig Andrews
Today I will welcome Joe Hall. Baker. Joe went to the University of Illinois. They've got the most amazing thing there. They have a corn field in the middle of the campus. And they built the library underground so that they wouldn't disturb the cornfield. Well, he hasn't left his farming words. He lives on a farm in eastern Tennessee. From and from that farm he runs his IT consulting business, the venture.

00;01;20;17 - 00;01;55;07
Craig Andrews
It's focused on cybersecurity. Now, one of the things Joel and I were talking about in the green room is many businesses think, oh, other businesses need to worry about cybersecurity. I'm not a target. That is wrong. This is something this is an episode you need to listen to. Because if you have a business, you are a target. And so hopefully, Joel is going to bring the heat to help us understand why your target and what you need to do about it, but more importantly, we're going to talk about leadership.

00;01;55;07 - 00;02;06;29
Craig Andrews
And Joel has a vision for legacy that extends far beyond anything he's doing his business. And we're going to talk about that as well. So Joel, welcome.

00;02;07;01 - 00;02;09;20
Joes Hawbaker
Hey, Greg. Glad to be here. Thank you.

00;02;09;22 - 00;02;38;07
Craig Andrews
So, obviously, you know, University of Illinois, I, I looked at going there. and I didn't just because it was too much hassle. I, I, you know, I had credits in North Carolina, you know, was getting out of the Marine Corps. I had creds from the community college in North Carolina. I would have to transfer to whatever that community colleges in Urbana-Champaign lose credits in the process, then transfer into U of I.

00;02;38;07 - 00;02;53;12
Craig Andrews
And I was like, that's just too much hassle. But when amazing school. And it was fascinating how what's the deal with the cornfield? The, there's like some rule that they can't get rid of that cornfield.

00;02;53;15 - 00;03;14;07
Joes Hawbaker
You know, honestly, I had not heard about that cornfield, so I don't yeah, I don't know if that was, a thing of the past or what, because there were there definitely are corn fields that, they used for research there. they're further south a bit. The library currently is above ground, so it may have been something in the past, before I was there.

00;03;14;10 - 00;03;23;03
Joes Hawbaker
okay. Yeah. You know what's funny, though? My wife was actually she almost went to North Carolina for school, and she ended up going to UVA, and that's where we met. So.

00;03;23;06 - 00;03;24;10
Craig Andrews
Oh, that's all I story.

00;03;24;10 - 00;03;25;18
Joes Hawbaker
Yeah.

00;03;25;21 - 00;03;29;17
Craig Andrews
So now you now you have a a farm in eastern Tennessee.

00;03;29;17 - 00;03;46;10
Joes Hawbaker
It's now it's well, we call the Money Pit. I mean it's a hobby farm, right. So it's I had a conversation, you know, this past week where like, I do not want to be a farmer because farming is actually a lot of work. and, and I've got enough work as it is. So we we hobby farm, we spend money on the farm, right?

00;03;46;10 - 00;04;03;00
Joes Hawbaker
We spend money on animals and and things just to have fun, you know, and and to to have goats running around for the kids and chickens and stuff like that. So it's fun. But yeah, just a small little property here that you've got, you know, some some open fields and some animals. So good place to raise kids.

00;04;03;03 - 00;04;13;02
Craig Andrews
Now that's that's awesome. It's a do you, do you eat anything off the farm? Do any of the, the goats make it on onto the dinner table?

00;04;13;05 - 00;04;34;11
Joes Hawbaker
Not yet. I've thought about it, but, we have we have milked the goats. We've done that, for a little while, so we got tired of that. we do have chickens for eggs, and I. We butcher some chickens. and we've raised pigs, so we'll definitely eat the pigs. They're in the freezer right now, and, we're thinking about getting some cows soon, so.

00;04;34;17 - 00;04;35;20
Joes Hawbaker
Yeah, a little bit.

00;04;35;23 - 00;04;55;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And and of course, we're getting in the cyber security, but I mean, this sounds a little bit, this is really neat. You know, you're raising your kids on the farm. What what sort of things are they learning by? By doing that versus, you know, let's say living in Knoxville or Chattanooga?

00;04;55;19 - 00;05;15;09
Joes Hawbaker
Yeah. I mean, honestly, we came from a Chicago suburb. So where we moved from about 7 or 8 years ago. And so the kids were a lot younger than for one. But where we came from, we we had essentially a condo and it was a townhouse condo. And so no real property outside. The kids just kind of run free outside.

00;05;15;09 - 00;05;37;24
Joes Hawbaker
Right? So what they've learned is, I mean, man, they they just love being outdoors. They can run free. We're far enough from the road. I'm not worried about it. And so they've grown up completely comfortable in the outdoor rugged environment. Right. We've got lots of hills. We got a pond. We've got the woods, we've got, the fields.

00;05;37;27 - 00;05;54;27
Joes Hawbaker
so, you know, like, right now my, a little boy who's eight, he's, you know, he's currently got a pet frog, and he catches crickets, keeps, keeps him in another cage and feeds him every day. And so, you know, the him and his little brother, they go out and they they turn over rocks looking for all kinds of bugs coming in, asking what kind of bugs they are.

00;05;54;27 - 00;06;13;10
Joes Hawbaker
So, you know, and then the, the kids, they all do chores out of the barn, too, every day. Right? They go out there and they they, take care of the animals, make sure they're fed and watered, you know, and they've learned to, do the chores around, like, you know, keeping the barn clean or, you know, going out and doing, the medications, vaccines throughout the year that we have to do for the animals.

00;06;13;10 - 00;06;25;03
Joes Hawbaker
So a lot of things that I mean, it's stuff that we learn, too, because I'm a city boy really. You know, my my upbringing was not in the country, but I always loved the country. So, we've we've kind of learned it together over the past eight years.

00;06;25;05 - 00;06;41;11
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, and one of the things that's really interesting, and I guess it's been true for a long time, but I think Covid really helped us realize it is you can run a technology business from a farm. Yep. Street in Tennessee.

00;06;41;13 - 00;06;43;10
Joes Hawbaker
It's true. Yeah. It's a blessing.

00;06;43;12 - 00;06;48;17
Craig Andrews
Yeah. So tell me, tell me a little bit about your your tech business. What's it do?

00;06;48;20 - 00;07;05;19
Joes Hawbaker
Yeah. I mean really, you know, the, you know, kind of the paint picture a little bit. The thing is, as you alluded to before, we are in a cyber war, right? It is going on all around us every day. It's real people. You know, sometimes we think this is all just computers, but no, it's real people. Real people all around the world are attacking other real people.

00;07;05;19 - 00;07;28;20
Joes Hawbaker
Usually people like us. Right. And this is something that I want people to understand and I want to help them win that war. So that's what this business does, right? We we provide a few services where we demystify the idea of cybersecurity, because a lot of people hear that term and they think it's just it's too complicated, don't really know what it means, don't know how to secure myself my business.

00;07;28;22 - 00;07;47;23
Joes Hawbaker
We demystify by bringing it down to earth in terms that are simple and easy and easy to understand, like, you know, one one illustration we often give is you got to have a full sense of security around your business, right? Like if you put a fence around your yard doesn't really help to put up half a fence, right?

00;07;47;26 - 00;08;11;00
Joes Hawbaker
Doesn't doesn't work too well. So there are certain components that have to be in place. They all need to be in place. Now, they don't necessarily need to be 20ft tall, but you need each one of them to some extent, right? It doesn't help to have one section that is 20ft tall and the rest of it's missing. So we we help demystify it by explaining the components that are necessary.

00;08;11;03 - 00;08;34;21
Joes Hawbaker
And then, you know, using just common sense to help people put these things in place, secure the business without spending a ton of money. And it's actually built on tactics that we see attackers use. Right. It's not it's not just a software easy button that just, you know, promises to secure your business, but, you know, set it and forget it.

00;08;34;21 - 00;08;47;03
Joes Hawbaker
No, it's actually you got to think about how people think and how the attackers are thinking. And we can help put these things in place that will actually prevent attacks and stop them and detect them.

00;08;47;05 - 00;09;13;19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Let's dig in a little bit into who's, you know, who's at risk. Because, you know, I think of his target that was hacked, you know, a number of years ago. And you think, oh okay. Women target, you know, that's who the hackers are. You know, they're going after the Walmarts, the targets, the you know, the banks. but I just have, you know, a small business of, you know, 5 or 10 people.

00;09;13;21 - 00;09;16;24
Craig Andrews
I'm not a target. Is that right?

00;09;16;24 - 00;09;38;28
Joes Hawbaker
Thinking is not. It's not. I mean, you know, obviously a target, a Walmart. They're going to make the news, right? And they're going to make the big headlines. You can find news articles, though, about all sorts of small businesses but small. You mean municipalities, school districts, things like that that are getting hit every day and being ransomed and being, you know, shut down for days on end, sometimes never to come back.

00;09;38;28 - 00;10;08;08
Joes Hawbaker
Right. And the thing is, because of the way technology is today, with automation, with AI, all these technologies that the attackers use them, just like we might look at using them to increase our productivity. Well, they do too, right? So if you are connected to the internet at all, which I think just about every business, every person is these days, you are a target because the attackers are not looking for your name and saying, how am I going to find them?

00;10;08;08 - 00;10;30;12
Joes Hawbaker
I'm going to find where where their computers are, where their IP addresses are, and attack them instead, they have tools that automatically are just crawling the internet looking for vulnerabilities, looking for weak spots, and as soon as they find them, they have other automated tools that will exploit those weak spots. And before you know it, you've got an attacker in your system.

00;10;30;15 - 00;10;47;25
Joes Hawbaker
You are, then, you know, most likely going to be encrypted, right? That's the ransomware that you spoke about. your system is going to be encrypted. And the only way you're getting it back is if you had a good plan ahead of time to get it back or you pay a ransom.

00;10;47;27 - 00;11;10;04
Craig Andrews
I think the most bizarre example I heard of, of a small company being ransomed was a dry cleaner. just a small dry cleaner. And they got ransomed. And think about the, you know, they had thousands of garments, you know, on those little rails and they're people are showing up. They don't even know where their garments are.

00;11;10;04 - 00;11;11;25
Craig Andrews
They're somewhere in the back.

00;11;11;27 - 00;11;12;25
Joes Hawbaker
Yep.

00;11;12;27 - 00;11;18;21
Craig Andrews
But they can't even deliver their garments because location of the garments stored on the computer that just got ransomed.

00;11;18;23 - 00;11;44;08
Joes Hawbaker
Yeah. And think about that. I mean, think about the, you know, the money they got, they got to pay either to the attacker to get decrypted or to a provider to help them. You know, restore from back up or whatever it may be, the time that they're down, the money. This lost the reputation as lost. If you really look at, you know, the the impact of an attack like that, it's not that initial, you know, that initial, cost, it goes on for years.

00;11;44;16 - 00;11;49;05
Joes Hawbaker
It can really harm a business. And a lot of businesses just simply do not come back.

00;11;49;08 - 00;11;53;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. How's that going? For years.

00;11;53;10 - 00;11;54;04
Joes Hawbaker
I'm sorry as that.

00;11;54;06 - 00;11;58;07
Craig Andrews
So it's not just the cost of the initial attack. You said it's a cost that goes on for years.

00;11;58;15 - 00;12;16;22
Joes Hawbaker
Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Yeah. So it it goes on for years. Really? Because of the reputation loss. That's a big part of it. There's there's a lot of factors, but reputation loss, the, the cost of, building the business back up, the, the cost of really recovering the data that was lost. Sometimes it's not recoverable.

00;12;16;22 - 00;12;35;24
Joes Hawbaker
Right. Sometimes you may you may have to go back to, hey, we lost three months of data. We lost six months of data, whatever it is. Because, you know, one of the tactics, attackers will actually get into your system and they will look for the backups and then they will make sure that they've infected the backups over time.

00;12;35;24 - 00;13;05;24
Joes Hawbaker
Right. And then then they pull the trigger after, it's like, okay, well, now we're six months into the system. So even if they restore from backup from a month ago, oh, well, we still got a back door into it. Right. Because it's still infected or they'll extort. Right. They'll say, hey, we if it's especially if it's like a healthcare organization or something where there's, there's, you know, private personal information, they they'll, they'll exfiltrate that data and say, well, if you don't pay the ransom, you can you can restore from backup all you want.

00;13;05;24 - 00;13;17;12
Joes Hawbaker
But if you don't pay the ransom, this is going public. We're going to publish all your client data. And you know, again, how do you come back from that? Right. That's your whole that's your whole business. And to keep that private.

00;13;17;14 - 00;13;54;03
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it's funny, I get these, I'm going to name recently, but I used to get these emails where it's like, oh, you've been doing something naughty, and I've hacked into your webcam and, you know, you've got to send me this Bitcoin. And I think the one that got the biggest kick out of was, I don't know if, you know, I was in the hospital for three months, you know, and I was in a coma for six weeks, and, they sent me they sent me one, basically saying without realizing I was in the coma, they were like, oh, in this day you were doing this?

00;13;54;03 - 00;14;00;06
Craig Andrews
I'm like, well, that would have been pretty amazing because I was on a ventilator and in a coma.

00;14;00;08 - 00;14;01;10
Joes Hawbaker
right.

00;14;01;12 - 00;14;18;25
Craig Andrews
But it gets people scared. I'm sure they're a lot. I mean, they, I guess it doesn't work anymore because I don't get those emails anymore, but that obviously worked for a while, that they would scare people just into paying, you know, basically paying a ransom, for an event that never happened.

00;14;18;28 - 00;14;33;23
Joes Hawbaker
Oh, absolutely. And that's the thing, because it's it's it's such a small cost to them to send those out, right? Like, they, they have an automated system that sends it out to everybody. And, hey, it's a numbers game. How many can you get to pay the ransom even if it's a small amount, right. Get them to pay the ransom.

00;14;33;23 - 00;15;04;03
Joes Hawbaker
And that that's the thing again, this this cyber threat warfare. You know, industry is an industry now. Like there is ransomware as a service that these attackers can buy, just like you buy software as a service. So you buy office 365 or you use Gmail. It's a free software as a service, right? Like they can buy ransomware as a service, someone that already created all the automated tools they need, and they can just subscribe to it and or buy it and use it.

00;15;04;05 - 00;15;19;29
Joes Hawbaker
And they have customer service departments, like if you get ransomware and you're not sure, well, it says, hey, I need to pay this many bitcoin to this, I don't I don't know anything about Bitcoin. How am I going to pay that. Oh we'll just call this number they got. They have a helpdesk. You can call and get get help.

00;15;19;29 - 00;15;26;21
Joes Hawbaker
And you know and have someone walk you through the process of paying the ransom. So it's it's it's straight up a business.

00;15;26;23 - 00;15;38;12
Craig Andrews
So so your, your threat isn't a, a lone hacker sitting in his pajamas in the basement figuring it it's like a professional team of developers.

00;15;38;14 - 00;15;58;10
Joes Hawbaker
It can be it can be both. Right. Because sometimes that that one lone attacker just happened to buy the tool kit, right. And because it's like, hey, if I can buy that tool kit, I can do all these things real easily and I can just set this thing loose and see who I can real in, right? Sometimes it's going to be a state group, state sponsor group.

00;15;58;10 - 00;16;13;00
Joes Hawbaker
They're really dangerous, right? Because they're they've got tons of money and a lot of expertise. And, and they're the ones that are, that are, you know, going to go after larger targets typically, you know, but it can be all of the above. Wow. Yeah.

00;16;13;03 - 00;16;25;22
Craig Andrews
So what are, you know, for, for your average SMB. What are 3 or 5 things everyone should be doing to protect themselves.

00;16;25;25 - 00;16;45;21
Joes Hawbaker
Yeah. So so there's a lot of pieces to it really. But you know some of the most critical things security monitoring. Right. So do you have anything that is like all of our devices, our computers, they put out logs. They put up messages saying, okay, here's what happened on this machine. Here's some, you know, whatever. Is anybody watching those?

00;16;45;21 - 00;17;13;19
Joes Hawbaker
Right. You may have a firewall in your business. Right? Most everybody does. There's a firewall between your network and the internet. Is anybody watching the activity on that firewall? What's happening? Does anybody know if there's anomalous behavior happening on your computers? If someone's scanning your network, if if there is an attacker inside your network sitting there messing around, looking for, you know, vulnerabilities because they're already past the firewall, who would know?

00;17;13;22 - 00;17;35;02
Joes Hawbaker
If you don't know, you probably need to think about having some sort of monitoring put in place. And, you know, the great thing about that is that in the past, you know, that's what's called like security operations Center SoC and, you know, monitoring, right. Like having a sock team, a security team in the past was much more unattainable.

00;17;35;09 - 00;17;57;19
Joes Hawbaker
It was expensive. It was hard to do. nowadays it it's simple. It's cheap. It's, you know, how many users do you have? Okay. Multiply that by this number. And that's that's what you pay. Right. And so it's easy to do. It's easy to acquire. You don't need to build it out in a house. You don't need to think, okay, when I'm going to hire a security team and you know, how am I going to do I don't have how am I going to manage a security team when I don't know security?

00;17;57;19 - 00;18;23;17
Joes Hawbaker
Right. Well, you don't do that because it doesn't make sense. It's not it's cheaper to hire out to the experts that do it all day long because you get economies of scale that way. So hire out, get somebody watching your network and watching your devices, watching your users in office. 365 or in, you know, in, Google Workspace and that will that'll take you miles beyond, you know, where you may be right now.

00;18;23;20 - 00;18;44;26
Joes Hawbaker
Other things we look for is okay. Well, what what is your company look like from the outside? You know, because we talked about how attackers are scanning the internet and looking for anything they can to find vulnerabilities. Well, do you know what your company looks like? There are companies out there that that provide a risk rating. Risk reports.

00;18;44;27 - 00;19;05;25
Joes Hawbaker
This is this is one component in our security bundle. that look at your public footprints and all sorts of ways, IP addresses that are out there, domains that are out there, users that may be showing up on the dark web, whatever it may be, and can put together a report of what's risky to you and what may be exposed.

00;19;05;25 - 00;19;25;03
Joes Hawbaker
You may not not even know about. I mean, you get into just medium sized businesses and there's hundreds and thousands of of assets out there on the internet, right? That if you're not really diligent in tracking them, you may not know what's out there. So it's useful to have this. And this is part of what we do every month with our customers.

00;19;25;06 - 00;19;44;02
Joes Hawbaker
We meet with them. We go through these reports and, you know, a bunch of others as well that we do scanning their network, stuff like that. But go through these reports and say, here are the risks that you have. And sometimes it be like, oh, I didn't know about that one. Oh, I know what that is. That's an old system that we forgot to turn off or okay, okay, good.

00;19;44;05 - 00;19;57;11
Joes Hawbaker
Now we know. So this next month we're going to take care of these right. And then we'll come back in a month later and we'll talk about here's what we still see. Here's what you need to take care of. Right. And so our customers as they are with our program, they get better every month. Right. They get more secure every month.

00;19;57;15 - 00;20;20;22
Joes Hawbaker
And you notice it's not it's not like I say, it's not, here just every month they're spending more on another piece of software. Right. It's more about actionable tasks that are actually making them more secure. It's getting rid of vulnerabilities that are out there because that's what attackers are looking for. So those two things, I'd say if I were to pick a third one, well, there are some very basic things, right.

00;20;20;22 - 00;20;39;28
Joes Hawbaker
There's agents on the machine. There's like what? What used to be called antivirus. Now the current, you know, version of that, which is much more intelligent and capable, is called EDR endpoint protection response. So this this is on every computer in your business. You should have. So if you don't if you don't know if you have it, find out because you need that.

00;20;39;28 - 00;21;01;13
Joes Hawbaker
Because that's what is protecting these these computers. When an attacker does get in and attempts to do something, a lot of times the EDR can shut it down right faster than a human can, you know, detecting it. Right. So those are some basics. But we put in what we call canaries or what are called canaries into our customer networks.

00;21;01;15 - 00;21;22;07
Joes Hawbaker
And if you've heard, you know, the term canary in the gold mine, you know, it's the it's the first alert, right. Something's going wrong is the first alert. So a canary is something that looks like a computer may look like a firewall, may look like a router, may look like anything. We can make it look like anything. you know, software wise.

00;21;22;09 - 00;21;50;17
Joes Hawbaker
And so an attacker gets into your network and they start looking around, they're going to see this thing. There we go. Oh, that looks that looks, you know, vulnerable. I'm going to see if I can get into that. And all these alarm bells will start going off, you know logs. And if someone's watching your logs. Right. logs and such so that you know right away that there's some anomalous or potentially malicious behavior happening in your network before they have a chance to really break into something valuable.

00;21;50;19 - 00;22;23;06
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, one of the things that amazes me is I can't think of a single time I've heard about bank being hacked, so and for good reason. Obviously, they have just insane security. And where I'm going with this is most most businesses aren't going to have the same security their bank has. and when I think about our sheds, you know, we, we put thousands of dollars of equipment in a shed that we, you know, lock with a $5 padlock that anybody with bolt cutters could remove.

00;22;23;08 - 00;22;43;25
Craig Andrews
But it works. Is there a padlock principle to cyber security that, you know, you don't need to be as secure as a bank, but, you know, some very, very there's a basic threshold that once you cross it, there are easier targets to be had. And so people go after the easier targets.

00;22;43;27 - 00;23;00;16
Joes Hawbaker
Oh absolutely. Yeah. I mean, we say all the time, you don't have to be the fastest gazelle. Just don't be the slowest, right. Cheetahs chasing the gazelles. Just don't be the slowest, all right. He's not going to get to get the gazelle in the middle of the pack usually. So. So yeah, there are absolutely, you know, basics like I mentioned.

00;23;00;17 - 00;23;20;11
Joes Hawbaker
You know those are all basics. And you can you can turn those up or down as you need to. Right. You don't have to spend a ton on these things like security monitoring. There are ways to do that. That's relatively cheap at the very least. Like let's say we we just monitor what's happening in office. 365 right. If you if that's what you use in your business, right.

00;23;20;13 - 00;23;35;22
Joes Hawbaker
Just monitor what those users are doing where they're logging in from. So, you know, like, hey, you know, Joe Smith usually logs in, you know, from Chicago and today he's logging in from Russia. Okay. Well, that's probably a problem, right?

00;23;35;24 - 00;23;36;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah.

00;23;36;19 - 00;24;04;17
Joes Hawbaker
You know, you want to get alerted on that. So there you know, those can be those can be, excuse me, fairly cheap things to turn up. And then even like the other stuff that we talked that I mentioned before, I mean, a lot of that stuff can be done fairly inexpensively. And that's why our bundle, what we call a co managed partner program, is really a bundle that's that's tailored towards every customer that it's got all these components.

00;24;04;20 - 00;24;27;00
Joes Hawbaker
And we say, okay, let's, let's talk about here's what we recommend you do. Oh well the budget just won't support that okay okay. Well let's talk about the most important things or let's talk about instead of putting every computer into this, let's put in say, the 30 most important ones, including like your accounting machines, your your VIPs in the company, your servers, stuff like that.

00;24;27;00 - 00;24;36;05
Joes Hawbaker
Let's get at least those monitored. Right. So someone's watching that stuff. So there are ways to tailor those and not break the bank on it.

00;24;36;07 - 00;25;06;08
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And one of the things that worries me always is the is the human element. Well-intended people do things that compromise the, the business and I think probably the best example I can think of is right here in Austin, we have SolarWinds, you know, and they had an intern that, set up a password, you know, set up a log in and a password that was floating around the internet.

00;25;06;08 - 00;25;11;22
Craig Andrews
And it led to the largest hack of government computers in U.S. history.

00;25;11;25 - 00;25;13;10
Joes Hawbaker
Right.

00;25;13;12 - 00;25;28;07
Craig Andrews
And so how do you and think that an intern intended harm? Yeah, he was probably hoping to get a job there. I don't think he was being malicious, but well-intended people make mistakes. How do you deal with the human factor?

00;25;28;09 - 00;25;48;14
Joes Hawbaker
That's a good question. I mean, because you're absolutely right. I mean, that is we tend to be the weakest link in the chain, right, as people. So, you know, there's a lot, lot to say about that particular incident. Right? The a lot of it comes with, management within the company. What are your policies? Do you have, you know, policies for where data should go, where, where sensitive information should go.

00;25;48;14 - 00;26;21;21
Joes Hawbaker
Do you have password managers that your users are required to use? Right. that can help stop a lot of that. But cybersecurity awareness training is a big component of our CRM, our program as well. And that's that has a few components to it. But, you know, one that you're probably familiar with is if you've, you know, worked in any company, you get these phishing emails that are often sent out by the IT department, and it's to test you, to train you.

00;26;21;21 - 00;26;45;00
Joes Hawbaker
Right. And so it's a it's a platform that can send these out based, you know, on the cadence that they want to to, to users that look like, you know, look pretty legit right. It could be Comcast. It could be an Amazon email. It could be whatever. And you know it'll log to the user, open it to the user, click on a button with, you know, within the email.

00;26;45;00 - 00;27;06;12
Joes Hawbaker
Did they then on the website that opened up, did they put in their name and password like it can log all this stuff. Right. So you know which users are falling for this and how far they're falling and then have them, you know, take part in some remedial training like there's usually videos and things like that to go along with it to help them understand, like watch out for these things.

00;27;06;12 - 00;27;26;12
Joes Hawbaker
Here's how to spot a phishing email. Or here's some basic, you know, cybersecurity tips like don't store your passwords on a on, you know, sticky note or, you know, and a text file on your computer. Here's what you should be doing. So things like that do all the training that we can do. The thing I'll say about that, though, you know, it's vital to do that.

00;27;26;17 - 00;27;44;28
Joes Hawbaker
But still we're human, right? Everybody's human. And some people some people just clicks for some people doesn't. So you still it's definitely a both and right. You can't rely on the training alone and you can't rely on just the technology alone. It's got to be both and yeah.

00;27;45;00 - 00;28;15;19
Craig Andrews
Wow. Well, it's a lot. It's a lot to think about and I, I hope businesses hope everybody realizes that cyber security is a threat to them. but, last thing I, you know, before we wrap up, one of the things you said when I asked you what your goal was for the podcast, you kind of thought about, and you what came out was in all that you do in your in running your business, you have kind of a higher goal.

00;28;15;21 - 00;28;24;24
Craig Andrews
And this this comes into the legacy. What what do you see as your legacy? What do you want your legacy to be?

00;28;24;26 - 00;28;41;02
Joes Hawbaker
Right. So I mean, as you can tell I mean, I've got a passion for cybersecurity, I've got a passion for helping people secure their businesses and win this war. But ultimately, what matters. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and I want people to, you know, I think about my legacy. I want that to be known. Right?

00;28;41;02 - 00;29;05;13
Joes Hawbaker
I want I want it to be. That's how I live. That people will say, yep, he did live as a follower of Christ. And I want people to know the gospel. I want people's lives to be changed. I want people to be saved from their sins. I want people to, I it's amazing when when you see the power, when someone is saved and how it changes their life, changes their heart and, you know, it's not just for eternity, it's for now.

00;29;05;13 - 00;29;30;14
Joes Hawbaker
And so I that's really, you know, that is my overarching passion. That's what I teach my kids. It's how I lead my family. And, you know, we recently came back from a trip to Africa, a missions trip, and, it's just eye opening to see, you know, when you when you get outside of the U.S., you get into places that they don't think about all the things we think about because they're just they don't have the things we have.

00;29;30;14 - 00;29;53;29
Joes Hawbaker
Right? It's just life is simpler because it's a lot harder. Right? And the joy they have of knowing Jesus, right. The joy that that comes with that, even though they have nothing else. Yeah. It just really opens your eyes. You're like, man, everybody needs us, right? Everybody here and and the US and elsewhere needs this. So that's my passion.

00;29;54;01 - 00;30;17;16
Craig Andrews
Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting I, I live in a school district where they've, there has been a Ferrari parked in student parking at the high school and. Yeah. And so the, you know, the, the cruel, the, you know, the cruel parents here, you know, don't, don't buy their kids a, you know, an exotic car or, you know, or a German car.

00;30;17;18 - 00;30;34;16
Craig Andrews
and I love that, you know, that you take your kids to Africa where you realize, you know what? These guys, none of them have a car. But it's about finding the things in life that truly matter that they wonder.

00;30;34;19 - 00;30;37;18
Joes Hawbaker
Absolutely. Yeah.

00;30;37;21 - 00;30;41;03
Craig Andrews
Joe, how can people reach you?

00;30;41;06 - 00;30;58;04
Joes Hawbaker
They can find me on LinkedIn, and they can also find me if they go to our website for lunch or.com, they can, you know, they can schedule right on my calendar from right there. They can, you know, check the about us. You'll see my my face and bio. And you can schedule right there with me now.

00;30;58;06 - 00;31;01;08
Craig Andrews
Well, Joel, thanks for sharing all that on Lazarus and Legacies.

00;31;01;10 - 00;31;04;28
Joes Hawbaker
I appreciate it, Greg. Thank you.

00;31;04;28 - 00;31;33;24
Craig Andrews
This is Craig Andrews. I want to thank you for listening to the Leaders and Legacies podcast. We're looking for leaders to share how they're making the impact beyond themselves. If that's you, please go to Alize for me.com/guest and sign up there. If you got something out of this interview, we would love you to share this episode on social media.

00;31;33;26 - 00;31;57;06
Craig Andrews
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00;31;57;08 - 00;34;07;24
Craig Andrews
Please go ahead and subscribe your thumbs up! Ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show. It means a lot to me. It means a lot to my team. If you want to know more, please go to Alize for me.com. or follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.