He Ran Security for The Weather Channel. Now He Keeps Factories and Fleets Online.
with John Penrod, Co-owner and chief technology officer, Transcend Networks, Cumming, Georgia. Former chief information security officer at The Weather Channel
If a just-in-time supplier is late with a windshield, the entire car plant shuts down, and John Penrod says that supplier can be fined $50,000 every 15 minutes. Customers like that have to stay up. At Transcend Networks, his managed service provider (MSP), that means redundancy and monitoring built so something can fail while operations keep running, plus recovery plans that start from what the business needs. Then the same lessons go to their smaller clients.
John founded Transcend Networks, an Atlanta MSP, in 2003. He ran it solo for a number of years and brought on a partner in 2014, and today they own it 50-50: John's background is technology and information security, his partner's is operations and sales. John has also served as chief information security officer (CISO) at the Weather Channel. Automotive manufacturing is one of the firm's best core businesses. Word of mouth brought in broadcast video and state government work, and the best fit right now is companies with 25 to 75 users.
What we cover
- How a late windshield can shut down an entire car plant, and the fine he says the supplier faces
- Redundancy and monitoring, so something can fail while operations keep running
- Why a disaster recovery plan starts with business needs, and what an outage would mean for a client with one server
- A Kaseya and Datto shop that adds open-source tools such as Zabbix where they are needed
- Cold calling, a full-time vice president of sales, and speaking at the Georgia Automotive Manufacturers Association
- Using artificial intelligence (AI) for engineering answers that once took days with a vendor, while keeping confidential data out of it
- Buyers who call about acquiring the firm, and why he treats every one of those calls as training
- Phishing emails that include an entire conversation thread, so the request looks already approved
- The good hurricane: a speaking engagement from his Weather Channel days, and why more business from fraud is still a shame
- Scam Microsoft Teams calls, money wired abroad that you will never see again, and the time Hong Kong police laughed at him
- Cyber insurance checklists that can be almost impossible to satisfy, and why you still have to have it
- Open source where necessary, rather than where possible
- Getting a busy client's time for the risks, from admin rights to bad batteries
- Co-managed information technology (IT): a client's own IT person takes tier one and Transcend covers tier three and higher
- Letting clients hear they are down from their provider before the front desk tells them
- Staff on site full-time at state agencies in Georgia and North Carolina, working at the client's pleasure
- After a larger equity-backed MSP bought the firm he worked at, the sales meeting where losing five customers and gaining 10 counted as a net win
- Lightning round: deep web monitoring as a scare tactic, and training with simulated phishing as the most underrated thing
- Cloud or on-premises in five years: VMware licensing, Azure costs and a dishwasher that has to be online for rinse mode
- The MSPs that survive the next five years, and starting out on open-source tools
Chapters
- 00:00 The cost of factory downtime
- 00:28 Introducing John Penrod
- 00:58 Founding Transcend and splitting responsibilities
- 01:56 Keeping factories running: uptime and recovery
- 05:05 The MSP technology stack
- 06:11 Sales, referrals and manufacturing events
- 07:42 AI for engineering and client guidance
- 09:53 Growth plans and private equity conversations
- 11:04 Phishing, fraud and evolving threats
- 13:39 Cyber insurance and the security checklist
- 15:17 Open-source tools and security trade-offs
- 16:50 Getting clients to act on IT risks
- 18:01 What co-managed IT looks like
- 22:37 On-site IT teams and escalation support
- 25:04 Finding markets and building customer relationships
- 27:47 Lightning round: tools and deep-web monitoring
- 29:09 Security training and simulated phishing
- 31:03 Cloud or on-premises in five years?
- 32:27 VMware costs and the push toward cloud
- 34:26 MSP survival and starting with open-source tools
The guest
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