Jack Rhysider

The Dominican Republic was in trouble and Omar's job was to help.

The Dominican Republic was in trouble and Omar's job was to help.

Now, this is what I love about Omar, is his awareness and his social skills. I used to work for a company doing incident response, and guess how much cybersecurity news my boss paid attention to? None. Guess how many other companies my boss interacted with to understand what threats they were facing? None.

Now, this is what I love about Omar, is his awareness and his social skills. I used to work for a company doing incident response, and guess how much cybersecurity news my boss paid attention to? None. Guess how many other companies my boss interacted with to understand what threats they were facing? None.

The attitude in our company was to put your head down and do your work, not look around to see what everyone else is doing or meet other people in the field. And I hated that. I can't stress this enough, that having allies in this business and going to conferences and meeting people and sharing stories with them will help you do your job so much better.

The attitude in our company was to put your head down and do your work, not look around to see what everyone else is doing or meet other people in the field. And I hated that. I can't stress this enough, that having allies in this business and going to conferences and meeting people and sharing stories with them will help you do your job so much better.

So please, IT managers, stop thinking you're in some silo and your problems are just yours. Encourage and support your IT employees to go to conferences, meetups, talks, and workshops. It will help your business. Trust me. Omar has gone to conferences. You heard two of his talks at the beginning of this episode even. And he's gone to meetups and he's made friends across the sea in Costa Rica.

So please, IT managers, stop thinking you're in some silo and your problems are just yours. Encourage and support your IT employees to go to conferences, meetups, talks, and workshops. It will help your business. Trust me. Omar has gone to conferences. You heard two of his talks at the beginning of this episode even. And he's gone to meetups and he's made friends across the sea in Costa Rica.

Specifically, it was the conference called FIRST where he met them. And you can learn more about this at FIRST.org.

Specifically, it was the conference called FIRST where he met them. And you can learn more about this at FIRST.org.

While FIRST is just one conference in the world, there are so many more going on these days. In fact, I think any given week, you can find two or three security conferences going on somewhere in the world. So just Google cybersecurity conference near me and see what's coming up near you. And having these connections were very valuable in this situation. I mean, it was a force multiplier even.

While FIRST is just one conference in the world, there are so many more going on these days. In fact, I think any given week, you can find two or three security conferences going on somewhere in the world. So just Google cybersecurity conference near me and see what's coming up near you. And having these connections were very valuable in this situation. I mean, it was a force multiplier even.

Dominican Republic doesn't have the biggest cybersecurity incident response team in the world. And so knowing who to tap for help creates a battalion of people who can help you in different ways. One thing they did was compare their malware and indicators with other countries in Latin America to see who else has seen anything like this.

Dominican Republic doesn't have the biggest cybersecurity incident response team in the world. And so knowing who to tap for help creates a battalion of people who can help you in different ways. One thing they did was compare their malware and indicators with other countries in Latin America to see who else has seen anything like this.

Then he started creating a playbook with help from other nations to start remediating this. Of course, he was also calling up security vendors, the people who made the software that was supposed to be securing his network. He'd call up and say things like, hey, we pay you to block these attacks and you didn't. Please help us fix it.

Then he started creating a playbook with help from other nations to start remediating this. Of course, he was also calling up security vendors, the people who made the software that was supposed to be securing his network. He'd call up and say things like, hey, we pay you to block these attacks and you didn't. Please help us fix it.

And of course, the security vendors want to make their tools better. So they wanted like a sample of the malware and what methods they used to get in. And we're working quickly to fix their software so they would be able to block these attacks from continuing. continuing. And this was happening on Windows machines. They were getting infected even though they were fully patched and updated.

And of course, the security vendors want to make their tools better. So they wanted like a sample of the malware and what methods they used to get in. And we're working quickly to fix their software so they would be able to block these attacks from continuing. continuing. And this was happening on Windows machines. They were getting infected even though they were fully patched and updated.

So a call to Microsoft was important to show them what they were dealing with and to ask, how can you fix this? They were calling out to other network vendors too because their systems were compromised. And by the way, when you call up one of these companies to try to report a zero-day exploit, it's not easy.

So a call to Microsoft was important to show them what they were dealing with and to ask, how can you fix this? They were calling out to other network vendors too because their systems were compromised. And by the way, when you call up one of these companies to try to report a zero-day exploit, it's not easy.