Author Archives: Megan Carnes

Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive, sits down with Dave to talk about how to defend against social engineering attacks in banking. Dave starts us off this week with a story about Amazon opening up its selling market to Pakistani residents, and what consequences that led to for the organization’s business. Joe’s story follows a scam targeting soldiers in the Army. The Army warns against unknown individuals purporting to be noncommissioned officers that are calling said soldiers and asking them for money to fix a “pay problem” and, if questioned, threatening them with a punishment. Our catch of the day comes from listener Manie who writes in about a scam found when trying to download a HDRI (High Dynamic Range Image). The scam involves a fake ad asking for people’s cell phone numbers as soon as they click on a button that reads “download here”. Manie shares how after she clicked the ad, she realized the mistake and immediately researched more before proceeding further.

Meanwhile, there have been concerns around a skills shortage in IT. Rusty King, CTO of the European division of managed services company Thrive, said this has made companies eager to retain their existing IT staff.

King said this desire to retain staff is also linked to the ongoing cost-of-living and energy pricing crisis.

“Match this up with home or hybrid working practices in place from the pandemic and the introduction of a younger workforce with different desires and collaboration practices, we will see far more ingenious flexible working patterns and locations,” King said.

King added that this could lead to more professional services-as-a-service opportunities for managed service providers (MSPs), in order to provide “some stability in case of IT team losses”.

Welcome back to another installment of our “Thrive Spotlight” blog series.

Our featured Thrive employee is John Padron, Solutions Architect at Thrive. John works closely with the sales team on solving business issues for clients and prospects with Thrive’s deep NextGen technology portfolio.

Security has always been in John’s blood. He spent years as a police officer before entering the technology world. While at Thrive, he is a sought-out Information Security expert for top Florida law enforcement agencies.

John lives in Lakeland, Florida, and enjoys traveling, sampling new cuisine on the weekends and catching the latest Sci-Fi flick.

Hi John! Can you tell us about your background and how you came to Thrive?

I joined Thrive through the acquisition of DSM Technology Consultants in June 2022. I was with DSM for almost ten years, initially starting as a Systems Engineer on the Professional Services team and transitioned to Solution Architect at the end of 2018. Before DSM, I was a System Analyst and Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Local Agency Security Officer (LASO) for the City of Key West and mainly focused on supporting the Police Department. I am also a former Police Officer, having served seven years with the city.

Where did you go to school or get training?

I attended the University of West Florida in Pensacola. I also interned with BellSouth while still in high school. Most of my training was on the job and through self-education. I earned several IT certifications in PC Support, Server Administration, Virtualization, Networking, Security and Cloud Computing.

What do you most enjoy about working for Thrive?

Although we are currently going through our integration with Thrive, the company provides a solid foundation with an encouraging environment for employees to learn, grow and succeed. Everyone has been so helpful and supportive at Thrive.

Any recent exciting projects at Thrive that you can tell us about?

I’m proud of a project we recently did with the Florida Department of Highway Safety. I assisted with the initial hardware deployment and set-up of the environment. It was rewarding to implement a solution that I helped design. We also recently worked on a significant Disaster Recovery project for a South Florida city. Our team performed a three-day DR assessment, and we designed, implemented, and strategized a comprehensive roadmap that will begin soon. City officials are thrilled with Thrive’s elegant technical solution that exceeded requirements while staying under budget!

Are you interested in learning more about Thrive? Click here!

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for the latest news, and continue checking our blog for more in our “Thrive Employee Spotlight” series. Until next time…

Today, security threats outnumber the resources available internally in most organizations to mitigate and manage them. While an array of security softwares exists to create layers of protection over various assets, attackers aim directly for the gaps in that mesh when trying to gain access to valuable data.

The notion is simple; organizations that lack sufficient data security are the most likely to be targeted and breached. Implementing intrusion detection systems (IDS) can increase awareness of the threats a business faces, but do the internal resources exist to quash that danger and prevent it from happening again?

DOWNLOAD our white paper today!

End-users are the top cybersecurity threat in 2023, says Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive:

Business Email Compromise (BEC) will continue to be a top attack method from cyberattackers and the easiest way into an organization. With the increase in zero-day attacks, people are going to be looking at reducing their externally available footprint. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) will be ubiquitous, and nothing should be externally available without it.

Making cybersecurity predictions is easy (“Cybercriminals will become more inventive”). Making actionable ones for IT security leaders is much harder.

“Business Email Compromise (BEC) will continue to be a top attack method from cyber attackers and the easiest way into an organization. With the increase in zero-day attacks, people are going to be looking at reducing their externally available footprint. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) will be ubiquitous, and nothing should be externally available without it,” explains Gibbons.

While data centers are not immune to rising costs, Rusty King, CTO of the European Division of Thrive, tells TechRadar Pro that they often provide greater energy efficiency, superior backup systems, and around-the-clock support, while sharing just how the energy crisis will affect businesses that manage their own infrastructure.

Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive, cautions organizations to be more cognizant of where their data lives, no matter what industry they are in.

Financial institutions, law firms, health care providers, and other companies that deal with sensitive customer data should already understand that.

But even for those companies that aren’t typically managing lots of data, it’s crucial to know where your data lives and how to protect it, Gibbons said. Otherwise, the consequences could be grim.

“MFA will be ubiquitous and nothing should be externally available without it,” said Chip Gibbons, CISO at Thrive, a provider of next-gen managed services.