NSITSP Offers Media Training - Be prepared for the next cyber "incident"

As far as I can remember, going back forty years in this industry, I've never seen a session on media training for IT consultants. Yes, the upper echelons of Microsoft, Adobe, and Intel all get media training. Now we're starting to bring it to SMB IT consultants!

Way back (two years ago), I was really struck by the media response to the big Kaseya attack. And, to a lesser degree, the Colonial Pipeline attack, and pretty much all cyber security incidents. 

The media were largely ill-informed. Of course they didn't understand the technology. That's okay. It's not their job. But they also didn't understand the most basic elements of what these attacks mean to businesses. They don't understand the channel, or retail markets, or cloud services, or onsite vs. remote. 

And so, they quickly jumped to conclusions. I've mentioned this several times in meetings. Their instant analysis includes statements like:

• They (vendors/customers/IT consultants) obviously didn't know what they were doing.
• The software must not be very good.
• Or it was set up wrong.
• The IT people didn't do their job.
• Why would anyone outsource their IT support?
• Why would any IT company use such dangerous, powerful tools?
• and so forth.

ALL of these comments come from a position of being un-informed or ill-informed.

Now imagine the next big attack. (There will be one.) Imagine that you have some basic materials to give the media and some words they can use to explain what happened. Not in deep detail. But just enough so that they don't say wrong, insulting, uninformed things.

And then imagine that they want a one sentence quote. Or a six-second sound byte. They might talk to you for fifteen minutes. But if you want to be in the story, you need to give them one good sentence or one sound byte.

Can you do that?

Most professionals can talk for an hour about what they do. But they can't talk for six seconds. I was a radio broadcaster and DJ for ten years. I've written more than twenty books and hundreds of thousands of words. I have literally lost count of how many presentations I've made. 

I don't think I could deliver the one sentence that matters.

So I am grateful to have this training. I'm grateful that the NSITSP Marketing Committee and Steve Kazan have organized this. 

The session will cover:

• Creating clear, impactful messages
• Delivering smooth, solid answers to the tough questions
• Avoiding missteps and gotchas
• Positioning your narrative so the reporter gets what they need to write a great story that is also positive and on-message for you
• and more

And I'm grateful that the Board of Directors has decided that this is a members-only training.

Way back when I started talking about the challenges of our industry, I mentioned this exact scenario. And I've said a thousand times: "Whenever people are talking about our industry, we should have a seat at the table."

This is what that looks like. I would *love* to have hundreds (or thousands) of IT consultants have the training it takes to talk to the media. To know how to prepare. What to say and what not to say.

JOIN US!!!

If you're a member of the NSITSP, please click this link to register: https://nsitsp.org/event/meet-the-press-a-media-training-primer-for-msp-leaders/

If you're a FREE member, now is a great time to join.

If you were to buy the smallest bit of media training, you would spend thousands of dollars. This is your opportunity to join for $125 or $150 and get it for free. See https://www.nsitsp.org/join

If you've been over on the side asking, "What do I get for my money?" I hope you'll dig in, join us, and look around. At $150 or less, you don't have much on the line, and you're guaranteed to get your money's worth. 

Find out all the details here: https://nsitsp.org/news/meet-the-press-a-media-training-primer-for-msp-leaders/

If you're not a member, join us! Then you can look around inside our site, see what we're up to, and join the movement to transform our industry into a profession.

If you're not sure about any of this, post a comment! Join the conversation. 

:-)