We welcome Mason and Mary Landrum, co-owners of Nice Guy Technology. As a family-owned and operated business, they are proud to have served the central Ohio area since 2011. Their team has over 30 years of IT experience and several certifications.

From the rapid shift to remote work during the pandemic to the constant evolution of cybersecurity threats, our guests break down the challenges that businesses (and individuals!) face when keeping up with hardware, software, and internet safety.

You’ll hear real talk about password myths, cloud-based computing, device maintenance, security software for different devices, and the growing risks of ransomware and workplace hacking. Whether you’re a small business owner, an entrepreneur, or just looking to protect your personal information, this episode is full of actionable tips and resources.

Our conversation is loaded with helpful takeaways like recommended training tools, the crucial importance of backups, and practical advice for working securely—at the office, at home, or at your favorite coffee shop. Stay tuned for best practices and insider stories that make cybersecurity less intimidating and a whole lot more approachable!

If you like this episode, please let us know. We appreciate the feed back, and your support of offset costs of producing the podcast!

Here are 3 key takeaways you can put into action today:

Passwords Matter—But Complexity Wins Over Change Frequency

1. The FBI now recommends longer, more complex passphrases you change less often, instead of constant rotation. Consider a memorable phrase with special characters vs. hard-to-remember random sequences.

Cloud Computing Is Not Optional

1. The pandemic pushed businesses of all sizes to adopt cloud-based workflows. It’s here to stay—embrace cloud solutions for collaboration and ensure you understand where your data lives (and how it’s backed up).

Endpoint Security Is Critical in the Work-From-Anywhere World

1. With staff working remotely, security must shift from protecting a physical office to securing each device (“endpoint”). Invest in modern antivirus protection, strong backup strategies, and educate your team regularly.

We would love to hear from you.

Give us your feedback, or suggest a topic, by leaving us a voice message.

Email us at hello@lookingforwardourway.com.

Find us on Bluesky and Facebook.

Please review our podcast on Google!

And of course, everything can be found on our website, Looking Forward Our Way.

Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle 270 Media® Podcast Consultants.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Copyright 2026 Carol Ventresca and Brett Johnson

Mentioned in this episode:

Listener Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the experts interviewed on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcast hosts or any affiliated organizations. The information provided in these interviews is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified professionals for specific advice or information related to their individual circumstances. The podcast host and producers do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided by the experts interviewed. Listener discretion is advised.

Well, I will say I've actually seen the FBI has actually changed their stance on passwords. The industry standard used to be change your passwords every 90 days. The FBI, who sends out regular alerts to whether it be businesses or the entire community about what is happening in cybersecurity, is saying change your passwords less often but create more difficult to guess passwords, ones that are more complex.

We are looking forward our way from Studio c in the 511 studios. Hi, this is Brett and with me, as always, is Carol. How are you?

I'm good today. How are you doing?

Doing great.

Wonderful. Well, I am so excited. Today we are going to explore technology in today's environment. How we are all surviving the technology tidal wave that hit us during the pandemic is beyond me. Needless to say, we are all suffering at our desks. But if we think that technology was difficult before the world shut down, we are on a whole new plane of existence right now.

All right, exactly with us today is Mary Landrum and Mason Landrum. They are co owners of Nice Guy Technology. Thanks for coming along.

We're very happy to be here.

Nice to be here. Thanks for having us.

Now, I met Mary and Mason in the past on another podcast. I'll give that podcast a plug Business inspires through Tri Village Chamber Partners. I brought it up to Carol. I thought that would be a wonderful resource for our podcast listeners from that episode, knowing what they brought to the mic and what that episode did. I think we need to start, though, with an overview of your company, Nice Guy Technology. What we really want to know is the story behind the name and how you guys got started and where you're going with the company.

The story behind the name is kind of cool because Mason is the most patient and empathetic person I've ever met and he's not your stereotypical IT guy at all. And I said to him one day, you're an IT guy, but you're such a nice guy. And so then the name developed from there. Nice Guy Technology.

That's great.

Yeah. I had spent all these ideas struggling of what's a nice professional name to use. All these what you hear usually for a name for a business and stuff. And I'm like, well, let's try it. That sounds good to me. It's unique.

Absolutely. Talk about a great sound bite.

Yeah. I still think of changing it, but every time I go to any kind of a convention or anything where they give you the name tags and stuff, person after person comes up to me. I love Your name?

Yes.

You can't change it then? You can't?

No, exactly.

No, no, no. Yeah.

So do you want to tell us any more about the company and where it's going and your mission and.

Sure, absolutely. We actually started out serving just residential. We used to have a storefront and we would have people bring in computers for repair and those type of things. And then we started getting more and more business clients. And so I think it was around 2015. 2015, we switched over to just working with businesses basically for small and medium sized businesses. We want to be your tech department. Those are usually the size of businesses that can't afford to have a dedicated person on staff to be working on technology.

So we fill in that gap and be the one that you reach out to for all your technical needs. Even if you are large enough to have a tech staff person. We can also supplement them and help them along with taking care of some of the smaller, regular, everyday tech issues so that then they can concentrate on some of the bigger technology.

Sort of a rent a technology person. Because needless to say, I met Brett from my previous work in a nonprofit agency and you can't afford a tech person on staff. I mean that's. Smaller groups can't. So we're going to have all your location and your website and everything on our show notes. But so tell us a little bit more about your background and how you got to this point of starting your own business.

Sure, absolutely. Interestingly enough, Mary and I both have education degrees in our background, but computers were just. When I was in college, computers were really just starting and I've always enjoyed them, I've always worked with them. And I decided to add on a minor in computer science while I was there working on my education degree. I actually only taught for one year and then ever since then I've been in the technology field. So I've been working for other companies though, for years as their network administrator, taking care of their computers and all of that. And in 2011, I started getting enough side business on doing myself that we decided to jump in, establish the name for the company and start doing technology exclusively as our own business under our own name.

Wonderful.

Yeah. So the huge issue for the audience, I'm sure, the challenges of the day. And it's going to be a mixture of technology, software, hardware, Internet connectivity. Now, particularly from home. I know in our home we were pretty much WI Fi, but knowing Zoom, you're going to have to hardwire it to really get that Ethernet. All of a sudden that Ethernet cable That name's coming back into our world. That wasn't there before because we got pushed that WI fi is the cool thing and that sort of thing. But can you go over some of the.

What's driven people to the edge of what are they asking about? What you're hearing some common questions. I know you've moved away from the residential, but you're still getting those common questions about, okay, how do we connect this? How do we make Zoom work better? I've got this kind of computer. Is it going to work now with everything that's moving along? Maybe I. Can either one of you jump in on that to answer that?

Yeah, actually the majority of the calls that we have received or the, I guess confusion or pain points that we've heard from our customers has not been around the technology side of the wireless versus hardwired connections and things like that. It's that they're now starting to use software that larger companies have been using for years. And you know, they've been conducting business this way for years because in larger companies, majority of the time the people you're working with are nowhere in your vicinity. It's just now that technology has been forced into the small to medium sized business area, who is so used to doing things face to face across the table in a meeting room. And they've just had to learn how to change their habits to get teams, whether it's Microsoft Teams or Zoom or whatever it is that they're using as their tool, just how to use it efficiently, get comfortable with the technology and instead of it being looked at as a barrier between them and the people that they are working with, really to embrace it and use it for all it can be used. What we're hearing though, from a lot of companies now, even some of our own companies that we work with is small and medium size, they're realizing they don't need a physical building anymore to have a company.

Right.

I just had one contact me yesterday that's like, we've decided we're all going to work from home now and so we need to make some changes and take everything that they had before and move it to the cloud. So I really think in some ways it has made us relook at what small to medium sized business can be and make us realize that we are a lot more connected than we maybe think we are, that we don't have to be in physical buildings at the same time anymore or sitting across from the table.

So the money they're saving on a physical building, they can put into infrastructure of their cloud infrastructure of the equipment people need in their homes. Because I'm guessing that a whole lot of folks back in March when they suddenly were home working, were working on an old laptop. So that's, I would think that was going to have to get some upgrade. But it's interesting too when you brought up cloud, because I hadn't even really thought that through. How has this changed in terms of our knowledge of cloud? Cloud based computing. Have businesses been kind of behind in that and now working their way up?

I think you see one of two things. Either the business is behind and they had to play catch up back in March when things shut down and everybody was working from home and it was a, oh, oops, what do we do now? So it's either that or they've had the structure in place all along and they transitioned very smoothly into working from home. We were very lucky. Most of our clients had, had, had the infrastructure and they, they had things in place so they could go ahead and very smoothly transfer into working from home. So that was, that was nice for them.

Yes. And the other thing related to that is a lot of time, a lot of businesses have been scared of the cloud.

Right.

Don't want their data up there in the cloud and want it safe and secure on a server at their location. So it's kind of forced people to start to trust the cloud infrastructure a little bit more, knowing that that is the way to go.

Right. Well, I find it hard to think in terms of cloud based computing when I'm used to everything sitting right there in front of me and I know where to find it and I know where all those drives are. And now suddenly, I mean, I never could grab them, they're in my computer. But if you felt like you could grab it as opposed to dealing with whatever's floating above me.

And we probably do a lot more cloud based computing than we realize. If you start think what really is living on your computer and on your server? What do you log into to use? Is it really other than using the power of your computer to connect? There's nothing there on your computer anymore to slowing it down.

Yeah.

It's Internet based so much now.

Yes. That you start really thinking about, I mean, if nothing else, your email. Everything you do on email is not necessarily on your computer. You're logging into Gmail or whatever. It's all out there.

Absolutely.

And just make that jump of going, oh yeah, right.

Except for those of us who still insist on Outlook. I can't get past it. I love Outlook. So anyway, so just talking about cloud based computing, how do people learn about things like that? How do they learn about Zoom? There's lots going on that people need to get information and resources on how to use these programs wisely and efficiently. Can you give us some examples of what they can do to get themselves up to speed?

I tell you, the companies nowadays, whether it be Zoom or Microsoft365 on the actual websites themselves they've got some great tutorials. If you go to Zoom us I believe it is there are tutorials to show you in bite sized, bite sized pieces how to use Zoom and how to use it effectively. I've sent that to a number of people. It's a wonderful resource and same thing on Microsoft's website. If you can dig it up and find where it is, there's some great.

Information there and we can include links to those in the notes for our show notes.

Right.

Of where you can reach out for those.

Have you had clients who have been in need of of training that where they may have a new staff member who needs to use Excel and they aren't up to speed, they may only know some basics and can't link spreadsheets and all of that sort of stuff. Are you comfortable with providing any information about different resources for that kind of tutorial?

Sure. One that I point to a lot. It's been around for a while. It's called Lynda.com I think they just merged with. I think there's something to do with LinkedIn now.

I think there's something LinkedIn learning, right?

Yes. And it is a paid service. There is a monthly subscription fee but on that they have tutorials on just about any software that you would want to learn about and everything from beginner level classes on up. They're self paced and we have definitely directed quite a few people there in the past.

One thing, sort of an update on lynda.com and I don't know if this has been around for a long time but if you have a Columbus Metropolitan Library card and you go through the library's resource page, you can use lynda.com for free.

Wow, I did not know that.

Yes, it's really cool. And we will put that link on our show notes too and I'd be glad to send that to you. It's very easy and very. I've gone in and done some things and certainly makes it easy easy to get into that training. What I don't know since I've never had a subscription. I don't know if there's any differences, but there were thousands of things on there that were free that I went in and I've. And it lets you create like a. Almost like a book bag of stuff that you want to do.

So you can. You go through the list once and then you go to your own book bag and find it again real quickly without having to search for it again. So. So I have some things in there that I want to learn and when I get a chance. And it's anywhere from 45 minutes to days long in the training. So yeah, so it's very cool.

I didn't realize that.

Another great resource that might be right in your neighborhood is a lot of the senior centers and.

And rec centers.

Rec centers in the area offer free or very reduced cost classes as well to dig into these type of things at very beginner levels too. So you don't have to worry about having hardly any computer experience whatsoever. We've actually taught some ourselves at the Upper Arlington Senior School in the past, whether it's basics from even how to use, getting used to using Windows 10, which can be very new to people or topics on individual programs as well. So check out your local resources to see what is available as well through just your local community.

Right. And with our listeners, we're not really sure where they're located, but we hope that just giving them, giving you all some ideas about where Central Ohioans can go that'll give you some ideas of where you can go in your community, go to your senior center, go to your local library, that kind of thing. So very good.

Well, security has become critical in our new normal, actually it was before then too, honestly. But I think we look at it a little bit differently now too. We have to be particularly careful in logging into employer sites, looking for malware, juggling several devices, your laptop, your cell phone, tablet, et cetera, all during the day. This is a big subject and we put a lot of little notes under what we were wanting to cover. But can you give an overview on some security issues, some advice on. Every device is different in regards to what you should do and where you are is different as well too. But maybe a little bit over an overview of all that.

Sure. One of the main things that has changed where everybody used to go into an office with their computers and work is you were kind of in a secure walled garden while you were there. And you didn't have to worry as much about security because your company was taking care of it at that point. Protecting the, you know, the building per se. Now with everybody taking their laptops home, it's looking more at what is called in the industry endpoint protection. So protection for each of the devices that you have. So no longer is it being protected by that walled garden at work, but the individual devices, you have to be more. You have to give more attention to the individual devices and making sure that they are protected.

Since work from home has become so common now, a lot of the antivirus manufacturers have created special bundles called work from home bundles that you can purchase from them that allow you to have better security over your individual devices, your individual laptops, so that it is protected at that level. Hopefully whatever business you are working with as well has changed their security protocols and are forcing you to log in in very secure and protected ways as well. There were a lot of businesses that did have to play catch up and had never really thought of their employees working from home, but they should have made those changes by now so that when you are working from home, you can still be protected and their network can be protected as well.

As an additional question, I didn't hear a lot of stories in regards to businesses being hacked or taking them down. Were there a lot of issues as we switched over work from home? Did you hear about or have to worry about new viruses coming through or. I just didn't hear anything, which I was kind of surprised. I got to thinking about that while you were answering that question going, wow, what a great opportunity, thinking as a bad guy here to do that. But I never did hear much about any businesses being taken down because of this transition.

Did it happen across the nation? There was a huge uptick in ransomware and the scammy type things that have been going on. So definitely an uptick, but it's something you just have to constantly be aware of anyway.

And that was really on the uptick even before COVID came along. We've been doing security, cybersecurity seminars and things, things like that. And small and medium sized businesses are just increasingly becoming under attack.

Right.

You would think that's strange, but they realize that as a small to medium sized business, you don't have the high level, high tech security that a larger company would have. You've still got important data though, that they can hold hostage and get money from you if they, you know, ransomware money, if they try to.

Right.

You're the prime target.

Yes.

Right.

Well, and I would think too that employers want to make sure they're not going to be vulnerable because their people are working from home, but it goes the other way Too. They don't want their folks working from home to be vulnerable on their own personal information because somebody's hacking into the company and these folks are connected in. So it almost an additional issue for them to deal with. That can be taken care of. But you certainly don't want your employees to be suffering through this process.

Yes. And that's where, like I mentioned earlier, it's really changed a lot from protecting the physical business to protecting all your individual people, all the individual computers, no matter where they happen to be in the world, making sure each one of those is protected because all you need is one weak link and that can introduce damage to your company.

Did we ever think 10 years ago when people were begging to be working from home, that now people are begging to go back to their office so they can get their kids to school?

Well, talking about that weak link, we've got to get into passwords. I want to talk about passwords. Not that I have a specific question, but I think there are so many myths around the passwords in regards to password strength. Of course, don't use password as your password, but at the same time, it's the character combination, it's the length. You hear so many pieces of advice. What do you think? What have you seen that works? Let's put it that way.

Well, I will say I've actually seen the FBI has actually changed their stance on passwords. The industry standard used to be change your passwords every 90 days. The FBI, who sends out regular alerts to, whether it be businesses or the entire community about what is happening in cybersecurity, is saying, change your passwords less often, but create more difficult to guess passwords, ones that are more complex. And one of the most complex things you can do is use a passphrase rather than even a strange combination of.

I've heard that. So you end up with an acronym.

An acronym, or even actually typing out a whole phrase, a short sentence as your password. Yeah, because passwords can be as small as eight characters, but they can be really long as well. And really, the more characters you have in a password, the more difficult it is for the algorithms that hackers use to guess what those passwords are. The other thing is phrases are a lot easier to remember than these random characters and letters that we put together. True as well.

What's a minimum character count would be advisable. You mentioned 8 before. Is that pretty much a standard?

8 is the standard minimum that you can use. And like you had mentioned, always throwing in extra strange characters like exclamation points, question marks, pound sign, whatever.

The.

Not all websites will support all of those different characters, but once you find out what it will, adding those in definitely increases the strength of the password as well.

I've been teasing Brett because he gives me these passwords that I said you can't even type this, let alone I never try to remember it.

Well, it's auto generated by a past exact password camp that I have, you know, and they go, well, I got to take my own advice. Start using these combinations especially but well, I know any weak link can get to your information whether it's tied to that accounts tied to a credit card or not. Once that door is open, I know they can worm in anywhere but you know, I figured that would freak you out. The one I sent you, what is that?

He enjoyed that.

He.

And when he sent it to me I'm like, what? What?

Well, it was.

We were building the website for looking forward our way and going. I'm not going to mess around with this one. Let's just get a good password on this one because I don't want to have to rebuild and you know anything with the website because I've already gone through one on another website that somebody took it over basically and didn't hold it for ransom. But it's one of those. I had to rebuild it and but luckily I don't, I don't capture any information from any of my clients or anything like that. There's no credit card numbers or anything. But know it was gone. So I don't want to go through that process again at all.

So yes, you could, you could hire him to generate those passwords for you.

So you have a use a password manager.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Since you. We're talking about managers I'll talk about.

That's really a good point. Let's talk about that.

Password managers are great because they, they, they will generate random large sets of numbers that you and letters that you can use as passwords, but you don't have to remember them at all. All you have to do is you have to remember how to get into your password manager. And that needs to be a secure password. But once you're in there, it can handle all that for you can handle the changing of the passwords as well. And for companies out there, there are some password managers that allow each individual to have their own bank of passwords. But then if you have a few passwords that the entire company uses, you shouldn't do that. But sometimes it's required in certain cases you can put Those passwords in a company vault that all of the necessary users can get to and share those passwords that way. So you're not texting back and forth or emailing back and forth those passwords.

Great.

To allow your individuals in.

Is there a site that gives kind of an overview on password manager programs or is that something that we can add to our show notes for our listeners?

Yes, we can simplify that.

Wonderful, wonderful.

And another one. And I forget the website, but we'll also have it in the notes at the end. Is there is a website that you can go to and I have made sure that it is safe and not just capturing them, but you can type in different passwords that you would like to try or phrases, and it will actually calculate for you how long it would take the average hacker to be able to break that password.

I think I've seen that one yet. It's kind of interesting.

It is very interesting. It made me worry when I first saw that it was capturing everybody's password.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, my gosh. It's out there to help you. And it is amazing sometimes how just adding one little character will add thousands of years.

Right? Right. Wow. Right? Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Our former tech volunteer showed that to me for our agency and it was amazing. It went from like, you know, a year to figure out this password to a thousand years to figure out a password by adding one character. Yeah, it was amazing. So cool. Very cool.

If I can mention one more thing regarding passwords, though, one of the bad things is no matter how complex of passwords you use, you probably are aware there's been a lot of security breaches by different companies that have been in the news. Whether it is, I think there was a security breach with Target and a lot of accounts got exposed. So unfortunately, when those accounts get exposed, oftentimes the passwords you use for those accounts gets exposed as well. Gets on what's called the dark web, right. And then people can pay money for those databases of passwords and things. So one of the things you do need to be aware of is just because you've created an extremely complex password, you do need to change it on a regular basis. Especially if you know that you have an account that has been hacked, immediately change the password to that. Because even the safest password isn't going to keep you secure if it's out there on the dark web for somebody to find.

And if the password is stuck to the bottom of your keyboard. Also probably not a good idea. Regardless of how complex it is that.

Post, it Note that sits on the monitor. Yes.

And that's exactly why the FBI changed their stance on it, is because people created these complex passwords, stick it to on a sticky note on the front of their computer. Well, let's get away from that. Let's use complex passwords, but change them less frequently.

Right. And not just the name of your pet, but yes. Very good.

Yeah. So let's talk about security software. You know apps that can provide security on devices, free ones, you know, ones that are paid. Are they effective? What are your thoughts on those?

My thoughts are different depending on whether you are at home or working on a business computer. Like at home, just using your own computer versus being on a business computer. There are some good free programs out there that offer basic level of protection. However, also Windows 10 itself has, what is built into Windows 10, which is called Windows Defender has gotten a lot better than it used to be and it's on every Windows 10 computer out there. And from a residential perspective, I think you could possibly get by with a free option out there for that basic level of protection. I would never run a business on a free type of antivirus protection just because as a business you have data that is a lot more important to protect. And I would definitely use a paid version of something out there.

It's buying an insurance policy, basically buying an insurance policy.

The other thing to look for is antivirus is changing a lot. There's a new generation of antivirus out there that uses basically artificial intelligence to constantly be scanning your computer for malicious things that might be happening. The reason why that is good is because I forget what it was that I put in an email the other day, but it's thousands of new viruses are created and introduced into the wild every single day.

Wow.

Thousands. So it's hard for antivirus companies to keep up with that, adding that to their database of threats and getting those updates out to your computer. By making antivirus with artificial intelligence, it can catch those things just by watching for suspicious activity that haven't even been known yet, that haven't been identified. So when you do look for antivirus for business, look for more like what's called next generation antivirus protection.

We didn't talk about earlier security on different devices and I think that's important looking at laptop because laptop is mobile versus your PC sitting at home and you have that tendency to. I'm going to take it to Panera and go on Wi Fi. Let's talk about the dangers of that or how to protect yourself while you're in public. What you should or shouldn't do be wise, let's put it that way. I know there are ways that you can go out in public and be able to do those sorts of things. But there are some things I'm sure you shouldn't do.

Maybe talk about that when you go out into public. If you're sitting at a Panera or a Starbucks and you're that's a great place to work.

It is. And I wasn't pointing fingers that they're a bad place to go. It's like. But that's a common place to go.

Oh, absolutely. Fantastic environment. And some people work very well there. Just be careful about what you're doing on. If you join their public WI fi you don't want to be on public WI fi and doing any sorts of financial transactions or anything work related that that could transfer because you never know who's watching what you're doing. So Mason has some great ideas as far as things you can do still working in public but not using that public WI fi necessarily.

A lot of times when Mary and I have been out working in a public space on our phones and most people have this on their smartphones nowadays is a personal hotspot connection. We usually turn that on so we're connected to our own phones and not using the public network that is at Panera. However, if your company uses what's called a VPN or a virtual private network software, you can be on Panera's public WI fi with the virtual private network in place. Your data is protected as it's being transmitted back and forth between your computer and your company because it is encrypted in that connection. And even if somebody is snooping in trying to find data on the Panera website or sorry the Panera WI FI connection, they're not going to be able to see what you're doing.

Okay.

And you can download apps on your phone to take care of that too. Right. Are they pretty efficient?

So on.

Are you talking about from a VPN app? Yeah.

Yes. There are VPN apps for phones as well. The other thing to keep in mind is the security of the device itself. Apple is a pretty secure ecosystem when it comes to their phones. Because unless you've done something called jailbreaking of your phone. Right, right. Then the only thing you can install on your iPhone are apps that have been verified and know are secure from Apple's own that their app store. So you can be very secure about that on an iPhone.

Android's a little bit more open and you can Install a lot more apps from different places on it. So there is also antivirus. There are antivirus programs for Android and if you have an Android phone, I would suggest you at least use a free one that's available, if not a purchased one.

I have an Android phone and regular PC at home and purchased a McAfee subscription for safety on my computer at home, which allowed me to also put it on my phone. So same subscription and I could do it on a tablet, I can do it on my Surface computer. So it takes it all in, which is good. I'm not having to pay for each one.

I think that's where some of those work from. Home bundles that they have created will help you do that. So you can have multiple devices is protected under one subscription.

Okay.

The other thing to keep in mind about working out is like Panera and stuff like that a lot of people forget is the physical security of the device. You know, you leave the laptop sitting on the table and you go and refill your drink. When you come back it could easily be gone right amount of time. And then the thief has all of your data is probably still. It has the password in, is probably unlocked. They can get to anything they want. So just being mindful of if you take your work laptop out, take it in with you to the restaurant, don't leave it locked in the car, don't leave it unattended at the table. Just some of the common sense things that will help keep the physical device itself protected from being.

Good point. Because we all can be way too over trusting. And a lot of times when people are working in those kinds of environments, they're by themselves. It's not like you're with your family. There's somebody there to watch over a device. Okay, so I am your worst case scenario client. My passwords are my dog's name. I have done everything that could possibly go wrong.

I've done and I've been hacked. Can't you know, malware on my computer, Somebody's taking it over, they want money. I'm calling you crying and you are going to tell me what my first.

Question is going to be. Do you have a backup?

Good point. Of course not. I said worst case scenario.

I thought maybe you would at least be good with backup.

Well, I did one, but it was like last year.

The biggest thing to remember and law enforcement enforces this or recommends this. Never pay the ransom. You are dealing with a thief. What makes you think that if you provide money to that thief they are going to give you back your Your information.

Exactly.

It usually doesn't happen. And so all you're doing by paying that thief is teaching that thief their method is working and they're going to make money from this. You may be out of luck in a lot of ways if you don't have a backup. But I do want to stress at this point, having a current backup is pretty much the gold standard thing that you can do to get out of any possible computer related mess. Whether the computer has been stolen, the computer has gotten damaged with water, you have gotten a virus, ransomware, anything like that. If you have a backup of your data, you can recover from anything, right?

A backup of the data plus some way to resurrect the programs themselves.

Yes, yes. Another device or something like that. Yes, but it's just that insurance policy that you just have to have. We stress backups, backups, backups.

Do you tell your business clients different ways to do backup? As opposed to a person who's just doing their home stuff, for instance, do business clients need to have like a shadow server?

It all depends on how quickly a business needs to get back up and running should an issue occur. We always recommend two types of backup, which is one is on site backup backup, that is to a connected device, a drive, a USB drive connected to your computer, and as well as cloud backup. The reason why we recommend both is because it is much faster to get back up and running from a local backup that has been attached to your computer. But oftentimes if something happens, if your computer bag is stolen, your backup drive is probably going to be in that case as well. If something happens with water damage or fire, both the drive and the computer are probably going to be damaged in that same event as well. So that's where the cloud backup comes in.

Good point.

It's a double level of perfect protection.

Okay.

But yeah, from a business perspective we recommend that same thing. If you are a business that can't be down more than an hour or you're going to lose millions of dollars, then yes, we would recommend and put in place basically a device that would create a mirror of all of your data that we could spin back up and have it back up and running within 15, 20 minutes.

And it sounds like that advice would be applicable for home based businesses as well. Let's say it's an entrepreneur and they're doing all Internet sales. They're just, you know, basically selling something and then fulfillment comes from somewhere else. It sounds that they should be doing the exact same thing locally and in the cloud too, or any Depending on the level of information that they're gathering from their clients may dictate how much security and backup they have.

Yes, absolutely. One thing that has changed backups a little bit. I'm still stressing do backups, backup on site, backup in the cloud. But a lot of businesses are running off of web based applications now. Right. The information that they're putting in about their clients, they're putting into maybe a CRM in the cloud. So in that case, you want to make sure whoever it is that is your vendor that you are working has a backup. You want to make sure that whatever vendor you are using for your important applications is backing up your software and has a policy of being able to restore that data should something happen.

Right.

And I bring that up because I know our audience can be full of, and probably are full of entrepreneurs.

Sure.

And they're looking at this, it's side hustle or they're looking at, I'm going to start this business, but I'm still working for my current employer. But I, I want to evolve into this. But there are safety issues that it's not just a home computer and you're, you're, you're playing around, you're dealing with other people's lives and livelihood by taking just a credit card number to fulfill an order. That's a whole different level of protection for them. And you, and, and like you said to all the other applications that you're using in the, and software you're using too, how are they protecting you?

Wow. Okay. And you brought up something when you were talking. It made me think of some of the applications that a small business would often use would be things such as Office 365 Word Excel. One of those things is called OneDrive and it is a storage based utility that they have. However, I want to make sure that everyone understands that OneDrive Dropbox is another common one. There's several out there. It's not backup software.

Right.

It's for storage and synchronizing that data between multiple computers. But if a file is deleted off of OneDrive, it's also gone off your computer and any other computer that's connected to that account. So you still need a level of protection of online backup that is beyond OneDrive or Dropbox or something like that.

Well, it would seem that maintenance on devices now more important than ever. Can you give us some tips on basic measures we should take to keep our computers in good working condition? And I know it varies between Macs and PCs.

We like to say that when you Get a new car, you definitely keep up with the maintenance. You do the oil changes, you put gas in it, you, you take it through the car wash. So you do that maintenance. The same thing has to happen on your computer. It's not something you can just buy, set it, forget it, that kind of thing. So you want to be able to be doing those routine maintenance things.

And some of those things that you would do would be making sure that the software on your computer is kept up to date. Software manufacturers are constantly putting out critical patches to patch security holes and things like that.

So don't ignore those.

Don't ignore them.

When they say update me. Update them. Yeah, right.

Just like your phone.

Right, right. But unfortunately they are a double edged sword because sometimes bad patches come out and cause problems, but they are a necessary evil to do. So those types of things, doing kind of a regular spring cleaning on your computer, getting rid of the junk that's on there, you know, old files that you don't need anymore, those kind of things.

Sometimes it helps your computer run better when you do.

Absolutely.

You're getting rid of that junk just like that extra. All those cups and such you got in the back of your new car. Maybe she get rid of those and you have not brand new car, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing is every computer made pretty much has a fan in it for airflow. With airflow is going to come dust. And so regularly, if you have a desktop vacuuming the exterior case and where you see the dust building up on the outside, if you have a laptop, get a can of air to spray in where you know the vents are and stuff like that to help clear out the dust. One of the worst things for computers is heat. So you want to make sure it has adequate airflow. So that's another important maintenance routine.

Is that same thing for Max as well? Are they built okay?

Yeah, absolutely. And Max, they've tried to, they're constantly trying to improve the cooling without making a lot of noise. So I think they are just as important to make sure you keep clean.

Yeah. When they start to cool, at least my laptop, when it starts to cool down, you know, it's doing it. It's not loud, loud, but I was like, whoa, you're making a lot of noise.

It used to be that we would always defrag our hard drive. Is that something that you suggest we still continue to try to do?

It depends on the type of drive that is in your computer. A lot of new computers, old computers came with what's called a traditional hard Drive which was almost like an advanced little record player in your computer. It had a spinning disk and a little arm that would move back and forth across it to read data. Defragmentation is important for those kinds of drives. The new drives, called solid state devices or solid state drives are more like the memory that is in your smartphone. There are no moving parts. It's super fast. And because of that, defragmenting isn't as necessary for SSDs and can possibly even shorten the life of those SSDs.

Okay, good. Good point.

So check and see what kind of drive is in your computer. And then oftentimes the operating system is smart enough to know that, like Windows is smart enough to know if it's an old drive. Defragmentation may already be turned on and so forth. So it actually may be already doing that for you in the background.

Okay, good. Good to know.

Cool. Nearly every Mac made today would have an SSD though, by the way. So.

Is that with Windows 10 computers? No, you don't know.

Unfortunately, you still don't know. Some of the cheaper ones will still come with the standard rotating drives. Okay.

I just remember watching the little. You'd see this great big table and you could see all the buttons moving up. It was like a puzzle.

It was fun to watch. It was actually because you knew you.

Were doing something you were in power for once with this computer.

Yeah, exactly.

Make it faster. And I had more space. Well, how much more email can I hold on to? This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for all these tips and all these resources. You know, we're going to put all of this information into the show Notes on the podcast page. Is there any other resource that you want to make sure they know about?

We'd love to have you visit our website and sign up for. We have a newsletter that comes out at least monthly sometimes we try to do it a little more often with tips, tricks, hints, hopefully helpful items. And it doesn't matter if you're residential, if you're a small business or even a larger company, it applies. The information applies to you.

And free information is always excellent.

Free information is always good.

Wonderful. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us today. This was great. Thanks for the information, as I knew would be plenty of great information that is applicable to anybody in any situation.

Absolutely. And I promise you I'll do a backup.

Thank you.