Welcome to Whimmed Web!
We are a small business whose mission is to provide effective, affordable cybersecurity to small businesses, SMEs, non-profits and local government services.
We’re a bit different from most cybersecurity agencies. We used to be in marketing, building web sites and managing social media and SEO for local businesses and not for profit clients. Then, around ten years ago, we got hacked.
Ten years ago, as a small business suffering a breach, the damages were more limited than losses experienced in breaches at small businesses today. Most hackers back then were in it for the thrill and notoriety, script kiddies, whereas now, major criminal organizations have created a dark web of financially motivated and organized cybercrime.
Our recovery from a network breach
Our business did not suffer a major financial loss, but as anyone knows who has suffered a breach, the mental and emotional tolls are also high. Immediately, we shut down parts of our network and scrambled to contain and repair the damages. Today, there are clearer protocols and legal regulations for how to respond and recover from a cyber incident. When it happened to us ten years ago, there were few standard and required responses and even fewer guiding resources. We relied on our instincts and values to help us navigate our cyber attack recovery.
After containing our network and stopping further damages, we notified all clients whose data was impacted, offering recovery assistance and humble apologies. Fortunately, only minor customer data was exposed and there were no significant damages to our clients as a result of the breach. We recovered and continued creating and managing ad campaigns for local businesses.
We also developed a keen interest in IT security for small business. We signed up for newsletters, RSS feeds, followed recommendations from NIST for small businesses and others. We studied the crimes and we studied the solutions, just like we had been studying keywords, advertising ROI, and search engine results pages. We read thousands of pages of code and developed a deep understanding of small business network security. We came to understand how the questionable privacy practices and poor security controls of various big players in the marketing industry were allowing hackers and other bad actors to easily access private, personal data. (Since those earlier days, great improvements have been made in privacy laws and practices in enterprise security, including on major social media and advertising platforms.)
As the cybersecurity industry matured, we found our passion.
Since making the shift to information security, we have worked in both the public and private sectors, advising on cybersecurity and fraud detection and prevention. We are passionate about helping small businesses and small enterprises build safety first networks. Small business cybersecurity and SME network security have historically been more challenging to achieve. Good options have been harder to identify, very costly to implement, and have too often had short life spans. This has been changing though, and there are now excellent frameworks and affordable network security solutions for businesses and organizations of all sizes.
And this is what we do, who we are. We keep our finger on the pulse of information security, keep up with the constant developments in the threat, law and policy, and threat protection landscapes to identify the best solutions for SMBs, small enterprises, local government entities, and non-profit organizations. We partner with enterprise security providers whom we consistently re-evaluate for quality, usability, and affordability in order to bring you only the best solutions. We love helping our small business clients and groups find peace of mind around the challenging and crucial issues of network and information security. You are out there investing in your local communities, providing vital services, and building human connections. We want to help keep you protected from international crime syndicates focused on stealing your financial and informational assets.
Key Partners
We carefully vet and choose our partners based on their ability to deliver top quality solutions, their pricing models, including both affordability and transparency, and on their terms of service and privacy policies. Some of our partners are:
Microsoft
Cloud Partner
Have Questions? Let's Connect!
We offer free, no obligation consultations.
Our client connections always start with a free, no obligation consultation. Whether you are revising your information security systems and protocols or building an entirely new cybersecurity plan, we’re happy to answer questions and provide recommendations. We’ll answer questions about our services, with up front pricing. We promise to recommend only those services that are genuinely needed and to provide only those that we are qualified to provide. We also never sell your information in any form. Connect with us here or call us at 360-545-3676 to schedule a phone call or Zoom meeting to discuss the current best options on your path forward to greater cybersecurity. We’ll get back to you in 48 hours or less.
