dnsUNFILTERED: Cheyenne Harden, Cyber Protect

[00:00:00] Mikey Pruitt: thank you everybody for joining us. I'm Mikey Pruitt with DNSFilter, and today on dnsUNFILTERED we have Cheyenne Harden. He's with Cyber Protect and he's gonna tell us a little bit about his MSP as a side gig later. But first Cheyenne, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit for us?

[00:00:18] Cheyenne Harden: Thanks Mikey, for having me on today. My name is Cheyenne Harden. I am a cybersecurity and IT services business owner. Been in it for over 23 years and before that didn't know what I wanted to do. So there's a big whole story about me finding my way here. But yeah, my goal is to, it's really just help everybody out with their cybersecurity issues because you don't know what you don't know.

[00:00:50] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You don't know what you don't know, and I feel like a lot of people are that's the scary part. Like you just don't know what you don't know until you fi finally figure it out. So you've been in the biz, I guess you could say, for about 23 years, which is quite a while.

You've seen a lot of transitions. I'm curious, what were some of the big transitions that you've noticed in it or cybersecurity as those years have progressed?

[00:01:15] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah. When I started, way back when just before 2000 there really wasn't a mention of cybersecurity. It was passwords. You put a password on something and you were good to go.

[00:01:28] Mikey Pruitt: You put a password on a sticky note on your monitor,

[00:01:31] Cheyenne Harden: That's it, right? You had them written down somewhere and that was it. And you used the same password for everything. So nobody really worried about it back then. So I started off really wanting to just learn a lot just trying to soak up everything like a sponge.

I dunno what to say.

[00:01:50] Mikey Pruitt: You're like, I learned everything. What were some of the things that that you really enjoyed learning about? You mentioned passwords, but was there other stuff that was like, wow, this is really cool? Virtualization? I'm sure you saw that, come and I saw stick around, saw conversation.

[00:02:03] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah, I saw that coming up. When I first started out, none of that existed. Virtualization was unheard of believe it or not, like companies like Kaseya didn't exist in the forms they do today. You didn't have really a good way to remote access things and remote access a lot of different computers unless you had a VPN.

So it was really in, its, to me, it was in its infancy. Being able to remote into workstations across the state of Michigan, like when I first started my first job was just amazing to me. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm fixing something from, 40, 50 miles away. The lag was horrible. It really was. The lag

[00:02:45] Mikey Pruitt: was horrible, but it was impressive.

And you're like, wow, I could do this from anywhere.

[00:02:49] Cheyenne Harden: It was, and then years later, really virtualization started to take off and that was just a big change from, hey, we are having servers in-house to, putting them in the cloud or even in your own personal cloud.

[00:03:04] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, so you just mentioned the, another key transition, the cloud.

So I think virtualization and move moving to the cloud, like I would say they're still in that transition phase, a lot of things can't be put in the cloud or don't want to be put in the cloud, or it's not easy enough to make it financially feasible. But are you seeing, like people are just, gravitating more and more towards the cloud?

Is that pretty prominent in your business?

[00:03:31] Cheyenne Harden: It is a mix. There's a lot of more software as a service identity as a service, but really we deal with a lot of law firms and medium sized businesses. A lot of them still like to keep the servers on site, I hear a lot about, to Azure to AWS, we have a few, but most people they like it on site, they trust it, they wanna see it, they wanna see the little blinky lights knowing that everything is theirs and they don't feel comfortable.

Some, especially some of the older business owners don't feel comfortable putting your stuff in the cloud and not knowing where it's at. Who has access to it.

[00:04:11] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So there's like a, there's a trust issue to overcome.

[00:04:15] Cheyenne Harden: There is, when you're hearing people getting hacked every day, they're just like doesn't that open me up to more attacks?

And we have to convince them that you're not spending as much as Microsoft on security. Securing your infrastructure. You don't have as many professionals, doing those things. You don't have us maybe there full time when you're just running just a bunch of desktops and a server every once in a while and you don't wanna spend the money on, really any kind of decent business class security.

[00:04:46] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So you're really like taking on someone else's like black box risk, like you have no idea what it is, but. In the reality, that level of risk is probably lower than you do trying to do it yourself.

[00:05:01] Cheyenne Harden: It's but I can't understate it. You have to have a professional looking at your cloud to see that your T's are crossed, your i's are dotted.

Make sure that things are done right, that you don't just open up databases to the internet or file shares, things like that. That does happen.

[00:05:24] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah.

[00:05:25] Cheyenne Harden: And inadvertently it happens all the time. You'll hear about, passwords and databases being left open and this data was stolen by somebody. It was just left out there, so they didn't, it was low hanging fruit.

They didn't have to do much work to grab it. They just found it.

[00:05:40] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So cloud means less maintenance, not no maintenance,

[00:05:44] Cheyenne Harden: le different maintenance. I like to think of it as different. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You don't have to update the hardware.

[00:05:49] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. Hard drop fails is not my problem.

[00:05:52] Cheyenne Harden: That's right. And you should really never see that happen at that point. And you still, you gotta convince them then, okay, now you put it in the cloud, you still need a backup, but it's in the cloud. You still need a backup.

[00:06:05] Mikey Pruitt: It's hard. It's hard for get to get people to make that leap. No. It's just someone else's computer.

Yep. It's fine.

[00:06:12] Cheyenne Harden: Email that, that's one of them that we try to convince people of with email. They're like we've got it in the cloud. Microsoft's taking care of it or whoever. And we say, yeah, but what happens if Sally. Three months ago, deleted an email that you need later on, or you have a disgruntled employee and you have no backups and you can't restore it 'cause you didn't know about something that was deleted till months later.

Now you got those backups.

[00:06:39] Mikey Pruitt: It's always Sally, I swear. So tell me this over your years you've seen all these progressions. What your current strategy for cybersecurity can you tell me a bit about how that works?

[00:06:55] Cheyenne Harden: Sure. We like the old school layered approach. We try not to do a hundred percent overlap, but we definitely work as a layered approach to cybersecurity to make sure we secure, people, processes, devices, cloud, infrastructure.

So basically try to look at, in a holistic way. Sometimes, we use the, HIPAA or. N standards. I don't know if you can hear all those emails going off. I'm gonna close that. I apologize.

[00:07:25] Mikey Pruitt: That's okay.

[00:07:27] Cheyenne Harden: So we, we look at those standards and try to match that up. I don't like when. IT companies and cybersecurity companies say We wanna bundle our software and things like that.

We say no, we need to go ahead and at bare minimum meet compliance, but we need to have security controls in place that actually mean something. And then at the end of the day, also those policies have teeth in them for people not following them. When we talk about compliance. To law firms and other companies manufacturing they will try to just go and check a box and we try to educate them to tell 'em that should not be their goal.

To educate to the check that box. It should be to meet a security standard. And if you're just checking a box, you're doing the very minimum that the industry thinks you should be doing. And are they a minimum standard firm? Are they in standard business? And hopefully the answer is no. So there's sometimes there's things that we want to be doing.

I don't like the paradigm of antivirus where everything is allowed and everything works on a signature, and it has to look like a duck. And quack like a duck must be a duck. Therefore, the malware gets blocked. I say default, deny everything. Nothing's allowed to run. Zero trust.

[00:08:51] Mikey Pruitt: That's a really good way to move forward.

And I'm curious, so like you were saying checking that box, so if you're doing security right, the boxes are going to get checked and it sounds like you're really Yes. You're really pushing your clients to be secure practice, cybersecurity best practices, like not just from the software stack that you're implementing, but also from behavioral issues and training people.

And then those boxes, they just happen to get checked on that journey.

[00:09:22] Cheyenne Harden: If you're doing the right things, the boxes take care of themselves. You'll walk into a company if you have a knowledgeable. Provider, they will walk you through the things that you should be doing. And most of those boxes will be checked off by themselves.

The endpoint security, the separation of duties we even, web filtering but we even talk to our clients about. Securing their identities outside of the business, and everybody should put a credit freeze on. Equifax, TransUnion, Experian, and their little brother Anova should always do that.

So we always try to add that value.

[00:10:07] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, that's actually a really good idea. I haven't really heard that much. So you're not only coaching them on their business security, but in their personal security. Because a lot of times, especially in like law firms and manufacturing, like these high value people in these companies could be targeted.

And if their personal life is not secure, that is perhaps an inroad for the bad guys.

[00:10:28] Cheyenne Harden: Oh it really is. And then. Okay. I'm lazy. I wanna do everything the right way the first time 'cause I don't wanna redo it. I'd rather go ahead and educate people about cybersecurity. Tell them to do the right things and get them in that cybersecurity is everybody's issue.

Get them in that mindset. And then things are easier for me because I don't like cleaning up from after ransomware attacks. Or data breaches or anything like that. It's great billable hours, but it's just a nightmare to go through.

[00:11:05] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So you're teaching them to fish, P-P-H-I-S-H instead of giving them a fish.

That's great. So let's talk a little bit about your business, cyber Protect. How long has Cyber Protect been in business?

[00:11:19] Cheyenne Harden: Started it in 2019. Gotcha. Yeah. Right after a friend of mine and an acquaintance of my wife their businesses were both hit with or once with ransomware attacks. One was a home remodeler and he got hit with ransomware.

The other one worked for Section eight housing and they got hit with ransomware on one one of their machines. Fortunately it didn't get any farther than that 'cause the files weren't stored on those machines. But the, unfortunately, the remodeler got completely locked up.

[00:11:52] Mikey Pruitt: So people were like, Hey, I need help.

And you're like I know how to help you.

[00:11:56] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah, I guess I'm in business now. Yeah. I said to those individuals, I said, Hey, this is what we do for a living. And at the time it was really defending networks, but I hadn't done it as a my own business at that time. It was just for other people, employers and things like that, or just one-offs that I would protect their networks and, consult for them. But then I started Side Protect and then within the year things were looking really good. It was growing quickly. And then after that I had to bring in a business partner.

[00:12:31] Mikey Pruitt: That sounds like the natural progression of things. And one thing I noticed on your website is that you very prominently call out your giving back the nature of your business, giving back to nature.

You really prominently showcased how you're really striving for like clean water, clean air, clean environment. How do you think that has, boosted your sales essentially.

[00:12:57] Cheyenne Harden: I had to think that it has, I, I really don't know. The traffic to that part of the site has not been great and that's okay.

I don't that, that is really just a pet project of mine. I'm a girl, dad got two daughters and wanna make sure that clean water, clean air for them is something that I leave being in the IT industry we use. Many plastics, electronics energy that we use. And so we, a long time ago, we planted trees.

Even before I started cyber protect I planted trees, planted with my dad then purchased trees to be planted. We partnered with one tree planted to make sure that every year we go ahead and plant those trees. A few thousand.

[00:13:40] Mikey Pruitt: And it looks like every year you have an initiative, like one of them is some trees planted in different places.

You have a carbon offset and then you did some like fire, forest fire recovery, which I assume is also planting trees. So you're really just, doing your part, your small part to give back to make sure that. The natural environment that we all love is available for your kids and I appreciate that.

'cause I have a little one as well. And I looking around this room, thinking of all the electricity and the plastic and the gold and the silver and the copper, like it's everywhere. So thank you for that.

[00:14:18] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah, no problem. Happy to do it.

[00:14:21] Mikey Pruitt: So I have one last thing I wanted to talk to you about, which was astonishing to me.

When we were grouping up to, to have this conversation, you mentioned to me that your MSP is a side hustle. So the office you're at, I don't know if that is your employer's office and it's, or that's your employer's office?

[00:14:38] Cheyenne Harden: Yes, I'm

[00:14:41] Mikey Pruitt: great on his lunch break. How, like how do you run a successful MSP?

I can see how much you pay DNSFilter and it's not no small amount. So your business is, doing well, bustling, I would say. How do you manage an MSP with a full-time job?

[00:15:03] Cheyenne Harden: It's difficult. It's a little easier now. When I first started it was just me doing everything and coming out to the companies right up front and saying, Hey, I, in, in the building I work in.

We'd like to work with you. I'd like to work with you. I always said, we as cyber Protect, we'd like to work with you and we're here in the morning. I get in before my day starts. I wake up extra early in the morning. Sometimes I have to remote in and do things in the, six o'clock in the morning.

Then I come into the office, start my day take off at lunch and sometimes go fix things. Do billing get back with customers. Then after lunch or after dinner go and start doing it all over again with checking emails. Finish up billing sometimes at night, laying in bed, doing so social media on my phone, and then putting out posts which I try to put out three, four posts a week.

And then scheduling them. It's the bags under these eyes that tell you I don't get a lot of sleep.

[00:16:08] Mikey Pruitt: But then what was the

[00:16:09] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah, my, my business partner helps a lot yeah. With it. And then we've got a full-time person that we just brought on for tier one that handles all the small stuff for us.

[00:16:19] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah. So what was the trigger where you were like, okay, I think I can maintain a full-time job and run an MSP? Was there a certain event or just something? What was it

[00:16:30] Cheyenne Harden: there? There was, it was a horrible event. So I was at home on a weekend and. I was putting all of my savings and spending, and I was putting that in Excel spreadsheets and extrapolating out what my retirement looked like, and then I got really depressed and I you were like,

[00:16:51] Mikey Pruitt: wait, these numbers aren't adding up.

[00:16:53] Cheyenne Harden: Not where I wanted to be. And so I walked upstairs and I talked to my wife and I said hey, ha, have a good retirement. She says, what do you mean? I said I'll never get to retire. I said, this will be enough for you, but not for me. They're like,

[00:17:05] Mikey Pruitt: Look at this.

[00:17:07] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah, it looks good for you.

So then, yeah, so then at that point I was like, I have to do something else. And people had already followed me online. Back in the day we had a website, lazy network admin that I was part of, and we had thousands and thousands of hits on scripts and things that we wrote. I did the same. I moved some of those over to company Spiceworks in their forums where they could download download the scripts that I had written. So I wrote a lot in VB script did some in PowerShell, did some in Python. And just really doing all of those kinds of things. It was like if I'm already doing these things, maybe I can expand a little bit and get paid for that too. And it really worked.

Most of it was word of mouth and then started doing a little bit of advertising and then some people have sought me out and called me up out of the blue and said, we want you to do this, that, and the other. So yeah, it's, it worked out really well.

[00:18:10] Mikey Pruitt: So you were, I was just thinking, you said earlier that you were lazy, which is clearly not the case,

[00:18:17] Cheyenne Harden: but I just is how you look at it, right?

[00:18:18] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, I understand the sentiment and I think a lot of people get started in it because, or they're good at computers, good at computering because they're lazy because they want to make the computer do something for them. And by doing that, you end up being able to do that thing typically faster than anyone else.

So your laziness has paid off, but you're, and I was just thinking it's so great having a skill like you have that you can, hang out your shingle anywhere, at any time from anywhere in the world and be an expert for someone else and people will pay you for that.

[00:18:56] Cheyenne Harden: For that. I think if you treat the customer well treat 'em as you're equal.

Not that they're bothering you or that you know this is an annoyance. No, you're there to solve a problem. You're there to help them out. They have other things that they wanna be doing, and that's why we wanna do this. We like solving problems.

[00:19:15] Mikey Pruitt: Yeah, exactly. Would you, do you have any advice for people getting started in it or in the MSP space?

Like someone may be looking for a career learn.

[00:19:26] Cheyenne Harden: Yeah, learn everything that you can learn. Make sure you learn how to script program a little bit. Learn about cybersecurity, learn about business. I did not know and was learning, self-taught all the things I didn't know. Learn a little bit about business if you're going to make it your career when you get your first job.

Second job, don't try to be the highest paid person in the room. Instead, ask for guaranteed training every year. Because somebody can take their, your paycheck away from you, but they can't take this knowledge that you accumulate.

[00:20:09] Mikey Pruitt: Exactly. Knowledge is power.

That's great. Thank you shy for taking the time to chat with us today.

Thank you everyone for joining us and yeah, I just really appreciate it.

[00:20:18] Cheyenne Harden: Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you.