Episode Twenty | Cybersecurity Basics Every Business Owner Should Know
Hosted by Ruth Ann Janson special guest: David Sewell
Welcome and Introduction
Ruth Ann Janson
Hi, everyone. My name's Ruth Ann Janson, and we are back with another episode of TopBranch. I'm so excited to have a special guest with us today. This is David Sewell. He is the president, owner, and founder of Sewelltech, and he's going to give us a little bit of an intro about himself and his company before we get started with our episode. Thanks, David. Take it from here. [laughs]
David Sewell
Ruth Ann, thank you for having me on this, on this episode. I'm, I am honored to speak.
Ruth Ann Janson
Oh, wow. Okay. [laughs]
David’s Background: From Photography to Technology
David Sewell
Once again, my name is David Sewell, owner of Sewelltech. We've been working with The Dove Agency for a little bit over five years now.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
And love working with them. Great people. They do some great work for designers. I started out in my, in my land, in my world, not in technology, but I started out as a, a commercial photographer actually, back in-
Ruth Ann Janson
Oh, I didn't even, I didn't even know that.
David Sewell
Yeah. So, back in high school, I was a photographer. Did, you know, sports photography, fashion, wedding. Went to college for commercial photography, graphic design. So, that's how I kinda got into technology, was, you know-
Ruth Ann Janson
Awesome.
David Sewell
... back in the early '90s, desktop publishing, you know, computer graphics.
Ruth Ann Janson
Okay. Yeah.
David Sewell
That was, that was the rage. Kind of fell in love with it, fell in love with the technology, the process, the, the, you know, the excitement of the newness of it. But also too-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... then you, you come into a lot of challenges of, you know, stuff not working.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
People not being able to do-
Ruth Ann Janson
Of course. That's, that's the, that's on the daily for you probably, right? [laughs]
David Sewell
It's not as, it's not as crazy as it used to be back in the early days.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
You know, when your designers were trying to do Photoshop and do layouts and graphics and things of that kind.
Sewelltech’s Apple Focus
Ruth Ann Janson
Figuring all that out. Well, that's interesting. Before we get going into the questions, it's, that's one of the, one of the reasons... Well, there's many reasons that we love working with you all, but you're one of the few firms, at least in Dallas, that, you know, readily supports Macs, or Apple, because we use a lot of Apple in our life at The Dove Agency. Whereas, you know, a lot of firms are only supporting the PC side. So, that's another thing. I don't know if that's a huge differentiator for you still, but I know it was when we decided to work with you all.
David Sewell
It is, that is our core focus.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
We are one of Apple's top partners in Texas. We're-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... we have, we're an Apple Foundation partner, Apple’s technical partner. So, we have all their top certifications. I just got back from Apple-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... last week for their big training and marketing stuff that we do.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
So, yeah, we're heavily focused on the Apple environment. We take pride in knowing that really well-
Ruth Ann Janson
Good. Yeah.
David Sewell
... helping our customers move forward. So, yeah, I mean, those are the, those are, that's the technology that we like to work with, because that's where we kind of started our roots back in the '90s.
Simple Security Steps You Can Take Today
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. That makes, that kinda ties together. Now I kind of understand with the photography kind of onset of things. Well, let's jump in and, you know, true to our little format here at the TopBranch, we really like to have a couple of key takeaways, like, you know, keep things simple, at a pretty high level so that designers, business owners can kind of leave after watching this and think, "I could do a couple of those things in my business today." So, those are, that's where we're going to kind of lead, lead our listeners, and viewers. So, just kind of with that in mind, you know, a lot of designers, their businesses are, you know, one to five people. They probably don't have the luxury of having somebody like a Sewelltech, you know, available at the ready if something is going wrong with their technology. Just for, to speak to those kind of viewers and listeners, what are two kind of key takeaways that they could leave this episode and go home or go to their business and implement today or over the month to kind of keep their own data more secure, keep their client data more secure? Just a couple low-hanging fruit items that don't require you to have a big tech brain to accomplish.
Tip 1: Back Up Your Data
David Sewell
I think there's a couple, two or three things that are, like, low-hanging fruit, simple things you can do. One, make sure you back up your data. If it's important to you, make sure you have a good backup. That could be put it on a small hard drive, a flash drive. You know, your important photography, those important spreadsheets.
Ruth Ann Janson
Okay.
David Sewell
Make sure you have a backup copy. Just don't leave them on your laptop hard drive thinking they're going to be okay.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yep.
David Sewell
And you can do as simple as just a manual backup. Copy it over to a flash drive, set that aside. Do that every so often.
Ruth Ann Janson
Okay.
David Sewell
Or if you want to get a little more sophisticated, you could do an online backup, like a Carbonite, a Backblaze, software you install on there. You pay a monthly fee. It backs everything up. But at least, at least have a backup-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yep.
David Sewell
... in case something happens. You lose a laptop, you spill coffee on it.
Ruth Ann Janson
Spill coffee on it. Yeah. That's something.
David Sewell
Yeah. Something like that nature because that's always going to happen when you-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... least expect it.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yep. Okay. That's a great tip.
Tip 2: Secure Your Accounts with Two-Factor Authentication
David Sewell
Second item is make sure your accounts are secure. And what I mean by secure is if you can turn on two-factor, turn it on for everything that you have.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
Social media, bank accounts, email. Anything that you're going to log into that has your data or your information attached to it, try to keep that secure.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
And I know that a lot of people are like, "Two factors, you know, kind of a pain. I have to do this other step." But in today's security landscape-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yep.
David Sewell
... it is; it's almost a bare minimum of doing the simple things-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
... to secure data.
Ruth Ann Janson
And that includes the owner kind of pushing that mentality and that kind of requirement down to all their employees as well, and making sure that's kind of part of the onboarding process and just basically with setting up their emails and any other software tools that they're using for the firm on a daily basis, making sure that they have that in place.
David Sewell
Yeah, I mean, I would take it as, make security like a mindset in the office. Like, we're going to turn on two-factor. We're not going to share passwords.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
We're going to do these things. Like, you know, be, you know, don't be like, you're not trying to be a security firm, but be in the mindset of, we need to make sure that these are conversations we're having because-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
... long-term, it protects the organization.
Avoiding Scams: “Be Curious”
Ruth Ann Janson
Right. Well, that kinda segues into the second thing, which is a little bit of a scary topic. I think as a business owner, I know we, we're kind of always thinking and talking about this with our team, which is, you know, falling into one of these scams that are coming through everybody's, you know, texts and emails multiple times a day. What are some good tips around kind of not falling into those traps that these scams can lay so nicely and seem like so authentic? [laughs]
David Sewell
I'm going to quote, you know, one of my favorite TV shows, which is Ted Lasso. And Ted Lasso says in one of the episodes, "Be curious."
Ruth Ann Janson
Yep. That's awesome.
David Sewell
And ask more questions. And when it comes to like email security or phishing attacks or smishing attacks or vishing attacks, is don't take it for face value. Like, look at the email. Ask some questions of yourself. Like, one of the telltale signs of a scammer-type thing is trying to get you to be in a rush or hurry or act in a fast manner. That's always... Because they want to trip you up. They want to make sure that you're off guard, you're not paying attention.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
Also verify some information offline in a, in a different manner. Pick up the phone, make a phone call, send a Slack message. You know, send a message to somebody. Don't just take the email for face value and click the link or reply to it or something like that.
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
And they're like-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
... actually, do some offline verification of it. Your bank, call your bank. If it's a coworker, walk down the hall and talk to them, you know?
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah, and you had, when we were prepping for the call, like you, you had like a funny story. You're like, you know, the owner or the executive of the company, he's not going to reach out to the new hire or the intern to ask them to go buy a bunch of gift cards for team members. Like that, there's like a common sense factor to some of this, but like what you said is somebody gets a they're in a hurry, they're excited, they don't stop to take that minute to be curious about, like, does this really, does this request make sense? And it actually doesn't. [laughs]
David Sewell
No, like, I think we, I think because we see it in our inbox, we, we place-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... a higher value on it.
Ruth Ann Janson
Mm-hmm.
David Sewell
And so, we take it for a little more face value.
Ruth Ann Janson
That's a good point.
David Sewell
So we take it for a lot more face value than it, than it is. Exac- you know, the exact point is like, would the, would the boss of a company send a new intern to go buy something? Probably not.
Ruth Ann Janson
No.
David Sewell
He's going to have, he's going to have an executive assistant. He's going to have-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
... you know, ways of doing-
Ruth Ann Janson
Trust your team member. Yeah.
David Sewell
He's going to have ways of doing things that are, that are in a protocol. So like, just because it lands in your inbox, you know, be curious. Don't, you know, be like, "Eh, I don't know about that one."
Tech Support for Small Firms
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. No, that's, that's really smart. And it's so simple. That's an easy like one-liner for somebody to walk away with and remember. What about, you know, a lot of the designers that we work with, they, like I said, they're small businesses. They may not be able to afford or kind of have the inclination to have tech on the ready. What, in, in your firm, I mean, do you work with companies the size of, you know, zer- you know, not zero, one to five? Like, is that even a, is that kind of too small to like hit your radar? Or at, at Sewelltech, how do you all decide what would be a good client for y'all and what's a good fit?
David Sewell
We work with clients of all different sizes, from firms that are one to two people all the way up to, you know, you know, corporate 50.
Ruth Ann Janson
Oh, wow. Okay, good. Yeah.
David Sewell
Huge, huge enterprises. I think it kind of boils down to a couple different factors.
Ruth Ann Janson
Okay.
David Sewell
Is, is a lot of the smaller shops that we work with understand that they need support, they need security. They're going to need a lot of these tools and things to be done.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
But they understand that they don't have the expertise to do them, nor is it good for them.
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
And what I mean by good for them is, you know, if their designers are not out, you know, doing designs, you know, taking care of business, it's not helping to move the company forward. Like, so their time could be better served doing other things instead of chasing down tech problems. And that's why, you know, smaller firms engage with us, because they understand that doing work with us gives them time to do higher-value products, or I mean, or higher-value work, higher-value things. And that's why... And we love working with the small guys because we want to help them grow.
Ruth Ann Janson
Well, I mean, that's, that's definitely what kind of pushed us to that point. I mean, you know, we, one of our founders was taking care of all of the tech for two or three years, and then it just gets to a point where, like you said, there's so many more valuable things that she could be doing with her time versus taking care of all of our tech.
David Sewell
Yeah, I mean, we-
Ruth Ann Janson
And it's not her necessarily, her expertise. And so, that was a great, you know, great change that we made for our company back in, you know, at the time, I bet we didn't have more than 10 or, 10 or so employees, and now we're up to 25 plus. But, you know, we were small when we made that decision.
David Sewell
Yeah, I mean, I remember work starting with Beth, and she was like more than happy to get that-
Ruth Ann Janson
[laughs] Yeah.
David Sewell
... that task off her plate. I mean, and she was doing a great, she was doing a great job.
Ruth Ann Janson
She was, yeah.
David Sewell
She was doing a great job at it. I mean, it was very highly organized and, and Beth-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... but she was like, "I, this is not what I do."
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
She's like, "You know, I started out as a designer, and I do this."
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
And she's like, she was super, super happy to get that off her plate because she was like-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah
David Sewell
... "I can go do other things."
Planning Ahead vs. Putting Out Fires
Ruth Ann Janson
Other things that are more value-driven for the firm. And I think you also said something else in prep that stuck with me was that, you know, you can- these things, while they're not inevitable, they are, a little bit, that you are going to have tech kind of bumps in your tech road, so to speak. And do you want to, like you said, control it- control the spend on it, like in a monthly, quarterly type of way, or have to be reacting to kind of fires and problems that come up, which are equally or possibly more expensive, but they also are not on your timeline? I mean, that's not going to be a complete disruption to your business versus kind of doing the things monthly to keep things on track and ensure, ensure to the best of your ability that those don't happen.
David Sewell
Yeah, it's like, I mean, you look at it, you know, if you look at it on overall budgeting and, and planning standpoint, do you want to... You're going to have to deal with it at some time.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
Do you want to deal with it now when you have the timeline, and you can put the budget and control those costs? Or do you want to have the wake-up and emails down and things are not working and you have a compromise, and then it costs you three times as much, uh, time, money, and effort?
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
So you're going to, you're going to pay either way. You-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
It's kind of choose your own adventure. Do you want to, do you want go down the-
Ruth Ann Janson
[laughs] Choose your own... That's funny.
David Sewell
You want to go down the easy path or it's going to be-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
You have control, you have understanding; it's less stress-free.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
And you, and you can do that, or do you want it to be, you know, wake up, your house is on fire-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
... and now you gotta deal with it. So it's-
Ruth Ann Janson
Right.
David Sewell
There's, there's going to be a cost either way. You get a choice in the matter.
The Critical Question: Do You Control Your Domain?
Ruth Ann Janson
Right. I love that. That's really good. That's really good advice. And the last thing I wanted to, to kind of end with is, what's, like, one question that every small business owner, every solopreneur, or somebody of a four or five or eight-person firm, what's the one question about their tech, and maybe it's one or two, but what are the one or two questions that they need to be able to always answer and have the inf- the answer on the ready? Like, what, what are those two critical, one or two critical questions?
David Sewell
The bigger, the biggest one that I see when I start helping, you know, like, a small firm that's growing, that's moving up is the one that they need to answer is know where you've purchased your domain, your email address. Know how to get into-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
... that account. Know where you purchased, either through GoDaddy or Network Solutions, but have that one on lockdown. Like, have all the passwords, the information. Make sure your credit card is up-to-date on file in there to pay for that.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
Because that's the one thing, if that account gets compromised or you can't log in because you forgot a username or a password, it's near impossible to recover that. And-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. That's, that's very real.
David Sewell
... if that, if that goes, if that goes sideways, like, your credit card is not up-to-date and your domain, like, say, on GoDaddy, and your, and your emails goes down, your websites go down, that will have a massive impact-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yep.
David Sewell
... on your business. And domain registry is fairly cheap, 30 bucks a year-
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. Yeah.
David Sewell
... 25 bucks a year.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
It's, it's one of those things where it's like when it actually, when it actually doesn't go through, and it hits you, then it has just a cascading, really bad effect.
Ruth Ann Janson
Catas- it's catastrophic. Yeah.
David Sewell
Yeah, it is.
Closing Thoughts and How to Reach David
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. Yeah. Good. Well, that's, that's, those are, that's been... This has all been so helpful, and we like to always end on some kind of quote, and I usually, you know, find something before that makes sense and is kinda relevant to the topic, which I had done, but I love your Ted Lasso quote. So we're going to end with that, which is just, "Always be curious," regarding your tech. I think that can really save some people some headaches down the road. And before we sign off, I would love for you to tell people how they could reach you, if anybody wants to reach out after listening to all your great tips.
David Sewell
[laughs] I, I would love to talk to y'all 'cause I, you know, I help a lot of small designers and firms, you know, get up to that next level.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
There are a couple different ways. You can call me on my cell phone, 214-769-7695. You can go to our website, www.sewelltech.net, and there's a big button right there that says, "Schedule time. Have a meeting."
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah.
David Sewell
And we'll show up, and we'll do a meeting. We'll talk tech. We'll give you a full evaluation of your tech. Those are the two best ways to find me.
Ruth Ann Janson
Great.
David Sewell
You know, schedule some time with me, give me a phone call, but definitely, you know, we want to hear what you have to say. If you got some problems, you got some questions, then we'll get you some answers.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, and I will attest to the fact that you answer both texts and emails very quickly. So thank you for always doing that. [laughs]
David Sewell
Yes. Thank you.
Ruth Ann Janson
All right. Well, thanks for your time.
David Sewell
You're welcome.
Ruth Ann Janson
Have a great day. Bye, everyone.
David Sewell
Well, thank you for having me. This was fun.
Ruth Ann Janson
Yeah. It was fun. We'll see you next time on TopBranch. Bye-bye.
David Sewell
Bye.