[Music] good Tuesday morning everybody welcome into your fre waves now Community Spotlight on this Tuesday I'm Kaye Nicks and we've got Mario conell here on the line to check in with our 3pl Focus Community Check call Mary we are back on the topic of cyber security today this time talking about a Direct in in direct proponent who is in the space of cybercity McLoud software they are in the thick of it on the front line talk to me a little bit about what they're doing yeah so we actually kind of broke down some of the
nitty-gritty because obviously everyone is hearing cyber attacks ransomware what does that all even mean so we break down what some of the most common you know cyber security threats are and then also um kind of why it's something that everybody does need to care about um because you know we're we see in the headlines like Mega corporations huge billion dollar year companies are the victims of cyber threats but what is so common actually is that smaller companies maybe a small Freight brokerage that has a couple of people um a small carrier some of the smaller
companies that might not have that it infrastructure um or might not have as much importance on cyber security put in place you know their victims of it too it's just it just not doesn't make the headlines um because the thing is the people who are you know committing these attacks and you know behind everything they they don't really care if you are a billion- dollar company or a $500,000 a year company they just want to make a they just want to make a mark and they just want to hit their target and so um if
they get 10 companies to give them $1,000 a day well that's a pretty good day versus you know trying to get a Millions out of a big out of a big company so it it's it's happening all the time so that's why it's really really important for freight brokers for 3pls for even um agents to be more on top of things and to kind of be on the lookout just because you think that you're immune because you're a small company and oh they won't care about us we don't make enough to matter no they do
they'll just take the money from you because they know that more often than not you don't have that it infrastructure to go about fix it um you'll just pay the Rand someware and carry on with your life so it is important for everyone to kind of have something in place and if you're a small company you likely don't have the means to recoup it or to go after the folks who are The Bad actors in The Bad agent so their risk to reward is honestly pretty low McLoud is so interesting because they are a legacy
software provider right they've been in the TMS schem for forever and they have a really wide range of folks who use their product with those small to medium businesses some of the biggest Enterprise fleets are run off M Cloud so for folks who maybe hack into their software it does give them a pretty wide Gambit of both things to attack and then on the flip side it gives McLoud a very wide Gambit of things that need to protect when they're looking at their protection strategy do they go kind of like big to small like if
we can design a solution that works for our biggest Enterprise customers then it should also relatively work for our smaller groups too oh for sure and that's the thing with McLoud is that you know they have been doing for so long so they know a lot of what BR Brokers and 3pls and everybody they they know a lot of what those guys are looking for so if you come to them saying like there's no one that can make a TMS for us like we're so special we're so custom nine times out of 10 they're going
to go no we have a solution for you just kind of tell us what you need and so when they when it comes to like protection you know they have that entire network of people and so they um of carriers and different users and everything like that so they are ble to stop um some of those Bad actors from even getting in the door and so it's really nice that they do take security so seriously um and that's something that you know they they Pride themselves on is you know not really being subject to some
of those threats and keeping their um keeping their own cyber security up and running because if they go down well then you know suddenly a whole bunch of brokerages go down and um then they're not fulfilling their end of the contracts and obviously everyone's losing millions of dollars and that's just not very fun so it's something that they take seriously and that they also in turn um you know coach some of their clients on best practices and make sure that they are also um kind of fulfilling their end of the bargain so that way everyone
in their network is kind of fully protected um which is fantastic because a lot of times when you have some of those software Partnerships there's not a lot of emphasis on okay well I'm going to kind of help you um and kind of coach you through what you need to do for maybe the rest of your organization or just bring up things for you to consider um because there's that's just not a thing a lot of times you'll find a TMS company that's just like here's a TMS have a nice day hope nothing goes wrong
so let's talk a little bit about Integrations because that's kind of a big buzzword across Freight Tech space and it's one that both has a lot of meaning but also doesn't have a lot of meaning which I think is interesting to think about right we see actors who are like Highway who are a business who has built itself on being this single point of contact for fraud prevention okay that's great but now you have to go in and you have to talk about expanding your business model by offering yourself to integrate with these TMS providers
you take your solution and fit it into the solutions that other folks have built and then on the flip side you could have a platform who maybe develops their own TMS that has their own proprietary fraud detection system in it right like truck stops loadboard for example right and can we talk about the value behind find finding an integration partner versus building your own types of things there's value in both sides I'm curious on your thoughts on what the value is in each those places yeah so like you said there's a time and a place
for both and a lot of it I think comes down to your own personal resources and where you put your priorities I mean any any leadership coaching pretty much anything you're going to find about running a business is going to say where you put your priorities it's going to grow so if you know that you know your core business is moving Freight and you don't really want to invest in building your own technology you just want to go to someone and say hi can I have this please make these adjustments please kind of adjust things
as I need them if you know that that's what you want to do then absolutely no way should you be kind of building your own cyber security there's plenty out there that you can get um but if that's something that you know you like and if you pride yourself on being a tech first company of having Cutting Edge Tech and you know you struggle to find a partner that matches your values and kind of your goals then obviously yeah that's going to be really helpful for you to build your own Solutions and build everything um
it's just a matter of what works for you and what works for your company um but I would say especially when it comes to uh areas of security and everything like that um I personally am hesitant against building my own solution um just because there are so many out there that are affordable that can do a much better job uh much faster than building it completely from scratch because if you think about it while you're building it from scratch what do you have in place right then like what do you have in place then if
but if you use those companies to kind of fill the Gap until your solution's ready that's fine um but it's just really comes down to what are your priorities and what's more important to you is it you know growing your Client List growing your business making relationships with carriers or building technology um and I would say even a couple years ago you know that Integrations they weren't always 100% successful um but I think that now we can't really say that anymore because there are so many um people asking the right questions ahead of time to
make sure that this integration will be completed and successful and let's also make it very clear that when you're trying to sess out those priorities there's not necessarily a wrong one right it's not that oh my gosh okay I have to put aside the idea of protecting my customers in order to build my book of business or I have to build out this technology solution and focus on acquiring customers at a slower rate there's not a wrong answer to that it's all up to you and there is there is a place for you in this
Freight ecosystem no matter which path you choose Mary really quickly before we let you go talk to me a little bit about your guest and then where can we find the show today so today we have uh Ben Barnes he is the Chief Information officer at McLoud and we really get into some of the I don't want to say the fun parts of cyber security but it kind of is the fun parts of cyber security at least to he and I um and so we do that in that episode if you want to listen to
it it comes out at 12:30 Eastern today on Apple podcast Spotify YouTube pretty much anywhere you can get to the internet you can find it um and then if that's not enough news the newsletter will come out today at 2 pm Eastern and I can't wait for you guys to read it it'll have a whole bunch of memes in it per usual there we go all right Mary thanks for joining us this morning we'll catch chat call later on this afternoon and catch up with you later thanks guys [Music]
