By Penny Belluz, Director of Operations
A great turnout was achieved at our Cyber security Lunch and Learn event on Thursday, March 28th at Lakehead University’s Faculty Lounge. Together with Jones & Associates, we were able to discuss with local business owners and managers the importance of making sure they protect themselves from Cyber Crime and the Dark Web.
According to the National Cyber Security Alliance, 70% of cyber-attacks target small business and 62% will go out of business within 6-months of a successful attack. At Teleco, we feel it’s our responsibility to make sure that our customer’s and our community are not part of this statistic. Herb Cheung from WatchGuard started the presentation off by sharing with us what the current landscape of cyber security looks like and what the latest threats are that we should be aware of. We heard about real life business examples of businesses that suffered attacks and how it crippled their company and how it could have been prevented.
We also heard from Jeff Jones and his personal experience on the ransomware attack they experienced at Jones & Associates and the impact it had on his business. Luckily, no client or proprietary information was breached, and it was a valuable insight for us all to learn why it happened, how they dealt with it and what they learned from it.
Ryan Johnson, Director of IT and Sales for Teleco, discussed why hackers target small business and why we are at risk. He shared practical advice and knowledge on what we can implement today to navigate these threats. Everyone was provided with a 15-point checklist to take back and start the discussion with their IT people on where they are at with their security and prevention.
Jones & Associates shared what options are available for Cyber Security Insurance and how the coverage works if all else fails with your security and prevention plan. The lunch and learn ended with a panel discussion with Herb, Ryan and Jeff answering all sorts of questions surrounding security, insurance and Dark Web. Some questions included, “Where can you buy BitCoin? Also, I have credentials on the Dark Web, what do I do now? Great interactive discussions were created around these topics.
Dark Web Scans were presented to all in business in attendance. Some with many credentials exposed and some with none. Teleco was also providing onsite Dark Web scans to those that requested it.
Congratulations to Manroc Developments Inc. that won the door prize of 6-months FREE Dark Web monitoring of their domain. Thank you to all who attended our event. It was great to share this knowledge and information with our customers and community. As small businesses we are largely unprotected from the growing list of risks, threats and vulnerabilities that exist in the modern IT world and we want to change that!
