UnHacked - Cybersecurity Made Simple for Small Businesses

Mario Zaki (00:00)
Well, I mean

Justin Shelley (00:11)
Pop quiz guys, how do you spell sentence? I still haven't fixed it.

Joshua Holloway (00:14)
here we go

Mario Zaki (00:14)
Who knows?

Bryan Lachapelle (00:14)
Sentence.

Joshua Holloway (00:14)
again. Sintance.

Justin Shelley (00:18)
I

get in trouble every time I record because I haven't fixed that. ⁓ guys, welcome everybody to episode ninety-one of Unhacked. ⁓ we are continuing our multi-part series. I called it a 12 part series. I mean, you know, it's up for debate. Yeah, well, unless we just keep going. Who knows? ⁓ AI. Everything is AI. I had to once again shut you guys up and hit record because all the good stuff happens. ⁓ Mario, are you gonna?

Joshua Holloway (00:32)
We're down to eleven.

Justin Shelley (00:45)
Are you gonna show us your three D printing job again? Please don't. ⁓ I don't know what the hell's going on in the

Mario Zaki (00:49)
what isn't this a

Bryan Lachapelle (00:50)
I'll show you

mine.

Mario Zaki (00:51)
isn't this a isn't this a well f you showed me yours, I'll show you mine.

Justin Shelley (00:57)
my god.

Joshua Holloway (00:57)
Yeah, but

Bryan Lachapelle (00:57)
Hahaha

Joshua Holloway (00:57)
is isn't

this a podcast for for kids?

Justin Shelley (01:00)
It is

it is specifically

Mario Zaki (01:01)
The the way Justin curses

Bryan Lachapelle (01:02)
I don't even want to know

what the hell that's supposed to be.

Mario Zaki (01:03)
on here?

Joshua Holloway (01:03)
All right, t

today's episode is N C seventeen.

Justin Shelley (01:06)
Yeah,

Mario Zaki (01:06)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (01:07)
it has been marked not for kids in so many different ways. ⁓ Jesus, guys. All right, listen, let's get started because we have some schedules, hard stops today. ⁓ we'll do some quick intros. I'm Justin Shelley, CEO of Phoenix IT Advisors. And as I love to say, I help businesses use technology, aka ⁓ i, that's a lot of letters, to make money. And then we're gonna protect that money from the greedy.

I'm gonna go in reverse order today. The greedy attorneys who will sue you if you don't do things right. The government who will come in and fine you if you don't do things right. And the Russian and other hackers who will come and steal all your money if you don't do things right. That's what we do at Phoenix IT Advisors. I am here in a room full of the brightest Brianes and the Brian's Brained? It's a combination of Brian and Brain. The brightest Brian Brain brains in the industry. Josh Mario.

Bryan Lachapelle (01:55)
Ooh, the brightest Brian's, yeah!

Mario Zaki (01:56)
Ha ha

Joshua Holloway (01:57)
⁓ all of the brightest.

Justin Shelley (02:04)
Brian, in that order, guys, go ahead and introduce yourselves. Tell everybody who you are, what you do, and who you do it for. Josh, go.

Joshua Holloway (02:10)
Yeah,

Joshua Holloway with 7DI Technologies. And we primarily work with businesses that have a compliance that they have to overcome and and and ⁓ adapt technology to it. So we help them figure out how to make technology work in a compliance world. And on top of that, everything else that just Justin does with the attorneys and the government and all the hackers out there. So if you if you have a compliance and you can't figure out how to make it all work with your technology, we're your guys.

Justin Shelley (02:36)
AKA Ditto. Mario, what you got?

Joshua Holloway (02:38)
Yes. A.K.A.

Ditto.

Mario Zaki (02:40)
Yeah, Mario

Zacchi, CEO of Massek IT and we work with small to medium sized companies specializing in those CEOs that stay up at night, you know, worried about their company. We help them sleep better at night, keeping them safe from dittos and AI agents that are malicious. I'm I I'm I'm one offing you guys.

Joshua Holloway (03:02)
Yeah. There you go.

Justin Shelley (03:02)
All right.

Brian, what do you got?

Bryan Lachapelle (03:06)
I want to keep it simple. My name is Brian Lashbrook B4 Networks ⁓ based out of beautiful Niagara, Ontario, Canada, and we help business owners remove the headaches and frustrations that come with dealing with technology and all the rest of the stuff they do.

Joshua Holloway (03:18)
I think the last guy should just be able to say ditto.

Justin Shelley (03:21)
I mean, that's kinda

where we've been going. And ⁓ listen, I'm trying to be all slight. Mario, I'm just gonna say it on the air. Check your mic, man. I think you've got the wrong mic selected or something that sounds weird. ⁓

Mario Zaki (03:32)
It won't let me change it if we're recording it.

Bryan Lachapelle (03:37)
⁓

Mario Zaki (03:39)
All right, but either way.

Justin Shelley (03:41)
Technology problems, technology problems.

Joshua Holloway (03:42)
Well it's

okay today because there's somebody else on the hot seat, right?

Justin Shelley (03:46)
That it is true, yeah. It's one of those things that like used to have control and then as as these ⁓ platforms, these developers add more features, they start taking away some of the basic ones and whoops, you gotta pay extra for that one that you used to have all the time. We could go in and make these changes, and now we can't. Great. ⁓ anyways, all right. Well we're stuck. Mario talk really clear and enunciate when you do. okay, so last week, guys.

Bryan Lachapelle (04:02)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (04:14)
I'm putting everybody on a hot speed. Hot see, I can't talk today. I'm gonna turn the AI on and let it run the show for me. ⁓ Josh, last week you went through setting up an integration with Claude and your email. Microsoft email. Right? So for in full disclosure, I went and dumped the transcript of the episode into AI and I said, hey, build an SOP on

Joshua Holloway (04:29)
Yeah, Microsoft three six three sixty five. Yeah, I use the connectors built in clock.

Justin Shelley (04:43)
All that bullshit Josh said. And then I made that PDF. It turned into like a five page document because AI loves to talk. And and it's available for download. Also, you guys can probably just type it in yourself and get your own PDFs. But ⁓ it's on there if you go to unhackmybusiness.com, ⁓ episode 90, the the you can download the PDF that talks about what Josh did. Now, at the end of the episode, I gave Brian and Mario an assignment and myself to go ahead and run that integration. ⁓

Brian, I already know your answer. You didn't do it because Brian thought we were recording tomorrow. So you're kind of off the hook, kind of not. Mario, did you go ahead and get this integration set up?

Bryan Lachapelle (05:16)
Hahaha ⁓

Yeah.

Mario Zaki (05:23)
Yes I did. No I didn't

Justin Shelley (05:25)
Yeah, and so for those not watching on YouTube, Mario's

shaking his head. No. So nobody did the homework. Good lord. Okay. Okay. Then

Joshua Holloway (05:34)
You know why?

Because they couldn't ask the AI to do it for them.

Mario Zaki (05:37)
Exactly. In in in my defense, I've I I haven't I don't trust it. So I'm not integrating it. I'm just kidding.

Bryan Lachapelle (05:38)
This is true. This is true.

Justin Shelley (05:46)
⁓

okay, no, that's actually where I was gonna go next because as I went through it, I I tied it in and then I immediately disconnected it. And so, Josh, I actually have questions for you on security. Now, what I did is I went back through into I've I've been talking about hats, and I don't care which one you use, but there are by design secure platforms, and I did do the integration through a secure platform where I don't because

I I I I got it. Here's what happened. I did the integration and then I'm working in Claude and I'm like, hey, talk to me about the security of what I just did. And it's like, mm, it's not good, bro. It's not good. ⁓ everything that comes into your email goes into our LLM and it it's all ingested. And like if you're in a, you know, HIPAA or CMMC, you know, like not good. So Josh, tell me, and I know you had some security measures put in place, but is that anything that you can brief us on?

what you did there.

Joshua Holloway (06:42)
Well and I think the PSA for that one is anytime you get ready to add a connector or launch a connector or install a connector, you you definitely need to figure out if your compliance blocks you from being able to do that. Right? Like so

Justin Shelley (06:53)
Yeah.

Or best practices, whether even even if you're not regulated, ⁓ this is stuff that we all need to be aware of.

Joshua Holloway (07:02)
Yeah, so I I had gone through and and looked and I understood that it was giving given full access from like my security standpoint, but my account is like any other standard user's account. I'm locked down, I only have access to certain folders. ⁓ I'm not a global admin on my on my tenant for Office 365. And when I added that connector, I did have to log in with that that GA access or that general access. And I could see exactly what it was going to change and

Before I even installed it, I made sure everything was read-only. So it can be read, it cannot be altered. Yeah. So it would be a lot different, like if I had turned on the ability to read write. ⁓ same thing with like like cowork, right? If I had ⁓ accidentally given an entire access over my computer, well then I'm connected to OneDrive already, or I'm connected to SharePoint or Google Drive.

Justin Shelley (07:35)
Right, okay. Key right there, right. But it can't d yeah.

Joshua Holloway (07:57)
Locally on my system, cowork would have full access. So if I would have ran a prompt like analyze all my folder structure and suggest a better folder structure and then do it, there's nothing blocking it because I gave it a different tunnel. I gave it a different ⁓ way to access it. So I limited it as much as I could ⁓ and made sure that it was read only. Obviously, like my computer, I don't have anything that would be governed by any of the other compliances where I'm receiving something that would be secure.

So for for my test case I went ahead and went.

Justin Shelley (08:30)
Now, I'm gonna make two points here. I one, I was comfortable putting you on the spot because I know this is the world you live in. I know I wasn't gonna catch you and where you're like, my God, I never thought of that, Justin. Thanks for bringing it up. number two, I am going to say listening audience, unless this is the world you live in, get somebody involved. All right. All four of us in this room are are willing to help. Go to unhackmybusiness.com, pick any episode, it doesn't matter, ⁓ right below the audio and video players.

Joshua Holloway (08:50)
Yes.

Justin Shelley (09:00)
There are two cards, like little action cards you can fill out. One is if you've got a comment about the the show, like anything that we've said, anything that we've done, ⁓ give us feedback. We're looking for that. And then the other is if you would like a free consult. We're all offering free consults. Now that may lead to paid consultation, depending on what you need, but we're all going to give you a few minutes of our time to at least talk through some of this stuff. So we are giving you the keys to a very dangerous machine. Be careful, use it wisely. Mario, you had your hand up. What's up?

Mario Zaki (09:30)
Yeah, so ⁓ one thing that I kinda wanna emphasize here and to build on what you guys were talking about, the reason I didn't get a chance to set up this integration and even if it's read only, is because you also need to monitor if you have it actually start replying and stuff like that, you need to have the time to ⁓ to to to like quality assurance to make sure it's doing the way doing it what you want it to do.

So don't say, you know, if you integrate and say, reorganize my folders like like Josh was talking about. You have to be prepared that if it does it the wrong way or you know you it doesn't you it didn't understand the way you want it, that you have to undo it. And you it's not the one thing about AI is it doesn't, at least from my experience, it doesn't do a great job by it's not a control Z, say where it will let you, you know, just undo what you do. You it doesn't

Bryan Lachapelle (10:21)
No.

Justin Shelley (10:21)
Yeah.

Undo undo.

Joshua Holloway (10:23)
Yeah. I do,

I do.

Mario Zaki (10:26)
And it it can't sometimes it can't undo the email that it sent for you. So you have to have not only when you integrate it, you have to have time to test it. That's that's a key thing with AI, and no matter which week we talk about, anything we say, you have to test it because it it assumes a lot. And sometimes assuming is not the way you want it, and it could be the way you prompt it, but you have to test it because.

It is there there is no way of saying undo everything you just said. Some things are not undoable. So you have to be careful and have the time. And I didn't honestly I I you know it's not an excuse, but I really didn't have the time to do it this week to do it and to monitor what it's doing and ⁓ you know, read only or stuff like that, because you know, read only is only helpful in the beginning. Later on, the powerful you know, the power of AI is it can

actually do on its own and you have to you have to be watching. It has to be supervised for a while.

Justin Shelley (11:25)
Right. Yep.

Joshua Holloway (11:31)
Yeah, and and Mario to your your your point, there always needs to be a human in the loop. And

Justin Shelley (11:31)
Good call.

Joshua Holloway (11:38)
Case in point, like what I I showcased last week, one of the things I did is I wrote a script that would generate an email and it drops it into drafts for me. Now, Claude couldn't drop it directly into drafts because of its restrictions. So I circumvented some of its restrictions through writing a different PowerShell so that it does drop the files that I need, but it doesn't auto send.

It puts them in drafts, I go into drafts, I I QC what has just taken place, and then I send out. And that's the human in the loop, right? You should you should always have a human in the loop for that f that final or last mile, right? We've all heard the last mile from internet service providers and things like that. Like Mario, you you nailed it dead on.

Justin Shelley (12:22)
Yeah. ⁓

Mario Zaki (12:23)
Yeah, and and

and that's the thing. Like a lot of people are worried about, you know, it's gonna, you know, replace jobs and stuff like that. We're not fully at that point yet. You know, we're we're at the point right now where we're using AI to help people and to make their life a little easier so we can dedicate their time elsewhere. Yes, it probably will get to a point where we can replace people or have one person be able to with the power of AI do the

you know, three, four, five different people's worth of work at one time. But you know, you at this point you do need to have a human being overlook and supervise its its work.

Justin Shelley (13:05)
And I'm gonna say what I keep saying about that. Yes, it allows us to do more, which the natural, the fear, like our we're biologically wired to not die, right? We're we're still think we're in the tundra or whatever, being chased by saber-tooth tires. That's how we're tires? Are you kidding me? Tigers. Good God, I need a nap. Listen, I had a long day yesterday. That's a different story. ⁓ but we're we're all in in fear of losing our.

Bryan Lachapelle (13:22)
Yeah. Wow. Rolling, rolling, rolling.

Mario Zaki (13:23)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (13:24)
Wow, you're on a roll today, dude.

Mario Zaki (13:27)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (13:34)
our means of survival, right? Here's what I have found in using AI. And I was bitching about this before I hit record. I should be less busy because it's it's doing so much of my work for me. But what it has done is opened up so many doors that things were previously that were impossible. Now they're on my plate. And I'm probably working realistically ⁓ 10, 12, 14 hour days, longer days than I was before I started

Getting involved with AI, ⁓ I'm getting a shit ton of stuff done. ⁓ but my workload has gone through the roof. My number of hours work per day has gone through the roof. I'm not cutting anybody off my team. We're getting really cool stuff done, but I am in no worry, no concerns whatsoever of losing my job or anybody on my team losing their job. It's the opposite, is true right now. So ⁓ all right, guys, let's go ahead because I know we're on time constraints today. Brian.

You've got the hot seat and it is your week to talk about integrations. What are you doing in your business? What was the problem? What did you do? And what was the outcome?

Bryan Lachapelle (14:33)
I do.

Okay, so I, one of the problems I've have is I'm not financial account. I don't, I don't know much about accounting. I'm pretty green at accounting. mean, I've run a business for the last 20 years. So I do have some knowledge, probably more knowledge than the average person out there who's not a business owner. But when it comes to, people who are in business, my accounting skills probably lack a little bit of finesse. And so analyzing profit and loss statements, cashflow statements, things like that aren't

exactly my cup of tea, they're not my wheelhouse. And pulling together all the data isn't just as easy as going to your accounting software and ⁓ running a report. Sometimes you have questions about that data, and you want more details and it can't use that right now. Anyway, you can't talk to your accounting software and say like, Hey, what about this? Like, what does this mean? ⁓ Or hypothetical situations, you need accountants typically to run data models. Well, I

for the fun of it wanted to just practice and see if I could ask questions of my data ⁓ through AI. And so I connected ⁓ to a sample company because I wasn't going to put it on my actual company just yet until I knew a little bit more about how it integrates and how it works. So I have it connected to a sample company right now. And I'm asking questions like, you know, who are my bit my most profitable companies that I'm working with? You know, what's my biggest expense?

what would happen if ⁓ we doubled revenue tomorrow or next year, sorry, and we didn't, you only 20 % increase in cost, what would my P &L statement look like? And it's able to give me some information that I otherwise would not be able to access. And so do I recommend from a security perspective to connect Claude to your accounting software today? Maybe not, but it just gives an example of...

of what you can do. And there are guardrails. So it does ask you every single time it goes out to zero. use zero every time I go out to zero, it asks me if I want to allow that action to happen. That being said, of course, you know, security is still my first thought and my first ⁓ go to so I not have not yet integrated it with my actual company details, but I might do so through a third party like hats or through through something like that.

Justin Shelley (16:59)
I'm frantically looking to see if you know, because I I don't use zero. And I'm looking for my accounting software. Is it QBO?

Bryan Lachapelle (17:04)
It does have a QuickBooks integration. Yeah, it has a QuickBooks

once. Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (17:09)
You know, Brian, what one thing you could do too is in instead of just having it integrate directly into cloud, is pull down a copy of the database locally. So then you can't inadvertently mess anything up or delert or delete. and then it's not direct access to it.

Bryan Lachapelle (17:23)
Well, won't

Yeah, so it doesn't actually have the ability to make changes to the accounting software ⁓ information by default, the way that it was the MCP server was created by zero is it's a one way download only view only synchronization. ⁓ That being said, of course, again, if you're concerned about the data being on the models, then maybe use caution. ⁓ In my case, after I've played with it and after I've tested it, I'm pretty safe to say that I'll probably

Joshua Holloway (17:29)
Perfect.

Bryan Lachapelle (17:51)
I will probably connect it because there's not a whole lot in my accounting software that I'm really worried about, ⁓ you know, ⁓ leaking or anything like that. And the value of what I could pull down as far as information and the insights I'll be able to get from the data that's there might outweigh the risk, if any.

I was also able to connect it just into DocuSign. Now, it was terrible, I will say. I tried to put a file and tell it, know, can you fill in the fields, make sure all the fields are the right place, everything. And it tried, it really did its best, but the fields were all over the place. That being said, if I had a template already created, I could probably have it create the entire thing where, let's say, ⁓ you know, I had ⁓

Justin Shelley (18:14)
I'm

okay.

Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (18:44)
a contract I wanted to send out with dollars and the template was already set up to allow for it. I could just drop it in Claude and say, here's what the values are. Can you prepare the envelope for me and DocuSign with this template? And it probably would have done it. So that is probably something I'm going to continue to explore a little bit and potentially use that to send out some agreements and speed things up because we have the quotes that come in from our sales team. We could just take that, dump it in the Claude and say, go fill in the template.

and send out the contract. Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Shelley (19:15)
Yeah, that that's one on my radar as well to to build

these contracts. all right. Guys, any more thought that was fast. ⁓ any any more thoughts on connecting your financial software to AI. Has anybody else done this?

Mario Zaki (19:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean

no, I I mean I've I've done similar stuff where I've downloaded like some some things and put it in there and then asked it questions. you know, that's just like a the regular chat feature. ⁓ not an integrated dashboard, but we we can easily do that. And you know, Zero seems like they've already done it.

where it's a safeguard that he it's a read only. If we set it up for a client or anything like that, we would always want to do it as a read-only. ⁓ i I mean, it's also I can't really think of too many reasons why you would want to write to your accounting software that much either. But you know, ⁓ but you know, most of the time you're gonna want you know something like that, you build a dashboard and and kinda ask it questions.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:04)
Mm-hmm.

I can.

Justin Shelley (20:19)
mean I don't know, Mario.

I 'cause I've got it right now, like, hey, show me what bills are due. Pay that one. Pay that one. I mean

Joshua Holloway (20:26)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (20:27)
I've

got other ones that we like go through my entire inbox and find all the invoices that I forgot to send to zero and you know, take them all send them to zero and that would be really cool, right? Go check what's there. If it's not there, grab it and send it, which would be a really cool feature if it had that ability, which probably will give it time.

Justin Shelley (20:36)
Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (20:46)
And Brian, did you, after you got it connected, did you double check to see what data in the background you could see? Like there's no routing information, computer, excuse me, bank account numbers or or anything like that. That's all protected by the MCP server. So you're getting just like raw data on your finances, but there's no there's no banking information to where if your computer was hacked or somebody was to get on it, they couldn't just query that data bypassing the whole entire bank system.

Bryan Lachapelle (21:13)
They could see the revenue,

they can see who the clients are, the names of the clients, who my vendors are, what the categories of my biggest expenses are, things like that. But yeah, I couldn't see banking information, although that's a great idea. I probably should ask it to do that and see if it's able to give it to me.

Joshua Holloway (21:31)
Well, and I think the the information that you also shared was like who are your clients, how much money's coming in. If you l let's think about this from a security standpoint, like we're okay with bringing it in, it's read only. From a security standpoint, they are if your computer was compromised, they would see your entire list of business and how much money they're paying you. Which

in a way would give the hackers a target, right? Like company A pays you a thousand ⁓ a thousand dollars a month. ⁓ okay. Company B pays you twenty six thousand dollars a month. Then you get into the we have all your your your financial information. We're gonna blackmail you and say, hey, ⁓ we're gonna reach out to your clients and let them know that you got hacked unless you give us, you know, what what's the going rate? Like 15 Bitcoin or you know, five Bitcoin or whatever whatever it is. You know, send us send us your crypto.

Justin Shelley (22:15)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Lachapelle (22:16)
15 yikes, whoo, bankrupt.

Joshua Holloway (22:19)
Well, you know, it the price

keeps going up and down, up and down, up and down. So you never know, like from one day to the next.

Bryan Lachapelle (22:24)
Yeah,

it's true. It's true.

Mario Zaki (22:25)
I mean yeah, there's a lot

of security too. Like if they are able to get in, they can always try to reach out to the client and say, Hey, you know, we never ⁓ got your you know, your ACH payment or whatever, you know, here's our new routing information and stuff like that. I mean, that we can you know, we can go back to our previous and talk about, you know, a lot of security that, you know, you're in place. I mean, if you're doing a lot of this stuff, again

Joshua Holloway (22:40)
Right.

Mario Zaki (22:54)
you know, not we're not trying to sell anybody anything, but you need to really set it up the right way. And and this is not to replace any security. You still need, you know, the proper security to make sure none of the stuff can fall through the cracks or there is a vulnerability somewhere because you're only providing fuel to the fire at that point. You know, i if there is a vulnerability, you're just giving making their life even easier right now. Do you just say, Okay, let me let me just

Ask it which ones are I on here, which ones are paying by ACH and you know and stuff like that. So you still need to have the security in place.

Justin Shelley (23:34)
You know, one of the things we don't talk about that often as far as security goes is ⁓ we've got all kinds of safeguards in place so that somebody unauthorized can't get to whatever financial information, our email, like w whatever. But all they really have to do is get access to my workstation, my desktop, or my phone. And all of those things are are they're all bypassed or they're authenticated or however you want to look at it. So if I've got AI set up to access all this stuff.

It's not necessarily about somebody breaching any of my applications anymore or, you know, all I've got to do is leave a laptop unlocked and step away. And either somebody has remote access to it or somebody that shouldn't walks by and opens it up. And they could just start chatting with my financial package now, right? They could start chatting with Xero or QuickBooks or ⁓ you know, our ticketing systems or or whatever. So

It it really brings back the point that we have to secure our endpoints more so than than ever as we start tying in these integrations. So this is cool stuff. Like I'm blown away at what we can do by it, but good lord, are we ⁓ I mean, we're just got this great big old stack of hay and we're pouring gasoline on it and we've got the match, we're lighting the match, and we're just like, no, but I'm being super careful. this match is three inches away from the gasoline, nothing could go wrong.

Joshua Holloway (24:33)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Lachapelle (24:34)
Agreed.

Yeah.

Joshua Holloway (24:45)
We're just poking holes in it all the

Bryan Lachapelle (24:55)
Ha!

Mario Zaki (24:57)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (24:58)
We're good. Don't worry about it. That's what we're doing, guys. Right? Tell me I'm wrong.

Mario Zaki (25:05)
No, not or you're one hundred percent right.

Justin Shelley (25:09)
So ⁓ it this is kind of I don't know if that we're wrapping up yet or not. It seems like we're kind of we've we've said what we can say about financials. ⁓ I'm gonna propose you know, Josh, I like your your deal where you just have a a package of what is it, 20 hours, three grand. I don't know, I don't know how much detail you wanna give on that. But basically it's it's kind of an open ended, it's a project on AI. We're gonna come in, we're gonna need do what we need to do to get started, and then we're gonna roadmap from there. Yes.

Joshua Holloway (25:27)
Yeah.

Yes, ⁓ yep, you mail it.

Justin Shelley (25:38)
okay, so I'm gonna

I'm gonna propose another option. That's a great option for people that want to go that way. ⁓ but we have divided this series into three parts. We have setting up basic chat, like giving it some context, some instructions, some formatting, ⁓ framework around our prompting, stuff like that. ⁓ get somebody to help you do that or or go download the resources or whatever from the podcast. Start there. When you want to start.

Bringing in integrations of any sort, as we're talking about last week, this week, and the next two weeks, get somebody involved, please. I if you've got an MSP and they're helping you, great. If you've got somebody in-house, great. But just make sure you know what you're doing because you have that match three inches away from your gasoline soaked hay pile. ⁓ be careful. If you're uncertain at all, get on our website and just go to either ask the hosts, again, click any episode.

Ask the hosts or request a consult. If you're not ready to take that full commit of requesting a free consult, I know that's a big ask. ⁓ then just ask a question. It's a little bit less intimidating, maybe. ⁓ either way, you got to give me your email address. I'm gonna spam the hell out of you, but whatever. ⁓ guys, any any thoughts on that? Well, okay, so that's only part two. And then the, you know, we're gonna come into part three, which is vibe coding and you know, now we're we're actually building applications. ⁓ security ramifications become even more

Severe. So any any thoughts on how we can help our audience because I'm gonna throw one more question out there, and I know I'm kind of all over the place today. The number one question that I face when I'm talking to a client or prospect about AI is where do I start? Right? You guys hear that? Okay. So this is where you start. Ask us a question, get a consult, set up your your chat bot, whatever you're using with the basics.

Joshua Holloway (27:22)
Yep. All the time.

Bryan Lachapelle (27:22)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (27:33)
Move into integrations, move into vibe coding or or guided vibe coding or outsourced vibe coding, but now you're building couple custom applications for your business that were never possible before. But do not do this without security in place. So that's ⁓ that's my rant. Crawl, crawl, walk, run. I can't talk today, guys. It ⁓ unlike all the other weeks. Huh? What's in my cup?

Joshua Holloway (27:49)
Crawl, walk, run.

Mario Zaki (27:55)
What's in your cup? What are you drinking? What's in your

Bryan Lachapelle (27:56)
That's it, you're fired.

Mario Zaki (27:59)
cup?

Justin Shelley (28:00)
You you can't see what's in my cup, so you can't prove

Bryan Lachapelle (28:02)
Hahaha

Justin Shelley (28:03)
anything. I don't wanna hear it. ⁓

I'm I'm just getting a message that Brian's Brian's cooked. Brian, are you still with us?

Mario Zaki (28:12)
It's five o'clock somewhere, right?

I see a movie. ⁓ I did.

Joshua Holloway (28:20)
⁓ he dropped

Justin Shelley (28:20)
Nope, now he's

Joshua Holloway (28:21)
out right there. He he taught us about his his his connector with financials and he was like, I'm done.

Justin Shelley (28:22)
he's gone. He's back. He's

Mario Zaki (28:27)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (28:27)
Deuces.

What the what the hell was that, Brian? Why'd you leave?

Weird. Somebody vibe coded this stupid platform we're working on, I guess. Doing it again.

Joshua Holloway (28:39)
Yeah,

don't don't jump immediately to vibe coding. Just just don't.

Mario Zaki (28:41)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (28:41)
Yeah,

we can hear you. You can't hear us. ⁓

Mario Zaki (28:52)
Is it a spinning thing? Yeah, I think I had that last week or a week two weeks ago when they first released the new shit that we're on.

Joshua Holloway (28:59)
Yeah, and the week before I had cameras

fighting, like non existent cameras fighting over what was gonna be sh shown or used versus what it was actually plugged in and in use.

Mario Zaki (29:03)
Hmm.

Justin Shelley (29:13)
Is that what the problem is? No. So I'm gonna

Joshua Holloway (29:16)
It's 'cause he copied

down all his financials.

Mario Zaki (29:19)
Ha ha ha.

Justin Shelley (29:19)
Probably. Downloaded

all of ⁓ All right. Well, guys, I th I think we we're gonna keep this one relatively short today, unless anybody has anything else they wanna throw out. I'm I'm gonna say it again. Mario and Josh, you guys are now on the spot and I'll do the same. Get something tied into your finances by next week because we're gonna talk about it. If it's a a fake company like Brian did, that's probably smart. Or put guardrails around it or whatever, but come prepared to talk about what you did, what you found.

Excuse me. ⁓ and and how we could coach our audience through doing something similar. ⁓ Mario, do you want to drop any teasers on what you plan to talk about next week as far as your integration? Will have anything to do with your leave of absence tomorrow?

Mario Zaki (30:06)
⁓ well if I return safely from my ⁓ you know ⁓ bachelor party leave of absence then I will put some something together. We lost Brian again. ⁓ you know, it it is gonna be ⁓ a basic you know ⁓ integration again, like I said, you know, previously, I wanna do it and I wanna do it right in and and monitor it and test it, you know. Anything with AI, you know, even when we get to vibe coding.

Justin Shelley (30:11)
Leave of absence.

I know.

Mario Zaki (30:36)
You know, like we've been vibe coding some platforms and you know, putting to the platform together wasn't that bad. You know, it took a week or two, you know, but the testing has taken, you know, three times that. You know, the the testing and and when you're testing it is where you also just not only find bugs, but you'll also find more things that you want to add on there, like Justin, you were talking about earlier. Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (30:50)
Ha

Justin Shelley (30:51)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, it's not just me. Yeah. Yeah.

Mario Zaki (31:04)
⁓ so it I will I will have like you know it an integration set up and I will have it tested and I I'll be able to kind of show you guys live. ⁓ but you know it is it is gonna be there's so many different things. I mean you can actually Google you know what I can integrate what could I integrate Claude with, and I think the result was like there's like a thousand things you can integrate Claude with, you know, so

Joshua Holloway (31:04)
Scope creep. Brand new word for that.

Mario Zaki (31:31)
The no matter what the integration is, it has to be done to make yours or somebody else's life a little bit easier. You know, save time, make things easier, or you know, something that's just not available right now. But you know, so that's my little teaser.

Justin Shelley (31:48)
Without getting that match

one inch next to the fuel soak.

Joshua Holloway (31:53)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (31:55)
Just throw it in there. Let it explode.

Justin Shelley (31:58)
Let it let it blow, whatever.

Joshua Holloway (31:59)
Okay, Brian just wants to see the world burn.

Justin Shelley (32:01)
I know.

Mario Zaki (32:02)
Mm.

Bryan Lachapelle (32:04)
We'll torch it. We'll torch it all! ⁓

Justin Shelley (32:08)
All

right, guys. ⁓ let's let's go ahead and move to key takeaways. ⁓ you know, we've we've talked about a fair amount today, even though it, you know, we're talking about one one particular ⁓ integration, which has led us back to the the root of this podcast, which is security. ⁓ that in mind, let's go Josh, Mary O'Brien, key takeaways, and then we're gonna go ahead and wrap up for the week.

Joshua Holloway (32:33)
I think it goes goes back to the key takeaways is don't just add a connector because you want it. Understand what it's doing, what it's accessing, and is it starting out of the the the gate with guardrails, read only access. If you can't figure that out or you don't understand it, absolutely ask somebody who does know or who will take the time to to truly figure it out. And hopefully they're protecting you. And if they're if they're not, any one of the four of us who are currently on this podcast right now would be happy to jump in and help you out.

Obviously you you can work with us for free to get started. ⁓ but ⁓ that's my key takeaway. And for my sign-off, I'm Joshua Holloway from Set of DI Technologies, ⁓ MSP out of Sacramento and Reno, and happy to help you guys with any compliance needs that you need wrapped around technology and AI.

Justin Shelley (33:21)
Right. Next up, key takeaway, what do you got? I think it's you, Mario, right?

Mario Zaki (33:26)
Yep, that's me. So the one thing, you know, we as we've been talking, you know, you can integrate it and and do, you know, even if you're doing a lot of read-only stuff or if you're going and having it do anything. You also have to keep in mind, you know, almost like a an inventory or asset management, like we've always been talked talking about for ⁓ a ⁓ for security.

Joshua Holloway (33:26)
Yep.

Mario Zaki (33:49)
If there's something that you're not using, you know, if you integrate something, say you're like, that'd be cool to do it with this and this and this. If you don't actually use it or find it that it's gonna be useful for something, then disconnect it. You know, just the way you've can did the connector, you can do a disconnector, if that's a real word. ⁓ because just like we we've always been saying, if it if it's you know.

You less footprint for stuff that you're not using, even data. If you don't need the data, don't be responsible for that data. So ⁓ if you're not gonna use it, lose it. All right. ⁓ again, Mario Zacki, CEO of Mastic IT, located in New Jersey, right outside of New York. And we help you guys sleep better at night, making sure your company's secure and safe, and it'll be there in the next day.

Justin Shelley (34:21)
Yeah.

I love that. Mario, your your takeaway is ⁓ I'm I wrote that one down. That that that's solid. Brian, what do you got for us?

Joshua Holloway (34:43)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (34:47)
All right, mine is a little bit similar to that, but we didn't actually discuss it here. And that's if you don't provide something to your staff, you haven't given them access to any models or Claude or chat. I guarantee you that one of them has probably already signed up for a personal account and they all already connecting it to these connectors to do stuff. And the danger of that is that if you fire them or let them go,

The data that they've already extracted from those apps is still sitting in their personal accounts and they may not be able to access the live information anymore, but they might still have historical data in there. So my recommendation or my key takeaway for everybody would be put a policy in place, letting everybody know that you cannot use any corporate tools on your personal AIs and then supply the people who need the tools with

with a version of whatever version of AI that you think is appropriate for your business. But if you don't give them things, they will eventually do it on their own, unless you put guardrails up to make sure they don't. just people are people will be people and they will they will do whatever is required. Shadow IT is a real thing, they will do whatever is required in order to get their job done, even if it's breaking all sorts of rules that you don't actually have in place, right that you you imagine are in place, but are actually in place. So that would be my key takeaway.

Joshua Holloway (35:58)
They're already doing.

Justin Shelley (36:11)
Okay. And and I'm gonna wrap mine with ⁓ secure platforms. You know, everything we're talking about that you know, we're we're saying just what you said, Brian. If they don't, if you don't give them access, if you don't have policies in place, they're gonna go and do it on their own. most of what we're talking on here about on here is the publicly available claude, chat GPT, you know, I'm not trying to leave the others out. That's just the ones that keep surfacing. There's hundreds, thousands of these things.

⁓

Ditch them all and get a secure platform. in a business using these things, they are taking your information. It's like Google and Facebook. Everything you put in there, you lose. It's not yours. ⁓ you know, the I I saw an article a while back about ⁓ LinkedIn. It's they call it a borrowed audience or a rented audience or something like that. All you've got to do is violate a a policy with some, you know, big

technology conglomerate that you you don't have any say on they just pull your your account, right? Shit the the president of the United States got his Twitter account killed, right? Back in the day. Remember this? So like you've you've gotta be careful. I

Joshua Holloway (37:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mario Zaki (37:24)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (37:30)
I was going somewhere with this and I completely got distracted and I have no idea what I was gonna say.

Mario Zaki (37:33)
Dude I I I do

Bryan Lachapelle (37:33)
Yeah

Mario Zaki (37:36)
I do need to know what's

Joshua Holloway (37:38)
Secure platforms.

Mario Zaki (37:38)
in that cup today, Justin.

Bryan Lachapelle (37:40)
Secure platformers, Justin, secure platform.

Mario Zaki (37:42)
Mm-hmm.

Justin Shelley (37:42)
I I mean yeah, I I I'll

come back to that, but I was I don't know why I got off on ⁓ on rented audiences.

Bryan Lachapelle (37:50)
Well, I mean, it's no different than what you just described. Let's say you create all sorts of connectors, all sorts of automation in your platform of choice, and then you violate a policy and they shut down your account. You've just lost all the automations that you've created. And if you're relying on those to run your business and you lose them all at once, holy crap, like you're...

Justin Shelley (38:06)
Yeah, yeah, that's a that's

a that's a great guess at where I was going. It's not right, but it's it's as good as any guess, Brian. It's it's as good as my guess was. ⁓ because I don't remember. It doesn't matter. ⁓ just be just be careful what you're doing. ⁓ but the the the possibilities are endless in both productivity, ⁓ things that we can do that we couldn't do before, and ways we can screw it up. ways we can lose it all. So

Bryan Lachapelle (38:10)
I'm just, yeah. It's that, right?

Joshua Holloway (38:13)
Yeah.

Justin Shelley (38:34)
That's that's not the point I was going to, but it's where I'm gonna end up. And since I think Josh and Mario already did their full sign off, Brian, I guess it's your turn for a sign-off and and then mine. But before you do that, I'm just gonna make my last pitch. Go to unhackmybusiness.com. We had a little discussion last week around this. It is not unhacked past tense my business, even though the title of the show is unhacked past tense. The website is unhacked.

The verb to unhack my business, unhackmybusiness.com. ⁓ where I am just continuing to put more and more stuff up on there. the the the next scope creep, is that what you called it, Josh? where where the ideas won't stop flowing is I'm gonna start working on some integrations into our portal that we're building for security so that as you go through and self-assess, you know that you have MFA and you have data backup verified and stuff like that.

I'm gonna start building some integrations into this so that it will validate those for you. So that's that's coming soon. And this project probably is never gonna be released because I'm never gonna stop having new ideas. I I guess so. So yeah. I'm on like version twelve thousand three hundred and sixty-four. and none of it's done. There's cool stuff up there now, but it's not done. Brian, go ahead with your sign off and then I'll get I'll get us out of here.

Joshua Holloway (39:41)
They're just gonna keep building upon it.

Mario Zaki (39:43)
Ha ha

ha.

Bryan Lachapelle (39:44)
Version 1, Justin. Version 1. Jet version 1.0.

Joshua Holloway (39:46)
Yeah.

Bryan Lachapelle (39:58)
All right, Brian Lashrow of B4 Networks. If you are struggling with AI, if you're struggling with technology and it's keeping you up at night, give us a call. We'll be your guide in your journey in both securing your network and exploring AI and how you can use it in your business.

Justin Shelley (40:14)
All right, and my modified sign off, I am Justin. Remember, listen in on Spotify, Apple, or your podcast player of choice. Take action on unhackmybusiness dot com and keep your businesses unhacked. All right, guys. That's all we got for this week. We will see you next time with more integrations and AI.

Mario Zaki (40:27)
On the hack.

Joshua Holloway (40:28)
Unac

Bryan Lachapelle (40:28)
Unhacked.

Mario Zaki (40:36)
Yeah guys.

Joshua Holloway (40:37)
See you guys.