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While taxes are usually the star of the show, Dr. Friday takes a detour “off the grid” this week to discuss a critical component of business health: cybersecurity. Joined by Matt Folker and Dennis Buzard from Innovative Solutions Through Technology (ISTT), Dr. Friday explores why small and medium-sized businesses are often the most vulnerable to hackers. From “sniff tests” for emails to the dangers of leftover COVID-era remote access, this episode is a must-listen for any business owner looking to protect their data, their employees, and their legacy.
Key Summary Points
- The Goal is Risk Elimination: ISTT’s primary objective isn’t just fixing computers; it’s identifying hidden risks in a network and eliminating them before the “bad guys” find them.
- The 30-Minute Assessment: Dennis explains their entry-level scan, which takes about 30–45 minutes. If their simulation software can run on your system, it means a hacker’s malware can too.
- Good “Cyber Hygiene”: Matt shares simple but effective tips, such as the “toothbrush rule” (never share your password) and the “sniff test” (if an email looks off, it probably is).
- Ransomware is a Business: Modern hackers aren’t just locking your data; they are stealing it to sell. Matt shares a cautionary tale of a business owner whose retirement plan was ruined after a breach forced him to pay for identity protection for every employee from the last seven years.
- Hidden Entry Points: Your computer isn’t the only way in. Hackers often use “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices like office thermostats, printers, and security cameras to bridge into a company’s main server.
- The “Good Guy” Support: Beyond security, ISTT discusses the importance of professional IT support to prevent “jerry-rigged” solutions that accidentally open security holes during emergencies like payroll processing.
Episode FAQ
What is ISTT? ISTT stands for Innovative Solutions Through Technology. They are a Kentucky and Tennessee-based IT and cybersecurity firm that provides technical assessments, end-user training, and managed IT support.
What happens during the free evaluation? Dennis Buzard visits your office for 30–45 minutes to run a sample scan on a few workstations. About a week later, they provide a 25–30 page detailed report (in layman’s terms) explaining where your security holes are.
I’m a small business with only a few computers. Do I really need this? Yes. Dr. Friday notes that many small businesses rely on outdated setups from decades ago or “big box store” Wi-Fi solutions that aren’t secure. Hackers often target smaller firms because they lack the robust IT departments of major corporations.
Does ISTT use offshore support? No. All ISTT employees are based locally in Kentucky and Tennessee, though they serve clients across the majority of the United States.
Transcript
Dr. Friday
All right, we are here with the Doctor Friday show. The Doctor is in the house, and we have some guests in the studio. Matt, could you say your name, please?
Matt Folker
Yeah, my name is Matt Folker.
Dr. Friday
And what’s your job title?
Matt Folker
Well I’m got a little bit of everything, but um pretty much I’m the chief information officer for a company called ISTT, which is also a mouthful. It stands for Innovative Solutions Through Technology. Yes, I run out of breath every time I say it. That’s why we say it ISTT. But thanks for having me on today.
Dr. Friday
Thanks for joining me, and I’m so sorry. Everyone that knows me knows I am Horrible with names. Dennis is also here. Dennis, you want to tell him a little bit about who you are?
Dennis Buzard
Yeah, Dennis Buzard. I’m the senior sales manager with ISTT, helping folks stay safe and not let any cyber issues hit them.
Dr. Friday
All right. And that’s what the show’s about today, guys. We’re gonna get into a little bit off the normal path. Taxes are fine and exciting and for me totally fun. But I think sometimes we need to, you know, let our brain rest and go and think about something else. And I um being an enrolled agent, we have to keep things kind of cyber safe And so I called these guys and Dennis came to my office and did this really cool evaluation. And so Matt, I guess we’ll just let you tell a little bit about what is the first step. How does IST keep the bad guys out?
Matt Folker
So really it boils down to our objective is to eliminate risk. Okay, we we want to go into a facility and we do some technical assessments. We have some cool technology that helps us with this, but overall our objective is to find risk and eliminate it.
Dr. Friday
And I guess the next question following that would be, how do you do that?
Matt Folker
So um like when when Dennis went to your office, he had a little USB drive that I’d loaded up for him. Um and basically it does Kinda just an entry level scan, kinda looking to see if at least you’ve got your front door is is shut and locked, which, you know, most of the time the doors are wide open. But that’s okay. That’s part of the business. That’s why we’re here. Um but our our objective is to find things that have been overlooked and sometimes it’s things that have been set up incorrectly when it was first set up fifteen, twenty years ago and was just kind of forgotten about. Um but then we we evaluate, you know, what users have access to what, those kinds of things. Um and really the the skinny of it is if it’s really easy for, you know, one of your employees to come in and access some things that they shouldn’t shouldn’t have access to. Then that means the bad guys can too. And so if you have a really simple password, for example, um then It’s gonna be really easy for those bad guys to to get that password, or if you don’t have two FA, uh, which we can we can go into a little bit of that a little bit later. But But yeah, basically we are looking for risk and we are trying to eliminate that and we and we eliminate it via technology.
Dr. Friday
Right. And I think that’s the any business owner or maybe you work for a firm where you work under the, you know, the the office staff and you know that maybe nothing’s been updated for a while, nothing’s been taken care of for a while. And you’re like, cause I mean my office you know, Matt hit her on the head. We’ve kinda just continued with what was set up decades possibly ago. Pretty sad. I mean we’ve updated the softwares we’ve updated and we think if we’ve got McAfee or Norton that it says it’s security software, hello, um, that we’re actually doing what we need to do. But we know now Thank you, Dennis. Um that we were not actually necessarily doing everything that we should. So so now let’s say you go in and you find the flaws. What would be the next step Um for someone, you know, not talking financial so much as, you know, what would you be doing to help them secure their borders?
Matt Folker
So basically once we we’ll compile a report, okay, and a lot of it is kind of technical, nerdy jargon. And that’s why I keep Dennis really close. So ’cause he he’ll he’ll keep he’ll keep me close and he he’s a much better communicator than I am, as you can tell. That that said, um we we run this report um and then we review it with the the business owner or the decision maker of Hey, here’s all of the holes that we found and just lay the data out. Here it is. Here’s what we found. If you want to hire us to help you close some of those gaps. Great. If not, here’s the data. Here’s the report. Our objective is to make the community a safer place, whether you use us or not.
Dr. Friday
And I I have to say that was a huge selling vehicle for me because I was thinking, Okay, I have Norton, I have the he’s gonna come in, he’s gonna say, Okay, there’s these little things, passwords. I know mine aren’t the most high tech, maybe Now knowing they’re even less high tech. But anyways, um, you know, I didn’t I didn’t think about it too much because I was figuring we we have these different things, but After seeing the report, it’s kind of guys like when you get in a love letter from the IRS and it says, we’re changing your tax return and you have no idea why. And they send you this whole booklet of stuff. This guy came into my office and he had to have twenty-five, thirty pages of all kinds of jargon. And Matt is correct. I’m feel myself a fairly intelligent individual, but with looking at that, I’m like, Dennis, break it down. Get it down to the layman terms because there’s a lot of information. It wasn’t necessarily something that an everyday person But the hackers would understand this information. And that’s what was scary for me.
Matt Folker
So here’s a here’s a good example of I I’m gonna put myself in your shoes.
Dr. Friday
Okay.
Matt Folker
Um I have three three boys ages eleven, nine, and five. And my two oldest, uh, in in twenty seventeen, the hospital that they were born in had a huge breach. And two of my kids, they had their social security numbers stolen. And so in twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen when I went to file my taxes, uh, and y I I wasn’t late, but you know, I filed it in end of March somewhere in there. Um my taxes got rejected because someone had already filed taxes against my children. Yes. Okay. So you know, but so one kid was four, the other kid was two, and they had already had their identity stolen. Okay. Totally sad. And it’s it’s been, you know, there was two years of nightmare and a lot of paperwork, but at the end of the day, I can’t change my kids social security number. That’s what was assigned to them. Yep. And when they hit adulthood I expect they’re gonna have a lot of issues. They’re gonna have, you know, alerts of people trying to get loans and car loans and stuff like that and liens. On their social security number.
Dr. Friday
They need to start a corporation with an EIN number, just create themselves an entity.
Matt Folker
Yeah.
Dr. Friday
We’ll talk about that when you get old enough to worry about it.
Matt Folker
Yeah. I’ll I’ll bring them in.
Dr. Friday
We’ll we’ll get that figured out.
Matt Folker
Um but anyway, it it’s an absolute nightmare. And these are for my kids. Like I I’m the I’m supposed to be the cybersecurity expert and it still happened to me. You know, I mean there wasn’t there wasn’t anything I could do in this case. It was the hospital had a really large lapse in security and I was the victim of it as were a lot of their people.
Dr. Friday
How many times do we get letters from TOGAT? and all kinds of places where we’ve used our credit cards or whatever and they come back and they said you’ve been your identity may have been stolen or or your information may have been hacked. IRS I got one from because they got somehow your information So we know that’s out there. And we also know our dentist’s office where we forgive them everything is probably not as secure as it should be and those kind of things, which is why I wanted you on actually, because I think a lot of times Us smaller guys, you know, maybe IBM or you know Coca-Cola, the big guys, they have these whole departments.
Matt Folker
I know that there was a Couple couple well this was last year I believe T Mobile got hacked and they had gotten hacked previously like five or six, seven years ago. So even the big names in technology where you’d be like, Oh, they’re fine. We’re all humans. Yeah. Big or small. There’s gonna be mistakes that are made. Um and and so that’s why we we really take it seriously of keeping the bad guys out and keeping the good guys in. Right. That that is is is what we’re trying to accomplish on any level. It’s it’s the big corporate level and then also the the personal level.
Dr. Friday
Right. So the bad guy out we all understand. I think that’s pretty much the hackers or the people that are trying to steal something from us. And then you have the the education side, which is like For me, if I work with you, it’s like keep the good guys in.
Matt Folker
Yeah.
Dr. Friday
How does that I mean how do you help do that if that makes sense?
Matt Folker
So we we do a lot of end user training for our clients and really that that helps out in twofold Number one, our clients obviously they want to educate their staff to where, hey, you’re you’re handling this important company data, this important client data. And we don’t want it to get mistreated, we don’t want it to get leaked out, we don’t want it sold off to the highest bidder, those kinds of things, obviously. Um but at the end of the day, the our clients realize that even if they’re able to teach their clients or their their employees of, hey, this is how you detect a malicious email. Okay, here’s some password hygiene that you need to have. A term that I use is you never share your toothbrush, so don’t ever share your password. All right. Um the the our our clients understand that employees when the when they’re educated and even when they’re in their everyday life when they’re able to um kind of When when they’re able to um sorry, when when they’re able to do a better job of keeping their own data safe. When they have those good intentions, when they have you know good password hygiene personally, then they’re also going to do that on the on the business level.
Dr. Friday
Sorry, Matt was stuttering partly because I’m doing this little hand signal that we have to take a break and I’m like Matt’s like, Okay, I get it, Friday. Anyhow, just so you guys don’t have a camera on here so you don’t see how Funny that isn’t here. If you guys want to get a free evaluation, they’re gonna stay on the show. But for our first break, if you want to call them 615-225-7070, 615-225-7070 Free evaluation. We’re gonna take our first break. We’ll be right back with the Dr. Friday show. Alrighty, we are back here. Dr. Friday. This is the Dr. Friday show for all of you that are listening. I’m Dr. Dr. Friday and enrolled agent licensed by the Internal Revenue Service to do taxes and representation. That being said, today we are going off grid. Well, I don’t know if that Eric C fits perfectly with this conversation, Matt. Dr. Matt is here with I S T T Inc. I’m trying to say it slow guys ’cause I I’m a mess it up. And you notice I didn’t use Matt’s last name. It’s a easy name, but I’m gonna mess it up no matter what I say. Maybe by the end of the show I’ll be calling him the proper name. Anyways, when we left the last break, you were talking about how, you know, keeping the good guys in, educating people so that they and I thought that was great because Um again, we’re working with these guys and they’re gonna be educating us because I think that’s something we take a lot of seminars. We’re big on CE credits and seminars. Um but you only apply what you know. With someone could come in and say, hey, we know your system. Right? We know, and this is what we need you to start doing. Passwords need to be better. Not sharing your toothbrush, that’s true. So therefore you don’t want to be sharing your passwords And I will say that happens in our office. I already know that because someone will get locked out and we have to, you know, get someone else in, whatever. And and Since Alone’s almost family in my office, it’s it’s very laid back. Only have two people that aren’t physically related to me, so it’s very close in my world, but it doesn’t mean that that information can’t get out the wrong way. And that’s what I feel um People trust my firm to keep their information as best I can. I need to do the best I can. And that’s why you guys come in. You’re the best.
Matt Folker
Yeah. And that is their their personal data. They don’t realize the value of it on the dark web. And then also with obviously w with company data. You know, j one small breach. Can mean that all employees W twos get stolen. You know, name names, addresses, social security numbers, all that can be gone.
Dr. Friday
And think about an accounting firm who has payroll. And all those, right? So I mean we have a lot more and the IRS has put out a lot of notices for accounting firms because they hijack it, right? They want to put some sort of A couple I I’ve never known anyone, but they had articles on the IRS where people had gotten hijacked they had to pay a fee to get their hard drive back.
Matt Folker
So we call that ransomware.
Dr. Friday
Ransom, okay.
Matt Folker
And and basically is the bad guys will hack your system they will take a copy of your data and then destroy the data that you have. Okay? And so some people are like, oh, we got good backups, we’ll restore it, have a nice day. Well, that’s only half the problem because they have a copy of all of your data. And and it it may sound a little bit strange, but yeah, they’ll they’ll ransom your data and they’ll say, hey, we want five Bitcoin and we’ll delete the copy of the data we have and and First glance you’re like, well, I I can’t trust you. You’re you’re a criminal.
Dr. Friday
You’re a bad guy.
Matt Folker
And yeah, at face value, that’s true. But fr in their point of view, you know, these are guys in North Korea, Russia. Uh, you know, a a lot of a lot of naughty places and it’s a business for them. Oh yeah. And a lot of people, they’re just working for a company. Going out trying to steal people’s data, they don’t really see any harm in it. They’re and their their mindset is well if we got in, then you know
Dr. Friday
Those are the kinds of things that you read about and you know of course you hope never happen, but it happens to somebody. So therefore I can’t live my life with the idea I hope I’ll never be the guy that gets caught So that’s the reason I have you guys in here. This reason I want you as my listeners to listen because if you’re working in a small office. Medium sized, large. These guys aren’t limited to numbers. I’m more thinking that and and Matt pretty much already said sometimes you think the big offices you already think have IT departments, therefore they should be But maybe this would be a cool test if you do work in a big office, have these guys come in and I mean again, it’s free. You’re not wasting anyone’s time, but they’re so hey, it’s really just a matter of Have them come in, run this test, and see if you are as safe as you think. Because if you aren’t, well, hey, they can fix that. But if you are They’re not going to do anything. I mean, it was their time, right? So it’s a it’s a free evaluation. So it really is only a matter of how long does it take, Dennis?
Dennis Buzard
Thirty to forty-five minutes.
Dr. Friday
Thirty-to-forty-five minutes. He comes into your office He’s he’s a sweet guy, to be honest with you. I have great Danes in my office and everything else. I did hang him off, but I mean bottom line is he’s having to move around dog beds. I mean it’s a really crazy world in there Um and and it’s in a big barn. So just so you guys you guys know where I live. Anyways, that being said, he he was cool. He went in there, left a few 30, 40 minutes later And then like I said, a week later or so he calls me, gives me this absolutely wonderful report. Um and then, you know, I’m like, well, how fast can you get in here? Um and and seriously, I I mean, I I I never thought I was as potentially as in a threat situation as I am. And that’s why they’re here. But I if I figure if I am after 30 years of business, how many of you guys who have been listening to me for 15 to 18 years are in that same place because we all kind of get that comfort zone. Never had anything happen. Never had to worry about anything. Everything’s good. So you need to give these guys a call. Again, if you want to call them Just pick up the phone right now. 615-225-7070. How easy is that? 225-7070.
Matt Folker
The phone number was really expensive, by the way.
Dr. Friday
Was it?
Matt Folker
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Friday
I like that Matt. And Matt, why don’t you tell them what the website is?
Matt Folker
So the website is Istinc. Com. I I’m from I’m from Kentucky, so sometimes my my T’s and my P’s sound a lot a lot alike.
Dr. Friday
They have no idea what I’m saying half the time. So they keep listening, don’t worry. They’ll they’ll they’ll figure it out at some point going through their So your basic plan is first keeping the bad guys out, which is a cyber you you do whatever the cyber world is. Mm-hmm. And then you come in, once you figure out what those you help educate that office to hopefully eliminate some of the Maybe I don’t want to call it laziness, but to a point it is our laziness.
Matt Folker
Sometimes it’s it’s maybe it starts out as laziness, but then you know it turns into bad habits.
Dr. Friday
Yes.
Matt Folker
Or vice versa. You know, I don’t really want to call anybody lazy. I just want to educate.
Dennis Buzard
Yeah
Matt Folker
When I see a password on a monitor, you know, I’m gonna take it off the monitor, I’m gonna hand it to you, okay? And I’m gonna say, hey, I’m sure you can remember this now. Put it in your pocket. And we’ll and we’ll be on our way. You know? we we do have we we can help you with the password manager and those kinds of things. But but yeah, yeah. And I promise you if you keep your password under the keyboard Everyone knows that trick. Okay.
Dr. Friday
Okay. So those are not the hidden places. I’ll have to rethink about that. Um and then then support. Okay, so we’ve got it. We’ve figured out the problem. We’ve educated and hopefully Taking our passwords out of the most obvious places, hopefully taking them out where people can’t find them, period. Yeah. And then what is the the
Matt Folker
Yeah, yeah. So we we want to elevate the good guys. And what does that mean is is we can also be just your IT support. Okay? And whether that is we’re an on-site presence there or just phone call away or sometimes it’s a little bit of both. Um but we we see a lot of of businesses, and mostly this is in the smaller business field, but Um basically whoever fixed the printer seven years ago is now the IT guy or gal, okay? and and that’s not really what their passion is. That’s not really what their education is. They’re just kinda doing the best that they can. Right. And that y creates a lot of problems. A lot of times when we do the technical assessment, a lot of the holes we find is because someone didn’t know any better. Yeah. They just they needed Wi-Fi, so they went to Best Buy and they bought something, uh, put it in and they were amazed that it worked. And then they never touched it again.
Dr. Friday
No. And and you guys are all listening and we’re laughing here in the studio because we all know that is exactly how most of our offices got established. We we hired someone and we had to have a second station and we’re like, okay. Well, according to m chat well nowadays ChatGPT or Amazon or Ma Microsoft, whatever, whoever we were doing back then, Google. It said, just open up this port and you can just have this person come in as another person and et cetera, et cetera. You may have five, six computers later, but you just continued that exact same process as we had before. So when we get back, because I’m gonna let Matt this time I don’t want him to feel like I’m pressuring him because we have a time clock going here. So when we come back, Matt and I are going to go back into that subject and let him talk a little bit more about how to elevate the good guy as well as probably just hit again on some steps we can be taking. Before or during this time when they come out and do this evaluation. So again, go to ISTTINC. Com. It’s an easy website, even though if you can’t get the letters just Come to me and I’ll give them to you personally.
Matt Folker
You can Google this.
Dr. Friday
You can Google it. So if you have the right ISTT, you can Google them or otherwise you have no idea what you’re doing. Um or the 615 225-7070. I still think that’s the best way, guys. 615-225-7070. Again, set up that free evaluation. This is costing you nothing, but could save you God, it could save your business. I mean all honesty. It could save you your entire business. After thirty years, the last thing I want to do is lose it to somebody or not doing the right thing. And that it could happen. It happens all the time. We’re gonna be right back with the Doctor Friday show. Alrighty, we are back live in studio. I’m Dr. Friday, and you guys know that. And if you guys are listening today, then you know today is not about taxes. It is about how we’re going to protect ourselves. And mainly this is for small businesses or people that work for businesses that have larger companies. Again, I keep saying the word small because I always consider myself a small business But this kind of thing, these guys don’t care how many computers, how many different states, they can do it all. They’re just looking at how someone’s getting to our system and how we can protect ourselves. So when we left Matt You were going to talk a little bit about how if you do have an IT guy, let’s say you have a company that’s doing your IT, maybe just like some of the tax people are just throwing numbers on a tax return, maybe they’re just kind of doing the same thing?
Matt Folker
What do you think? Yeah, so one of the problems that we see is um y that that person that was never originally hired to be the IT guy but now is really good at printers and unjamming things. Um they wait around and hope a problem doesn’t find them. Right. Whereas w we’re the opposite effect is Going back to the risk conversation, um, if your business is unable to work, unable to function, if your internet is down, if your systems are down, that that is a huge risk. So we are going out and trying to find the problem before it finds us. So if if there is any kind of potential outage or a system that’s about to fail. We we want to get in front of that. And it’s a lot easier to like let’s say you’ve got a a piece of equipment that is about to fail. Hopefully we can catch that very quickly. And then we can schedule that downtime. You know, we can we can do it on an off day or do it on a Saturday or do it, you know, do do it w when it’s not when it’s not critical. Yeah, we want to be proactive. That’s a lot lot better scheduling than you know, it it’s Wednesday morning, you’re trying to run payroll, and
Dr. Friday
Then that person that fixed the computer is now trying to jerry rig on internet access so that they can actually get the payroll run on time so that the clients are done. Yep. And now they’ve opened up probably more ways for somebody to do something because of it. And again, I can relate totally to this because and I think a lot of you guys listening can also because I have Well, a couple thousand people I deal with on tax seasons and most of you guys are small business and medium size and even a few of you are large and basically what you always talk about is You either the IT guy’s not available, so you have to fix it because you gotta do the payroll or whatever it is, or you can’t have the the the factory can’t be down because you have an order that has to be out because you’ve promised it. So Somebody is figuring out a way to bypass what may have been put in. And that’s when we’ve actually just opened up the if the barn door has now been flown open because we you know we may have gotten the system working, but we don’t know anything about Cyber, internet, anything.
Matt Folker
Another good example of that was during COVID. A lot of businesses had to work from home. The the part-time IT guy or the the employee that just knows more about computers than anyone else, they were scrambling trying to set up remote access and those kinds of things. And overall, you know, a lot of businesses did a good job with that. Uh, you know, w we were able to keep on trucking along through COVID, or at least most of us were. But then when COVID ended and everyone went back to work, no one ever shut off. That remote access back.
Dr. Friday
Okay.
Matt Folker
And so even if you have nothing to do with your IT department, but if you were working remotely during COVID And you haven’t worked remotely since, go to your IT professional and say, do I still have remote access? Is this still turned on?
Dr. Friday
Well that’s it. So again You know, I think that’s an example is that anyone listening today, in you we all live on computers. I mean it doesn’t make a difference if you were. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. What you’re you almost all of our careers fall into something like that You might want to take this number down and give it to whoever’s the boss. Maybe you don’t have the authority, but this is free. So when you go in and then you save the day because you know what, these guys come in, they find all these problems and then they fix and educate and now your boss is like wow what a relief I just saved the day in essence because if any of these things that went bad and I didn’t do anything. Now we theoretically lost millions of dollars for ransomware or in smaller business. You put us out of business. I mean that would put us mostly out of business.
Matt Folker
We’ve done investigations before where, you know, people have called us after an attack. You know. And it a lot of times it’s people we’ve marketed to and they’re like, nah, we’re good. They’ll call us six months later, help, my business is on is literally on fire and we don’t know what to do. There was there was one small business that we d we helped out in this has been a couple of years ago in Kentucky. Um the the owner of the company, he was in the midst of selling the business. Oh. Okay.
Dr. Friday
So he didn’t want to put any more into it than he had to.
Matt Folker
Yeah. He he he was Things things were progressing for him to sell. Um they had a a really large ransomware attack. They lost eighteen months worth of data. All of the employees data was stolen. Um and when when he was talking with the attorneys and I was at the table as well. The attorney recommended of like, hey, you’re gonna have to buy identity theft protection for all of your employees. U And he was like, okay, you know, well, we’ve got you know, thirty, forty employees, like, okay, I can afford that. And the attorney was like, Oh no, it’s every employee you’ve ever had for the past seven years.
Dr. Friday
Right. Because that was stolen.
Matt Folker
Yeah, because it was all stolen. You know, again, going back to our social security numbers never change. And so he ended up having to buy identity theft protection for three hundred and fifty people. Um That’s just the start of the problem that and he he did end up selling, but it he had to sell to a private equity. And it was pennies on the dollar.
Dr. Friday
Yep.
Matt Folker
And so that was his his entire retirement plan of selling the business, moving to the beach. Nope.
Dr. Friday
Well and I think that’s the way I’m looking, not so much but it’s always proactive. I mean the same thing happens that people come in and they’ll talk and I want to resolve my IRS issues or whatever. And then then tense a levy letter comes in or they actually get their bank or their home has a levy or or a lien put on it. And then they’re bringing you back in. But then The door is wide open again, right? Now the IRS has you, they’ve already got you on a collection system, they’ve already went through three letters saying you owe. You it’s a lot harder to put that fire out than it is to go and if the IRS took money from you, a lot harder to get the money back from the IRS than it is to keep it out of their hands in the first place. The And so I look at this similar everything in my world, as you can tell, Matt, goes around Taxes. Sorry. Just the way my world thinks. But it’s it’s very similar. I want to be proactive with my taxes. I want to make sure I’ve got everything done. And that’s what I think people need to think about with their computers. We now have cell phones, iPads, laptops. Hard top um desktops, servers. I mean every printer, everything is now hooked up to the internet.
Matt Folker
Even your thermostat.
Dr. Friday
There you go. My thermostat and you’re right, mine is actually hooked up. That’s right. He knows these things. Um and all those different things, besides, you know, probably my cameras, you know, all these things all have internet access. And I know that was one of the big things Dennis, who’s been actually surprisingly quiet, I think Matt and I have taken over the conversation. But Dennis came in and that was one of the first things he he basically says is you don’t realize The main entrances th right through the laptop you think, okay, I’ve got that kind of but you don’t think about the printer or the cameras or the the thermostat, which is what Dennis had brought up, the thermostat that someone could get into my server. I mean everything. They can get into my life because everything’s in that computer.
Dennis Buzard
Yeah. I’ve had a hack through the internet.
Dr. Friday
So those are the kinds of things I think that’s reason I’m doing this show. This is reason I think people need to be listening because we’re all proactive with things that we think are important, our medical or our things, but This has all of our information in it. So they can find out everything about you through your computers and our things. We save every document, right? I mean most of the time, hey, I went to the dentist. I scanned in my receipt. Everything is in my computer. They know more about me than I know about me.
Matt Folker
Yeah. You know, and so And and you’re keeping things in your downloads.
Dr. Friday
Everything’s like.
Matt Folker
You know, and no one no one is no no one is going through there and cleaning that out. You’re not cleaning out your own downloads folder.
Dr. Friday
One of the few things we do is we never open an email we don’t know who it’s from. I that’s probably one of the strongest things I can say in my office, but other than that, there’s a lot of failures. So I’m not gonna chu pat myself too hard on the back. All right, so I S T T is um a local company. Um and so that’s good guys. We we want to keep it local. We don’t want to be working from someplace out of the
Matt Folker
Yeah, we don’t use any offshore support and anything like that. All of our employees are either in Kentucky and Tennessee, but we do serve the country The majority of the United States.
Dr. Friday
Okay. And so again, I did kind of say no s company too big, that’s pretty much the case, right? I mean you guys can handle the colour.
Matt Folker
Right. And just again. Our goal is to better the community.
Dr. Friday
Right.
Matt Folker
Uh, so that if if we really believe that, we can’t pick and choose of who we want to work with. We want to work with the people that need help.
Dr. Friday
Yeah. They’re working with me guys. I’m just saying. You got that right? So anyways. Just saying. Um but yeah, no, I love these guys because I think one thing I like best is normally when I have an IT company come in, it I it often makes me feel like I don’t know what I’m talking about, right? And they never make me feel like I ever really figure out what I’m talking about. They give you all this and they say Well, you need this or you need to and the biggest thing is, oh, you can go to the cloud. You can go to the cloud. Well the problem I have with the cloud people is plain and simple, what if the internet goes down? I can’t work So I like having access to things inside the office. And so when we come back, we’re gonna talk again a little bit about this will be our last break. So we’ll come back and just talk about the three big steps you guys have. And maybe some insight to what people should expect when Dennis comes in really quick and all of that. So again, free, that’s the week word, free evaluation. Dennis is awesome. He’s gonna come out. And if he can make that thing work, it means you’re in trouble. So just letting you know it works. Six one five two two five seven zero seven zero six one five two five two two five 7070. I can’t even do a telephone number. And their email or their website, I stinc. Com. It’s actually not too hard, guys. And we’ll probably try to put a link on our website too. So if you guys find me, you know me, you can always link right over to them to get this free evaluation. Because I think every company, no matter how big, how small, should have this and that way, you don’t have to use them You don’t have to do anything after it, but then you can’t say you don’t know that you have issues or not. We’ll be right back with the Dr. Friday show. Alrighty, I’m Dr. Friday. This is the Dr. Friday Show. And we are here in studio. With Matt Fulker. Yes. I did it, people. All right. And Dennis, we’re not going with his last name. All right. We got, you know, you can only have so many wins in one day. So Matt, we’re going to rewind a little bit So we have people are always coming in and out of the station. So again, we’re here. You guys are a cyber company. A quick overview of what exactly your company does and how it’s gonna make my business or anyone’s business. I use myself because I like to talk about myself, but people’s business a little better.
Matt Folker
Yeah. So our objective is to eliminate risk and and define that risk so we can eliminate it. So we do have like a quick easy assessment that Dennis runs Um and it’s just, you know, if you’ve got 300 computers, we’re just gonna run an assessment on, you know, two to three or four computers. It just takes usually a few minutes to run on each one. And really if the assessment is able to run that’s actually a bad thing. The the assessment is kind of simulating to where if you were to to open up an email and click on something malicious, okay? and so if it’s able to run at all, then there’s a problem. But the longer the scan is able to run, we’re able to p pick out more data and just find more risky things going on. Um and but then we also we want to keep the good guys in, so we want to keep the the data that you have secure. We want to empower the your the employees there to that they’ve got access to everything that they need, that they’re they’ve got good w what I call cyber hygiene. You know, again, you d you don’t want to share your toothbrush. Another thing that that I I like to talk about is Um you gotta stick a deodorant, right? Well does that email pass the sniff test? Okay. Um, you know, just just Just kind of little dorky little things to remember that to kind of you know just. Yeah, does this email pass a sniff test? You know, take your password down, put that on there, boom. You you are set you are set for life. But then we also want to elevate the good guys and and what that means is we want to provide good, easy, fast, IT support. So your staff isn’t scrambling trying to fix something that they know nothing about. Or opening up security holes in order to run payroll that day. We we want to elevate your team with our IT team and you’re you’re not just getting an IT guy or gal. You’re you’re getting an entire team.
Dr. Friday
And that’s you know that’s the way I I like to think of it. And and the cost, to be honest, and we’re not gonna get into the dollars, but for what I was quoted, it’s extremely reasonable when you put it against the fear of loss, ransomware, even just having systems down. Yeah. I mean there that seriously their rates are extremely good. But I won’t put them on the spot because I’m sure every company, everything is going to be different on that. But um so Dennis, we’re gonna give you a a minute here just because you came all the way to the studio and Matt and I didn’t give you much time to chit-chat. I But again, if s if once someone calls 615-225-7070, what should they expect?
Dennis Buzard
Sure. So it’s a really simple process. First thing we do an appointment. I mean it’s I really want to take a look at the company, yourself. I want you to vet the company, make sure it’s a fit. So that’s first step one. Then step two would be an assessment. If it’s a fit, we’ll do the assessment. Very simple process. I mean, basically I come in, if you have whether you have 20 computers or whether you have 2,000 computers. We’re going to sample test three to four, hit the whole system, come back with some very extremely detailed information, probably within a one-week period. We have all the data within about within minutes we have it, but it takes us about a week assemble everything. Thirdly, I come back and during that period I would do an assessment review and go over every single thing top to bottom. Basically, if the assessment runs, again, that’s a bad sign because that means that a cyber goon can get in there too. Then we talk shop regarding pricing, two-fold program, monthly fee regarding computers and workstations. Then also if there’s hardware needed, we take a look at that too. So it’s kind of a one-stop shop
Dr. Friday
Perfect. All right. And that in again, guys, this is exactly what I did. And that’s how I um Dennis reached out to me. And this is exactly, I called the number, he came in. And we did this and it’s been extremely pain free. Otherwise I wouldn’t put ’em on the radio because well why would I want to promote someone I don’t like? Um and and it it really does. I mean I know that it’s it’s always scary to think, but if these guys can do what they do Then imagine what the bad guys can do. And then I don’t have any idea. Seriously, I thought I had Norton and McAfee on my I have both on my computers thinking, oh, I’ve doubled down And yet I didn’t double anything, people. I’m just letting you know. I am blessed. I live in the country. Um, so not as many people know where and how to get to me, I think, is what saved my hide But I will be in better shape. I am taking the responsibility, and that’s it. I’m an owner of a business. I take in your information. I feel very responsible And so that information needs to be as safe as I can make it and all of you guys do the same thing. I know you feel the same way. If you’re a dentist, a doctor. Anyone. I mean you’re running a manufacturing company, you’re a real estate agent. You take in a lot of this information. If you run a large real estate office, Imagine what’s in there. We all fill out applications. We all that that data could become something that then someone’s putting on the black market and then they’ll track it back and they say, oh, you know what? That real track Came back up this or whatever and you don’t want to be the the weak link. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t want to be the weak link. So in conclusion We want to make sure that everyone knows this is a free evaluation. And in given take how fast their surface is, he came really quite quickly too. I mean their turnaround is fast. So if you give him a call, within a week or so he’s gonna be out evaluating you and then out putting the test. It and it it’s a lot of time on Dennis’s side because he had a visit He then had to go out and do the the evaluation and then he had to come back and tell me his great news. Um and then they they still I mean so then they have to come out and then set up the system and and fix everything. So it is a Very time consuming considering, yes, they’re going to eventually get their money because they’re going to be paid monthly. But if you look at what their input for this upfront, it’s awesome because most of the time people don’t want to put that in without Oh, pay us a consulting fee.
Matt Folker
Yes. If you want to reinvest in your business or not. And this is also c very similar to insurance. But yeah we we just you know we’ll we’ll come in, we’ll get everything set up and it’s just build monthly. Um later.
Dr. Friday
Yeah. So Dennis is telling Matt to say it’s a month later. So we built afterwards. So it’s the next month after they set it up.
Matt Folker
Yeah, we we set everything up first and then we built.
Dr. Friday
And then yeah, wait, yeah, they’re a lot like me. I do the taxes and then I bill. I don’t bill before I do your taxes. So they’re doing the work and then doing it. So that’s what I love about these guys. All right, one more time, their phone number, free evaluation 615-225-7070, website isttinc.com. Again, I’m Dr. Friday. You can reach me at 615-367-0819. Friday at drfriday.com or drfriday.com. And as we love to say in Australia. Cop ya later.