Speaker 0 | 00:08.260

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Christian Okkeke, IT Manager at Healing Hands Healthcare. Hey, Christian, how’s it going today?

Speaker 1 | 00:18.185

Oh, pretty good. Pretty good. How are you?

Speaker 0 | 00:20.466

Very good. I’m excited to have you on the podcast here. We’re going to be starting out with our icebreaker segment. It’s called Random Access Memories. I ask a question and then you just respond with the answer that just pops in your head first. Right.

Speaker 1 | 00:35.321

All righty, sir. Let’s do it.

Speaker 0 | 00:36.642

So your first question is, has the blue screen of death become more or less evil over the years?

Speaker 1 | 00:45.144

Oh, I’m going to have to say less evil for sure. For sure. You know, now when I see it, I’m like, oh, maybe we just need a bitlocker key. It’s not that bad.

Speaker 0 | 00:55.728

It’s amazing. It used to be such a, you know, such a terror, right? You’d be you’d be working in it. The blue screen, you’d be like, no,

Speaker 1 | 01:04.313

you were done for it for sure.

Speaker 0 | 01:07.796

Friendlier looking, I think.

Speaker 1 | 01:09.217

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s almost like a sense of security now. Like, hey, my data is secure. You know, maybe maybe no one’s hacking into my stuff. Definitely become better.

Speaker 0 | 01:19.483

All right. Here’s another one. Computer pop ups are sometimes annoying. But what’s one that actually you’re happy to receive?

Speaker 1 | 01:29.894

Oh, well, it depends on who it’s from. But sometimes I’m happy to receive a pop-up for like an outlet email. Like I’m like, hmm, maybe, you know, maybe I got a good email or it’s the boss saying, hey, you know, where are you at on this? Where are you at on that? But sometimes it’s like at least in the middle, you know.

Speaker 0 | 01:46.704

It’s in the middle. I was going to say the boss. I don’t know about the boss going, this is a happy one to receive.

Speaker 1 | 01:52.588

I don’t know. Either they’re like, hey, good job. Or they’re like, hey, you know, we need this ASAP.

Speaker 0 | 01:58.090

And well, and it could be that you’d be like, yeah, and I already got it done. All right.

Speaker 1 | 02:01.691

Yeah, exactly. That’s always a good thing.

Speaker 0 | 02:03.572

I’m way ahead of you.

Speaker 1 | 02:05.173

I’m like, I’m like 50-50 there.

Speaker 0 | 02:06.773

All right. All right. That’s a good one. That’s a good one. All right. Here’s the last one. If you could see a diagram of any system or network, what would it be and why? Could be anywhere.

Speaker 1 | 02:22.348

could be anyone’s die any any company yeah any diagram yeah oh man man i don’t know i always wondered like microsoft like do they actually diagram how they advise to diagram like what does their you know hierarchy look like as far as their admin like who has permissions to do what like is it just like a crazy you know tree of people and there’s just someone at the top and like

Speaker 0 | 02:50.520

they give the permissions to the people below and then vice versa just keeps going down or like how does the permissions work so i am i i let’s be careful how i say this but i have actually had the privilege of seeing some microsoft documentation right oh yeah and while i can’t you know say what all that type of stuff what i can say is that the documentation was beautiful i mean it was like you know they paid somebody to create this documentation and it was internal documentation that they released uh uh you know to let us be able to see something and it was it was the most remarkable i think you’re definitely like microsoft gets like a marketing department to you know what someone they create their all of their uh um documentation they like put they must push it to a marketing department to clean it up because it was it was just it looked unreal it was outstanding and it was thorough and it had everything you wanted in it and it was easy to digest i was so surprised i thought i would be getting something that would you know you know place but no no it was spot on there you go there you got your answer it is it is they document like

Speaker 1 | 04:07.967

pretty awesome like yeah like you’re supposed to like you’re supposed to yeah exactly i’ve been learning that as you know as i grow in the i.t world documentation is not everything but it’s a big part of it for sure it’s a tough thing so documentation is best looked at as a journey and not really a

Speaker 0 | 04:30.296

destination of somewhere to get to because it is just uh it’s constantly a thing you need to do it’s a process that you need to build into uh the same processes that you would have updating something or uh or or changing something every project should have a section that has a documentation piece to it because otherwise you’re not going to keep it up to date you know that part of that it should be part of that project

Speaker 1 | 05:00.202

you know in my opinion but it documentation is something that always people always struggle with mainly because yes it’s like no no time for it it always seems like it’s like who’s ever gonna look at this documentation but then when someone’s like finally like hey how do you do this you’re like oh and then you’d have to try to say what’s in your head when if you just had the documentation for it you could just be like here this is why i do it this way it

Speaker 0 | 05:23.559

and and you um and remarkably when you do get start getting your documentation rolling and someone asked for that and you just go here and move on it is actually such so much of a time saver and i’ve had um oh yeah i’ve done some i’ve done some documentation uh in the past i’ve created all a bunch of documentation and i’ve had people ask me what about this and in executives and i’ve just passed the documentation okay good and they moved on you

Speaker 1 | 05:54.354

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up.

Speaker 0 | 05:57.735

Documentation doesn’t come up a lot on the podcast. I’m actually glad you brought it up because it’s such a big deal.

Speaker 1 | 06:08.060

Yes, I’m noticing in the higher roles, some of the, you know, growing into that, I’ve had someone that’s, you know, kind of been mentoring me on it a lot saying, hey, this is something that’s actually really important because me, sometimes when you’re just moving so fast, like, you know what you’re doing. So you expect other people to know that you know what you’re doing, but you have to have like some backup to it, you know. Can’t just take you for your word on that.

Speaker 2 | 06:31.113

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Speaker 0 | 08:50.802

Well, and true. And on top of that, you know, you have different types of documentation, right? Because you have documentation that, you know, maybe you’re going to be internal procedures that aren’t going to be as polished, but they just need to be a text file with just a bunch of, you know, you know, this is how you do it. This thing. Here you go. And save it. And then maybe you have to have some end user documentation, right? And that needs to be a little more polished, right? Otherwise, you’re not going to be able to follow it.

Speaker 1 | 09:21.959

It has to be a little bit more user friendly, so to speak.

Speaker 0 | 09:24.921

Correct. Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 09:25.901

Detailed kind of stuff.

Speaker 0 | 09:29.543

Executive documentation. That’s a whole different story, right? Yeah. Have you done documentation? Have you had the fun privilege of doing documentation for executives yet?

Speaker 1 | 09:41.250

No, I haven’t. We just kind of got on the start because we’ve kind of cleaned up our systems, implemented, you know, Microsoft 365. So we’re kind of at the point where we do need the documentation if we want to continue to, you know, expand in IT as we grow and kind of progress. We need to have documentation. So as we progress, the people that follow us can know what to do, basically.

Speaker 0 | 10:04.004

So, all right. So let’s give you some, some fun little pointers on this, right? You’re going to create a documentation for executives, right? You start off and just create your documentation. Then you look at it and you go, okay, how can I create of all this documentation I just created? How can I half it? Right. And so then you work on taking, we know what, let’s say you create a 10 slides. You’re going to make them five slides, right? Then you turn around and you go, all right. how can i half this they don’t want to read all that right and ideally if you can get it down to one uh one page that’s what the that’s what they want to see um no but i mean what ends up having you know uh yeah the issue with executives is that you know they don’t have a lot of time you know they don’t have time to look and digest stuff so they want to know the most important things up front a hundred percent so you You honestly, what I’ve done is I’ve actually just gotten rid of cover pages and I have just used that sense what it is data and then put the back back of the data is just resources if they wanted to double check it. Yeah. And and it’s been pretty successful in that regard.

Speaker 1 | 11:15.536

Mm hmm. But that’s some good advice.

Speaker 0 | 11:19.137

There’s also another trick to it. The other is keep in mind when you’re going to be creating documentation for anybody. Right. You have to understand what that documentation is trying to convey and make sure that that story is told correctly. Right. And so that’s a that’s a tough one, too, especially with executives, because they’re going to be looking for what is this? What am I supposed to be looking at? What do I need to do? What’s the decision I need to make? And now I can move on to answer the next thing that I need to do. Right.

Speaker 1 | 11:50.003

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 11:51.424

So it’s a little bit.

Speaker 1 | 11:52.025

That’s a good point. Yeah. Because right now we have one and I just did one. And it was for compliance and like Microsoft 365, like the secure score and stuff. So I did that. But to your point, I made it like it’s like eight pages, but it’s like, what will someone really read on that? And to your point, what is the point? What am I trying to show them just that we’re compliant? Am I trying to show what our score is? You know, what’s that going to mean to them? So those types of things are definitely helpful for sure.

Speaker 0 | 12:21.514

Yeah, I you know, you got that down right. Exactly. Because, you know. By the way, Microsoft Secure Score, such an interesting score, right? Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 12:32.121

where did they get that from? That’s what I always wonder. What are they measuring it against?

Speaker 0 | 12:37.603

And actually, they have a setting on there where you can change it to be by the different industries, right? Oh, yes,

Speaker 1 | 12:45.385

exactly.

Speaker 0 | 12:46.606

You guys are healthcare, right? So healthcare would be a different industry.

Speaker 1 | 12:51.287

Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 12:51.407

that’s a tip of the rules. Oh, yeah. You should change that to health care. And all of a sudden, this care score is going to be like. Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 12:56.446

exactly. So it’s like, which one am I going to put it on for this report? No. I’ll never know.

Speaker 0 | 13:04.310

But yeah, but no, it’s a good it’s a good point, too, is, you know, and and by the way, getting 100 on a secure score isn’t really a thing either. So that’s the other thing you’re going to put. You’re going to put a secure score and be like, yeah, this is the 65 secure score I got. They’re going to be like,

Speaker 1 | 13:20.459

it’s about what we have right now.

Speaker 0 | 13:22.432

Yeah. It’s amazing how I pulled that out of my head. Right. So, but, but then you’re like, wait a second. No, 65 isn’t, isn’t failing. Right. You know, cause it’s, you’ve got to match it against the,

Speaker 1 | 13:35.038

against the industry standards and how, you know, how many people you have, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 0 | 13:39.381

Yeah. So, um, I think it’s a good question you just asked prior to it though, which is, well, what are we, what am I trying to say? Cause it’s exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, who, who. ask the question, what did they ask for? Did they just ask the secure score? Did they ask or they ask if you’re compliant? Did they ask how are we doing on security? And why did they ask that?

Speaker 1 | 14:03.070

Yeah. Right. I see. Because they’re not even, maybe there’s something else that, you know, maybe they’re not even asking for it and then it’s completely irrelevant. Right. For starters. And then maybe they, maybe they do want to see, they probably want to see where we’re compliant, but they want to see it in a simple sense and maybe some easy improvement actions that we can do. I would say something, something along those lines, you know?

Speaker 0 | 14:25.193

Yeah. And so, and that’s a good point because now you have a, what you have here is an opportunity, right? And so, so it’s like, you know, you’re a, I saw on your, on your LinkedIn, you’re a soccer volunteer, right?

Speaker 1 | 14:40.259

Oh yes. Right.

Speaker 0 | 14:45.481

I love it though. And that’s actually pretty awesome. If I, if I had, you know, I had, I have two kids. And I have gone, you know, I’ve gone to when they were younger, a ton of different stuff.

Speaker 1 | 14:57.154

Right.

Speaker 0 | 14:58.475

Oh, yeah. Soccer, but gymnastics, everything and everything else that you possibly think of. But I’m going to get back to the opportunity thing in a minute here. But. But with soccer, you have an opportunity to score a goal, right? We can always see it. It opens up. Now, I say this, but I’ve only ever scored one goal in soccer ever. And I was super little. I was in elementary school, and I was horrible at soccer. And they kicked the ball, and it went straight into my face.

Speaker 1 | 15:36.774

And scored.

Speaker 0 | 15:38.695

but it’s scored right hey but it’s a goal you know i i’m a little kid and i’ve got like a you know and you know and ball and smash me in the in the in the right in the face and i’m you know sitting there going ah and uh they’re like no you scored i’m like i just i don’t like this game i don’t care yeah i’m done i’m done i’m leaving now i’m going home we’re playing never played again after that exactly exactly um but But you do have that opportunity. It may smack you in the face every once in a while, but you do have that opportunity to be able to go score a goal. And in this case, the goal is to improve your security posture. Right. So what they’re asking you is, are we secure? Right. And your answer should be kind of. It will be when you give me what I need to make us secure. Right.

Speaker 1 | 16:32.542

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 16:33.451

I like to like that. It’s kind of with your help.

Speaker 1 | 16:38.535

No, that makes sense. Like show them, show them it in a way that you can like not, not increase your workload, but like you can bring value through your workload. Like, Hey, we’re not exactly where we want to be yet, but this is what we can do to get there. Basically. Here’s how you definitely make sense. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 16:54.848

Help the company get where it needs to go. Here’s what we’ve done. That’s correct. And here’s where we’re going. And that’s a remarkable way in which to help them out. Yes,

Speaker 1 | 17:09.597

that’s cool.

Speaker 0 | 17:09.958

I think we’ve got a great opportunity sitting in front of you here. You’ve got to look at those things and go, oh, here’s what we’re going to do.

Speaker 1 | 17:18.181

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 17:19.381

You know, always kind of with, you know, it’s funny because sometimes I talk to people who have long running tenures in IT and other times. I do not have shorter tenures. And it’s always an interesting, fun little thing because you get some people that have have been through it all.

Speaker 1 | 17:41.811

And they’re been through it all. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 17:44.572

And then I get excited to talk to the talk to folks that are, you know, that are like in it and have, you know, like they’re they’re up and coming, you know, and everything long enough to to get weathered. Right.

Speaker 1 | 17:59.038

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 17:59.518

Yeah. But you can tell that they’re driven and stuff like yourself. And you’re like, you know, hey, I want to jump in. I want to learn this stuff. And that’s what really drives me on this stuff.

Speaker 1 | 18:11.904

Yeah, yeah. That’s kind of why I wanted to talk. You know, that’s why when I saw your podcast, even I was like, oh, this sounds great. Like just the chance to talk about it, you know, bounce ideas off. So I feel like especially talking to people who have more experience than me, it just benefits so much. Because they’re going to bring us perspective that you didn’t even think about. Like someone was recently, he came in as my mentor, you know, over me. And he brought so much experience, kind of like you’re saying. He was like, you don’t have any documentation. I’m like, no. Like, what do you mean? Like, documentation? What is this documentation? And it just started from there. And then he’s kind of helped me grow through that. And then implementing a ticket system as well. We didn’t really have one of those. So he’s been like, right when he got here, he’s like, we need that. I was like, why would we need that? We need like metrics and, you know, we need to know what our issues are. So we’ve had to kind of talk through that and just see like these things really do help. If you kind of can just understand it from, you know, someone that has been there, done that in a way.

Speaker 0 | 19:12.273

And it’s amazing. You have two bachelors, right?

Speaker 1 | 19:18.175

No.

Speaker 0 | 19:19.096

Or is that wrong?

Speaker 1 | 19:20.696

That must be. I was going for computer science, then I realized I am not a coder.

Speaker 0 | 19:26.399

You know, it was, you know, I, let me just tell you, it’s actually very funny. Yeah. You can correct that later. The, um, but, um, let me, let me tell you, uh, a fun little story. I went in for computer, uh, science as well. Right. And I got in, uh, and I, and I did, I took some classes for computer science and I started taking, uh, engineering calculus one. And I was like, and I, I, I gotta, I gotta be. uh that’s pretty good yeah but i i walked out right out of that class after i was done and i went in over to the college of business and i signed up for management information systems and the reason why i did is i asked them how many more classes of calculus do i need and they’re like what’d you take calc one engineer calc one they’re like oh no you’re done you’re good i’m like okay sounds good so

Speaker 1 | 20:15.158

i made it to calculus three and then the turning point for me is like i was in coding class or whatever i think it was like first or second coding class for C++. And we had like an assignment and I copied like three lines of code from the internet and I got a zero on the assignment. So in turn, I got a 69.4% in the class. I said, hey, professor, is there anything I can do, you know, to bump me up to 70, give me the pass? No. You know, it’s a reflection of your knowledge base. So I’m like, oh my gosh. So I was like, this is not for me. That was after that.

Speaker 0 | 20:52.430

You know, it’s so, yeah, I, I, I understand the change over to MIS, but actually MIS turned out to be exactly what I should have done and probably are on the same lines as you as well. When I started, I went into health care, IT. Oh, yeah. And so you’re, you’re, you’re mirroring a lot of what I did. I spent. 16 years in healthcare IT. And let me tell you that that was some of the best experience I’ve ever gotten because it sets you up for exactly how to do IT the right way. HIPAA, high tech, they will lead you in the right direction for how to set up uh i i t securely correctly every single time you know if you follow us if you follow uh you know the confidentiality integrity availability and oh yes sure that you uh able to do that man that that is the that is the way in which yeah folks that start off in in a um high uh um you know highly sensitive stuff so like you know folks in government jobs that have confidential data um folks in uh financial that have to deal with all the financial uh and pci data um and then also healthcare is another big one and i’m sure yeah you um out there because there are some other ones as well um but those are the those are biggies that um always require more it’s

Speaker 1 | 22:40.677

uh in the setup yeah and it definitely there’s like two things to it it really Like you said, it helps you set it up right because you have to learn. Like if you read the HIPAA privacy rule and whatnot, you have to learn how to be compliant in those things. So you have to learn all the ins and outs of the systems like conditional access policies. I mean, MDM, mobile device management, MAM, mobile app management, which I didn’t even know existed before I got into health care, you know. So that those types of things really caught my attention. When you’re talking about being compliant, you have to. do those things and even you have to understand have an understanding of them to do them so i would say that’s a big one um just you know knowing all the systems through and through i feel like is a big one as well i mean multi-factor authentication you just have to set up all your rules and policies basically to be you know highly highly sensitive data and to protect the organization so once you do that you’re going to end up at the end of the day with fully built systems not like

Speaker 0 | 23:45.334

systems that are kind of built or they’re secure in this area but not in that area you know things like that for sure well you said it right you know you have to build security into the system um you know otherwise you’re you’re going to run into problems later on down the road right so i actually think you you you have the right mentality um and you’re doing it the correct way you can tell that mis degree is paying off there right so you um it is a uh it’s an interesting um it’s interesting because so there there are some things headed your way uh that are gonna be really be um you know really gonna be hard to deal with coming up i mean so being in health care you know you have the ephi that you need to protect so we that you know that’s your major that’s a big one right you And so anytime anybody introduces a new project, right, could be from anything, especially from leadership. Leadership is executive leadership is coming to you saying we need to do this. right it’s your job just to go hold on i gotta make sure it works with uh works with it yes we can but i need to find out how uh we can secure it so that we can do it correctly for the company oh yeah yeah that’s definitely been a yeah

Speaker 1 | 25:10.673

we’ve run into some of that and that’s something that again growing through having a mentor and whatnot in that area it’s been big like being the subject matter expert in that area you know Because I feel like a lot of times you don’t want to go to them and say, hey, we can’t do this. You know, you just want to be like, well, if they want to do it, we’ll do it. You know, there has to be like a middle ground or a discussion about it, at least for sure. For sure. I’ve learned that.

Speaker 0 | 25:39.104

I think I think you’re absolutely right on that. So if the answer if the answer is not no. Right. And the answer is not yes. Just do it. What is the answer? You know,

Speaker 1 | 25:53.738

what is that middle ground? I mean, for us, I feel like it is looking at it from, you know, really getting down to the nitty gritty and looking at the privacy rules and saying, OK, if we’re not going to do this safeguard this way, what are we going to do in place of that? Or what are we going to do to make sure that, OK, you know, say, for example, we don’t want to have EPHI in this app. Well, how can we, you know. But the executive leadership says, we do want it in this app. How can we then safeguard that app or safeguard the phone that that app is on in order to still remain compliant? So those are some of the ideas we’ve kind of thrown around and dealt with.

Speaker 0 | 26:36.838

Yeah, it’s a good point. I think the other thing to remember is to be able to identify where your ePHI is sitting, where your confidential data is sitting. And then say, okay, this is the data, whether at rest or in transit, that we need to secure. And not necessarily the entirety of everything. We just need to secure this part. And that may help in limiting down the items and stuff like that. What I’ve seen is that can help reduce costs. That can also help to find solutions in between. And then say, well, you know what, right now we’re sending data this way and it’s kind of open. Maybe if we just change it to we’re sending data here or we move how we access the data, that also can change the way it works.

Speaker 1 | 27:34.531

So let me ask you this. So what is your experience when you are or, you know, if you’re throwing around the idea of filling holes with policy, if that makes sense. So, for example, you could say, well, we might be at risk. if ePHI is in this app. So we’re going to put it in our policy that the user is not allowed to install the app.

Speaker 0 | 27:56.907

Things like that. Yeah, well, what you’re talking about, so it’s a compensating control, right? So essentially, you do as much as you can by putting guardrails around things. But policies are effective and can be effective. Now, keep in mind that when you put a policy in place that we’re- requires uh that um relies on humans right there you there exists a risk of human error or human disobedience neglect human ignorance and all the above yeah so um you know and there’s a reason why most of the attacks happen because uh um folks you know it’s it’s humans that do it not necessarily you know they can put up all the you know, all the software in the world to prevent everything, right? But, you know, a human giving out a password on a phone or a human responding to an email they thought was legitimate, you know, that most of the time, that’s what causes the problem, right? So, that’s a risk. And when it comes to security, businesses have to make a business decision on whether or not they want to accept that risk or not. So, I always kind of What I always kind of do is kind of go here. It’s the IT’s job to identify all the risks and put them in front of the business and also come up with ideas on how to mitigate those risks. Right. And so you say, here’s the risk. Here’s how I think we should mitigate them. And then it’s the business’s job to go, that’s way too much money. That’s way too much effort. Right. And then that’s when the negotiation phase comes in. And that’s when you say, OK, well, what I’ve done for you is I’ve prioritized these by the highest risk, you know, and the highest impact. So it might be that something’s like super risky. But it has low impact if it happens, right? You can actually marry those two together and you can actually add more into this as well. But you can actually assign numbers into this and create a formula to identify which ones are the highest impact, highest risk. And then you can prioritize them by that. So if you have something that is super risky and. And if somebody ever got through that and actually had that risk, you know, that it would make a major impact to the company, a negative impact to the company, then you should tackle that first, you know, over something that’s a high risk, but is a low impact. Right. Yeah. A low risk, but a high impact. Still, the high risk, high impact is at the top of the.

Speaker 1 | 30:48.532

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 30:49.232

So organize those risks and put them in order and then say, OK, well, let’s start off with these ones up here. And and let’s start getting these out of the way, you know, and let’s prioritize these. And then these down here, you know, we can start to talk about making business decisions about what to do about them.

Speaker 1 | 31:10.684

So when you go in and kind of when you when you start doing that and start, you know, formulating that and you say, hey, this is a risk. This is how I would mitigate it. How? And maybe it’s kind of a subjective question, but how in depth? Will you go into your explanation on why you should do it or in depth on the problem? Like it could be as simple as, hey, I don’t think we should use app XYZ or is it I don’t think we should use app XYZ because of this, this, this, this and this. And I think we should do this, this, this, this and this where it’s like, I think we should fix the problem by implementing some Microsoft control. You know, like what where’s your middle ground kind of on that?

Speaker 0 | 31:52.793

So. If I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly, it sounds to me, it’s more of a question of how do you get the business to understand the risk in terms of the business? And then, yeah. So for instance, it’s not really up to the, you know, it’s up to the business how much money they want to spend and how much effort they can throw at it. Right. But really, it’s up to it on how to fix the problem. Right. Given the money and the resources. Right.

Speaker 1 | 32:32.784

I see. I see.

Speaker 0 | 32:34.024

So what you have to say is here’s what could happen if the if this risk were to come up. Right. Here’s what the business impact would be. And then they go. Oh, this is where your MIS training comes in, right? Because you know all the different risks that the business has. Yes, yes. You learned about them. So you turn around and you go, oh, man. Okay, so now the folks are sitting there going, okay, you’re telling me that if this happens, we could have a fine of this much amount of money and risk our customer base being upset because we lost their… personal exactly or risk uh um getting your license pulled or you know so there’s all these different things so you gotta know what the business impact could be right i see um and that business impact over to them and correctly and then then the answer is well you know okay well how do we fix it and yeah right you know how long is it going to take

Speaker 1 | 33:43.266

who’s you know how you know how much effort is going to take and stuff like that yeah so and that’s when you and that’s when you go well great right now i know what you know we’ll pop we’ll create a mitigation plan and i’ll get you the cost estimates for that’s cool that makes sense like you kind of just show them that and then say hey it’s it’ll cost this much do you want us to fix it and then if they say hey how do you fix it then okay we’re going down the path we might need some more documentation etc etc so

Speaker 0 | 34:07.239

yeah that’s definitely helpful i’m glad you brought this up because it’s okay to say Yes, let me get you the details on how exactly we’re going to do this. I’m going to go back and get better cost estimates and everything like that. But I want to give you a ballpark kind of here. We think it’s going to cost about this much. We think it’s going to take about this long. But I can refine that for you now that you’ve put your OK in that.

Speaker 1 | 34:29.882

Yeah, but that’s going to be more effective, even if you have potential projects you’re thinking about working on to just say what it’s going to do for the business, how much it’s going to cost, then to write up. three-page proposal on one subject and try to pitch it to them, basically. You want them to more so figure out what the business need is. They’re going to analyze it. They’re going to know what they want for the business more so than you will. You just have to kind of communicate that with them.

Speaker 0 | 34:56.698

Yeah, absolutely. And then from an IT perspective, I mean, that is the job, right? I mean, so you have to be going. I know that when you’re at work, you’re like, I really wish this was like this.

Speaker 1 | 35:10.503

I wish I could do this and this.

Speaker 0 | 35:12.544

Right. And so so then that’s the time when you go, OK, I got to write this down and I got to research this and figure out, you know, what this is. And that’s when you can turn around and go. this is a problem but is it really a problem because i’ve seen things where you think it’s a bigger problem but then you when you go and analyze you go yeah this is small actually yeah yeah they’re like that’s not we don’t we’re not gonna do that right now like we got other stuff to do you know yeah move on carry on that deal there’s so many things you know i like i said i love hippa i know a lot of people are like you know what yeah but hippa is a great uh you know it provides a good cyber security framework And there’s plenty out there, plenty of cybersecurity frameworks out there and stuff like that. But HIPAA just outlined everything so well of what it needed at the time. And it’s been updated and stuff. So it’s tech and all that. And I guarantee you it’s going to be updated even more as we move into…

Speaker 1 | 36:19.111

There was just some recent updates. There was just some recent updates from Microsoft. on HIPAA. And I mean, like you said, it’s a great, like, if anyone ever asked and said, hey, I don’t know what policies I should do or, you know, what I should implement as far as conditional access, I would say, yeah, look at HIPAA rules. I mean, you can’t go wrong. If anything, you’re going to be overprotective in that sense. But I mean, you can always, and that’s something that we’ve kind of dealt with is tightening down on some of the, you know, controls that are out there. in order to be compliant with HIPAA, you know, and sometimes that can bring some, bring some tension in when you start saying, Hey, you know, we didn’t do the authenticator app. Well, you know, why are we doing this authenticator app now? We haven’t had it, you know, for the past six months, stuff like that, for sure.

Speaker 0 | 37:07.522

Let me ask you a question based on that. Um, how have you navigated, uh, you know, implementing MFA and, and, uh, you know, uh, getting the authenticator and, and, and working with And users that might be hesitant, you know, to to to use these tools and, you know, because it’s a little bit of a hindrance. But how how have you been communicating?

Speaker 1 | 37:34.132

I think through not through trial and error, but almost like if we had something happen, like if we had an incident, we would take that incident and sort of expand it and provide visibility to it. So like if someone had an issue with Outlook where someone got into their email, we could expand it and say, hey, this is something that’s going on. This is why we need to implement MFA, for example. Or if someone logged in from outside of the country, you know, or something like that, we caught it, we flagged it, we presented that data and said, hey, this is something we saw is happening. This is why we need conditional access.

Speaker 0 | 38:12.986

this is why you might be blocked whenever you go to mexico on vacation you know stuff like that love that you do that i love that you do that it’s such a great idea because it’s actually providing real world examples um as to why you’re implementing the things you’re doing in kind of real time that’s such a great idea um uh you know to put that out there do you have a good system of communication out to the end users yes yes we do um we communicate like through a

Speaker 1 | 38:41.782

Email. So we’ll send out like Outlook to all of our staff and Outlook email just saying, hey, this is something that happened. We try to send it out like really quick afterwards. So we’ll be like, this happened. This is, you know, what you need to watch out for. This is the steps we took to resolve it. So it’s definitely alerted some of our users. I know phishing is on the rise. You know, we all hear phishing and we’re like, oh, but yeah, it’s definitely on the rise and things like that. It gets your users into. a mindset of hey you know let me look at this email twice before i just click on something for sure did have um uh uh have you guys implemented uh um like teams oh yes yes um yeah we have teams as well um various teams on there so we’ll post and uh we have like a like a group that has all of our staff in it so we’ll post on there um i would say Definitely. Teams has been one of the greatest communication tools that we could have thought. We never would have guessed. I mean, we have our ticketing system now through Teams. People can submit tickets just by typing create ticket in the chat. So it’s been a tool that’s I’m like, you can use it for files, you know, and again, it’s all protected under under HIPAA. And there’s actually BAA. I mean, you’re probably familiar with all this. There’s a BAA. that you go into with Microsoft whenever you enter into an agreement with them. I know that was a big deal. So just kind of having that cloud infrastructure, it has alleviated a lot of things that you would be dealing with if you had on-premise stuff, a lot of threats for sure.

Speaker 0 | 40:19.613

For our non-healthcare folks, do you want to explain what business associate agreements are?

Speaker 1 | 40:25.515

Oh, yeah. So business associate agreement is basically… It’s basically saying that you’re abiding by HIPAA standards. So that means all of your systems just kind of follow the safeguards. You have all the appropriate administrative safeguards, anything from user safeguards, anything from locking your computers away in a cabinet, just all the rules and policies and procedures. It basically says that when I communicate with you. I can communicate freely and I don’t have to do things. I can create my emails to you and stuff like that.

Speaker 0 | 41:02.580

It’s actually really, and this is pretty interesting because you’ll always see BAAs, anyone that does business with healthcare or healthcare that has to do business with anybody, right? They’re always running through legal department, getting it cleared and back to you signature and all this type. And it’s such a good idea to have this. And yet you jump out of health care and it’s, you know, maybe you have an NDA, you know, with some terms in it. You know, or maybe you have a confidentiality agreement hanging out there. But, you know, they don’t usually have these. But what, you know, what’s so standard about the, you know, even being out of health care is creating third party vendor. policies. But yet, the business associate agreement gives you that method to keep following up and keep renewing that agreement with them. It’s a great tool, and it’s one that I almost wish that other cybersecurity frameworks would adopt from HIPAA, because it’s a fantastic tool.

Speaker 1 | 42:22.471

Oh, yeah. It really protects you a lot. I mean… I’ve never been in the midst of something going wrong in that aspect. But I wonder, I’m curious to how it would play out with someone that had a BAA versus someone that didn’t. If there was a direct comparison, I know there’s not, but the potential savings and or headache that it can save you.

Speaker 0 | 42:45.589

Well, there are some interesting, fun things because you can actually take… If you’ve got a good team here that… can put together some of some good baa language um you can actually uh do things like cap the uh um you know cap the damages uh you can pop a whole bunch of stuff in there based on what you know on what they’re supposed to do and everything and um

Speaker 1 | 43:12.083

we’re totally off the hook if anything happens you know and you can put it in the language to where it says that now i’m sure that that would not hold

Speaker 0 | 43:21.714

But having it having it is a, you know, is actually a pretty interesting thought process and would save you and give you something to argue about later on. So and it might help a bit. So, yeah, any little any little thing. But there’s some great ways to craft BAAs to protect your business and also, you know, make sure that it’s mutual as well, because otherwise you don’t make it mutual that nobody’s going to sign it. Right. So, but yeah, that’s a whole other, you know, I always, I always make, I always tell people that, um, collaboration with other departments, um, uh, legal being one of them is such a great way to strengthen your it, right? Because they’re going to, they’re going to be like, Hey, take this BA and make the language, uh, um, you know, air watertight, right? You know, that’s what I want.

Speaker 1 | 44:16.932

They’re going to know what to say. Yes, exactly. Rather than us.

Speaker 0 | 44:21.790

forming great relationships with other departments is a core value that needs to be had with any IT department. Because your strength as an IT department relies on… So many different things that may not be just IT, right? And I mean, for instance, if you’re going to buy new gear, being friends with procurement or sometimes it’s lumped into the accounting team or the AP team, you have that whole finance team. I always tell people, get with finance. get with marketing, get with, you know, the legal team. The list could keep going. I could keep naming them, but know who runs each department, get familiar with them and, and also be there, be these departments ability to, to also grow and be there for them.

Speaker 1 | 45:29.469

Yeah. I think that’s a big point. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a big point. I think, cause that’s something that I’m learning as I’m you know, growing in it. It’s, it’s also, it’s not all about who, you know, but it definitely, who, you know, if you can build those relationships and like you’re saying, a lot of times what you would want to do will also help the department. But if you don’t have that relationship with them, they’re going to be like, I don’t know, it sounds kind of crazy, but if you kind of built that relationship with them, they’ll have, they can have that, you know, trust with you where they might be like, okay, like, let’s go, let’s go look into this a little bit more, you know? I think you’re right about this or just things like that. For sure.

Speaker 0 | 46:11.194

That trust is paramount to you being able to get stuff done. I think it’s a great, great strategy. Just like any team, right? You have an IT team, but the company is a team too, right? So you have to know when you have to kind of hand off the baton to somebody else to help you out. And for the sake of the company. And it’s a really, really huge deal. You know, it’s interesting. You would, you know, you have a kind of an interesting spot because, you know, you’re from an experience standpoint, you are coming in with a lot of I’m looking at some of your experience you have in here. Right. Which is a false truck center.

Speaker 1 | 47:02.809

Right. Yes.

Speaker 0 | 47:04.610

And then a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services,

Speaker 1 | 47:08.613

right? Yes, yes.

Speaker 0 | 47:09.854

And then Healing Hands Healthcare. Yes. Man, you’ve got a whole sorts of different stuff already you’ve been exposed to in this, which is great because that kind of adds to your arsenal of what you’ve been able to see already up front. So you’ve been at Healing Hands for like two years now.

Speaker 1 | 47:31.772

Yes, yes, for sure.

Speaker 0 | 47:33.733

And- And, you know, what is, by the way, two years, pat yourself on the back, right? Because at healthcare, two years, I mean, and I can already tell by talking to you that you’ve got a lot more to go. Oh,

Speaker 1 | 47:49.180

yes. There’s always things to do.

Speaker 0 | 47:50.800

Healthcare two years is like five years in another company, right?

Speaker 1 | 47:56.483

There’s always more than you think you’re getting into.

Speaker 0 | 48:00.705

So let’s talk about your. your growth, right? When you first started at Healing Hands versus today, right? And I always kind of want to measure, we don’t measure ourselves against other people. We measure ourselves against our previous selves, right? So if you want to do your measurement of your previous self and track your record here of starting here and working through and looking towards the future at Healing Hands and growing in this organization. what are the types of things that you’re doing uh now uh um to to get that information because i mean we’re talking and you’ve already mentioned you’ve got a mentor you’re talking to you’re reaching out actually coming out on the podcast uh right uh to to get information you know it’s a great so let’s talk about how you’re trying to do that yeah i think um like the first two years it was a lot of

Speaker 1 | 49:01.586

of technical learning and self-study. Cause when I got here, I really didn’t know, I knew what Azure was, but I didn’t know the depth and the scale of Microsoft 365 and kind of how many branches it has. So having to learn all those branches and at least have an understanding of it, cause we had to set all of that up. Now I feel like I’m trying to transition more so into the management side of it. Because I did start, you know, as the IT, I was over, you know, a couple people. And then my mentor, he came in actually above me because of how fast we were expanding. So I’ve had to adjust and say, hey, maybe I don’t know everything. Maybe there’s another side besides just the technical side of things. Because I know all the techie stuff, you know, when it comes to Azure and, you know, Microsoft and, you know, HIPAA, all that stuff I could figure out. But it’s going into the manager side of, like you said, relationships, things like documentation, things that come with leadership, things like that. You know, a ticketing system, you have to kind of, you know, move into a coordinating role. So I think things like that, seeing growing in those areas and like like even just talking on here, the insight that you’ve given me is going to be greatly helpful and appreciated. Just. being able to grow in areas that aren’t, hey, if that makes sense.

Speaker 0 | 50:30.432

It does make sense. And it’s actually good that you kind of learn that. It’s actually pretty funny because as you kind of move into leadership, right? One of the things that folks have a hard time sometimes doing is letting go of the tech, right? And you’re like, but no, but that’s what I came in to do.

Speaker 1 | 50:51.424

There it goes.

Speaker 0 | 50:56.486

Oh, man. Yeah, it’s weird, but you start up, you get real techie, and you get into all these fun things, and you’re doing all this stuff, and you’re like, yeah, I can do IT everywhere.

Speaker 1 | 51:10.414

I know everything, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 51:11.975

Right, and then you start to move into management, and you’re like, hold on a second. But what you should feel, you should feel this uncomfortableness, right? you should feel uncomfortable and that what that is you got to learn to live in this uncomfortable feeling right because that’s growth yes that’s yes every time you’re uncomfortable you’re growing all right and uh and so if you’re comfortable you’re not growing you’re not uh getting better you’re not uh improving yourself you’re like complacent feel uncomfortable not a lot not i’m not saying like you’re gonna be sitting on a couch with spikes or something but you know you But you just have to be like, I can’t really sit right away.

Speaker 1 | 51:58.304

It’s just not. This isn’t exactly fun. Like something, you know, it’s kind of hard, but it’s not terribly hard. We like crying at work. But like you have to be in that sort of learning. You have to be learning something that’s almost out of your comfort zone, you know?

Speaker 0 | 52:12.274

Yeah. And if you can live in that, you know, live outside your comfort zone, not too much, but just enough so that, you know, that you’re.

Speaker 1 | 52:23.094

uh you feel uncomfortable but you can you can ride the wave uh yeah yeah that’s the middle ground that i’ve tried to find for sure like the be out of your comfort zone but don’t go too far out of your comfort zone to where you don’t really know where you’re at you know like you’re trying to do too much in a sense like don’t just try to conquer everything stay in your zone but also be uncomfortable and like learn from those around you yeah i

Speaker 0 | 52:50.282

Well, and the good thing is that you have a lot of tools at your disposal now. AI is a great way to ask questions and get some type of answers. It’s fallible. It won’t tell you the exact truth all the time. It’ll make stuff up. But it will help you kind of get somewhere and help you start that so you can ask it questions and get a good… you know healthy start um and stuff um so that’s something that you know wasn’t available uh back in the day right two years ago now right right completely available now to your disposal so we take advantage of that um so there’s some things to help you along along the way um and you and you’re living in a great area of communication so um you can always reach out uh to folks on uh you know sitting on all sorts of platforms and ask questions and they’ll answer them they’ll answer them and it’s just it’s amazing how how much people want to you know give back and and and give that type of information what not yeah yeah yeah help other people so when when you so they you have an interesting perspective because uh you know being in a mode which i wish I almost wish I could go back again and be in this mode because it’s, it’s, there’s so much, it’s so exciting. There’s so much to learn. And, uh, uh, but you’ve got a lot headed your way. uh you know that um you know that uh um is going to be hitting and if i if i had been an it manager at the time in which now we had other challenges but the but the challenges that are hitting uh right now are so so hard you’ve got you know uh ai which could help you but also can hurt you yes for sure for sure you’ve got um you know challenges with um uh business uh economics and stuff right now uh you know which is just wildly uh um all sorts of all over the place um uh uh the healthcare industry in itself is um is a really really tough industry at the moment yes yes see and i i could keep going there’s tons of stuff what are you seeing out there um and what is your thought when you see these things and, you know, and how you’re going to conquer some of these things coming up?

Speaker 1 | 55:30.470

Yeah, I think I’m seeing more so it’s if it can be systems are very hard to upgrade. If you’re not building on the latest, I guess, tech, not technology out there, but the latest systems and architecture out there. Like if you were to go into a business where their systems and their servers and their file, you know, servers were designed. 10 years ago, it is going to be tough to get up to speed on that kind of stuff. If you already have all these systems in place, I’m seeing there’s a big gap in having everything on-premise. Now, I don’t think on-premise is bad, but there’s a big difference in having everything on-premise and the policies you have to follow and the tax you’re susceptible to and having like a 100% cloud infrastructure. Now, it’s not possible for everyone, you know, given the scope of their business, how much they want to spend, list goes on. But having everything in the cloud, I have not seen very many points of failure as far as security goes. Because if Microsoft’s going down, then our stuff’s going down. But other than that, how will our stuff go down, you know? So that’s kind of something I’ve been seeing for sure.

Speaker 0 | 56:50.277

It’s a good point. you get the shared security model when you go up to the cloud, right? Be it Azure or AWS, you get their protection and their documentation, right? Oh,

Speaker 1 | 57:05.585

yeah. Their documentation. Their BAA. They signed it.

Speaker 0 | 57:10.607

You should turn around and ask Microsoft. Be like, hey, listen, I have your documentation on your security and how you… See if your rep will give you the internal documentation. right i want to ask him to see what he said so but no i’m but i know good point though um you you have this uh um the cloud is a good way to migrate the stuff up i think i would counter to say getting stuff up in the cloud the the main problem with it is it’s too accessible right yeah and now from a health care standpoint you’re like okay but now i gotta prevent uh you know some someone over here that is accessing it from a but they’re like house on their cell phone right you know and it could possibly get through it and you know you have mentioned some of those uh those control being mdm and mobile app management as well um right it’s funny it’s called mobile device at this point it’s like everywhere right it’s just it’s the app management and uh device management right because it’s not really uh yeah Everyone can access anything from anywhere.

Speaker 1 | 58:21.799

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I think that’s one definitely that we’ve seen. As you move to the cloud, the work-from-home incentive becomes pretty high. There’s not as much you can do with that. Obviously, working from home becomes the same as working at work. If everything’s in the cloud, it’s basically the same. Besides those face-to-face interactions you have with people, but you can say, oh, I’ll just Teams call. you know i’ll just teams call in so i think some of the relationships that you do have at work you can start to lose those if you move to cloud because you’re going to be working you have the ability to work from anywhere really in

Speaker 0 | 59:05.538

some in some aspect interesting so this is uh this is an interesting one for me because i don’t i’m not sure we’ve recovered this but yeah um so what you’re saying is uh There is a possible culture problem that may arise from a migration, a full migration to the cloud that. allows for folks to work from anywhere uh pretty easily um and uh and that that may actually cause a cultural shift and loss of kind of earlier what we were talking about which is making those connections and that trust and building that trust and everything that’s

Speaker 1 | 59:49.112

a really good point that’s a really good point yeah that’s something that we’ve kind of seen you know like just just dealing with that i mean Like you said, you might have a few friends in the office or just people that, you know, talk about random stuff, everything from football to what your kids are doing, yada, yada, yada. And then you’re moving. People are moving to home. They’re no longer having even two conversations a day. I mean, they’re not interacting with people. So it can cause. But some people like that. You know, some people like that sort of cultural aspect of it being in the hybrid setting. They work better from home. So I think it’s balancing it out. There may be people that also don’t know what they like, and they may think they want to go home, but then they may be caught in this sort of place that they’re not used to. We’re in uncharted territory, so to speak, in a lot of that.

Speaker 0 | 60:45.401

It’s interesting. How much do you value those in-person connections versus the… versus the remote,

Speaker 1 | 60:57.616

right? Yeah. I mean, I’m the type of person where I’ve always like me in the part-time, we shared office for a while. So we were talking every day, you know, and I think, I don’t know, it’s very, you can be very motivated if you have the right people around you, you know, if y’all are working on projects together and you can kind of just bounce ideas off of each other in that way, I feel like that can really, but it can be good or bad. because you’re at liberty of who you’re around. You know, if you have negativity around you, it’s going to influence you to be more negative. But if you have positivity around and you have people that push you, people that say, Hey, what are you working on? Hey, let me see that. Hey, this, this, and that you’re going to run into, uh, you’re going to be able to continue to grow and it’ll be almost, you know, not fun, but it’ll be, it’ll be enjoyable in that sense. I feel like.

Speaker 0 | 61:49.249

I think that, I think you said that correctly. I think, uh, you know, it’s a good point because it’s a tool regardless, you know, in the office and being able to communicate face to face is a tool, but if it’s used incorrectly, right. Then, you know, it’s just as bad. Right. So there’s a, there’s an opportunity there, but it needs to be done the right way. And actually I think based on that logic, you’d go the other way around, right. Because I think you mentioned it already. There’s some people that thrive in the work from. uh remote work so any other headphones now they’re just in zone i didn’t i didn’t like it i uh i don’t working from uh from i get so distracted i got so distracted i could not say there’s were never as big yeah no monitors were never on yeah it was always something to do but yeah it no it was uh i always found it uh um much easier to work uh um in the office

Speaker 1 | 62:50.012

and uh and form those connections and stuff like that but again communication is big too like you’re talking about forming those relationships i feel like some of that is being not lost but it’s undervalued a little bit now being able to form those relationships and talk to people and sort of have a business

Speaker 0 | 63:07.143

work with them as in a business objective you know for sure so i i had um um i sometimes have the chance to speak with um uh college students as they exit college uh whereas they’re basically getting done and getting close to exiting college and they always ask me the question and so by the way they’re all getting security degrees oh yeah everyone is getting a security degree uh you know it’s mas yeah i’m scared all my guys cyber security everyone’s good yeah and i guarantee we’re still not going to have enough um yeah and so um they always ask me well how do you know i want to become a uh you know uh like a security analyst right out the gate you know a security person right out the gate and i always kind of tell them i’m like well that’s getting pretty difficult because you don’t have the experience uh uh to be able to apply that security knowledge just yet um you know you almost got to come out a bit and and work in some other roles uh support roles first before you can kind of get the lay of the land um and then know how to really apply that security uh um you know uh all those security pieces to IT, right? You got to learn IT first. And, you know, based on your experience on that, you know, what’s it, what, oh, math.

Speaker 1 | 64:29.692

Yeah. Four years or so. Five years. Yeah. I graduated in 2017. So actually I started, I started there and I was trying to play, you know, everyone’s going to play pro sports. So I was going to play pro sports, but that didn’t end up working out. So I started.

Speaker 0 | 64:48.041

Seven years because we’re coming up in 2024.

Speaker 1 | 64:51.403

Oh man, that’s crazy.

Speaker 0 | 64:52.724

It’s up correctly. It adds up a lot, right? So being at seven years now, and having that under your belt. Um, and, and, and, and not being too far removed from college, what do you, uh, you know, when, when you see folks just coming out of college, right. Do you agree with that assessment or do you have a different assessment on how they should come out of college and apply their degrees?

Speaker 1 | 65:18.077

I think, and we were talking about this at a recent, um, you know, MIS sort of like class, um, you have to, your expectations have to be realistic. And you have to gain some knowledge in the industry, like you’re saying, because you have to look and see who you’re competing against, really. When it comes down to it, you have to think about what you want in three years. Where do you want to be? If you want to be a security analyst, I bet you could do it, but you would have to start getting certifications. You would have to go above and beyond going to your eight to five job every day. or having your internship. Just because you have an internship doesn’t mean you’re going to get a security analyst job. I think my first job was like $14 an hour. So starting there right out of college, I was like, I’m making $14 an hour. I went to school. This is not right. Something’s wrong. But you have to start somewhere. And once you do start, you can definitely grow in that.

Speaker 2 | 66:21.190

Hey guys, this is Phil Howard, founder of Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I just want to take a few minutes to address something. It has become fairly apparent, I’m sure all of you will agree over the years, that slow vendor response, vendor response times, vendors in general, the average is mediocre. Support is mediocre. Mediocrity is the name of the game. Not only is this a risk to your network security, because I’ve seen vendors on numerous occasions share sensitive information, but there’s… There’s… Also a direct correlation to your budget and your company’s bottom line. Not to mention the sales reps that are trying to sell you and your CEO and your CFO on a daily basis. That causes a whole nother realm of problems that we don’t have time to address. Our back office program at Dissecting Popular IT Nerds, we’ve put together specifically for IT leadership, and it’s on a mission to eliminate this mediocrity. And the best part is that we’re doing this. in a way that will not cost your IT department a dime. So if you’d like us to help you out, get better pricing, better support, and jump on pressing issues in minutes, not days, then contact us now so we can get on a call with you and conduct a value discovery session where we find out what you have, why you have it, and where you want to go and how we can improve your life, your IT department, and your company’s bottom line. What you’re going to end up with is, number one, just faster support from partners who care about your organization’s uptime and bottom line. And because you’re going to be able to access our 1.2 billion in combined buying power, you’ll be able to benefit significantly from historical data. And on top of that, you’ll also benefit from the skills of hundreds of on-demand experts that we have working behind the scenes that are all attached to our back office support program. So if you’d like, again, none of this is… ever going to cost you a dime. At the very least, it’s going to open your eyes to what’s possible. Let our back office team provide you the high-touch solutions and support that your IT team deserves so that you can stop calling 1-800-GOLD-POUND-STAND for support. Now, if you’re wondering, what does this apply to? This applies to your ISPs, your telecom providers, all your application providers, whether you’re a Microsoft shop, or a Google shop, what you might be paying for AWS, even Azure, co-location space, any of those vendors that you’re paying a monthly bill to, we can help you with.

Speaker 0 | 69:04.388

Hey,

Speaker 2 | 69:04.788

it’s Greg, the Frenchman secretly managing the podcast behind the curtain. To request your one-on-one call, contact us at internet at popularit.net. And remember,

Speaker 1 | 69:14.552

it will never cost you a dime.

Speaker 0 | 69:17.093

We’re going to go to our fun little segment, IT crystal ball, which is the future of IT. But, and I was kind of thinking in here, like, I almost want to. I’m really interested in your kind of vision of this future. And sometimes I go, give me the future IT in healthcare. Give me the future IT in this. And I actually am going to just open this up and make it incredibly vague for you. Oh, yeah. Because.

Speaker 1 | 69:47.558

Sounds good.

Speaker 0 | 69:48.999

And the reason why is because you have such an interesting perspective. And I don’t need the, by the way, I don’t need the history. I don’t need like the, the, you know, future of soccer. So you don’t have to go into that.

Speaker 1 | 70:02.428

Okay.

Speaker 0 | 70:05.029

Soccer, they put shields up for everybody in their head. So they get hit in the face. Right. No, for sure. No, but I want to keep it. I want to keep it vague because I want to hear authentically from somebody who’s got. enough experience that they’re in in the thick of it right now right uh but not so much experience that they uh um you know that they’ve you know kind of been through it too much right oh yeah to know what you’re seeing the future look like you know uh and i’m gonna open up floor you can go explain to the audience all right where you see uh it going in the next five years you

Speaker 1 | 70:51.110

I’m going to see, I think there’s going to be a discrepancy in like computer support jobs. There’s going to be a gap. There’s going to be sort of like, as far as, you know, wage goes, as far as knowledge goes, because coming up in the MIS, when you come out of college, you don’t know anything really, you know, you don’t know anything that’s going to applicably, you know, be a part of a healthcare company or an accounting company or wherever you go. So you’re going to have to, you’re going to have jobs that are comfortable, you know, because the systems are being more advanced. You know, you’re going to have jobs that are more comfortable, but you’re also going to have jobs that are really in depth in certain things, if that makes sense. So you’re going to have to jump, per se, to the higher tier jobs in ways such as, you know, like you said, relationships. I think relationships is going to be big. As you go to hybrid, there’s going to, the lack of relationships is going to cause people to not be as pushed as they could be for sure. So that’s just kind of some of the stuff, you know, and that’s just, that’s just what I think, you know, I never know what’s going to happen, but just seeing some of those, the dynamic has changed ever since COVID, you know, COVID was a big, okay, people see that we can work from home and actually our jobs are exact, exactly the same. But what are the long-term effects of that? The short-term effects are nothing’s changed, but the long-term effects are people are not going to push themselves as much when they’re at home.

Speaker 0 | 72:33.643

Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Do you think that being in the office gives you an advantage over not being in the office when it comes to leadership?

Speaker 1 | 72:46.129

When it comes to leadership, I would say… It gives you an advantage, yes, I would say, because people really want to see your face and they want to see, you know, they want to see you. I think it but also I think it really comes down to trust. I think you can build the trust better when you’re in the office, you know, around people. I think you can. There’s not going to be as much miscommunication because when you’re emailing or if you’re on voice calls. You can sometimes take something the wrong way and then you can kind of think about it a lot, you know, think about it. So I feel like from that perspective, it’s not going to be and it’s just in an IT role, especially because, like you said, you have to communicate with the other departments and the people around you. That’s going to be a lot easier, in my opinion, if if you were at the office.

Speaker 0 | 73:37.992

So there is a so there is a difference there. So, you know, being in the office might give you that advantage. if you want to progress and move into leadership and progress your growth a bit. That might be a defining factor and it may not be fair, right? But it may be the reality based on, I guess what you’re saying, which is the trust factor and your ability to create relationships.

Speaker 1 | 74:09.577

Yeah, more of the developing leader type. I still have so much to learn. I feel like I can learn. those types of things a lot easier, you know, sitting in office with the mentor or talking to him every day versus. Now, if you get up there, you know, if you get to the higher ups, I don’t really think there’d be an advantage of being here or not. They’re going to make the big decisions based on the metrics a lot of the times, you know. So it kind of fades out. But I say like for developing purposes, I think it could be beneficial for sure.

Speaker 0 | 74:40.059

So what is the, you know, leadership going to look like in the future, five years from now, IT leadership? What’s it going to look like?

Speaker 1 | 74:50.824

I think the IT leadership is going to be, you know, it’s going to take a, it’s not going to take a backseat, but it’s going to be more so what the job is going to be what you make it. So it’s going to be like, if I wanted to be a leader here, would I manage and coordinate with the people below me or would I go above and beyond and find things that are going to improve our systems, basically. I think before it’s been like, we need computers, we need them to turn on, we need to get on this application. Well, now it’s how can we use technology to improve our business processes? Like that’s a whole other ballgame for sure.

Speaker 0 | 75:30.932

So you’re entering into a whole nother world at that point, right? Which now we talk about a little bit of the technology enablement here. And this is where all the fun little things that are happening now start to creep in, right? Because Right now, we’re on the cusp of, you know, starting to kind of explore a lot of these new technologies and where they’re going to be taking us and how they’re going to be making our jobs a little bit more challenging as well. So five years from now, we’re, you know, and I’m sure there’ll be new tools, right? But five years from now, we can probably expect that those tools are going to be more implemented. more integrated into what we got going on?

Speaker 1 | 76:20.201

I would say they would. I would say really you can see it’s going to be more so managing those systems than basically working the systems, if that makes sense. Instead of working an Excel sheet, it’s going to be someone saying, hey, how can I format my script? Or how can I work this into a way that’s going to improve the process? If that makes sense.

Speaker 0 | 76:47.080

Yeah, it does. And so, um, so those skills of being able to understand like logic and, uh, being able to, uh, work through, you know, concepts and stuff like that, you know, they always take it whenever they have to have a whole bunch of folks, uh, program, right. They always find a way to put a, put a, you know, uh, um, a GUI in front of it to make it easier to, to program, but the logic is still there. Like you still have to understand the logic piece, right? Yeah. So It sounds like what you’re talking to me about is, you know, you’re going to have to have a whole bunch of folks that understand logically how these systems are supposed to work and interconnect. Right.

Speaker 1 | 77:27.899

Mm hmm. I think now, you know, it’s a lot like it’s almost a requirement to know how to work a computer in the group, in the fact of basic functionality. I mean, I would say there’s such a high amount of people that are sitting at a desk in front of a computer, whether they’re working Outlook. Excel, you know, compliance. If you know, if you learn how to work those systems really well, you could have your job be a piece of cake, really, you know, instead of filtering through a hundred emails. What if you have all these folders for these emails and you’re only seeing the important ones and those important ones are flowing through a Microsoft flow? Like you’re just getting into a lot of productivity increase that you could have.

Speaker 0 | 78:13.412

I think you’re right. And I actually think that that analogy that you’re using applied to business makes complete sense too, right? Essentially, why sit there and sift through all this stuff manually and stuff like that when you can set up rules and only show me the things that I really need to see? So future really is trying to get that information. This kind of mirrors something I had on another podcast as well, which was talking about. The future being not about collecting the data and having it there. And it’s really about now trying to do stuff with that data.

Speaker 1 | 78:52.047

Yeah. Yeah. It’s going from like a data store to like a flow. It’s like a flow of data more so. Like it’s just, it’s always dynamic, always changing. Reports are being built off, you know, micropower BI. It’s basically a live report. You know what I mean? It’s going from a chart to something that’s live and changing all the time.

Speaker 0 | 79:12.532

And if you could only do that with documentation. Yeah, I know. So much easier, right?

Speaker 1 | 79:17.773

I’m going to be doing that tomorrow. Like, oh, remember what you told me. I’m going to think about Microsoft and just know I can never get there.

Speaker 0 | 79:27.699

Nerds, I’m Michael Moore. I was host of this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. And I’ve been here with Christian Okkeke, IT Manager at Healing Hands Healthcare. Christian, so good to have you on. And what a great perspective you’ve given us.

Speaker 1 | 79:42.848

you’ve brought today and i really appreciate you coming on and and sharing everything oh yes thank you so much for the inside advice and uh just talk for sure thank you so much have a good one