The Commission Code for Success

Cybersecurity For Everyone, James Elliman

• The Commission Code For Success from Sims Training and Consulting, LLC

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Your antivirus isn’t the hero you think it is. James Elleman of Element Technologies joins us to show how real protection comes from layers: smart people, smart processes, and just enough tech to stop threats before they become disasters. We dig into the everyday habits that make a difference, like inspecting sender domains, hovering over links, and verifying unexpected requests through a second channel. James also drops a surprisingly effective brand-meets-security tip: managed HTML email signatures that are tough to copy, giving clients a visual authenticity cue and making impersonation attempts stand out.

From there, we zoom out to the infrastructure that keeps your workday moving: the internet itself. Most folks assume a handful of giants own every connection, but the landscape is more nuanced. Smaller infrastructure owners lease lines to big names, and independent ISPs can broker the best route, monitor your connection, and escalate with hard data when something’s broken. Instead of another “reboot your modem” loop, you get proactive alerts, pattern analysis on recurring drop-offs, and someone who can push for new cable when the evidence demands it. Since bandwidth pricing is often regulated, service becomes the edge—and a partner who advocates for you beats waiting on hold.

If you run a professional services firm—law, accounting, marketing, or any team living in email and video calls—this conversation arms you with practical steps you can take tomorrow. Train your people like drivers, not mechanics. Tighten your domain hygiene with DMARC, DKIM, and SPF. Upgrade your signatures and teach clients what “real” looks like. Then rethink connectivity with a provider who notices problems before your clients do. That’s how you cut downtime, avoid scams, and protect revenue without buying every tool under the sun.

If you found this useful, follow the show, share it with a colleague who battles frozen Zooms, and leave a quick review so more business owners can find it. Got a security tip or an ISP horror story? Tell us—your experience could help someone else stay online and stay safe.

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SPEAKER_02:

So the biggest practical thing that you can do is probably user awareness, understanding what's out there. It's not just what used to be a six, seven and even a decade ago, oh, where we taught cybersecurity just to IT professionals and hoped that uh it would never happen to the end user. Or it's now something that everyone has to know about. Kind of like driving a car.

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome again to the Commission Code Podcast. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and join us here today. We're here to help you increase your business revenue and have time to enjoy it. I'm your host, Morris Sims, and I've been consulting and training business people for, well, let's just say over 40 years. We're focused on increasing revenue and having time to enjoy it. After years as a professional salesperson, I spent 32 years in the corporate world. I retired as vice president and chief learning officer of the sales department of a large insurance company where we designed and built and delivered training for over 12,000 professional salespeople. Now I get to consult one-on-one, helping people grow their business and organize themselves to make the most of the time they have. We also build online courses to support business owners in their work as they strive to build the business that they've always wanted. Our objective is really very simple. It's this we're here to help you get what you want from your business and your life. So, right now, let's get on with this episode. Today on the Commission Code, we are graced with the presence of James Elleman. And James, boy, howdy, I tell you what, his business has grown significantly over the past few years. He's doing some new things, and I just can't wait for you to hear more about him. James, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. My name's James, and I've been I I I fixed computers, and I have for the past uh six years of doing it professionally, but probably over a decade unprofessionally. And um, I've owner of Element Technologies. We're a IT provider and internet service provider located on South Shore, Massachusetts. It's it's it's it's a wonderful experience. And for a techie person like me, I can't answer it would do anything differently.

SPEAKER_01:

James, that's really very interesting to me because uh, well, being an old guy, uh computers are wonderful things and I love them, and I I really enjoy messing with them and getting things done, but golly gee, sometimes it's difficult. But tell me this, James, how do you find your clients? Who are your clients? Who's your who's your audience?

SPEAKER_02:

So most of our clients are professional services. So think attorney, CPAs, bookkeepers, marketing agencies, a lot, a lot more professional services. Well, luckily you were graced with that ITE is something that everyone needs these days. Yeah, it's not just very industry specific. There's industries that value it more than others. And those professional services are definitely the one alone.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, you you can't live today in the business world without having a presence electronically, it seems to me. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_02:

No, not. I mean, you you have to be the in on the internet in every way, shape, or form. I mean, you talk to everyone from marketing agencies that are doing digital marketing for websites and social media and SEO, and there's all that tech there, but there's also the cybersecurity side of making sure you don't leak your data to uh all the worldwide, the bad people on the world wide web to uh how do you work efficiently? How can businesses use everything from AI to automation tools to just basically communicating and sending an email? Uh, we went from the tech of old school phone lines and that ran everywhere and it looked like a spider web of everywhere to now the same one wire that carries your internet uh to explore the world wide web also carries your phone service, it's carries your your video data, uh, everything. I think it's it's it's cool how technology has grown like that.

SPEAKER_01:

And then and then uh somehow or another it becomes a fiber light cable. I don't understand this.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we're starting to move away from electronics and just moving to light waves.

SPEAKER_01:

It's incredible. I don't I have a degree in engineering and I still don't understand that mess. Oh, yeah, we're gonna carry it on this lightness this fiber cable, and yeah, good. You do that. That's a wonderful thing. I'm glad you do that. But I anyway. James, something that that you mentioned that I think can be a challenge for most of the folks that probably are listening to us today is this whole idea of security. Because yeah, okay, I've got a I've got anti-malware, and I've got uh uh this, that, and the other. But is that enough? I mean, how do you how do you advise your clients about staying secure on the web? I knew I know somebody came in and took$1,000 out of my checking account a year or so ago and put it into a securities account with a company that's not a very reputable securities company. And I nobody would help me recover that. I lost a thousand dollars because my checking account information somehow or another got out there to the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_02:

So there's a couple things to think about when you think about cybersecurity. You can buy every tool on the market, and you're still not cybersecure. It's all about oh one thing that we talk about is layers. So let's take a one of the most common cybersecurity issues out there, which is a fraudulent email. And someone and some nefarious actors send you an email, oh, with a bad link on it. Well, all the first first line of defense is usually some sort of spam filter or to see, hey, is this in a database? Do we recognize this is spam? So on and so forth. Okay, cool, it got through that. Uh now it's okay, cool, it got to the workstation, and that's when we rely on on user training. And it's kind of it's layers upon layer. There's okay, cool. Can we trust that this employee isn't gonna click on a link that they're kind of suspicious about and we'll send it over to IT to look at? Uh or okay, cool, they clicked on it because they trust it, or they're just mailing it in and saying, Oh, yeah, let's see what this is, is and so you have uh different tools such as like antivirus, EDR, sim, and all those other things, but it's it's all about layers and filling in the gaps. Think about it kind of like a fortress. You have a moat, you have archers, or you have big stone wall, also you have inner walls, oh you might have a trench, and it's all to be barriers to slow down attackers, or kind of get them to go the other direction and go away. And you can buy a 13 different antivirus tools, but they're not they're not gonna uh stop something from getting to them. So oh, setting up different and stage it is is really the biggest thing and kind of making that building that puzzle, building that a fortress.

SPEAKER_01:

So the average guy out there knows to to have some antivirus sort of stuff or anti-malware, you know, software on his computer. What how do you how do you build these layers? Give me something practical that that our audience could grab a hold of and go out and do differently tomorrow than what they're doing today.

SPEAKER_02:

So the biggest practical thing that you can do is probably user awareness, understanding what's out there. Or it's not just what used to be e6, seven and even a decade ago, oh, where we taught cybersecurity just to IT professionals and hope that uh it would never happen to the end user. Or it's now something that everyone has to know about. Kind of like driving a car. You can't really guess where HR in the world these days is unless you're in New York City, where there's a lot of cabs. You have to learn to drive. It's not something you have to learn to do your taxes. It is learning about cybersecurity and how to protect yourself online is something that you have to do. You have to stay up with the news of what's going on out there. Do you have to understand and the the bigot this things that are happening from ransomware are attacks like how they got in through SSH or man in the middle attacks? No. You don't have to know that the sheer details, but understanding how to recognize a a fraudulent email. How to recognize if someone and fails to or has a has a fake website. Maybe they made a second copy of the Bank of America website, like what happened a couple weeks ago. Oh, understanding how to recognize those little things.

SPEAKER_01:

How do you recognize that? I mean, what do you do? What do you look at? And you get an email. I got one last week. Hi, you know, Mark Sims uh died and left no one in his uh in his line, and he's got this estate worth$680 million, and we think you're in line for that. Uh send me, you know, reply back and I'll send you all the data about how we know you're connected to Mark and what's going on. I read it and read it and read it, and I thought, you know, it's probably a thing. It probably is not real, but I don't know. Maybe it is. So I I sent it to my son, the attorney, and he immediately wrote back and says, Dad, the email address is not the same as the person that they say they are. It's a it's a crazy email address compared to what this guy is saying he does and who he is. So forget it, delete it, move on, block it, go from there. You know, James, I never thought of that. I never looked at his email address. But just something that's are there other things you can do to to spot that fraudulent crap besides the fact that it's just out there and it's totally ridiculous. Uh I never knew anybody named Mark Sims and in my family line, it just doesn't happen.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, uh the first thing that I always tell all people look for or is to look at the email address. It's so cheap to have a business branded email address these days. That it's not most businesses aren't doing any business with an AOL account or a Gmail account. They're doing it with James at Element Technologies.com or or Amanda at company a dot com. Um it's always it it's it's it looks very very professional. And that's usually the first thing that at looking at at or if they give you a website link and the website link is is www.saltwater.com and their email address is coming from um um I don't know, oh clamshack.com, it's like, oh hey, this doesn't match up. I see that a lot, uh that's a lot of mortgage fraud, but you'll see that is people people saying, Hey, hey, I don't see this this or this this email address as in this website don't match up. Yeah, that's a very common thing. Um also just like I've never worked with this person before, and they're saying that they need all this personal information from me. Well, I'm not expecting this. I'm not applying for I don't have a new job, I don't have any of this, so I don't want to be giving out this information to people. Um but uh a lot of it's just looking for the little details. If you're uh an actual business, use a full HTML web signature because it can't be copy and pasted, so people can't fraudulently act as you.

SPEAKER_01:

You have to come down a couple of levels here. I don't know what an HTML signature, okay?

SPEAKER_02:

Yep. So well, if you remember, uh it if you go into Outlook or Google, well, you can just kind of type it in and create whatever you want for uh an email signature. Or it's just it's all text-based. Maybe you insert an image or two, oh, and that's it, and that's your signature. Or but if you look at a lot out of companies now, oh you have the nicely formatted it, maybe they have a like a picture of themselves with the company logo with like a link to the website, right? It has multiple columns, um, and it looks very structured. It looks kind of like in a piece of a website, it's in the bottom left after your signature. And a lot of those, depending on the provider, are you can't copy and paste them, which is really important. And not all providers do this. There's some vendors that do and some vendors that don't won't, but uh setting one up is a super simple way to make it so oh spammers that maybe do get a hold of hold of some aspect of your business and want to act on behalf of you, it's an easy way to stop it by okay, cool. My clients recognize that this is my email signature. Yeah, well, if they say if they say that they see a a this two lines of text or something else, or the spammer decides to copy and paste it and it looks all wonky, he they're gonna be like, okay, well, did this really come from James? Did this come from Roger? Did this come from my attorney? Did this come from my doctor? Or did this come from my bank? And so helping by it's it's a lot of marketing too. Building your business and building uh a safe haven for your business is by having a nice having that marketing a well-polished signature that can't be copy and pasted is a really great cybersecurity tool to protect your business from being fraudulently impersonated by other people.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting. Never thought of that. Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

It costs 30 cents a month for a lot of for that software per user.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's but but where do I find that kind of stuff? Where do I get that?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh you can just Google old um HTML all signature software.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And there's a bunch of them out there. There's code, there's a disclaimer, there's dozens of them out there. Okay, cool. The one that's compatible with your email software, it makes your business look a lot more professional, but it also stops a lot of spammers from being able to uh impersonate you.

SPEAKER_01:

Boy, that's the kind of practical stuff I love, man. Thank you. That's that's exactly what we need to hear is that sort of practical stuff about what you can do tomorrow today that you haven't been doing up until this point, which is absolutely perfect. And James, you mentioned you're you're now into the world of being an internet service provider, an ISP. What does that mean? Absolutely. I know what an ISP is. I I thought I knew what, but I really don't tell us more.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. So oh, the biggest thing that people think about out for ISPs is they think about the Comcast, the Verizons, the spectrums of the world. All that all I do is lay cable and provide the internet service. But there's also small independent internet service providers like ourselves. We bury a little bit of cable, not much. It's only a couple miles, but what we do mostly is we broker our internet service. Just like you would go out to an insurance agent and say, Hey, I need auto insurance. And they'll go and they'll shop around a progressive and state farm and and and all those other companies, and they'll be like, okay, here's the best way. Now, when you get into an accident, you don't call State Farm or Progressive, you call your local insurance agent, and they help you file a claim. And we do a lot of the same thing on that side. So we'll go and help you get at a great deal from Comcast or Verizon for your internet service. This this will get you set up, we'll help you with the billing set up, we'll help you with the technical service side as well. Do you want to uh call all a big provider that may keep you on the phone for an hour and a half on hold before or someone um that's maybe making minimum wage is tells you to read to unplug and plug in your modem again? Or do you want to call all small team team that uh says, okay, cool, let me look what the status codes are on your modem. Okay, cool. I can't see your modems online. Do you mind unplugging it, plugging it back in? And or okay, cool, our automated system picked up up the uh your modem has a 503 code. But let me go call all the provider for you and get a technician dispatch to your office. And so we became a license internet service provider for the sole reason of I didn't want to have clients have to go call all and argue technical information and with big ISPs. Yeah, we can do it for you. And that's just kind of we we grew and it was something that not a lot of IT companies are willing to do, put the time into. There's not big commissions in it, there's there's not a lot of money in it, but it's it's something that if you're gonna be a holistic experience for your company or for your clients, it's something that's really important.

SPEAKER_01:

So, and yeah, how does that work when well, for example, I live outside of the Metroplex of Dallas Fort Worth, and we're about 30 minutes from downtown Dallas. The only option I have is ATT. There's no other ISP out there, that's it. I can't even get I can't get Verizon line, you know, a line from Verizon in. I could do, I guess, I guess I could do, you know, 5G wireless internet with Verizon or T Mobile or somebody else, but there's no other hardwired internet service provider, I guess is what it what it is, except for ATT. I'm stuck.

SPEAKER_02:

You you'd be surprised how how many service providers are out there or that you don't know about. So you'll see that, oh hey, Comcast Esther Verizon or ATT in your example is the only one that's available. But a lot of companies include from Comcast to Verizon, they don't actually own the cable that's in the ground. What they do is there might be a company like J JW Cable Company in your area, and they actually own all the cable in the ground, and they lease it to Comcast, your Verizons, your ATTs. And so you can go and say, Hey, from my side, yeah, okay, cool. Well, Mr. Sims here's office is on 31 North Street, and he needs internet service. Okay, cool. Let's go look up a cable finder. This this company owns that cable. Oh, it's not owned by one of the big telecom ums, it's an independent that rents it out. I can go rent up out online myself. And then they just back at uh what's called an internet exchange, and they just say, Okay, cool. Port Earth 31 of this carrier goes over to Element Technologies, and we provide the service from there on out. There's a lot more creative ways you can go about that. Even um we we've helped quite a few good clients that have Comcast and say, because Comcast will rent out their cable to us and say, okay, cool. Well, we just need the cable out of the ground, we'll take care of everything else from there on out.

SPEAKER_01:

So when it comes to service in a situation like that, uh I've got a client and she is uh wonderful and she's got all this stuff, but she's kind of feels like she's stuck in the middle as well. There's no other provider except for one, she's told. And she's got spotty internet service. It it just it constantly seems to, you know, be going down or at least fuzzy, you know. Oh yeah, you froze kind of stuff all the time. Is this a solution to that kind of problem?

SPEAKER_02:

It is, yes. So oh, one of the big things about being independent is that we have a lot more control over tech support. So, for example, oh, we just worked with a client that's a little south of us that they thought they just had Comcast service. And that was fine. Comcast was the best cable old old contract in the area. Uh, but every time they'd call, oh, they would get just get hit with okay, reboot your modem, you're good to go. Everything worked for a week or two, and then it would go back down again, and they'd have to call and it was just this repeating cycle.

SPEAKER_01:

It took you 45 minutes to get somebody to say, unplug and replug in your modem.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, exactly. And so what we did instead is we uh when they start signed with uh us, we got them this almost basically the same cable contract that they already have. But but when we saw we use an automated system to see when your internet go gets spotty instead of waiting for you to call us, we're a little more proactive about it and be like, okay, cool. We see that the internet goes down. We can actually track it that the internet goes down um every few weeks after the reboot. We can provide that information to the cable company, and they actually got all new cable ran to ran to their building.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

That's solved the issue because we can we have the regular we can meet a lot of the regulatory compliance and with the cable companies to say, hey, you need to go fix this. Um, from uh, hey, this has happened multiple times. Because unless you get at a higher level technician that can sit C, hey, hey, this has happened multiple times, Comcast needs to go out out and bury$2,000 worth of new cable in the ground, they don't want to do that. And a level one technician doesn't have the the power or the permissions to authorize something like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

But us as an independent company, we can prove that. And we have the customer service is perspective to want to do that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And services, uh, I I gotta believe, at least it is for me personally. Service is the why is the whole why behind why I do business with uh just about anybody is when the service they provide is over the top, I'll spend more money with them than I would with the cheapest option that's out there. Service is king, it seems to me.

SPEAKER_02:

It really is, and one thing to know about internet service and phone service is it's very highly regulated. Like here in Massachusetts, it's it's probably one of the more regulated regulated areas. So if I want to sell 100 megabit service to someone, the price I sell it to you at is gonna be the same that Comcast sells it to you at, it's gonna be the same that Verizon sells it to you at, and it's gonna be the same aim that Spectrum sells it sells it to you at. So you're it's not a guarantee on it's not a competition of price at that point in my area. It's a competition of who is the best customer service.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, totally, totally.

SPEAKER_02:

And there's a lot of companies that don't even know people like me exist.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I think you've got you've got a real concern on your hands there. It's not about who you know, it's about who knows you. And uh getting out there to be more visible is one of the biggest challenges any of us in a medium to small business have. So you're right on target there. James, uh, how do we get a hold of you? How do we how do we get in touch with you and have further conversations?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Our website, it's the the best way to do it. It's just el i man te ch dot com, elementch.com. Um uh we have a phone number or we have an email address and everything's monitored 24-7, 365 days a year. Feel free to call. If if you're annoyed by your internet service at two in the morning, feel free to give our our sales line a call and we'll submit a quote for you and we'll get it back to you, usually within in about four hours. So if you have questions or if you need that or just want to talk tech, feel free to go on and skip schedule a meeting with me. My calendar link is right on our website. So if you ever need anything.

SPEAKER_01:

Outstanding. James, thank you so much for being on the commission code today.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. This was a blast. I learned a lot, and that's that's when podcasts work, is when I learn something. So thank you, man. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02:

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the commission code to success in your business. Remember, go to Morris Sims.com for more information. And in the meantime, hey, have a great week. Get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes, I'm Morris Sims.