HT Helps The Gabriel Group Employees Improve Organizational Security

In May 2023, The Gabriel Group switched to Hungerford Technologies after experiencing slow turnaround times with its former managed service provider.

Emails to the MSP were going unanswered, and Gabriel Group felt the MSP didn’t fully understand its business.

“Unfortunately, it was the big-picture stuff that they just didn’t seem to hear us,” said Paul Borden, Gabriel Group’s director of IT. “It’s frustrating for sure.”

The tipping point came after the Grand Rapids-based distributor of food service products attended a security conference webinar and received an extremely low security score, mostly due to its employees’ lack of knowledge regarding strong password usage.

Gabriel Group informed its former MSP of the low score and asked it for help to improve the company’s security. But months went by with no plan put in place.

“I knew the results (of the security score) wouldn’t be good, but it was eye-opening, to say the least,” Borden said. “We began to look at increasing our security so that people didn’t use ‘1234’ as a password.”

Gabriel Group began internally discussing the need to change MSP providers in mid-2022. A word-of-mouth referral from another employee led the organization to Hungerford Technologies. Discussions between Gabriel Group and HT began in the fall of 2022.

Borden said he heard from many people about Hungerford Technologies’ strong reputation as a reliable MSP. He experienced HT’s people-first approach firsthand when meeting with account executive Bret Neuman.

“(Bret) listened to us; he understood what we needed help with,” Borden said.

Organizational Goals for The Gabriel Group

The top priority for Gabriel Group was improving password practices. The goal was to educate employees on creating strong passwords and utilizing passphrases that are easy for them to remember but hard for attackers or computers to guess.

“If we can give (our employees) the tools to be more secure on the business side, hopefully, that will bleed over into the personal side so their bank password won’t be ‘ABC123,’” Borden said. “If you can help one employee change the password on their bank account … to something more secure, it’s worth every penny.”

In addition to adopting better password practices, Borden said improving his co-workers’ ability to spot phishing scams was high on the priority list. Before switching to Hungerford Technologies, Gabriel Group fell victim to a phishing attack after clicking a link in an email that appeared to be from a dealer. The link, however, installed a virus on the computer. Borden said the team is now more careful with unexpected emails and will make a phone call to the dealer if an email looks suspicious.

Because of the amount of spam Gabriel Group employees receive, Borden noted the phishing training seminars utilized by HT have been a great learning aid and helped his co-workers understand how malicious emails that appear legitimate can be detrimental to an organization.

Furthermore, Borden said the additional services Hungerford Technologies offers, such as lifecycle planning, roadmapping and budgeting, have helped him and his team figure out when to replace aging computers.

He added Gabriel Group has been very satisfied with the support the team has received from Hungerford Technologies during the first few months, noting there haven’t been unanswered emails like there were with the previous vendor.

He also said there weren’t any day-to-day changes for his co-workers once onboarding was complete and noted the entire process was easy for everyone.

“In this day and age, you always think things are too good to be true. But when we told (Hungerford Technologies) what we were looking for and the proposal addressed those items, we’re like ‘OK, we’re on to something,’” Borden said.

Educate Your Employees

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