As Winston Zeddemore from ‘Ghostbusters’ Would Say: ‘We Have the Tools, [You] Have the Talent’

A law-firm marketer friend made a rather insightful comment to his wife a while back on the topic of childrearing.

At the time, the couple was having a lively discussion (okay, “tiff” is the more accurate word) about how far parents should be willing to go to smooth the way for their kids during their formative years.

Providing Cybersecurity Tools

Mom—being a nurturer of the first order—asserted that parents need to do everything possible to spare children the hurts and disappointments of failure. Parents, she contended, need to hold their younglings’ hands every step of the way through life.

Dad countered that parents shouldn’t do that. He believed the job of parents is to equip their offspring with the tools necessary for independent growth and success. If the kids choose to use those tools, fantastic; if they decide not to use them, well, any failure that comes of it isn’t the parents’ fault.

I share this story with you because—believe it or not—it’s very relevant to the issue of cybersecurity and to what our team here at BobaGuard does.

The Importance of Utilizing Cybersecurity Tools

What we do is provide state-of-the-art cybersecurity tools.

However, that’s all we do. The rest is up to the users of the tools.

Let me illustrate this another way. Say it’s New Year’s Eve. You resolve to shed 30 pounds and replace the fat with lean muscle. So, come January 2, you hire a personal trainer to help you get in shape.

Illustrating the Importance of Utilizing Cybersecurity Tools

The first thing the trainer does is set up a diet and workout plan. The plan says something like “eat a serving of these vegetables three times a day” and “pump this amount of iron in three sets of 10 repetitions every time you go to the gym.”

You review the plan and proclaim it brilliantly. But you then shove the plan into the top drawer of your desk and never look at it again, let alone put it into effect.

Result? Not only do you lose no weight and grow no muscles, but you also instead add pounds and become even flabbier than before.

Responsibility of Utilizing Cybersecurity Tools

Worse, your failure to act on the plan your trainer provided puts your health at risk—you’re more vulnerable than you were on January 2 to heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other conditions that could potentially land you in the hospital.

The same dynamic is at play when it comes to cybersecurity tools. We give them to you, but you end up no better off than you were before (and maybe even worse off in terms of increased vulnerability) if you don’t use the tools you were supplied with.

For example, if we provide you and your team with the finest possible cybersecurity training (which is exactly what we do), you must ensure everyone participates in the training and completes the course.

The Consequences of Not Utilizing Cybersecurity Tools

More than that, you also need to create a culture of officewide cybersecurity awareness. You and your team must continually be thinking about the many ways bad actors can attempt to get their sticky fingers on the confidential data contained within your information technology systems and devices. As well you and your team must also be mindful at all times about behaviors, habits, and practices that can inadvertently open doors and roll out the welcome mat to those same bad actors (things like clicking on links that should never be clicked and sharing passwords that should never be shared).

Without question, there’s a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. The cybersecurity tools we place in your hands are invaluable when it comes to helping you fulfill that responsibility, but they’re also ultimately worthless without utilization.

This is important because cyber criminals are becoming more skilled, aggressive, and successful. Their attacks come at you now from more directions than ever. BobaGuard gives you multilayered defenses against all this—protections ranging from Dark Web monitoring to software that filters out suspicious emails (likely to be phishing scams, business email compromises or baited malware traps) before they can reach your inboxes.

However, these defenses are given to you as tools, not actions undertaken on your behalf. In the 1984 movie “Ghostbusters,” the character Winston Zeddemore (played by actor Ernie Hudson) famously proclaimed as the team of apparition exterminators prematurely celebrated victory over ancient Sumerian god Gozer the Gozerian: “We have the tools, we have the talent.”

That statement is pretty close to what I’m saying: BobaGuard has the tools, but you’re the one with the talent. Unless you make full and proper use of those tools, your talent will count for little if you hope to gain (and celebrate) victory over the cybercriminals who threaten you day in and day out.

Conclusion

The silver lining here is that 2/3rds of the tools included with BobaGuard work FOR you, 24/7/365, once activated. We do the heavy lifting and remove all the complexity in getting them up and running – and protecting your and your team. The few other tools are up to you to implement, but again – we make it easy. Our account managers check in with you monthly to review our tools and continually help you get more out of using our services – to maximize the protection your firm gets.

Book a call with our team today if you’ve procrastinated getting comprehensive cybersecurity solutions due to confusion and overwhelm. Our mission is to simplify the process of getting all these tools in place, so you can focus on what you do best AND have the peace of mind that your firm is protected.