Hybrid Work and RIAs: Choosing the Best Endpoint Protection Solutions – RIA Tech Talk Episode #15

Todd Darroca

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the RIA Tech TikTok podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. David Kish and myself, Todd Darroca are here. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs just like yours. Now in the podcast, we’ll be your tech guides breaking down those often confusing tech topics into plain, old and practical English terms. So we hope you join us every single episode as we dive into the latest tech trends, share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of our IA technology. David, hello. How are you, sir?

David Kakish

Fantastic. I am doing fantastic, Todd. How are you, sir?

Todd Darroca (00:50):

I’m great. I’m great. If you’re listening to this, we’re celebrating the 4th of July, about last week. But no, it’s been good. Got some good time with family and all that stuff. And so yeah, it’s great to be back. And so today we’re talking about hybrid work and RIAs and choosing that best endpoint protection solutions. So David, why should the RIAs care, but also even the management business side of the house, care about this stuff? Yeah,

David Kakish

Yeah, absolutely. So again, we tend to focus our thank you, by the way, Todd, I want to welcome you. I want to welcome the listener. The really big challenge for RIAs, especially now, is you’ve got remote work, whether you like it or not. So some RIAs are a hundred percent remote. Some RIAs, it’s a hybrid, two or three days working from home and then two or three days in the office. And then some RIAs are still very old school like, Hey, we want to do it all in the office. And so there’s that entire range. But even if you’re the more of like, Hey, we work in the office all the time, and then occasionally from home, you still want to think about, Hey, how do I protect my employees when they’re working from home on the road in a hotel at the airport, and so on?

And that’s kind of a really, really big concern because it’s really changed for everybody. And so yes, we work in a hybrid environment. Now I want to secure my remote workforce, but I don’t want to have a detailed technical discussion because I’m not an IT manager. I’m not an IT director. So our discussions are really focused on the managing partner, the office manager, the chief compliance officer, and so on. So we don’t get into a lot of the, even though as much as I would love to get into the technical weeds, I really avoid that because I know that our audience is a 15 person RIA with a chief compliance officer or a VP of operations that doesn’t have an IT background. And so we’re going to talk about that. But really what’s really interesting is, hey, when we talk about securing the employee, when they’re working remotely, people immediately think about the laptop or the computer that they’re working on.

And yes, you want to secure that, but what about their iPhone and their iPad and Android and so on? And so we’re going to talk about, we’ll bring up the six best endpoint protection solutions, the two that I really like and why I like that, and then what you can do about that. And so my hope is by the end of this call, you’re like, okay, here are the top six that we should look at. Here are the top two. Let me go back, talk to whoever’s managing my IT and say, Hey, do we have something like this in place? And if they do, great, and if they don’t, you can give ’em some pointers or they can tell you ’em to listen to Todd and David.

Todd Darroca

Yeah, I think on this topic with hybrid work just in general, it’s not going away. I know a lot of companies, even small businesses are like, oh, now we’re back to getting everybody back in the office. And now it’s sometimes mandated. But I think what we’re seeing in the data shows it from Gartner, Forrester, wall Street Journal, all these that you’re going to lose out on talent if you are not playing in the game by allowing this remote from work. So I think to help decrease your liability and increase your security, obviously these will help you do that. But again, hybrid work is not going anywhere. Actually. I know that there is definitely a push more for employees to come back in. What I found out about that is the only reason companies are really doing that is because of the taxes and because of they have to have that building filled for so many days of the week in order to get certain tax breaks. So that’s kind of why you’re seeing larger corporations like Dell and Microsoft requiring people to come back in. But again, those are the big, big, big ones. But for everybody else, this is definitely here to stay. So let’s talk about the first endpoint solution, David, that you recommend for those of this hybrid work world.

David Kakish

Yeah, and actually Todd, before we even do that, so here in Chicago, what’s really interesting, so I live in the suburbs and I work in the suburbs, or I call it the suburbs, but it’s just outside of O’Hare. And it’s really interesting. I have friends that work downtown, and these big companies are basically, I’ll use the word essentially mandating that you’re in the office two or three days a week. And it depends on the company because the city of Chicago is basically saying, Hey, we need people spending money on their lunches here and taking the transportation and stuff like that. I think there’s been in these big companies, as much as they would love to get people back, a hundred percent people are basically saying, we’re just going to leave. It’s fine. So I’m going to talk about what we see with RIAs here in a couple of minutes, but it’s really interesting to see the dynamics at some of these bigger companies where it’s like they almost want to force everybody to come back and work in.

And my brother had worked for Google for quite a while and there was that even Google, they wanted to bring all their employees back in almost full-time, five days a week. And the employees essentially said, well, we’re just going to leave. And so there’s that tension that’s sort of talking in general terms with RIAs. What I noticed is, again, there are those that are built, so they’re a hundred percent remote. They’ve built their model around that. That makes a lot of sense. So people are working from their homes all the time, and that makes a lot of sense. And on the flip side of that is there are companies where they say, Hey, listen, we just prefer to come and work in the office. Everybody lives five, 10 minutes away and there’s that separation of home and office. I’m the same way. I mean, I could easily work from home or at the office.

I prefer to physically be in the office. And so that’s typically my preference, but it’s just mentally I feel like I’m much more productive and I don’t like to work from home. I guess when I go home, I like to spend time with my wife and my kids out. A lot of distractions, right? Oh yeah. Completely get it. Yeah, completely get it. And then, yeah, I would say most RIAs are probably some kind of a hybrid. I mean, 80% of RIAs now are some kind of a hybrid where you’re working from home 1, 2, 3 days a week, and then in the office again, 1, 2, 3 days a week. And even the ones that if your RIA is a hundred percent where you’re working in the office all the time, we all know that, hey, you know what? There’s a snow day, somebody’s sick, whatever, or you’re traveling.

So in theory, I mean technically that’s even a hybrid, even though you’re in the office all the time, the key there is the old days of you working in a physical space and you’re protected behind a network firewall and the physical, those days are kind of gone. Yes. Even if you’re there all the time, you’re still working remotely on a computer or you’re accessing your email on your iPhone, your Android, different things like that. So it’s an era where that’s it. It’s here to stay even when you’re in the office, I’d say 90 or even a hundred percent of the time. Right. Alright, so just a little bit of context and then what we seize, and again, just to kind of zoom in on the challenge is your RIA, you’ve got 5, 10, 25 people. You don’t have an IT team. You’re typically dependent on somebody else and you’re like, all right, well, what do we have for endpoint protection?

What are we doing to secure that laptop or that iPhone when Todd’s working from home? So you have to depend on somebody else to do that. And there are some great solutions and best practices out there, and there are ones that I’m not necessarily a big fan of, but I want to share that with the listener so that you go back and you talk to your IT provider, or if you’re the CCO, you say, Hey, what do we have in place? And not only do we have it, but hey, is it implemented? Do we have that implemented or not? So anyways, sometimes I feel like I’m preaching to the choir that I know that the listener knows that, but I want to get into the specific ones. So there’s a link that we’re going to go ahead and include in the show notes. It’s from Gartner.

And Gartner releases these wonderful reports. It’s called the Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms. Basically, it’s Gartner saying, Hey, who are all the major players in this space? And then we’re going to put them in different categories, and they really base ’em on two pieces of criteria. Number one is the ability to execute, and then number two is the vision, the completeness of a vision. And so if you are able, as a company, if you’re able to execute and you’ve got a complete vision, you’re in what’s called the Magic Quadrant or in the Leader Quadrant. And there are six different companies that are in this space, and there’s two that I really like. Todd, I guess before I talk about, and just to make it quick, Microsoft and Sentinel One are probably the two big ones in this space that we’re very familiar with. And then the other four would be CrowdStrike, trend Micro, Palo Alto, and then Sophos. Those are the, again, that just mentioned the six. There are 10 others that are mentioned in this report. I’m not really going to touch upon that because those are very niche players in specific spaces. But the six are that, and then the two that I’m really going to focus on are Microsoft and Sentinel One. But I’m a big fan of Gartner, but Todd, I know not all of our listeners are familiar with Gartner, and I know you’ve got a lot of background there. So maybe you talk a little bit about that and we’ll talk

Todd Darroca

About that. Yeah, look, from a marketer standpoint and a small business, if you are in that magic quadrant at the top of that square, that’s where you want to be. So people and companies will tout that as Gartner, you said, we’re in the top quadrant. And so that’s all it really is. It’s kind of like the blue ribbon of your space. So yeah, I mean, when I worked with tech professionals and business owners, when we looked at different IT tools or this security software, we would always look at the quadrant. Now I think what’s important is it’s not a black and white thing here. It’s not, well, it’s in that quadrant, so we have to go with it. And it depends on the size of your company, how many people are in that company, what kind of protection you want, and how much you want to spend ultimately. So I think as David goes through these things, keep that in mind that yes, we’re going to focus on those top six that are in there, achieving the top big companies in that top quadrant, but always just keep in mind, see what the other ones are just to make sure if they fit your bill for where you’re at today. Yeah,

David Kakish

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Todd. And again, as a reminder, we’re basically saying, Todd’s working from home. How do I secure Todd’s computer and how do I secure Todd’s iPhone at a very, very simple level. That’s basically what it comes down to. What if he’s getting attacked because there’s not a network firewall or he’s accessing a public wifi or his whole internet and so on. And there’s a lot of misconceptions that people have to go in and Todd’s working from home, so I need to manage his home router and all the internet access and this, I mean, you could do that, but it gets really complicated. It gets, yeah, good luck. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then your son or your spouse or whoever might come in and just change everything for all by just unplugging a cable or something like that. So at a really basic level, what we talk about is, look, and I’ll use Microsoft as an example, but this could be Google or Amazon or anything.

You’ve got your private network at Microsoft, and then you’ve got the endpoints and that endpoint or that computer, you could be working in the office or you could be working at home. So for us, it’s like, all right, we want to make sure we’re securing your Microsoft tenants or your Microsoft private network for your RIA. We want to make sure we’re securing your office, and then we want to make sure we’re securing that endpoint, that computer, that laptop, that iPhone, when you’re working from home when you’re traveling. And what’s really nice about that is you no longer need to manage home networks and all that fun stuff for a while. You got to go back a number of years, you had to do some other things. And the technology has really evolved. And I think another way for you to think about endpoint protection, and this is the analogy that I typically use, is Todd has, I don’t know whether it’s a MacBook, actually, your MacBook?

I am, yeah. Okay. All right. Big Mac guy. Todd’s got a MacBook, I have a think pad. There’s a security wrap around that MacBook, or there’s a security wrap around that laptop so that when again, in the office or out of the office that it’s completely secure and it’s preventing any attacks from happening. And then you’re encrypting the entire communication from endpoint to the Microsoft data center. And again, I apologize if I’m getting a little bit too technical, I don’t want to get too much in the weeds, but just enough to kind of paint the picture for you as a listener so you can wrap your head around that. So you’ve got, there’s four that are good, that are really good, but then there are two that are really great. Sophos, Palo Alto, trend Micro CrowdStrike. Those are really good. And those, if you recognize the names, they tend to be antivirus companies that have sort of evolved into, okay, we’re going to provide antivirus, we’re going to provide anti spyware, and now you know what? We’re going to go ahead and we’re going to provide endpoint protection on this computer that I’m a big fan of, and the two that are really big players in the financial services space, not just RIAs, but in financial services space. Sentinel One is a really big one, and then Microsoft’s a really big one, and I want to go on the record and say, nobody’s paying us to talk about, we’re not getting Todd, you me, we’re not getting from Microsoft and Sentinel.

Todd Darroca

No, we get nothing from this folks that don’t think we’re rolling in the dough from these big companies. We are vendor agnostic.

David Kakish

Exactly. Thank you. And I am a big fan of the Microsoft solution because I feel like there are some other things that Microsoft does on top of this that compliment each other really well. So Microsoft has something called Defender for Endpoint, which is fantastic, and that solves this problem, but they also have Defender for Identity, and then they also have Defender for Office. And what I love about the Microsoft solution is it combines many other things, and you’re using their AI to quickly detect something, prevent that from happening and stop that attack. And so for example, with a Microsoft solution, it kind of goes above and beyond. It says, hang on, it’s not just an endpoint protection, it’s saying, Todd, you logged in Austin and in Chicago, within two minutes, something seems off, I’m going to force a multi-factor authentication or maybe even a lockout. And it does that. And so the Defender for Endpoint is sort of looking at that computer and the logs and stuff like that, but the Defender for Identity is looking at your identity and logins and other things. So it compliments each other really well. So the big plus for Microsoft is, yes, you’ve got this endpoint protection, which is fantastic, but then there are other pieces that compliment that and they do that really, really, really well. And actually Sentinel One does the same thing, and that’s kind of why I like these two big solutions.

Todd Darroca

It sounds kind of like a fraud protection for credit cards, almost like the credit card companies can know your pattern of how you’re spending and where you’re going. And it sounds like Microsoft Identity is doing the same thing of it, kind of knows your patterns and seeing where you’re at. And so if it sees something erroneous, it’ll flag it right away.

David Kakish

That is a great analogy, Todd, and I never use that analogy. I’m actually going to start using that. Thank you. Exactly right. The only problem with that is when you’re traveling, and I don’t know, I forget, forget where I was. I think I was traveling internationally or something and it wasn’t part of my normal pattern.

David Kakish

Yeah, credit card has declined, like, oh, son of my gun. But I’d rather that than not. And usually when I travel, I have cash and then you’re able to talk to the bank. But funny enough, I started communicating with the bank now that, Hey, I’m going to be traveling, because I would rather if that happened than the other way around, like, oh yeah, somebody’s traveling Ally on your credit card.

Todd Darroca

Yeah, for sure.

David Kakish

Sure. But yeah, that’s actually a great way to think about that, where the credit card companies have become so good at understanding the patterns and saying, Hey, again, I forget, I was traveling and somebody got ahold of my credit card and I don’t know what it was, but they were buying Dunking Donuts, coffee and Alcohol, dunking Donuts, coffee and alcohol.

Todd Darroca

Oh, those poor people. It’s been a rough day or something. Getting some Dunking Donuts and alcohol.

David Kakish

Exactly, exactly. Let me get drunk and I’m sober up.

Todd Darroca

Yeah.

David Kakish

So my bag quickly detected that it was just, anyways, it was kind of interesting. But yeah, that’s exactly right. So those are the two really big solutions that I would look at. Again, if you’re using Sophos as your antivirus and anti spyware, it might make a lot of sense and say, Hey, I’m already using this. Let’s go ahead and upgrade that. So I use endpoint protection. Same thing with Trend Micro, and again, I’m a big fan of the four others that I mentioned, CrowdStrike, trend Micro, Palo Alto and Sophos. I like those companies a lot where those make sense. If you’re already using that solution, it’s just an upgrade. You’re using that antivirus upgrade your Trend Micro so that you go ahead and you use that upgraded version of protecting all of your endpoints. But if you were to ask me for your RIA, I would look at Microsoft number one, and I would look at Sentinel one as number two, and I try to keep it as simple as possible. This is going to lead me into something else, but Todd, it looks like you’ve got something to say.

Todd Darroca

I just want to make sure that the listener and the watcher understands how, I guess for lack of better phrase, fearful should these leaders be about endpoint protection and securing the information with their employees. I mean, there are those, again, people, 15 people in their company who are like, ah, it’s not a big deal. They’re all local. We can have the basic stuff. But is there kind of from a one to 10, and I guess it probably depends on the size, but of how, again, fearful or aware should leaders and business owners be about this type of endpoint security for their company in today’s world?

David Kakish

Yeah, so you ask a great question. We typically work with RIAs that have five plus employees. And it’s really interesting because I think when you’ve got one, two or three people, you’re concerned about that, but the answer’s like, ah, we’re not big enough for anybody to really be interested in us. It’s kind of interesting. Once you hit four or five employees, I see a shift in their mindset. And luckily for us, we work with typically, again, five plus employees. There’s a shift in that mindset to say, yeah, we got to really get serious about this, especially those that tend to grow fast. They started their new RIA and they’ve experienced a lot of success, and I was like, I don’t have a network. I’ve got people that are working all remote and I’m really concerned about that. So I would say, if you’re listening to us and you’ve got five plus employees, it’s probably on your radar.

You’re like, yeah, I need to be really careful with that. And just so you know, that is a big threat. That’s how a lot of it’s very difficult for somebody to attack you behind your network firewall in your office. It’s a lot easier for them to know, Hey, Todd’s working from home or on the road, I’m going to go ahead and access his device while he’s working remotely. I don’t have to get through a company that worked firewall and stuff like that. So yeah, most of our listeners look at this. I mean, if you’re listening to us, you’re looking at this threat and you’re taking it seriously. So if you’re a listener that, Hey, endpoint protection, great, I’m protecting my computer, I’m protecting my iPhone. But that’s just one component of many other things. So I’m going to talk a little bit, and I apologize for these acronyms, something called E-D-R-X-D-R and MDR. And the reason I bring that up is this has just become common practice and the SEC is beginning to talk about that, and a lot of people in the financial services space are beginning to talk about that. So EDR, I’m going to also include a matrix here. We’ll include a matrix here. Lemme see if I can, it really does a great job of explaining the difference between what’s called E-D-R-X-D-R-M-D-R, and again, I apologize for the acronyms, but it is coming up a lot. Right?

So EDR stands for endpoint Detection and Response. So this is really what we’ve been focusing on. XDR stands for extended detection and response. And then MDR stands for managed detection and Response. So what we’ve really talked about today is EDR think of that as sort of level one, and then extended is level two, and then managed is sort of level three. And I think, Todd, there’s a matrix here in one of the links that I sent you, and I think we’ll include that in the show notes, but one of the really nice things about XDR is it’s not limited to the endpoint. So with an XDR solution, extended detection and response, it’s also looking at your physical network and it’s looking at the cloud services. So let’s talk into Microsoft world, but again, that applies to anything else in the endpoint protection solution. You’re looking at that MacBook or you’re looking at that laptop and you’re looking at the iPhone, which is great.

You want to have that. What’s nice with the XDR, the extended detection and response, now it’s looking at your physical network environment and it’s looking at your private network over at Microsoft or what’s called a Microsoft tenant. So it’s actually looking at one, two, and three and kind of looking at all that, and it’s doing that now with the MDR, which is the managed detection and response. It’s just taking it a step above and beyond and saying, Hey, we’re not just using AI and automation to protect you. We have what’s called a security operations center. We have people that are actually physically looking at these alerts and actually doing something about that. And so those are kind of tie all these things together and we probably need to have a separate podcast where we talk about that in a little bit more detail. But at a really high level, what I love about the Microsoft solution is if you use that out of the box, it’s essentially what’s called an XDR solution.

So it goes beyond even an MDR with some of the other ones. It’s an MDR or it’s an endpoint detection and response. Sophos is great. What I like about Microsoft is out of the box, if you’re using the different features that they have, now you’ve got an XDR solution. And then if you want to upgrade that, right, you could pay more and you could have a company that does what’s called Security Operations Center that’s looking at that right there. Again, I apologize for the acronyms, but I wanted to bring that up because in our space and the SEC, and if you talk to other people, they’re beginning to talk about some of these things, and I just wanted to paint the picture for the listener.

Todd Darroca

Got it. Great. Yeah, man. Talk about a brain fart right now. One of the things that I always look at is the adoption of how easy is this thing going to be able to implement or to get employees on board? So within an EDR, how much work or what is required of the endpoint user? So again, back to me and my iPhone and my iPad, what do I have to do? Is there anything that I have to do that’s going to take time or is this literally like, Hey, you’re just going to start working on it and that’s all you need to do because things are mostly,

David Kakish

Yeah, that is a great question. So if you’re working with a managed service provider or an IT provider, and most of the RIAs listen to us, you probably are, this is something that they can push out and it doesn’t require Todd on his laptop to do anything, right? This is you having a strategic discussion, a strategic conversation with your IT provider and saying, Hey, do we have an endpoint protection solution or an extended, or I’m sorry, endpoint detection and response, right? EDR. So that’s kind of at a base level saying, yes, if you have that, fantastic. If you don’t, you want to have that in place, and that could be pushed out to all the computers, all the iPhones and so on. And so you would definitely want to have that. I would say challenge them and say, Hey, we want to have what’s called an extended detection and response.

We want to have an XDR solution because now it’s looking at beyond just the endpoints for that computer. It’s looking on that computer, it’s looking at your physical network in your office, and it’s looking at your private network at the data center or your Microsoft tenant. And so if you’re listening to us, endpoint protection is fantastic, and the Gartner report that we’re sharing with you is fantastic, but a step above that that doesn’t really add a lot of complexity is an XDR extended detection in a response. And that’s again, if you have the right Microsoft subscription, you probably already have it. It just needs to be configured and managed for you and doing it that way. And then where it gets a little bit more complicated is the managed detection and response because you actually have to pay extra for a company for a human eye to have a 24 7 security operation center that’s looking at that and doing that. I will tell you, we love the XDR solution by Microsoft because you’re leveraging a lot of automation and a lot of AI from Microsoft, and your credit card analogy is fantastic. Realistically for me, I can’t remember the last time that somebody used my credit card and I wasn’t alerted by my credit card company.

I don’t ever remember that happening where I go in and I don’t know what that was. Now, on a side note, on a funny note, my daughter used my wife’s credit card, buy some tickets or something, right? My wife asked me, do you know what this is? And I have no idea. And so there was a little bit of miscommunication between my daughter and my wife. My daughter had, I forget it, it was like some concert tickets or something like that, but we didn’t recognize the platform. So my wife calls the bank and says, yeah, and so anyways, but yeah, I’m trying to think in the last five years, I don’t think my credit card company once there was a fraud and they did not detect that. And that’s the way for you to think about endpoint protection or EDR endpoint detection and response or even XDR extended endpoint protection and response. So again, I apologize for the acronyms. We will include a couple of links there, and I’m a visual guy, so sometimes seeing really helps me. But yeah, so Todd, let me kind of go back to you. Does this kind of make sense or did I confuse a

Todd Darroca

Couple? No, no, it makes sense. My other question, I know we’re on time here, but the user, so me, if you tell me you’re going to push something to my phone and you’re going to be monitoring me, big brother, what is the privacy issue? Is there anything that if a user, you’re going to pick up on whatever you’re doing in your private life, what is that privacy? How much information are you collecting from my personal stuff, or is it really nil?

David Kakish

Yeah, that is a great question. So I’m going to talk about the computers and then I’ll talk about iPhones. And again, iPhones, a Androids, whatever, it doesn’t really matter. So the computers, generally speaking, it’s a company computer where it’s a laptop that you take home and you work in the office or you have a work computer at home and a work computer at the office. I would say that’s 95% of the time. Occasionally people are using a personal computer to access company resources or something like that. And that’s fine. I don’t want to get too much into it, but on a computer that is a company owned asset and we have full visibility, right? So for example, on that company computer, if you are going to facebook.com, you are RIA, probably knows that you’re on facebook.com or on a porn website or violence or whatever, and hopefully you have that block in the first place. And so a work computer, there’s complete control over that. Now, when it comes to iPhones, most companies, most companies are saying, okay, you’re going to use your personal iPhone and then access company resources. I would say 5% of RIAs are basically saying, Hey, we’re just going to give you a work iPhone or work Android smartphone, and we’re going to have full control of that, right? That’s very rare. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want carry two phones. Most people don’t want to carry two phones.

Todd Darroca

Right.

David Kakish

So the way that works on a personal iPhone, again, Android, whatever, it’s the same concept, but iPhone is very popular, so I’ll talk about that is actually it. It’s a fantastic solution. The way that we do that, and this is a Microsoft solution by the way, and this is what I would recommend that your IT provider does. What we can do is we can say, okay, most people want to access email on their iPhone for work related. Some people want to access more than that, but basically the way we do that is like, Hey, we push an agent to that iPhone. It allows us to put everything that’s work related in a separate logical container, and then everything that’s personal is in a separate logical container. So Todd, when you’re working, you don’t tell any difference. This is a work app that’s Outlook that you can access.

You can do whatever you want. These are your Apple, whatever, apple notes, your Apple email, whatever. You can click on any of that and you can use that. What’s really nice is we’ve created that separate logical container for work, and what that allows us to do is to control everything and monitor everything that’s work related, but we have no visibility on what you’re doing on your personal Chrome or any of that right there, or Safari or whatever. So we have zero visibility on the personal container. We have a hundred percent visibility on everything that’s work related. The one that comes up is if you have a simple password on that iPhone, like one, two, three, four, you’re not going to be able to access company resources. So we set it up so that there needs to be password complexity or if you don’t even have a password, right?

Well, that’s a liability for the RIA. And so that’s how it works. And what’s really nice is it’s completely locked down too, so that you taught as a user, you can’t go in and access company email, do a copy, and then put that in your Apple Notes. It’s completely locked down, and then three years you decide you’re going to go work someplace else. We’re going to disable your Microsoft account to do a remote wipe. That’s everything that’s work related, and then anything that is personal stays on that. But everything that’s work related, there’s just a remote wipe on that. So that’s how we do that, and that’s a really good question. I can’t speak for other IT providers, how they do that, but that’s how we approach that. That’s how we do that for our clients and works really well.

Todd Darroca

Yeah, so it’s kind of like two separate rooms, two separate doors. One door is your own bedroom and I get to lock it. Nobody gets in. The other door is for the living room where everybody’s at, and that’s where the company can see stuff.

David Kakish

That’s good would, yeah, separate logical rooms, right? Room number one is a work office, right? Room number two is my bedroom. I have no visibility in the bedroom, but until your work office, there’s complete visibility and it’s separate, separated logically. So it’s not two different logins on the iPhone or anything like that, it’s just you’re logging in, but it’s two separate logical containers. So yeah, the two room analogy is actually fantastic. Yep.

Todd Darroca

Got it. Alright, cool. Well, David, as we wrap up here, let’s go talk about talk the endpoints, the six best endpoint solutions. We talked about a bunch of acronyms, abbreviations, so give us a quick high level recap of what we talked about today and what the listener should be I guess doing today, they can start to do today with all this info. Yeah,

David Kakish

I’ll keep it really simple. I feel like this was one of these podcasts where I jumped around a lot and I apologize. As you can tell, I get excited about this.

Todd Darroca

I’ll get you on track. Don’t worry, don’t worry, David.

David Kakish

I get excited. It’s easy for me to get off on tangent here. So, hey, listen, I think the key thing is, look, you’ve got people that are working, employees that are working remotely. How do you secure them when they’re working remotely because they’re not physically in your office. The two really great solutions in this space is Microsoft and then Sentinel One. So look at those two. If you’re using any of the other vendors that we had talked about, that would be an easy upgrade. But look at Microsoft and look at Sentinel One. Those are the two really great ones that are in this space. I use the term endpoint protection a lot. If you talk to people that are in this space, they might use the acronyms of EDR and XDR, all that EDR is endpoint detection and response, which Sentinel One and Microsoft do.

And then XDR is just extended detection and response, which again, Microsoft and SentinelOne does. And yeah, I would definitely start the conversation and talking, looking at Microsoft Sentinel one for endpoint protection. I’ll leave it at that because we can have more detailed discussions and stuff like that, but both of those provide an EDR and an XDR solution, and that is a great way to go ahead and protect your employees when they’re working remotely. And maybe another way of me saying it is if you don’t have Sentinel One or Microsoft as an endpoint protection solution, go back to your IT provider and say, what do we have?

Todd Darroca

Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, great. And David went through a bunch of, we talked about the Gartner Magic Quadrant with a lot of different vocabulary that may be new to you, but those are going to be in the show notes underneath in the podcast description and on our video. So make sure you download those, A couple of good blog posts that David and team have also written. So make sure to visit those. Again, everything’s going to be in the show notes, and you can always go to ria workspace.com and check out the Learning Center. That’s where this podcast along with our other episodes will be and the resources there. So again, we covered a lot today and we want to say thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to listen to us. And so again, this is the RIA Tech Talk podcast. We’re always happy to be here and we’re brought to you by RIA Workspace. And so feel free to reach out to us with any questions or topics you’d like us to cover. We will look at those things, and I know we are going to have some special guests on here soon, so stay tuned for all of that. So hopefully you’ll like and subscribe to us and in our next episode we’ll cover some more RIA Tech insights. So for David and myself, thanks so much everybody for listening and have a great rest of your day.