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A Conversation with a 7 year old.

Dad, can you tell me what you do for work? I want to learn.

Suburban House

How is our computer safe?

Imagine our computer was our home. How do we protect our home? 

  • Door & Window locks

  • Deadbolt and Camera Doorbell

  • Privacy Fence

  • Home security and monitoring to let someone know we are in trouble

But computers don't have doors or windows dad...

You're right! but they are protected in a similar way, you see...​ 

Door & Window locks are like windows defender, it's great to keep people from walking in but if someone really wanted to get into the home they could.

 

So, we install deadbolts, doorbell camera, and privacy fence, these are like anti-virus and endpoint firewalls for your computer. Helps us keep unwanted guests from looking or getting into our home. 

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Even with all these things protecting us, if someone wanted to break in, they could. That's why we have a home security system. We call this Endpoint Detection & Response or EDR for short. It lets someone know the computer is in trouble and needs help! My team and I are the ones that come and help.

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Suburb Neighborhood
Suburban Homes

Is that all you do?

Well, no... You see our streets, our neighbors, and those businesses down the street? These things make up a community. Our neighbors do their part by having the same protections for their home as we do ours. 

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What about the streets? How do we keep them safe? 

 

We hire police officers or start a neighborhood watch. Some communities have gates, security and walls around them to keep them safe.

What does all that have to do with computers?

Just like our neighborhood has multiple businesses, houses, and streets. Our networks are made of multiple servers, computers, routers, and switches. 

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We protect our computers with EDR, but how do we protect the network? 

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When the traffic sign (Router) sends someone into our community we stop them at a security checkpoint (Security Gateway). No one comes in without and invitation and we have large fences around the community to keep intruders out (Firewall). 

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These are wonderful things to have but what happens when someone in the neighborhood invites someone in thinking they're a new neighbor or the fence breaks down because there's so much upkeep and someone sneaks in. 

 

We have police or security to get them out and keep us safe. In cybersecurity we call this Managed Detection & Response or MDR 

Is there any other way to keep people safe?

Yes, a proactive approach to finding holes in the fences, making sure the community isn't inviting strangers, and testing everyone's locks, cameras and fences in our neighborhood

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​We call this "Penetration Testing" and "Vulnerability Scanning" we pretend to be the bad guys to make sure everyone responds how they should. Just like you practice fire drills at school, now go to bed.

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