EP258: Ted Harrington - Two Security Strategies Every Bookkeeping Business Should Know

Michael Palmer: So now you compare these two stories side by side. One went out of business and one produced millionaires. And the difference between them was how they thought about security. Obviously there were differences in their business too, but that is an amazingly powerful idea that no matter what business someone is, no matter how large your company is, no matter how many people you have, how much money you have, how many resources, whatever, you are in full control of your attitude towards security and the companies who prioritize it and see it as part of their mission, good things come from it. And the companies who don't, good things don't come from it. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be an informative one. Our guest is the author of Hackable: How to Do Application Security Right and the executive partner at Independent Security Evaluations. He's a leader of ethical hackers who use his skills to help companies build better, more secure software. Ted Harrington, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. It's great to have you. And I mean, this is a topic that has come up many times in the last year and a half as we've all moved into working online and as well all these new applications to do that. And so before we get into talking about all of that and the implications it has on on our life. Tell us about you and your career journey leading up to this point.

Ted Harrington: Sure. Well, as you said, I'm the, uh, you know, as ethical hackers, we're the good guy hackers. And so kind of the, I guess, worldview that I have, the corner of the world that I come from, is helping companies try to understand how they might be attacked, what their vulnerabilities might be, how those vulnerabilities might be exploited. Before the attacker does. So basically, we do the bad guy stuff, but we're the good guys who, instead of, you know, taking advantage of those problems, we help identify how to fix them instead. And so over the course of, you know, the years doing this, we've been involved with some