Security importance when working from home with Dave Steffen

Host: Jeremy Cherny interviews Dave Steffen, a business coach with Action Coach. 

“And for those of you that don't know what business coaching is, it's really just my job to help business owners grow and succeed and thrive in their business and do the things that are going to help them be the best business owner they can be. So that means helping them strategize on actions to take and making sure they take those actions, talk about things that they can look out for from a marketing standpoint, a sales standpoint and an operation standpoint. So whatever the business is looking to do, my job is to really help them move through that process with as much philosophy as possible.”

 

Why is security important? 

“So there are a couple of things that come to mind for me, when somebody asks me about security relative to my business, the thing that I have to be very conscientious of is I receive a lot of confidential information, intellectual property, information from my clients. So safekeeping their information is obviously of significant importance to me. “

 

How do you communicate that to your clients?

“The first thing that I do is when we when we sit down and we talk about bringing on a client, I explain how I will keep their information confidential.”

 

Anything that you want to say about today's world, with COVID-19 and people working from home?

“The number one thing that I am communicating to the business owners that I've chatted with and including my clients is, seek help. There are a number of resources available out there for you to use and find to help you work through this. This is not something you have to try to do on your own. You're certainly not alone in this environment. “

 

What are some things you did in your prior role in IT around protecting people's data?

“You know, for example, you could put your accounting system on your network. But if you don't have any kind of security measure put in place, everybody, every employee that has asked for access to that network could access anything at all. So that includes all of your financials, your general ledger. And then it also includes not just accessing and viewing, but the ability to modify and change and or delete.”

 

Any favorite war stories?

“Yeah, there's obviously a number of times, but probably the one that I had the most fun with was working with a business and we were actually doing a proposal. And we had a contract and outline of a project that we were going to do for them. And I was talking with the president at the time, he kind of sidetracked the whole security piece of it and said, Well, this is really unnecessary. In my world today, he was in what I would call a state of denial. And really not sure that that was important. So I looked at him and I said, Sir, give me five minutes and if I’ll go to any workstation in your office and login and get access to your general ledger, will you sign the deal? He looked at me and he said, Go for it. Within five minutes, I had access to their general ledger. So I walked back in and said, Yep, I got your general ledger. And I said, Sir, you've got a lot of cash. You could do this project, you know. Right. He was a little dumbfounded. And he said, okay, clearly I've got a problem.”

 

What about a favorite Cybertek movie? 

“Hackers with Angelina Jolie”