Ep 148-149, July 2022:

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Today on Wisconsin veterans forward. Boy, it sure has been a heck of a tech month. We have talked about some really interesting topics this month, man, alive talked about e-sports ecosystem opportunities for veterans and military family members, which was really cool. We've talked about cyber security compliance and how that is becoming a facet of landing high profile, big money do OD and state level government contracts at federal and state level contracts and DOD contracts like crazy stuff, really informative stuff. I've learned a lot. That's something I love about this job. I get to ask smart people questions about things that they do, and I get to learn cool stuff and talk to cool people. And today it's gonna be no exception. Brian sevener is a friend of ours has been a friend of our organization for a long, long, long, long time.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

He's the founder of valor tech. We can get into all that stuff. And, and we are overarchingly today talking about how things that are happening around the world and in particular, the war in Ukraine, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that conflict there, how that is impacting the cybersecurity world. And this is a guy veteran I might add, who is in the trenches, doing this, defending us and businesses against cybersecurity threats on the daily. He has boots on the ground, frontline defender, and he's helping other people shore up their defenses as well. This guy knows this stuff, but before we get into that, just briefly, I really want to touch on his entrepreneurial journey. Cuz as a businessman, Brian's been absolutely killing it out there. I feel like I haven't talked to him in like a year and a half just cuz he's been so darn busy, which a good problem to have when you're an entrepreneur.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

I mean busy, is it not like busy buddy busy, but like, like he's got business. So I wanna talk about his journey for a bit, cause that's, that's gonna be very, I think, informational and inspiring, but also let's, we'll, we'll, we'll kind of snake it on into the state of his world right now. And the things that we may not think have a correlation that are impacting our world from a tech and a cybersecurity standpoint and things that we need to be aware of as consumers, as business owners, as professionals, we're gonna bring the thunder here as we close out tech month with some pretty valuable information looking forward to getting into it right after this, you are listening to Wisconsin veterans forward. Wisconsin's premier audio resource for veterans, military families, veteran owned and veteran friendly businesses. Wisconsin veterans forward is brought to you by the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce at wiveteranschamber.org.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

I still think hands down. My favorite part of that video is the right hand side where our president and CEO Saul Newton is, is petting a Lama at a that. And that's not an unrelated thing for those of you that don't know it was last summer already. We were traveling throughout the state visiting business owners who are members of the chamber. And one of them is frost, farm alpacas in the middle of smack dab in the of Wisconsin. And we, we visited and we stopped in and we, we bought a whole bunch of cool alpacas stuff from their farm store and we got to meet the alpacas. It was awesome, man. See, and that's what we do. You know, we are, we are housed. We are headquartered in Milwaukee, but we serve the whole state and not just metropolitan areas. Yeah, we serve Milwaukee course.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

That's where we started. We serve Madison in a hands on face to face boots on the ground capacity, green bay, as far as O Claire, we, we we've gone as far north and east as Altoona and we're continuing to lay out our, our plans and groundwork work to pound the PA. So we can provide that face to face service in addition to remote, you know, support throughout the state. But I digress. I'm a fan of the chamber. I gotta throw that out there. Ladies and gentlemen, very happy to introduce our good friend, Brian Sevener What's up, dude.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

How's it going? Did how you been

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Good? Was that like, was, was, was that an accurate intro? Was it, did it get you pumped up? Was it the video? Was it the alpaca part of the video? Talk to me?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Well, it was kind of funny when, when I saw, I saw that little snippet in that and I was thinking the same thing, like that's SA petting an alpaca.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

It is

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and I was actually thinking it should have been a goat

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

It a goat, because so is, so is,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Cause you could say that he is the goat, then

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

He is the greatest of all time and yeah, man. So, so I, I wanna dive right in. Cause I feel like there's a lot of stuff to talk about. You are currently the founder CEO, the head M F I C in charge of valor tech.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Yes. And am, how did you and I am also a college professor at Lakeland university.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Oh, how do you like that? Probably talking about cyber security stuff.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Yeah. I, I do a, I run the majority of that cyber security program that's being built up there. So it standing

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

It's pretty broad. So what brought you there connect the dots for us? So you were a service member, did you do it and tech stuff and cyber defense and okay. So how did you get from, from, from there to here?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

You know, it's kind of weird, like the it's an interesting journey. I, I grew up in a very unique household. My dad was an electrical engineer and I'm a, I'm a child of the eighties and, and nineties. And so we were talking very early, you know, computers right long before they were even networked per se. At least networked in, you know, as we know it right now, but <laugh> so I grew up, I grew up as a five, you know, both five give or take, I was, you know, playing games on like an old I wanna say like an old Commodor 64 and then, you know, my first like real PC was an Intel 3 86. So we're talking very, very old.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

I had a 2 86 before that just, you know,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Nice. And this is back in the day when you could just upgrade the PC to a 4 86 and you're like, wow, so

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Much power. Oh man. Yeah, it was groundbreaking <laugh> but literally groundbreaking cuz the PC weighed 475 pounds.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Yeah. I mean you needed a, you needed a forklift to move it. Right. <laugh> but but on top of that grew up in, on a small farm outside of Sheboygan. But with a dad that was the electrical engineer, so I got kind of this and he was a, a unique individual as well. He was also a tool and dye maker. So I had this upbringing in tech tool and dye making, so manufacturing and, and it was an active tool and dye shop and farming. So I, I got this wide breadth of exposure to different things and early on, I just, you know, I, I found an interest in, in, in tech in one way, shape or form did a typical high school stuff. I, I was not some, a student. I was a, B and C student getting in trouble, doing things that you do in, in, in the back 40 with a bottle Jameson or Jack Daniels that you smuggled from your dad's cabinet.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

You know, why, why, why do I, I, I totally believe that <laugh>, I, I totally believe that,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

You know, you get done with football on Friday and you know, let's go hit the back 40 and throw up a bonfire. Right. So mm-hmm <affirmative>, that was my upbringing. It wasn't anything spectacular. But it was a lot of fun. And then fast forward to about 2003 I lost my dad to a to a heart attack UN unexpectedly and I, I was struggling at the time I was already in the military. I was on active duty. I really wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do in life, but that kind of cab halted me into kind of the tech area. Interesting little tidbit is this is kind of at the earlyish stages of E cycling and eBay was coming up. And, you know, I remember going on eBay and seeing a bunch of like old used hardware for sale.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

And I was like, oh, pennies. I got curious. And I decided that, you know what, this is kind of the whole beginning of like I'll tie into the entrepreneurism here in a second. I got into that and I started buying for a penny selling for a dollar. So I would get hardware in, flip it for a dollar and I was making some pretty good money. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> the real entrepreneurism kind of started even earlier back kind of going back to when I was about five, my dad used to make these little circuit boards mm-hmm <affirmative> and I was five or six give or take. And I used to solder those circuit boards by hand. I used to get a dollar aboard. So by the time I was, I wanna say seven, I had about $700 in the bank already. Nice. So the entrepreneurism is always there. So fast forward again, you know, early two thousands, I'm in the military active duty. I thoroughly tick off a couple of people. I shouldn't have ticked off because I had shipments of computers coming in the base. When, you know, here I am a little, you know, mosquitoe weighing private and doing really

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Stupid. They probably thought that looked a little bit suspicious. I'm guessing just a tad,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

The CSM that caught me that wasn't real thrilled with me, but I lived through all that and got, you know, so fast forward I did my time did my, my time I got off of active duty went national guard.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So just to clarify, did your time, as in you completed your tenure with the military, not did your time, as in you went to jail for the computer parts

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Thing <laugh> no. No. Okay. I avoided jail

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Thankfully avoided prison and jail time to this point, I'm kind hoping to keep that trend going <laugh> but the so I did my time in this service got out active duty, got out, went national guard. And that's kind of really where I started my career. I had gotten my bachelor's degree in information systems management on, when I was active duty. I got got out. It wasn't until about 2014 where I started my ma one, my master's degrees. I got my master, just my a master's in finance. Then I went on to finish a master's in accounting and then a master's in their national business. Why I picked three. Why not?

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Three master's degrees.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Yeah.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Hmm,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Good for you. And then, and now top it off, I'm also a PhD student at Capella university,

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

A doctor. I love it.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

I, I hate labels like that. <Laugh> so much, but you know, so I, I I've, I've just always kind of liked it. I, I was working in it. I was an infrastructure engineer for another local, bigger, you know, it firm they're not, I, they, yeah, they got bought out. They're no longer around, but cut my teeth in there for till about 2016, give or take and, you know, that's kind of right where, you know, the ransomwares and whatnot, we're starting to kind of pick up pick up some steam. And I just saw that as kind of being the future for, for security with, with our clients. And I completely kind of changed the approach that we were doing roll a whole business plan to it. And when I presented it to the management, they basically told me, you don't know what you're talking about. Sit down to just do your job. Really kind of a, kind of a really bad thing to say to a guy like me. So started, you know, creating some waves a little bit because I was pretty confident in what I, you know, was putting together. HR eventually told me to stop it or they were gonna take action. Well, they took action and fired me. And I started valor tech about, I don't know, three months later.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Okay.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Yeah. And you've

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Been,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

It's just

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Snowballing ever since

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

It it's TA it took a couple years. It was not an easy road. It, I mean, I did this. It never is. Yeah, I did. I didn't take any kind of investment money. I used what money I had in savings. Again, I, I bootstrapped this to the Y degree mm-hmm <affirmative> and there are days where, you know, I was contemplating just, you know, what I was going to do, how I was going to make the bills perseverance if I, if I didn't have the military background and just that, like, get done, kind of added. Can I swear in here? Keep it, keep it mild. All right.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Yeah. <laugh>

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Keep it.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Well, you did. And there's nothing we can do about it. So we'll just, well,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

I won't go as far. I won't go full infantry grunt

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

It's okay. I mean, we, we check the button on YouTube that says, this is not for kids,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Probably safe when you have a,

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

We do that just cause like we, this would this pop up on the YouTube kids' app and a kid would be like, oh, I wanna learn about cybersecurity as it pertains to world events. Probably not. So we just save everybody the trouble and we click no, not for kids. So you're probably okay.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

It let me know. <Laugh>

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

I'm curious. You you're fine.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

But so, you know, perseverance, I mean, you, you had to be, you had to persevere, there was no other way around it. And went through a lot of trying times. We really got our, it took about three years for us to really get our footing. And it was one phone call, one phone call when I was at my lowest mm-hmm <affirmative> that changed everything it was. And it was just, I normally don't pick up my phone if it's after hours. I'm just, especially when it's late after hours, right. Especially numbers. I'm not really familiar with mm-hmm <affirmative> I just so happen to pick up this phone call and it, we, it launched valor into that was just one stepping stone of many that launched us to where we are today and, and we're doing very well. We've seen very significant growth. We've hit triple digit growth in, in many, many years now. We're, we're doing really

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Well. You're doing though, just to clarify for people who aren't familiar with that it's cyber security support for, for business, right?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Yeah. That's one aspect of what we do. We're we initially started out is just your typical MSP where we're just doing and providing match services match your desktop support and stuff. But we really kind of we took a different approach to that and we really layer on and a, a MSSP approach to our MSP program. So everything we do is gear towards a, a security focused approach. You know, you can see you want desktop support. Well, that's great, but we are gonna be doing a deep dive into what technologies you're using because we are

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

We really do stay on top of technology a lot more than what your average, you know, your average it expert does. That's part of our, part of our organization. And so as we take that, that security first approach and apply that to our clients and prospective clients, we really do start showcasing a lot of what the gaps are. One of the things we kind of really do well, is that because not one, you know, one size doesn't fit all. We really have to do a, a deep dive into what you actually do as a company, how you operate, what technologies you currently utilize to, you know, generate your, your revenue because all of those have different security different secur security issues that are associated with them. And understanding that really helps us cater and, and adjust our approach to your infrastructure.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So, so we, I mentioned at the beginning that we were gonna be talking about, you know, the defense and the cybersecurity angle of what you do. And obviously you have a very deep knowledge and understanding you mentioned being continuously aware of changing trends in cybersecurity is, is really, I mean, that's the name of the game it's always changing because the aggressors and the people who are attacking are always trying to find new ways and new vulnerabilities and new ways to new weaknesses to exploit. And but there are certain current events that may seem far removed from cyber security that aren't, and this is something we talked about on the front end before we went live. But in particular, the war in Ukraine right now, Russia and Ukraine, that conflict is having an impact in your ecosystem. And I, I can't being a novice, I don't know what I'm talking about. I can't, for the life of me link up the relationship between cyber security defense for a small business in Wisconsin and the war in Ukraine. But from what I understand, from what you've said, that those global issues reverberate in the cybersecurity world, can you connect those dots for us?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Well, it it's, we live in a very highly connected world. You can't cross the street without having the ability to access something across the globe, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> because of that connectivity, that, that basically means that anybody can get access to anything from anywhere. I don't need to be sitting next to you to start trying to get access to your bank account, or, you know, trying to turn off the lights on your Google smart home. You know, that that's, well, we enjoy the connectivity that also allows nefarious actors to attempt to gain access to

Anybody that's been in business or has done business or even works even remotely, you know, has any kind of remote interest in this space will understand that that your information is not important to the criminal. It's important to you and they don't care what's in there. They just want, they just know that that information's really important to you. And you're gonna want to get that. You're gonna wanna have your information back and if they can get access to the things that you know, can mitigate that risk, I E backups and whatnot, they're going to, they're gonna remove those and you're gonna be stuck paying whatever they tell you. You're gonna have to pay if you want your, your important information back. So because of that connectivity, it just gives those nefarious actors a lot more access to you and well, the world.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So wouldn't so, so are you saying that due to the conflict there are people who are more likely now to try to scam people out of money or to do it in a different way.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Well, your, your, your typical attack, your, your typical attack, you know, your biggest threats, kinda the top five threats, fishing and fishing attacks, malware, ransomware, you know, your weak passwords, insider threats. Those are all those have been around for quite a while now, but they're being exploited a lot more now and, and because cyber security and, and the threats that you're facing change all the time, you're also seeing the rise of new type of attacks. I'm sure everyone's received a spam SMS, right? Well, that's actually called smishing. And that issing yeah. Right. Smishing <laugh>, I don't know who coined these terms, but

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Yeah, we gotta find whoever came up with Ming and beat 'em up,

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

But it's, it's, it's the rise of SMS based fishing attacks. Mm-Hmm so you know, as you, as you're learning to protect yourself and more and more of the common individual, that's not in this area, starting to understand how these things work, criminals are changing their attacks as well. So yeah, we can talk about the Russia and Ukraine and how that affects things, but it doesn't help when you, you start either to politicians out there. I would say, be careful what you put out in the, in the ether, because you, why, why draw unnecessary attention to yourself? And now granted us helping Ukraine definitely makes, you know, doesn't help us in our, our relationship with Russia in a way shape or form. It, it, there us, it's a complicated world. <Laugh>, this is such a deep, there's so much, there's such a depth to the complexities of these things that you could really go down a rabbit hole. I'm trying to hard to stay away from that rabbit hole. Sure. But you, you should be being, you should be proactive in, in preventing these kinds of things from happening to you being smart, smart to, you know smart, you know, complicated passwords things along those lines.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

But I suppose with a lot of money being, I think I get what you're saying, like with a lot of money being filtered into into that in, into Ukraine, there are always, you know, in every conflict, anywhere where there is a public opinion, political figures are going to try to get on whatever more favorable side they can get on. And if their communications are compromised, it can make us look bad. It could compromise their campaigns. It could spreading misinformation could sway public opinion and make make it less politically advantageous for me to support somebody financially for us to support like Ukraine financially, if that became less popular, all of a sudden, maybe there wouldn't be the political will to do it. And we wouldn't be doing the right thing over there. You know? Well

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Going, tying that back to like the connected world, right. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so we, we can help Ukraine and therefore tick off Russia even more. Again, we don't need to be sitting next to each other to start attacking the other one because of that connected world, we have access to anything and everything. We, it, it, it can be found. Right. so again, when you start provoking other, you know, other nations Russia, it Russia's very good when it comes to the cybersecurity stuff. They're same China as well. So when you start, you know, becoming the, when you start helping the, the opposing faction to you know, to an enemy, the, you know, they're gonna come after you, especially in that cyber security realm, they're gonna go after your infrastructure. They're gonna go after your critical assets. They're, they're going to increase their attacks on, on in your

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Country. Should they be busy with their own war though?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

People have a lot of free time

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

<Laugh>, but I mean, and even before the conflict in Ukraine, Russia was pretty much nonstop in our business and maybe not necessarily cybersecurity attacks. I don't know. I, I don't know that eco, I know that they, they had warehouses full of people, just basically spreading misinformation to try to get all of us to hate each

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Transformation. Campaigns are a big thing, too, you know, they're, I think their, their big group over there is called Conti. And CTI's a very pro Russia criminal organization, cyber criminal organization, and interesting, you know, they, they just, they ramp up their attacks against, you know, us, us allies, anybody that's helping Ukraine. And, and yeah, this stuff has been going on for ages now mm-hmm <affirmative>, but it just gets ramped up even further. There's more, there's more dedication to the cause, you know, and all that stuff, just it, the more you SA rattled and the more you draw attention to yourself, it, and it goes both ways and pretty confident of that that you

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Know, yeah. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure we're not, you

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Know, we're not innocent in all of this. Yeah.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So how, how has the ecosystem changed over the last cuz you've been, like I said, you've frontline defender of, of this sort of thing for the last few years in particular and in an increasing fashion, how is it different now than it was a year or two years or three years ago?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Well, go back even a little further, like five years ago. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you could just have a regular antivirus and you'd be generally okay. Right. Even as a bubble back

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Owner, are you saying

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

As a business? Yeah. I'm, I'm speaking more on the business owner side of things. Okay. And, and some of the stuff does trickle down to the consumer, you know, talking about consumer, always make sure you have a, an antivirus on your computer, make sure you have multifactor authentication, you know, use different passwords for, for accessing of different, you know, different logins and be vigilant. Be very careful about clicking links and opening PDFs and anything along those lines, it just be vigilant. And your risk does go down a little bit. Any anybody that ever comes to you and tells you that they can a hundred percent guarantee that you'll never be crypto locked or held for ransom or any of that stuff is completely full of baloney. Right?

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

That's not a thing you can guarantee.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

There, there is, there you, you can G the only thing you can guarantee is that at some point in your life, you will be ransomware. That's probably the only guarantee I'd ever give you. Right. but it's really critical, especially with business owners to have work with organizations like ours, that, that catered a cater the security approach to your organization, which is very different than what it used to be even five or six years ago, where you could just have a simple antivirus, a firewall and call it good. Well, now the multilayer approach is, is really critical to mitigating that risk to, you know, as far as you possibly can and always ensuring you have really good backups of all of your information that's on that's, you know, follow the 3, 2 11 rule. And that's three, three copies of your day at two different locations, one on different media, one completely offline.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Say that, say that one more time. A little bit slower. I think that's, I think, cause I think that's valuable.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

So the old adage of 3, 2, 1, it used to be three copies of your data. Two locations, one on different media. The new adage now is because hackers have increased the, the sophistication into those you know, in mitigating that risk for deleting those backups is now a 3, 2, 1, 1 rule, three copies of your data, two different locations, one on different media. And one of those copies completely offline and separate from your environment. That way there is no access there there's virtually no way for that hacker to get access into that data, guaranteeing that you can restore your information when you are ultimately held for

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Ransom. They, when, when, when you inevitably, so you're saying as a business owner, you need to prepare for when you are subjected to a ransomware

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Attack. Yeah. It it's, it's, it's not a matter of if it is a matter of when. And I, I, I, I get migraines sometimes when I hear business owners saying, well, it never happened to me. It will it, it absolutely will if your day is hasn't happened yet, it will eventually come. And just, I really hope when, you know, when you, you need help, we'll be here to help you

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Right on. And I just, it took me a minute. Ignore the first link I put on the banner on the bottom. I was trying to it's all good, but yeah, valor, valor, tech.io is the website. You can see scrolling across the bottom. What, okay, so what sort of stuff do you have coming up? And obviously you can't get too deep in the weeds because you're, you know, this is like you're, you're a cyber defender. But, but what does the future hold for you? Or what do you predict being the future is, you know, is web three and blockchain and wallet, verification stuff. Are you, are you preparing for that transition? What, what does the future for you?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Cyber security is not going anywhere. I, I, you know, even talking to some of the contexts I have in, in the insurance industry they're, they're planning for this only to get worse and, and even through the pandemic and, and the subsequent year since then they've seen nothing but a huge increase in that by an exponential fold. So it's not going anywhere anytime soon, it, the attacks are gonna get more complicated. Their, their approach to their approach to getting your data is gonna be more complicated. As new techo new technologies come on board, they will find ways of countering that. And you have, you know, you have, you know, good cyber warriors, like my team at valor that are very active in staying ahead of those curves. And you know, as they change, we're going to change along with that. And, you know, I don't care about the technology coming out because we'll adapt and, you know, we'll be, we'll be there to protect whatever comes down the pipeline in terms of new technology.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

So, so in the future, every company, small business, or not should plan for a monthly expense to have a company like yours, to, you know, to implement safety procedures and processes and monitor and protect

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Absolutely it. I understand that small bus, really small businesses, you know, they're, they're cash strapped and everything else at a minimum odds are you have somebody that works in cybersecurity and there is a ton of different different material or different free materials out there for you to read on how to protect yourself at a baseline level. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> strongly encourage everybody to do, do their research, do some education. And when you get to a size where, you know, where you do have the ability to budget for some some aspects of security, I strongly recommend starting to engage early on with a, a trusted advisor, whether it's valor tech or, you know, any other, any number of other you know, good cyber security experts out there. Just to have that, that little, just get that Smid of of, of, of time and effort put into place to keep you secure

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Right on. So, so how can somebody, if they wanna learn more, learn more from you, learn more about valor tech, learn more about just how to be minimally protected. How do they get in touch?

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Well, there's a couple different ways. Eight, you can reach out to me on valor tech.io. That's our, that's my Val tech website. You know, you could email me, I'll I'll make sure that Adam can put my email out there. I'm I keep that very available for anybody. There's also two other new, new things that we, that I'm watching very soon. I'm watching my own personal website. I have a beta version up. I will also give that to you, Adam. And on there, I will be offering a lot of free advice, a lot of links to products that I have personally used personally vetted out that I think are best to breed in the industry. Lots of free material for you to read lots of free resources that you can get access to. Nice. and obviously, you know, we are also building what we're calling the tech on tap nation which I will give you a link to as well, that the, that website's in beta, we're about to launch in probably the next week or two here.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

But that's a, that is a actual community based around tap, being beer, being Wisconsin of of course. Sure. and tech where we will actually be bringing in person meetings or in person invites. Anybody can attend these where we will be bringing vendors in show, letting them to showcase their technologies showcase their, their market expertise. And we are currently producing our podcast where we will actually have vendor spotlights and be doing the same thing, allow any vendor that wants to showcase durability to do it to a much greater audience. All of this stuff is gonna be launching very, very soon, probably within the next, probably less than a month,

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Right on man. Well, yeah, definitely share those links and I will put them in the show notes when the audio version of this comes out. Sure. To appreciate your time, man. Thank you for, for all that you do to keep everybody safe and for sharing this information with everybody, man. It's good stuff.

Bryan Sevener - Valor Technologies:

Hey, thanks for having me appreciate. It's great catching up with you. And yeah, man, I know life has been pretty busy, but I'll eventually get down to you guys and there you go visit. Yeah, we'll catch up. We'll grab a beer

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

Works for me. I'll tell you what, hang on the line for just a minute. I'll I'll touch base with you afterwards. There you have it folks. Look, he, one thing that that stuck out to me is especially for a small business, he, he mentioned, I know you're cash strapped, but but this is an important line item. You know, what's more expensive than a monthly fee of having somebody monitor your stuff is a ransomware attack. And it's one of those things where you, you don't need it until you need it. And when you need it, it's too late. So an ounce of prevention, right? Best to protect yourself. And that's two weeks in a row that we've talked about the necessity to protect yourself from a, as a personal, from a personal level, as a consumer, as a business owner, as a professional as, as a corporate entity, all of those things, you have to be protected.

Adam Braatz - WVCC:

And either you have staff protecting you like actively protecting you or or you have a team like Brian's team at valor tech, who is, is doing that defense. If, if for a corporate entity standpoint, that's as important as the burly person with the black sunglasses and the little earpiece that you know, protects, you know, does security at your building and lets people in and out. It's just as important, like equal, equal importance because man alive, you could be buried as a small business owner, one ransomware, attacker, and they don't care. None of those people care. They, they wanna take things from you and they wanna take stuff that they didn't earn and they wanna make their living doing that. And they don't care if, if your business fails, if you go bankrupt, they don't care and it stinks, but we gotta defend yourself. We need to defend ourselves. We have to be proactive about it because being reactive when it comes to defense, physical cyber, whatever being reactive is expensive. So the proactivity line item and the cybersecurity thing, put it on there. Hate for you to pay the price happy tech month, everybody. Next month is agriculture month. We're gonna bring the thunder looking forward to it. See you next week. Thank you for listening to Wisconsin veterans forward brought to you by the Wisconsin veterans chamber of commerce. Please visit us at wiveteranschamber.org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, leave a rating and review in whatever platform you're listening through.