Every week a new story is released. Gain insight into the lives of IT Professionals. Learn about their careers, their favorite IT tools and their proudest accomplishments. Find out their opinions on what's going on in the industry. Expand your network by connecting with them on LinkedIn! This newsletter features Ken Mungar, a veteran IT professional specializing in data protection and information security.

1. IT SPOTLIGHT
Assurance IT is turning the spotlight on IT Professionals.
Read about their IT careers, their opinions on what's going on in the space and
their advice for other IT professionals. This week's guest is Ken Mungar.
For starters, let's congratulate Ken for passing his CISSP exam this month!
Meet Ken Mungar
Title: Data and Information
Technology Lead at Grand Bend Area
Community Health Center
Location: Lucan, Ontario
Fav IT Tool: Endpoint Protection -
"Don't rely on McAfee or Symantec!"
Fav IT Resource: His network
Keep in touch: Add him on LinkedIn
Ken started in cyber security when he worked at Blackberry

2. Ken has dozens of years of IT under his belt. He's also worked to become an
expert in cyber cyber security.
Here is his journey:
He started off in programming and then went into servers and computers. He
eventually got the IT manager role at a Catholic district school board where he
managed 2 high schools and 12 elementary schools - with only two other people!
That is where Ken got his first taste of computer security.
"That was my first experience with computer security because the year before I
got there, one of the students there learned how to hack the system that all the
marks were in. He got reprimanded, but then admin were very adamant about
making sure students didn't have access to anything. And that was like way before
cyber security."
From there, Ken worked at the London Health Science Center - a really large
regional hospital. He was responsible for moving their Ivy Institute from a 20,000
square foot location to a 52,000 square foot location.

3. "So I was responsible for making sure that everything worked at the end of the
day. I had a team. I mean, I didn't do it all by myself. And so when that job was
done all the contracts in that hospital were terminated with the new CIO. And so
basically I was looking for jobs. So they paid me for six months to look for a job,
which was great."
Ken chuckled.
"I ended up going to work for Research in Motion, which is known as Blackberry.
And I basically was a support analyst that people have problems with their BIS
server infrastructure. I would be the guy that tried to figure it out for them. And
that's when I started the security stuff. Blackberry has been at the forefront of
all security. Whether people agree with me or not, they were doing it before
anybody else.
So I decided that it was too much of a drive. It was a two hour drive there and a
two hour drive back every day. I ended up where I am today. I am the IT manager
for a community health center. I'm responsible for data analytics. I'm responsible
for servers, networking, computers and peripherals. And I'm also in charge of
cyber security."

4. How does Cyber Security Innovate?
Ken told us about how several hospitals in his area got breached in a short period.
"All of the hospitals in the area started getting hit with ransomware attacks and
none of them were prepared for it. Like there was two hospitals in the area that
their IT infrastructure was down for like two, three months. Like they were back to
paper charts in the ER because they had to reload absolutely everything from
printer, firmware."

5. So when we asked him what it takes to innovate cyber security in an organization,
this is what Ken responded:
"I've been very fortunate that my last two CEOs here have been all in because
they heard the horror stories at the hospital."
Today, Ken is ready for any ransomware attack. However, he emphasized that no
matter how ready you are, you need help to overcome the outcome of an attack.
This is what he said:
"Like if I get hit with ransomware today, I'd be reaching out to all my contacts. Can
you spare a day? Can you spare week?
I just finished the disaster recovery plan for IT here, working on the whole
business continuity plan, but I just finished the IT portion of the recovery. And you
don't realize how much you have until you put it down on paper."

6. How Ken stays up-to-date on with tech
Ken told us that most IT people have a creative side and he's in a rockband when
he's not keeping up-to-date with what's going on in the industry. The way he stays
so updated on everything going on? He's on several committees.
" I belong to a few different organizations. I belong to the data division of our local
area of family health team- for data and for cyber security. So they look like the
people that are on this committee are IT people.
I also sit on another community with an organization called the Alliance for
Healthier communities. They're out of Toronto and they do the negotiation with the
government for different stuff. And so I sit on a community of practice where, you

7. know, we're constantly reviewing new IT products.
I'm on community of practice for Ontario health and for the Ontario government.
So I sit in a bunch of meetings with a ton of other IT, and most of them are CISOs
or CEOs."
They Got Denied As A Charity... Here's How That Changed IT
"A couple of years ago I fought tooth and nail with Microsoft to become a charity
for Microsoft. And they finally gave it to me. And then last year they did an audit of
all of the Microsoft people that had charity licensing and we were denied.

8. So we're going from paying about $2,000 a year for all of our Microsoft
infrastructure to probably paying about $6,000 a year. And you can't get one
person at Microsoft to like acknowledge that, "Oh, it's sorry to hear that like here I
can do something for you."
Now, we're going to cut back our Microsoft environment. So instead of everybody
having a Word and Excel and everything on it. We're going totally cloud so that
everyone has easy access to the tools.
Instead of buying an $8,000 data server. I'm moving everything to the cloud
because our electronic medical records is hosted by our vendor. I don't have to
worry as much."
What keeps Ken up at night should be a wake up call to
everyone:
"The ignorance of the general public, like everybody hears about the cyber
attacks, the big ones, right? They don't hear about the small ones. They don't hear
about the mom and pops that get their Facebook hacked. Every time I see that, I
just put a link, read my link. And how to use two-factor authentication in Facebook.
It's so easy to do it.

9. The other thing is - we'll just pick on the elderly people for a second. Like my
parents, you know, they rely on me for everything when it comes to technology.
But at the same time, I look at things like the internet providers, the big ones like
Rogers, Telus, and Bell, they do nothing to secure people's email. Those three
companies will never invest in that, it'll cost them way too much money.
They'll never secure it, but yet the whole world has gone to this digital
communication. Everything's digital. We store our credit cards on our computers
and tablets and phones and so I installed a firewall on my phone. It's inexpensive
to get great insurance.
And that's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. It's not so much about
business because if businesses aren't doing their due diligence to protect
themselves from cyber security, I have no sympathy. It's the forefront of the news.
We're talking about Russians attacking virtually, and we hear that everyday in the
news. They should be doing something about that.
But nobody talks about the personal side of it. You know, if you get your credit
card stolen, your numbers stolen because somebody compromised the website or
your computer's compromised.

10. I firmly believe that technology like endpoint protection and I'm not talking just
antivirus, but endpoint protection should be free because that would keep
everybody safe."
Should Cyber Security have a mandated industry standard?
"Yes, and I have been pushing for that in my sector of healthcare for five years. So
I've been trying to push all the community health centers in Ontario to adopt a
framework that is affordable because there's no money, but at the same time it's
going to keep you safe. So if, if you came up with a standard, right, there's lots of
standards of that I've read about extensively like, ISO, CIS, I mean, they're all
great standards and they all have their pluses.
But say just in my industry and this industry is healthcare. There needs to be a
standard set forth because people don't know anything about IT - let alone cyber
security. lLike CEOs at the end of the day. They're like "IT. Yeah. Don't talk about
it costs me money." If that is the way that a CEO thinks they're in the wrong
business."

11. Assurance IT is thrilled to feature Ken Mungar in IT
Spotlight. We also agree that endpoint management
is essential for every business.
We partner with Tanium to offer endpoint
management. For more information about the
solution, here is their executive summary.