UnHacked - Cybersecurity Made Simple for Small Businesses

Justin Shelley (00:00)
Welcome everybody to episode 65 of Unhacked. We are here to help business owners navigate the chaos of cyber threats and come out hopefully stronger, smarter, and more secure. We've been doing this for a while, a little bit over a year now. And if you all remember back to episode, I turned text in there for a minute. If you all remember back to episode 34, we had a special guest on here and I love the fact that we are back together again.

So quick introductions, I am Justin Shelley, CEO of Phoenix IT Advisors, and I help businesses build their wealth through technology and then protect it from the bad guys who I like to call Russian hackers and Mario always disagrees with me and the government who's going to come around and, you know, give you a nice little fine penalty and maybe jail time. I've heard that one kicked around if you don't do things right. And then, Robert's got a look on his face. We'll come back to that. And finally, the attorneys.

Class action lawsuits are going crazy these days if we don't do things right. that's what I do is I protect you from all that nonsense. And I'm here as always with my good friend, Mario Zachy. Mario, tell everybody who you are, what you do and who you do it for.

Mario Zaki (01:08)
Yeah, Mario Zaki, CEO of Mastic IT located in New Jersey, about 50 miles away from Manhattan. We specialize in helping small to medium sized businesses stay safe, you know, protect their businesses, not only from the Russians, but from the Chinese, the Koreans and everything, everybody else around that area. ⁓ And we specialize in also keeping businesses, business owners, give them the ability to sleep better at night.

knowing that their businesses will be safe the next.

Justin Shelley (01:41)
Beautiful. And today we are joined by Robert choffee choffee. See, I did it wrong. I've got it wrong. Every time I say this in my head, I say it wrong. I know, I know we did. We did Robert say your name properly as a true Italian.

Robert Cioffi (01:48)
got in your head it's okay it's all good

Mario Zaki (01:48)
God damn it, Justin, we practiced this for like 20 minutes already.

Robert Cioffi (01:56)
OK,

so as a true Italian, it would be choffy, but ⁓ choffy is fine. Choffy is close enough.

Justin Shelley (02:01)
Okay. And chophie

is wrong. And that's the way I always say it. So welcome Robert. Thank you for being back with us again. Really do appreciate it. So guys, if you remember back to episode 34, and if you weren't around as one of our faithful fans and loyal followers back then, go ahead and rewind, hit that rewind button on your cassette player, go back to episode 34, hit stop, then hit play and take a listen to what we talked about. Robert is one of the few people who I know anyways,

Robert Cioffi (02:04)
Okay, no.

You're welcome. ⁓ Glad to be here.

Justin Shelley (02:30)
who has been through a major attack and Robert, learned not to say breach from you. and, and came out, I would say better, stronger, more intelligent through that process. Is that fair to say?

Robert Cioffi (02:35)
Thank you.

Definitely more intelligent, I think, but and definitely more experienced. ⁓ Certainly better, possibly stronger. Yeah, I would maybe check all those boxes. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (02:46)
Okay, okay.

Okay. So

Mario Zaki (02:54)
Cheers.

Justin Shelley (02:54)
Robert,

one of the main pain points I have as a cybersecurity specialist, an MSP, whatever you want to call us, a technology guy is that my job, like it or not, is to protect people, like I said, from the hackers, from the government, and from the attorneys. But it's rare that I live in ground zero and those who do rarely talk about it. So what we get to talk about is

⁓ frameworks. And we're going to come back to that. get to talk about insurance. get to talk about, you know, just, just stuff that we can gather after the fact, but rarely do we really get to see behind the curtain. So ⁓ that's kind of what we dove into an episode 34. And I'd like to start with a recap for those that didn't listen to it. Tell us briefly what happened.

Robert Cioffi (03:44)
briefly is going to be hard, but I'll do my best to encapsulate what is arguably probably a two hour seminar on exactly what happened to us and a forthcoming book, by the way, hint hint. Yeah, it's really a long, long, long story. But essentially, January, I'm sorry, January, listen to me already. I've screwed it up. July 2 of 2021. We were one of the

Justin Shelley (03:46)
Fair enough. Yeah.

Yes.

⁓ nice, nice.

Robert Cioffi (04:11)
Kaseya VSA victims. So there were about 60 MSPs worldwide, 50, 60, I don't know the exact number, that were victimized by a threat actor who broke in through a back door, essentially a zero day exploit of the Kaseya VSA RMM tool, and used that tool to upload RevalSodan Okibi to...

100 % of my customers that was 80 clients and 200 physical locations for time zones 2500 endpoints of which were about 250 servers 100 % ransomed encrypted in a matter of like, you know, an hour and a half. That's what SSD drives do, by the way makes ransomware installation just that much faster, right?

Mario Zaki (04:57)
Faster. ⁓

Justin Shelley (04:58)
Yeah,

I remember that now we talked about that. Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (05:00)
Yeah. So

my story is not so much the technical ⁓ details of what happened, although I do talk about those things. That's not the important part. The important part was the human side of the story, the psychological and emotional and even the physical stress that I underwent, our company underwent, our clients underwent. ⁓ And if you are a Lord of the Rings fan and if you are not, then we can't be friends.

Justin Shelley (05:30)
Well, this episode's over. I'm just kidding.

Robert Cioffi (05:30)
⁓ But who exactly, but

who, who, what IT geek in the world is not a former D and D player or active one or a Lord of the Rings fan, right? You're a shame, shame, Justin shame. No, I, I, I, I have my dice, you know, right behind me. We can start a campaign anytime you like. ⁓ So, ⁓ essentially what this tale was, was like,

Justin Shelley (05:42)
I hang my head in shame.

Mario Zaki (05:44)
Mm-mm.

Justin Shelley (05:47)
⁓ teach me. I want to learn a wise one. ⁓

Robert Cioffi (05:58)
⁓ the scene if you've watched the movies or read the books. It's the writers of Rohan showing up just as, you know, ⁓ it seems like evil was going to conquer good and the tide of the battle had changed. Essentially what had happened for us is that many people in the community, both on the MSP side as well as the solution partner side, right, ⁓ vendors ⁓ like Kinequise and Axiom. Axiom really is critical to this. Huntress is so

critical to our story, but also friends from coast to coast, New York to LA, Maine to Florida, Texas to Minneapolis, and all points in between who physically flew, not just business leaders, but also technicians, came to our office here in Yonkers, New York, lost in the Northern shadows of New York City, but came here to assist us with recovery efforts. So within about 17 calendar days,

we were able to recover just about 98 % of our customers to about a 98 % state. And we would not have survived this event had it not been for the kindness and compassion and empathy of all of those organizations that I've mentioned and the countless ⁓ MSPs and other technical people who just said, how do I help? They were not looking to steal my customers.

Justin Shelley (07:04)
Wow.

Robert Cioffi (07:25)
They were not looking to get paid, although we paid lots of them. It's not what their objective was. Their objective was we have a friend who is down and in need and who is in a very bad, dark place, and we need to be able to lift them up. ⁓ So that is the crux of the story. Like I said, it's about a two hour presentation that I put on that covers this in greater detail. And that's about as compressed of a version as I can give you.

Justin Shelley (07:25)
Right.

No, that's perfect. But I would like to plug. Do you have that available for people to watch your two hour presentation or is that a theoretical?

Robert Cioffi (07:59)
well, the podcast that you mentioned is, ⁓ you know, I think we'll give viewers and listeners here, ⁓ what was that episode 34, right? ⁓ so that, that probably is enough to give people a good enough sampling. then listen, I'm out in the community all of the time, ⁓ at many events, giving this presentation in various forms and formats. ⁓ there's plenty of other, you know,

Justin Shelley (08:08)
34, yeah.

Mario Zaki (08:08)
Well.

Justin Shelley (08:18)
Yes.

Robert Cioffi (08:26)
places online that you can find me where I talk about this. But some of those longer versions were for private events, so I don't have those links. Sorry.

Justin Shelley (08:34)
Okay. Fair

enough. But no, and listen, this is, and Mario, correct me if I'm wrong, an MSP's greatest fear, worst nightmare, the thing we all hope will never happen. Right? Mario, Mario, do you ever lose sleep over this at night? Cause you say, you say in your pitch every day, so you guys can sleep better at night. I imagine that's because like me, you lose sleep over this. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (08:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

all the time, all the time.

Because we take it for them, you we absorb

it for them. that's the biggest thing that I got from our episode 34 is the community and the help that came and helped Robert. And for me, I did sleep a little better at night knowing that, God forbid, that ever happens to me is that there is that lifeline, there's that

Justin Shelley (09:08)
Yes.

Mario Zaki (09:25)
community of people that not only do I want to join, but will be there to help as well. In the event something like that happens. And that's the biggest thing. That gave me a little bit of breathing room knowing that it may not be the end of the world if something like that ever does

Robert Cioffi (09:51)
Hey, Justin, do you mind if I press into this just a little bit? So I know there's probably, well, I don't know, 40 to 50,000 MSPs in the US. Who knows whether that number is real or not, but it's a lot. Would we all agree that there's, you know, there's tons of us. We're like, you know, Mario and I are like pizzeria shops in New York City. There's like three on every corner. So there's tons of us out there, but, and I always feel like, oh, lots of us are connected to communities and go to conferences and what I,

Justin Shelley (09:54)
Sure.

a lot. yeah.

Mario Zaki (10:11)
Exactly.

Justin Shelley (10:13)
Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (10:22)
What I was disturbed to learn from some, ⁓ you know, from people with greater insight in this information than I is that there are many, vast majority of MSPs that are not plugged into the community, that don't go to events, that don't have an online connection with other people even. And to me, if you want to do one thing to protect your business better, it is simply that. Just start making connections and friends with other MSPs.

not in an adversarial or competitive way, but just, ⁓ hey, we're neighbors or you're in Ohio, I'm in New York, we met online, let's get friendly with each other, simply because there's gonna be a day when we need each other. And ⁓ the biggest mistake that I've seen MSPs make is not investing in community.

Justin Shelley (11:10)
11 years ago, Robert, I was living that world where I was completely isolated. In fact, I did not know that communities existed where I could interface with other business owners, let alone other competitive, right? I T companies. and you know, I joined a community back then that's how I met Mario eventually. ⁓ and, and it was life changing and that wasn't, you know, we, we didn't haven't yet had to draw on what you did through community, but I have been through some shit.

in my life and ⁓ non-technical personal other stuff we're not going to get into today. absolutely and the community saved me. I will tell you it was ⁓ I wouldn't be in business and I'll leave it at that. I went to some very dark places and community is absolutely what pulled me through. So ⁓ because of the importance of that subject I'm glad you brought it up and now we're going to put a pin in it because I want to end on that note.

Robert Cioffi (11:45)
Well, that's important too, right?

Justin Shelley (12:08)
And I want to dive into a subject that's slightly less boring. ⁓ But it is something that I have become passionate about since talking to you back in episode 34. So I remember asking you, know, Robert, you've been through this like this is what I'm always trying to get out of people. You've been in the trenches, you fought the battle and you won, by the way, you came out on top scarred, sure. Limbs severed, whatever. But you came out PTSD. I'm 100 % sure there's got to be some long lasting

emotional, psychological, and by the way, you're welcome to talk about any of that that you would like. ⁓ What came out of that conversation for me as like Robert, having gone through all of that, what would you have done different or what did you learn? I don't remember how I worded it. And you said one word, you said frameworks.

Robert Cioffi (12:38)
There is. Absolutely.

Yeah, it was at and again, I only name names not to plug people or plug companies, but just simply to show you my path is it was at right of boom, the very first right of boom in February of 2022. So this was about six or seven or eight months after I saw cybersecurity conference, I was very interested for very good reasons because it just had my butt kicked.

Justin Shelley (13:01)
plug away.

Okay.

Robert Cioffi (13:22)
⁓ And I was like, I gotta go to this thing to kind of learn. And I was invited on stage. was the first, I'm sorry, was the second time that I spoke publicly on stage in front of a live audience about what had happened to us. And I met and made friends with a gentleman by the name of Eric Woodard. ⁓ He runs a company called ProTech and MSP out in Salt Lake City. Amazing friend of mine, Tay, that, you know,

the silver linings and these types of things is I don't know if I would have made friends with and have made a connection with Eric had it not been for our mutual experiences, but he had been through a horrible story similar to ours two years prior. And as I was sitting there with him in this conference, he was like, hey, like, are you using CIS controls? Now, again, I'm not here to advocate for them for CIS controls, but

Justin Shelley (14:13)
I am,

just for the record. Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (14:14)
Well, I mean, I will, you know, if you ask

me my opinion, I'm not trying to do that here and trying to convince the world to go sign up. and I know that Mario has maybe a slightly different opinion on this and that's cool, but I don't follow that framework to the letter. What I've done is I've used it at least initially to become my filter so that when I walk the showroom floors and when I get emails and phone calls and

Justin Shelley (14:36)
Yes.

Robert Cioffi (14:41)
Something, somebody plopped something on my desk and says, you got to try this tool. Like this is the best. It's going to, you know, provide you 150 % protection, right? And I'm being facetious there with the 150 ⁓ or maybe sarcastic. I don't know which, ⁓ but ⁓ the, the CIS controls became a tool for me to understand where I ought to be focusing my attention when building a good cybersecurity plan to protect my customers.

And it gave me a ⁓ good education on this is what good cybersecurity looks like. Right now, is it the best? I don't know. ⁓ Is it the only? Definitely not. There's a lot of different ways you can look at it. But again, like I said, it's become a filter for me and it helped me identify the areas where I had gaps so that I can say, ⁓ I need to stop chasing control number 18, for example.

⁓ But I really ought to be control of chasing a solution that fits in a control five or six because I had a massive hole there, right? And so that has enabled me to more intelligently ⁓ operate my business ⁓ to build a ⁓ pricing package and solution set around so I to make sense from a business perspective, but it also had to make sense from a security perspective and

Justin Shelley (15:43)
Gotcha. Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (16:03)
Like I said, a framework, pick your poison will help you at least, you know, land in those two ⁓ areas well to take those circles and, you know, and apply the Venn diagram and meet in that middle somewhere of here's what I think I can sell my customers, what they have an appetite for, what they have a budget for. And here are like a really the hardcore minimum things they need to have.

Justin Shelley (16:27)
So you hit on something, you mentioned that you don't follow it exactly. I don't remember your wording perfectly, so, well, here's the truth of it, Robert. There's, and forgive me, I don't remember the exact number of ⁓ protections. That's not what they call them, because I'm going to draw a blank, because I'm thinking. ⁓ You've got controls, which are like chapters, no, but then you have subsets, which are called something else. ⁓ So anyways.

Robert Cioffi (16:32)
Yeah, mean, you know, quotes, but not 100%, right?

Mario Zaki (16:46)
Controls.

Robert Cioffi (16:51)
I feel you're making me draw blank now too.

Mario Zaki (16:53)
the

Justin Shelley (16:55)
There's like 144 or 150 of these things. 50, okay. Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (16:57)
⁓ 156, I think, right? Because there's 18 controls,

Mario Zaki (16:59)
Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (17:01)
three implementation groups. And as you go from basic to medium to advanced, you ⁓ have to check, you you check them all off, right? And I'm not advocating somebody do all of them because it's too much. Yeah, too much. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (17:03)
Right.

That's my point. You can't, you can't. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (17:14)
Yeah,

and that's the thing. I haven't been able to do every single one of them. But some of them, it's almost common sense that you have to have in place. Like 2FA. It's certain things that you have to have in place. Some other ones that are tough to do or tough to do for every single customer and stuff like that. It's hard to really just take out the checklist and say, I can't move forward unless I have this checked off.

Robert Cioffi (17:43)
Yeah. Well, you can, but you have to at least acknowledge that I don't have that and that's deficiency. Let me give you a, for instance, I think this is the classic one. Control one and two are all about inventory, right? You can't protect what you don't know about, right? And I this sounds very basic and very obvious, right? Common sense. Of course, how can I protect, ⁓ you know, if I'm protecting only 20 machines, but there's really 30, how can I really protect it, right? In cybersecurity, we say,

If I can't protect everything that I can protect nothing like inventory, which is actually really hard, by the way, ⁓ is super hard, but it's control one and two for a reason because forget everything else. Like if you don't know what you're protecting, how are you going to protect anything? Right. So to me, that was very eye opening that ⁓ I needed to engage with a product beyond my RMM that was going to be able to provide me.

Mario Zaki (18:18)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (18:18)
It is.

Robert Cioffi (18:39)
⁓ additional details about what's sitting in that network, right? Or what's in their cloud environment, right?

Justin Shelley (18:43)
And for

Yeah, for the business owners out there who don't know what an RMM is. That's like our, well, remote management and monitoring, remote monitoring and management. I don't remember which word comes first, but it's what we use to manage the devices that we are aware of. Correct? What it doesn't do great is tell us what devices are out there that we're not aware of. People bring your laptop in and plug it in. We may or may not know that. Wireless access points. We probably don't know that unless we have specialty tools. RMM doesn't do that. And a lot of us just rely on that.

Mario Zaki (19:02)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (19:16)
⁓ so yeah, inventory is super huge and it's not just physical, by the way, ⁓ within those first two controls you're talking about, we need an inventory of the software. That's fun. If you've got a network of 20 computers that you just mentioned, how many applications are you going to find if you inventory that software? Hundreds, thousands. mean, it's a lot. It's a lot.

Robert Cioffi (19:26)
software as well. ⁓

Yeah. When we

onboard customers, we ask them, what are your major line of business applications? And they'll tell us like, I'm going to make something up, right? They'll tell us the three or four. And then we go and install our tool sets. And we start pulling reports and go, it's not three. It's more like it's not three or four. I think they meant to say 34, right? Yeah. Because even if you ask an MSP how many tools they have,

Justin Shelley (19:40)
Okay.

Right.

Mario Zaki (19:54)
34 exactly

Robert Cioffi (20:00)
They will ⁓ either lie to themselves or lie to you by saying, it's only like 12 or 15, right? And most of us are running, you know, 40, 50 tools. And if you don't believe me, go, go do your own inventory right now.

Justin Shelley (20:01)
god, yeah.

Yeah.

Mario Zaki (20:13)
Yeah, you know, we switched platforms and stuff like that and we planned along the way, we're like, all right, we need to move this, we need to copy this, I need people to copy over this stuff, whatever. And then halfway through, we're like, shit, we forgot about all this other stuff, so we gotta like start over. A lot of it, you kind of either take for granted, you forget about, or you're like, oh, okay, it's running itself, you don't think about it.

Justin Shelley (20:14)
Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (20:37)
you forget about.

Yeah, well, I'll scare you even more. Go put your monthly fee that you pay for all those tools next to that number and go add that up. And then you'll be like, whoa, hold on a second, right?

Mario Zaki (20:42)
You know, it's not easy.

Yeah.

Justin Shelley (20:50)
Yeah, let's.

Mario Zaki (20:54)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (20:54)
Nah,

I just got depressed and I won't be able to sleep tonight. ⁓ So ⁓ frameworks I think are key, at least like you said, like I said, when you mentioned that it kind of changed my whole perspective on this. And the problem with frameworks, like I mentioned, is that there's a ton of them just within CIS that you mentioned. And then there's a shit ton of frameworks that may or may not apply to various industries and government regulations and stuff like that. So it can get overwhelming fast.

Robert Cioffi (21:14)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (21:23)
But you've got to find something that you're measuring against. And if it's not, you know, we kind of touched on community. We're going to deep dive on it here in a minute. But before I got into frameworks, my, my framework was my community. And so it's, it's interfacing with guys like Mario and Brian, who said a goddamn golf tournament today, Mario or Brian, like what, what the hell? ⁓ anyways, he can't be here, but it's.

Robert Cioffi (21:47)
That's not

Mario Zaki (21:47)
then

Robert Cioffi (21:47)
terrible. It's not terrible, by the way, Justin. mean, using your community. No, no, no, I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about the noted. No, forget it. No, no. Like you can at least use community like don't just make up this crap on your own, because guess what? I don't care how smart you are. You're not that smart. Right. That's the poll. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (21:49)
No, because he's supposed to be here talking to us. ⁓ the community. I'm still talking about Brian. Damn it. He's not here and he's supposed to be. Yeah. No, you're correct. Go ahead. Finish what you're Correct.

Mario Zaki (21:54)
Hahaha!

Justin Shelley (22:09)
Correct. And I

would go to conventions, Mario and I walked the halls. We did an episode, Mario, right? Where we walked the halls and we interviewed the vendors who are promising that 150%. That's all bullshit. But we have to then figure out regardless of what best practice standard framework we're following, we've got to figure out what tool, what vendor, what product, what strategy best implements the solution that we're trying, the outcome that we're looking for.

Mario Zaki (22:14)
No.

Robert Cioffi (22:34)
Correct.

Yes.

Mario Zaki (22:35)
The community that me and Brian and Justin met at, that community has what has helped me elevate my company. Before I actually joined that community, I was a one man shop kind of working under the house. And since then I've been able to grow my business to 10 technicians and salespeople and admins and stuff like that and revenue that comes along with it through this community and finding

you know, vendors like, ⁓ like you mentioned, like PAX eight, you know, I never knew about them until, until I joined the community and stuff like that. It's, it's, you know, and, know, through, through these guys that I've talked to has helped, they've helped me, you know, become a better business owner, better MSP, you know, better, ⁓ everything, you know, because you, you know, you learn not only from people's mistakes and

and struggles along the way, you also suggestions and stuff like that, that they, you know, from stuff that they've succeeded, you know, they're more than willing to share.

Justin Shelley (23:41)
Yeah. Well, here's what I would say, you know, just to kind of wrap this up and transition. Cause I think we all want to get to community, which is really the bulk or the most important thing we're going to talk about today. But speaking to our business owner audience who maybe you don't even know what a framework is or what the hell we're talking about when we say CIS, but I will give you this advice, Mr. Business owner, Mrs. Business owner. When you are looking for an IT company who you are going to put your whole trust into protecting your business.

is ask them what they're doing to measure their, their standard. How are, how are they protecting you and, make them articulate it because, you know, we've shared something I found on Reddit a while back. That was a guy who had been in the industry, I think 30 years or close to it and had a prospect ask him, Hey, what are these best practices that you guys are always talking about? And he's a deer in the headlights. And he got on Reddit and just publicly admit, mean, it's a

anonymous forum, but still is like, dude, you're a jackass. You're out selling this stuff. You've been doing it for 30 years. A prospect asks you, what are you doing to protect me? And you can't answer them. So, business owners, when you're looking for a, an IT company, you're making a change, or you just want to make sure that you're really protected when you're writing that check every month. Find out, you better know at least enough to make sure that you're truly being protected, ⁓ through some sort of a, ⁓ standard.

You know, whatever we're going to call it. ⁓ checklist. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (25:07)
Checklists, know, like they

need it's at very minimum a checklist to make sure that there is nothing that was missed. That's it. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (25:15)
but they should be able to produce it on the spot.

Robert Cioffi (25:17)
Yep.

Process documentation. mean, these are like boring things, but they're so important.

Justin Shelley (25:18)
They should be able to produce it. Right.

Right, right. So let's put that one to bed because I know half the audience is asleep now and let's talk about community. And I think this is something that we can all relate to because as humans, this isn't just something that's nice. It's literally survival. We are biologically wired to have community. You you go back and ⁓ hundreds of years, thousands of years, whatever. Even today, you can't survive on your own. You cannot survive outside of a community. I will make that case all day long.

You put me out in the middle of ⁓ you know, the, I don't know, best environment, best society, you know, without other people, I'm not going to make it. You've got to have other people to rely on. So let's take this, conversation and pivot towards community and Robert, I'm going to give this to you and Mario, though, I want you to be involved in and kind of share your experience and, and, know, your point of view with this, but we all remember you talking about coming out of that scenario.

You know, you had people come to the rescue, God bless them, right? They were there for you, but it wasn't structured. wasn't formal. And correct me if I'm wrong, but that kind of became a personal mission of yours to change that.

Robert Cioffi (26:33)
It did, it did. So I experienced so many different emotions that summer four years ago. And it was right around now when I was having one of those moments of reflection, right? Today is August 21st when we're recording this of 2025. And I was probably around this time. Now I've got the event.

seven weeks in my rearview mirror, but still, you know, feeling a lot of things and still struggling with things. ⁓ But on an emotional level, I had ⁓ anger and hate in my heart. I had joy and gratitude. Also fighting for the same amount of space, right? Hate and anger for those that, you know, affected us or inflicted this damage upon us. ⁓

You know, I was I was bitter. ⁓ But like I said, I was also full of joy, inspired and grateful for all the help we received. Right. So was I was in this weird place and. You know, part of me was like, hey, I'm suiting up and I'm going to grab some friends and we're going to get on a plane and go to some foreign nation and go.

hunt down my attackers. mean, this was like, you know, the fantasy playing out in my head. mean, obviously, listen, obviously, that's just all BS, right? Like, I'm not actually going to do those things. Because TSA probably wouldn't let me through. Just saying. Anyway, so you know, that's that was just fantasies running through my head, you know, it's natural just to feel that. But, but I knew that I couldn't just say, all right, that's stupid. So I'm not even going to concentrate on that. And, you know, I, I

Justin Shelley (27:52)
yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

yeah.

Robert Cioffi (28:20)
I started to contemplate on this idea, but there's got to be a way for me to affect ⁓ or impact our adversaries or counter attack or counter ⁓ balance what they've done in some way. And I started to think creatively, like, what does that mean? How can I fight threat actors that are way more skilled and smarter and resourceful and way outnumber me? Right. I'm just one kid from the Bronx.

from Yonkers that, know, I don't like, what am I gonna do, right? Other than me beating my chest and, you know, puffing it up and acting all bravado, like that's not gonna get me anywhere other than maybe a more bloody face, right? So, but then I thought about this and I said, you know, the community, which I was feeling so grateful for, for coming to our aid ⁓ was so giving to us and really helped us. Maybe what I can do is I can, and I'm gonna use a,

word here that I really don't mean, but it gets you into the mode of thinking, how can I productize that? How can I make what happened to us or maybe systematize is a little closer to where I'm going for. How do I systematize the benefits that I received from the community and put it in a package that is now available to any MSP who finds themselves in the position that I found myself in.

And what further made me think why this was valuable is what I said earlier is that most MSPs are not plugged into the community, don't have friends, haven't made relationships or connections, barely know the solution partners that they buy products and services from. How can I make sure that they who are just as important as the rest of us, how do I make sure that they are protected? And you know, I want to just amend what I just said. Not only are they just as important as the rest of us,

But more importantly, maybe is their clients deserve the better protection and they deserve more. So if you're listening to this and you have an MSP that is managing your business, right? Know that we all think and feel that way about our clients, right? ⁓ We have a duty to protect you. So how can I extend this now in a way that goes far beyond ⁓ what

Justin Shelley (30:18)
Right.

Robert Cioffi (30:43)
happened to me and just telling the story of, look, all this great stuff happened. So it was in that moment. And maybe I'll take a breath here ⁓ is ⁓ I decided to register the name MSP nine one one dot org. And you can unpack that a little bit to understand exactly what it meant was a website that an MSP who is suffering a major attack like we did or even a partial attack.

or just find themselves in a whole heap of trouble ⁓ could open a case with volunteers, let's say like me, who are very willing to extend their knowledge, their experience, their know-how, and maybe even a little bit of their labor to help dig you out of a hole that you might find yourself in. I was absolutely terrified, confused, and lost about what to do in those moments.

⁓ I wish that I had a resource like that that I could have pushed the button and say, please help. Right? So that's where I'm going to take a pause and see if you have any questions there.

Justin Shelley (31:48)
Mario, I'm going to turn that over to you.

Mario Zaki (31:50)
⁓ For me, I want to know how I can, you know, be part of the community, kind of be on call for, you know, any help that I can do.

Robert Cioffi (32:02)
That is a wonderful selfless question there. And you are proof of why I have so much faith ⁓ and hope in this community because MSPs, and I don't really have a lot of experience outside of our world of MSPs, but it's crazy how we just have this sort of fraternal feeling for each other, right? You bump into somebody on the street or at an airport or some foreign country while you're on vacation and you learn you're both MSPs.

Justin Shelley (32:23)
Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (32:30)
and suddenly you're fast friends, right? Exchanging cell numbers. And we just love to talk to each other. So, and I think that question, Mario, is born out of our desire to not only be helpful to our customers, but be helpful to each other as well. So any MSP can go to, so this is a long answer here. Any MSP can go to msp911.org and there should be a link. If there is not, because we're in a little bit of a transition right now.

Mario Zaki (32:32)
Yeah

Robert Cioffi (33:00)
and I'll talk about how and why, but you should be able to just submit yourself as a volunteer through that website. Now from 2022 through 2024, msp911.org was a program under the care of CompTIA, but we have since taken control of the domain name back.

And Comtea has helped us form our own nonprofit, which ⁓ Matt Lee from PAX 8, Jason Slagle, who's an MSP out of Toledo, Ohio, and I have formed a new nonprofit called Cyber Rise, cyberrise.org, which owns the MSP911.org asset. And ⁓ and I say like, own an asset. We don't make any money on this, right? We is 100 % volunteer. We don't make a penny out of any of this.

⁓ But the cyberize.org website is now what controls msp911.org. And that is just simply a program that we're running out of that. So we have a bigger and wider vision that was inspired by all of that work that I started four years ago. And for sure, Mario, we are looking for volunteers. So if you have specific skill sets, or even if you just say, hey, like, you know, I'm probably an average MSP, but I'd like to help.

Mario Zaki (34:16)
Nice.

Robert Cioffi (34:29)
Right? You can get on our list and as we get better and more organized, we're gonna be leaning on people like you. Right? We have a case right now in Detroit that we've been working. ⁓ so, you know, we're looking for volunteers in that area to help out a fellow MSP.

Mario Zaki (34:46)
So that's that was gonna actually be my next question for you. Tell me a little bit about like what's what's going on day to day, you know, I'm hoping you guys aren't getting like day every day like like stuff people needing help. I'm hoping that they they're better than that. you know, run through.

Robert Cioffi (35:04)
⁓ yeah, on average,

there's been about, ⁓ one, ⁓ per month since we started. And that is with almost no advertising. I bet that number could probably be 10 or a hundred times that number. ⁓ there are people that know that we exist on the security side of the world, like the huntresses and my buddy Chris lair, ⁓ who sold his, solace.

Justin Shelley (35:12)
Wow.

Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (35:31)
his business solid security to an insurance carrier. ⁓ You know, he sees a lot of cases and sometimes he'll ⁓ or they will shepherd those ⁓ MSP owners to say, you should put in a case with MSP 911. These guys can probably help you. I want to talk quickly about one particular case where we could do nothing technically to help the owner. ⁓ But it landed in my lap ⁓ because the owner was going through a lot of emotional trauma.

So I had formed a relationship ⁓ with this woman who was running an MSP and just like trying to give her some life coaching, not that she needed life coaching, but sort of that emotional crutch that I think she needed to, she was facing lawsuits and potential business closure. Unfortunately, she did end up closing the business about a year later, ⁓ which was heart wrenching, right? But the emotional stress,

Justin Shelley (36:26)
Wow.

Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (36:30)
her kids or husband. I mean, we talked a lot about that. And I'd like to say that for the five or six hours of time, I probably gave her over the course of a couple of months just to be there for her, think was mission accomplished for what we're looking to do. Right. So it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to have a great ending and it doesn't have to have an immediate direct impact. But I'd like to say that, you know, I helped her a little bit through a

really bad situation.

Mario Zaki (37:01)
That's good. That's good.

Justin Shelley (37:01)
Yeah. Wow.

mean, honestly, once one a month stands out in my brain, that that's way more than I thought. Um, I was like, Mario kind of alluded to, I was hoping that it would just be radio silence because, you know, we're all protected, but I mean, the truth is it's, it's fucking bloody war out there.

Robert Cioffi (37:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, we-

it is, and there's a lot of stuff going on, ⁓ out there and, you know, listen, not every case was a thing that we could handle. Sometimes things were in different countries and we're like, you know, we can't help you in a different, we're not, we're not legally set up to assist outside of the U S at least not now. ⁓ some of them were just things that were like, look, you're already at the end of this or, or you're, you're on a good path. Like, you know, we wish we could provide you additional help, but like you're actually in a good place. So just keep.

Justin Shelley (37:29)
Sure.

Robert Cioffi (37:51)
you know, going on that. So some of these cases, a lot of these cases were more like that, rather than the one that we were just dealing with in the last two weeks, which was a bloody mess, right? Like 100 % encryption everywhere and like, you know, just a terrible road to recovery and they're still fighting through it now.

Justin Shelley (38:12)
could you, and I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit, but could you walk through, let's say that I, I submit the form, call you up, whatever. and I'm like, Hey Robert, you know, my, building's burning down. what do you do? What, walk me through what you would do to help me in that situation.

Robert Cioffi (38:14)
Mm-hmm.

Sure, it's a great question. So there is a little bit of confusion about exactly what services we're providing. So today we're providing that coaching, mentoring and guidance of what you should be doing from an incident response perspective, right? So first thing I might say to you is, all right, Justin, when did this happen? Oh, just now, all right. Do you have cyber liability insurance? Yes, okay. Well, then please, for the love of God, hang up on me, call them.

Justin Shelley (38:48)
Okay.

call them.

Robert Cioffi (39:01)
Once you get a breach counsel, which is a horrible name for their legal team and all that other stuff, then give me a call back. And now let's talk through what did they tell you, right? ⁓ Our goal is to be there to sort of be the friend that can ride shotgun along with you in this and to provide you whatever kind of assistance we can in that regard, right? Some experience, some knowledge. These are probably some questions you wanna ask. Look, your customers are gonna

you know, pound your phones. Like, for instance, part of my story is talking about how my accountability chart or my org chart, if you don't know EOS, ⁓ but how my our accountability chart, our organizational structure was flipped on its head, right? People in admin roles, what do they do during a mass cyber attack? Right? Well, they became food delivery people and taxi drivers, right? And

Justin Shelley (39:39)
Mm-hmm.

Robert Cioffi (39:56)
and just messengers, right? Or phone operators just to man the phones. Those are things that you have to ⁓ work through. And so those are some of the things that we can offer to say, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Why don't you do this? Justin, you're the owner. You can't do all 50 things. You've got to let go and give other people responsibility, right? I was admittedly very pigheaded.

I know Italian from New York, you know, imagine that I'm pigheaded, right? Like, I know that's crazy to think about, it's not true, right? And I was very pigheaded the first couple of days about receiving help because I just thought like, ⁓ we're gonna, we're gonna handle this. Right. And I was kidding myself. I wish I had somebody and I did actually, it was a fellow evolve a peer group member who slapped me up the side of the head figuratively and said, no, you need help idiot. And we're coming. Right.

Mario Zaki (40:25)
the

Justin Shelley (40:27)
You

Say it's not true, Robert.

Mmm.

Okay.

Robert Cioffi (40:53)
⁓ So it's that sort of thing, right? Like to ⁓ help guide them on the right path and this feeling that you're alone, simply the fact that we're a voice on the other side of a signal chat or a phone or an email has done wonders for some people. Thank you so much. You guys have been great. You know, just bouncing things off of you and getting confirmation that we're on the right track or

or that, you know, or helping pointing us in the right direction has been, dare I say, you know, we've changed the outcome of situation simply by doing that.

Mario Zaki (41:30)
And when, has, have you gotten any calls or anything like where they need, you know, boots on the ground, you know, similar situation, kind of like what you went through, do they need that or, and are you able to provide that now?

Robert Cioffi (41:43)
Yep. So part of the problem under

Comtea's umbrella was, ⁓ and it's no fault of theirs, like their nonprofit organizational structure, ⁓ legally and insurance-wide, could not support the liability of putting boots on the ground. Like I know that you and I and Mario, you and I and Justin, you know, we're MSP operators. We're like, you know, damn the legal stuff. We just want to roll up our sleeves and go help, right? Well,

Justin Shelley (42:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (42:10)
You know, you got to be a little careful about these things, because if I come into your business or one of your clients and I knock the Van Gogh painting off the wall and it's, you know, lands in a bucket of paint, like, who's liable for that? Right.

Justin Shelley (42:23)
Or if you format

hard drives and start reinstalling before they've done ⁓ discovery or, know.

Robert Cioffi (42:28)
that, right? Right.

If I've taken some misstep or I misunderstood a checklist or whatever, like we can suddenly find ourselves embroiled in a potential lawsuit. that's one of the major reasons why we had to form our own nonprofit under our own name and our own insurance and our own umbrella ⁓ that was aligned more with our mission than CompTIA's. You know, if you thought about it, CompTIA's mission was quite different. ⁓

Justin Shelley (42:33)
Right.

Robert Cioffi (42:57)
And so that made a lot of sense for everybody, right? It was a very friendly, amicable separation there. In fact, they financially supported us and still are to some extent, you know, through contributions of now GTIA. So, you know, and they're wonderful. They've been fantastic partner, but this was our way of like growing to the next level is exactly what you're going to Mario is ultimately we would like to be able to dispatch technicians and say, okay, Robert,

Mario, you guys are kind of close to each other. Why don't you get on that Delta flight, heading out of LaGuardia, you know, tomorrow morning and, you know, the two of you guys are going to go to, you know, ⁓ Tennessee, right? Hawaii, yeah, we can go to Hawaii. I actually have friends out there. I never wish this upon them, but I would gladly go there to help. ⁓ But my point is that ultimately that is what we want to be able to do is to be able to provide that

Mario Zaki (43:35)
Hawaii.

Robert Cioffi (43:54)
boots on the ground resource to not only call up brothers and sisters and local markets, but even say, hey, who else can go there? ⁓ You know, the other thing I didn't talk about in this episode was the math problem that we had, right? I had 2,500 endpoints to basically reformat and build from scratch or restore from, you know, from backups. And ⁓ that's a hundred pounds of potatoes and a 10 pound sack. How do you do that? Right.

Justin Shelley (44:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (44:22)
And it was a, you know, it was a body problem, right? I didn't have enough hands ⁓ to do the work, right? You can, there's only so many hours you can work around the clock and so many days that you can do that before your body just quits. And so that's why we needed that assistance. And to your question, Mario, it is an incredibly important element of what we are ultimately looking to do and provide is that ability to say, hey man, you need troops?

Mario Zaki (44:26)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (44:35)
Just collapse. Yeah.

Robert Cioffi (44:52)
We can supply you troops. You need intellectual guidance and mentorship. We can do that too. You need emotional support, right? Robert can be your emotional support pet, right? ⁓ Whatever you need is what we wanna provide in those instances.

Justin Shelley (45:08)
Let me, let me spin this a different direction for a second, because, Robert, I haven't been through what you've been through. So being incredibly sensitive to that. ⁓ I mean, I have on a much smaller scale, by the way, I have talked about the breach that happened to one of my, I'm sorry, the attack that happened to one of my clients and, it was everything it was, you know, it was a nightmare. And we were talking about 15 end points, I believe, you know, nowhere near the scale you're talking about.

Robert Cioffi (45:18)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (45:38)
And it was a nightmare. ⁓ it is what changed my whole perspective and how I do business and why I do business. ⁓ my passion right now is making sure that never happens. So God bless you for everything you're doing in the response of this disaster, the nightmare come true. Do you have, or you would, is it something that's on the radar maybe to add resources of prevention? ⁓

You know, because again, just the unhacked mindset, what we're here to do is make sure that organizations have, you know, the roadmaps, the toolkits, the frameworks, everything, the, the education, the information they need beforehand to prevent ever getting there. And what you have, you know, I alluded it to you earlier when I said you personally have been through it so I can pick your brain and I can see behind the scenes. You're building a resource that has access to.

at least one a month, right? Of people who have been through some real shit. Is there a way to compile that information and make it available so that we can all learn from it?

Robert Cioffi (46:47)
Yeah. So I'm glad you asked that, because especially in this last ⁓ event and, know, I don't want to beat up the the MSP that got hit pretty hard, but there were a lot of lessons learned there. so Matt, Jason and I have been contemplating and I don't know if we're going to do this or not, but we're certainly thinking about doing it in some sort of at least aggregated form of look, here are the lessons learned. Or let me tell you about a story, right? Like.

Justin Shelley (47:00)
Sure.

Right.

Robert Cioffi (47:15)
You know, we'll change names and cities and all that stuff and the, you know, the vertical market that they're in. But just to talk about like, what happened there? And hopefully to catch that 5 % of the audience members that are looking at themselves going, my God, that's me. That's me being a poor business practice. And I've got to do so much better. And if we can elevate that game, like the unknowable is really what we're striving for. And the unknowable KPI is what.

Justin Shelley (47:32)
Yeah.

Yes.

Robert Cioffi (47:44)
What incidents did we prevent? I can never know that, right? ⁓ But I know that if we just continue doing this good work, you just, you know, I'm convinced that we're helping the community. And I don't mean just the MSP community. I'm talking about the small business community. I'm helping the small business community be a safer place to conduct business and build ⁓ wealth and provide for families and all that other good stuff of why.

Mario Zaki (47:48)
Mm.

Robert Cioffi (48:12)
businesses, small businesses exist.

Mario Zaki (48:15)
Now

Justin Shelley (48:15)
Well, maybe it's

a real quick, this might be a self-serving shameless plug. I don't know, but ⁓ I would love to be at least a participant platform in disseminating that information. ⁓ Like this is what we do and our community is growing. Our audience is growing exponentially. If we could get a hold of that, if we could interview some of these people, if we could ⁓ redact everything and just give us some details that we could talk about.

Mario Zaki (48:18)
Yeah.

Mm.

Justin Shelley (48:45)
⁓ or any other way that I can help, you know, Maria has already put his hat in the ring. do the same after the fact, before the fact, whatever, because this is the nightmare that we all hope to avoid.

Robert Cioffi (48:56)
Well, we're in the process of getting better organized where we literally just the other day ⁓ verbally agreed with somebody to become our interim executive director because Matt, Jason and I have full-time jobs and you know, it's hard to do all this, you know, ⁓ goody two shoes nonprofit where I don't mean to make it sound that way, but to do all that is nonprofit work yet we're trying to, you know, trying to run our own businesses and our own lives.

Mario Zaki (49:19)
That's tough.

Justin Shelley (49:21)
It costs money.

I would say have a membership community, Robert. I'd pay right now if you said, like.

Robert Cioffi (49:28)
Well, I'm glad you said that. ⁓ So we actually have a pitch deck where we're going to be looking for, you know, bigger dollars from ⁓ from some some of the vendors in the space. you know, we want to make sure that that it's set up correctly and it's, you know, ⁓ presented properly and professionally. So that's why we're taking our time with that. But for anybody who just wants to kind of like, you know, toss a few bucks in the ring, right. ⁓ You can go to Patreon. ⁓

and you can look up Cyber Rise there. C-Y-B-E-R-R-I-S-E. We do have a Patreon site and you can sign up for like a sticker pack and you can donate, I don't know, a dollar a month, five bucks a month, whatever. Believe it or not, that money is helpful. It's building for us and it went from a few bucks a month now to, wow, there's actually one or two zeros in that number and it's getting bigger and it helps. ⁓ Please also understand that the way Matt

Jason and I formed this nonprofit. cannot, it is in our bylaws, we cannot personally benefit in any kind of way from anything. I can't take a penny out of this organization, nor would I ever want to anyway, but we even wrote it so that if I get on a plane to come out the Phoenix and present to your group under the Cyber Rise hat, I gotta pay for that out of my own pocket. That's how serious we are about making sure that these three founding members

cannot receive financial benefit from this in any way, or form.

Justin Shelley (50:59)
hear you. I appreciate that passion. And I would respectfully say if you were to tell me that you are making a fortune off of helping the community, you'd still have my full support just for what that's worth.

Robert Cioffi (51:12)
Well,

I appreciate that. But again, it's not not not what any of us are looking for. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (51:17)
I hear you. I hear you. Yeah.

Still, you got to pay the bills. And if you're going to have an organization like this, there needs to be funding. So Patreon ⁓ is what we have now. And I'm just going to put that plug out there, guys. Go, go be a part of this.

Mario Zaki (51:21)
Now

Yeah,

it's patreon.com forward slash cyber rise

Robert Cioffi (51:33)
Yep, correct. Thank you. Thank

you. Yep, that's it. And it's, you know, we're,

Justin Shelley (51:37)
I'll link to that in the show notes. Just you guys, if you're,

when you're listening to this, you know, Spotify, Apple podcasts, whatever, go to the long description of this episode and you'll find the link to their Patreon site.

Robert Cioffi (51:48)
Thank you so much, I appreciate that we're spreading that message out there, because really every little bit helps.

Mario Zaki (51:55)
Now, do you do something with the existing ⁓ members that, you know, do you guys do like a monthly Zoom? you know like something like...

Robert Cioffi (52:07)
Yeah, we're trying to get better organized with that. It's

a good point. We are doing some LinkedIn live ⁓ event sort of it's it's a little bit ad hoc at the moment, right? We're trying to get a little bit better organized with that. One of the reasons why we need an executive director that can kind of hold us accountable for and someone who can even just do the silly things like, hey, guys, let's put this on the calendar. So you all show up and do this right ⁓ when we're trying to ⁓

Mario Zaki (52:19)
Mm.

Mm.

Robert Cioffi (52:37)
be accountable to it's kind of like we're all hurting our own cats here. That's why we need somebody to go No, no, no, no, you need to stay on point, Robert.

Mario Zaki (52:41)
Yeah, yeah.

Justin Shelley (52:41)
Hmm,

yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, you, you said it, you're not making money from this. You have to make money somewhere, which means your attention has to be at a minimum split. And, know, we're, we're kind of getting to where we need to wrap up today, but Robert, I would love to keep this conversation alive and well, ⁓ Mario and I both obviously have some passion about this subject as we, know, week after week where we're teaching, we're educating, and we're doing our best to prevent these things. But you know, just being straight up vulnerable, honest.

This scares the shit out of me. No matter what frameworks we follow, no matter what we do, there's always that risk. And what do we do if it happens? We do this. We call people like you and this organization. So thank you. with all that I have, thank you for, you know, for doing that for this community because listen, I don't know about you guys, but I did not get into cybersecurity by choice. I didn't wake up one morning when I was 12 years old and think, Jesus Christ, I want to go fight Russian hackers when I get older.

Robert Cioffi (53:18)
as it should.

Justin Shelley (53:45)
I like circuit boards and modems and sound cards. And now look like this is what we've been forced into a lot of us. So, ⁓ with all my heart, thank you for, for what you're doing.

Robert Cioffi (53:55)
I appreciate that.

what you just said validates like the whole reason why I thought this something like this needs to exist because, you know, we all we all want to help each other, but that's all in these like little vacuumed pockets, you know, and it like I just envision this way of like, there's got to be just a global resource here for anybody ⁓ who has a problem to go be, you know, to be able to go get some help. And I don't care who you are. really don't.

I don't care if we've never met, that doesn't matter.

Mario Zaki (54:26)
It's like that friend that you never want to talk to but you're there when, you know, we're here when you need us but we hope to never talk to you, you know?

Robert Cioffi (54:30)
Yes, sorta.

Yeah.

Justin Shelley (54:35)
Right.

Robert Cioffi (54:35)
And listen,

we don't ever want our phone to ring, but we know it rings because because we can't prevent every every incident.

Mario Zaki (54:37)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (54:39)
It does.

Yeah. And I mean, really my passion right now is I think a lot of these could be prevented and they're not. And so we are trying to educate business owners. think we get a lot of ⁓ unintentionally, but welcome other MSPs who listen to the show just based on some feedback that we get, but whatever, you know, we are trying to elevate the community to a point where like, at least we got to make it hard for these guys to take our stuff from us. Right. At least let's, let's at least make it hard.

Robert Cioffi (55:09)
Thank you.

Justin Shelley (55:11)
Let's not roll out the red carpet, but holy hell, that's what happens a lot of times. Um, so yeah, that's, that's why my passion, that's why I'm like, Hey, Robert, can we maybe, uh, behind the scenes, can we jump off set and talk a little bit about, uh, some resources before the fact as well? Um, but either way that is what we will do week after week and where we can support this. Um, I guess you call it right of boom, right? This is after the fact. Is that where your work lies? Yeah. Um, yep. Yep.

Robert Cioffi (55:26)
Yes.

Right of boom would be after the fact after the closure, right? It's a military term, right? But

let's not forget left of boom, right? And proper defenses, prevention, right? You know, awareness thing, all those sorts of things.

Justin Shelley (55:43)
Correct. Correct.

Yeah.

So let's go ahead and wrap up guys. We'll go around the room here and we're going to do final thoughts, key takeaways, keep it brief, but say what's in your heart. What, ⁓ if, someone were to listen to only this part of the podcast, what do you want them to take away from that? Mario? I'm going to have you go first then Robert.

Mario Zaki (56:03)
Well,

before I do that, didn't we have a question from one of our listeners? he said, ask Robert how he sees government will affect small businesses when it comes to IT security. I don't know. ⁓

Justin Shelley (56:05)
Okay.

yeah, yeah.

Robert Cioffi (56:17)
yeah, wow. We're gonna have to book me for another episode on that one.

Justin Shelley (56:19)
Go ahead ⁓

Robert Cioffi (56:24)
But I'll be very, very brief. ⁓ It is in it is my belief that we need to form ⁓ an SRO, right, a self regulating organization, kind of like CPAs have done or financial advisors, right? For Pete's sakes, the girl who cuts my hair in New York needs a license to do that. But I don't need a license to do what I do think about that, right? Just, you know,

Justin Shelley (56:24)
Hey.

Mario Zaki (56:34)
No.

Justin Shelley (56:40)
Isn't that right? Crazy.

It's nuts.

Robert Cioffi (56:45)
Not that she's not important or that's not an important thing to have, like we, it's the Wild West and MSP, the IT world, right? So, ⁓ and I think we need to get ahead of that before the government says, know what, you know what, kids enough, right? You're your ball and I'm putting up a fence around the playground and you got to charge, you know, I'm going to charge you hundred bucks to get in every day, right? Like we don't want that. So we need to move in that direction.

Justin Shelley (56:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Mario Zaki (57:02)
Ha

Justin Shelley (57:08)
Yeah.

Mario Zaki (57:13)
I completely agree.

Justin Shelley (57:14)
Fair enough. We don't want

that, but we also don't want the wild wild west. And, I don't know. It's, it's messy. All right. Okay. So now I'm, just heard you volunteer for another episode. We'll book that once we, ⁓ stop the recording, but I would, I would absolutely love to come back and talk about that for real. So, all right. Now I'm to try one more time to wrap this up, Mario, if it's okay with you, let's go ahead and do our key takeaways and then we'll sign off.

Robert Cioffi (57:19)
Yes. Yep. SRO.

Mario Zaki (57:26)
You

Robert Cioffi (57:27)
I'm delighted. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (57:34)
Of course, that's good.

I mean, for me, the biggest key takeaway is to be not only involved in the community and put yourself out there because you're not going to grow yourself without knowing and being able to get guidance and assistance and knowledge from other people. know, unfortunately, some people have learned the hard way and some people have learned it from others, you know, and

The only way, know, with other than learning it the hard way yourself is to really, you know, ⁓ network with peers and join communities and form communities and just make the environment that we live in, you know, not only better for us, but for the customers that we're servicing.

Justin Shelley (58:28)
Alright, Robert, final thoughts.

Robert Cioffi (58:29)
Bravo.

Final thoughts. ⁓ Just different places you can find me and learn more about what we're doing. Cyberrise.org. That's C-Y-B-E-R-R-I-S-E.org. ⁓ Optionally, you can go to msp911.org, but you should be able to get there from the Cyberrise. Patreon.com forward slash Cyberrise. And ⁓ lastly, I am a creature of LinkedIn. Don't ask me why I love it so much. I just do.

So if you're looking to connect with me, I'd love a conversation. I'm open to sharing. ⁓ I'm at linkedin.com forward slash in forward slash R CIO FFI. That's our choffee.

Justin Shelley (59:14)
Perfect. And I'm trying to feverishly take notes here, but again, Robert, I'll put all these links for the audience. Go to that long description right there on your, your phone, whatever you're listening to and, click on those ring links. And if I could just champion one of them, it's the Patreon because like, again, Robert, God bless you for doing this without taking a penny out of it, but there is a cost associated with this.

Robert Cioffi (59:39)
There is, yes.

Justin Shelley (59:40)
⁓ and the last thing

I want is for you guys to have to front that cost on top of donating your time on top of having the PTSD of having gone through this nightmare yourself. So let's be that community for you as you're trying to be that community for everybody else guys, please go and make that contribution. And yeah, yeah, for real. that's, that's it. I'm not plugging anything that I've got guys. Everything goes to, ⁓ the, the Patreon site. That's my sign off.

Robert Cioffi (59:55)
Well, thank you so much. appreciate that.

Mario Zaki (59:58)
Thank you, Robert.

Justin Shelley (1:00:09)
I am Justin Shelley. Mario, Robert. Thank you so much for being here. We will definitely have to do this again. ⁓ Anyways, with that guys, we're going to go ahead and sign off. Take care. We'll see you next week.

Mario Zaki (1:00:20)
Thanks Robert. Bye guys.

Robert Cioffi (1:00:20)
Thank you.

Take care.