Hello! My name is Cassie Riebau. I recently joined Simplex-IT in February as a Social Media Marketing Coordinator. I have previously worked as a sales associate while in college. This Spring I will graduate from The University of Akron, where I studied speech pathology and audiology, professional social media, sales, and entrepreneurship. I have an eight-year-old golden retriever named Oaty…

While the cyber security of your business should always be a high priority, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means that businesses may be at an increased risk of cyber-attack. Although there is no direct threat at present, the West is placing a range of sanctions on Russia. There could be retaliation, and Russia has used cyber-attacks in the past.

But what does this mean for your business?

The average office worker sends and receives around 121 emails every day. And while that sounds like a lot, what’s more shocking is that 3 billion phishing emails are sent each day. They account for 1% of all email traffic.

What’s a phishing email? It’s an email sent by cyber criminals that pretends to be from a trusted source, such as your bank, Amazon, or a delivery company.

You may have something in common with my younger grandkids. Not just the total lack of respect for me – but a love of infrastructure! My youngest three, oh boy, they love playing with infrastructure!

This is their latest infrastructure project in the basement of our house. What, you thought it was going to be a network or something..? They’re like 3 to 7 years old! But it does follow the traditional definition of infrastructure.

We were so excited to celebrate Pi Day in person this year, after having to get creative last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pi day is on March 14th, 3.14, to celebrate the first three numbers of the mathematical constant Pi (π). It is a great excuse to enjoy the different varieties of pie. This year eight team members from Simplex-IT gathered fresh pies from Gardner Pies and hand-delivered them to our clients across northeast Ohio.

So you’re the internal IT Person and you’re expected to know everything about MS 365, I mean Office 365, I mean Windows 365…you get the idea, right?

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website that you could go to and be able to really dig deep into the features and specifics of the various 365 subscriptions? And I’m not talking about a Microsoft site either! Ooh, and compare them against one another? Maybe really figure out what you need?

Zero Trust World was an excellent conference and it’s been great getting back out there with peers in the industry after 2 years of virtual conference.

I had a chance to catch up with some of our amazing partners (looking at you Liongard and CompTIA) but also got to meet plenty of new folks. I’m excited to spend more time looking into their solutions later this year.

So if your country’s being attacked, invaded, and essentially just under siege, who are you going to call, Microsoft?

I want to call your attention to something that’s going on in terms of the Russian invasion and attacks on Ukraine that really brought Microsoft front and center. And this information is taken from primarily a post from Brad Smith, President and Vice-chair of Microsoft who talks about the roles that Microsoft played and it’s a pretty cool story actually.

Apparently, I want to buy cars in England, I want to sign up for anything that moves, and I want to have meetings with lots of people, or are these email scams?

I’ve noticed recently that there’s a significant increase in companies that are claiming that I’ve signed up for their services, even if it’s a 30 day demo or the like, and if I just click here I’ll finish setting up my demo. Problem is I haven’t heard of any of these guys.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of 100 battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. And if you know neither the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

The reason I’m bringing it up is you’re the leader of an organization and you need to know what the bad guys are trying to do.

Trust me. No two words have such a wide array of implications. It’s the punchline of a joke. An appeal for help. An appeal to help. But here’s my question. What kind of trusts are there? And do we get them mixed up?

Computers are becoming more and more interactive every day, from video games giving you an ego boost by telling you, “You’re the hero of Gandor”, to your smart devices cheering you up when you’re feeling down. “Hey phone, make me feel better.” Haha, time well spent, thank you phone. But could the future of psychology be actually artificial?

So you’re the CEO of an organization, small, medium business and you’ve got internal IT people and they’re ok but they need some help. Co-Managed IT Services may be the right fit. Or maybe not?

What I want to talk about here is really the 3 types of Co-Managed IT services. And by that I mean things that are going to help or assist an organization that still wants to hold on to their internal IT people.

So, it’s your responsibility to continually improve your value proposition to your clients. Whether it be improvements to your product, service, delivery, or experience. Guess what? So do the bad guys.

And they’re taking a page out of our book.

No, these are not people trying to put chips into your bloodstream! (Gurh!)

The CIA Triad is actually a model that we use to communicate effectively, core bottom line cyber security concepts to people who aren’t cyber security experts. The CIA in this case stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, & Availability.

There’s a price increase for your Microsoft 365 licensing coming in March. Now before you start complaining, Microsoft has not increased the pricing for their products for about 10 years so it’s kind of overdue. They have added a lot of additional functionality without increasing the price. Also, it’s not every product that’s increasing, however it is the following:

We currently have 4 open positons. We are looking for reliable Service Desk Specialists to act as a Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 Technicians. We are also looking for a Client Relations Manager.

You must enjoy talking to and working with people. We offer a relaxed drama-free environment with cool people, and you will learn a ton in a supportive environment.

So, your organization has suffered some kind of data breach. Encryption. Theft. Destruction. It’s a sucky day to the highest degree. It’s time for an Incident Response Plan. Actually, it’s past time for one. It’s too late for one, actually. But let’s talk about what you can do if you don’t have an Incident Response Plan.

Douglas Adams. You may know this famous Sci-Fi author from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Sure, he was an accomplished author, with an impressive understanding of science and a unique perspective on technology, but was he also a prophet..?

We almost always talk about security in terms of the external, the bad guys out there, doing bad things.

Today, we’re going to talk about those other icky-type people: Employees.

From the CEO/HR standpoint, the first thing you need to do is keep an eye out for employees who are being terminated/fired/let go.