Episode 121 – Securing Your Photography Studio

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Welcome to episode 121. My name is Scott Wyden Kivowitz And today I want to talk to you about something that is not often talked about in the photography industry, and that is securing your photo studio and your photo studio might be your home. It might be, uh, in another building somewhere. I mean, everybody's different. Every business is different than the size of your business. Depends on, you know, will, will influence where your studio is. Now, when I say secure your studio, I want to talk about two different things. One being securing the network, the internet in your studio, making sure that it's not vulnerable to any outsiders coming in, either getting access to your financials or any, any secure accounts. And also an S and also things like, uh, you know, what your guests are doing when they're in your studio, uh, what their devices might be doing, uh, and, you know, getting access to your, your, your backups, your original files, right?

These are your digital negatives, but then I'm also talking about the physical security of your, of your studio. And again, whether it's your home or whether it's, uh, an, uh, a building, an office building or something like that, you need to make sure that it's physically secure because you've got expensive equipment in there. So let's start with internet and network security. Now, there are many devices out there that offer security. I'm going to recommend to you. What I believe is the easiest way to secure your internet from the, from the outside, and also from the inside, based on what your guests are doing and what you're doing on, on the internet, on your computers, on your devices. And that is Eero now E R O is a product that was acquired by Amazon. So yes, Amazon does technically own this, but it's ran separate from Amazon.

It's not ran by the Amazon team is ran by the Eero team. Now Euro is a router, and I'm not going to get into all the technical stuff. But what I want to tell you is that Eero has a secure features called Eero secure, and there's also Eero secure plus, and both of these offer, um, this feature that can actually monitor for malware, some for malicious attacks, it can even filter out adult content and things like that from your, uh, from your internet, right? Meaning that if somebody is on your network, they cannot do certain things. Uh, it's kind of like a, an enhanced version of Apple's a screen time feature. Like it can do a lot more. And in fact, we'll even detect if there's some malicious stuff going on in the background and we'll block it. Now, it doesn't tell you exactly what is being blocked.

It categorizes things, but you do get an overview of what is blocked, what, you know, what device, uh, was actually, um, you know, doing something that it shouldn't have. And, and it blocks in reports that basically to you now, the secure plus also comes with additional things like an actual malware scanning app comes with one password, which is my password security app of choice, which is actually comes to number two of what I want to talk about. Yeah. And that is one password. Whether you use one password or, or last pass, or any of those definitely use a password management system, because they are way more secure than just your browser. And they make it really hard for people to get access to all of your, all of your, uh, your data, all of your usernames and passwords. And one password in particular has some bonus features like the ability to do two factor authentication with one password, right?

And there's also backup system with one password. They make this nice PDF you, that you can print out and hide somewhere where only you, when let's say your spouse or your business partner know, and you can get access to your one password in case you forgot your single password to get into your, into your vault. Um, you can actually use this sort of secure thing and then change your information after you use it and then make a new PDF and print it out. So, um, Eero for internet one password for password security. Now let's talk about physical security. Now, hopefully if you have a studio, you've got your cameras and lenses and all that equipment in a lockbox somewhere. Right. But there is also, um, the sort of the security, like what is preventing people from getting into your studio in the first place? So things like smart key pads, as long as you have that on a network, that's also secure, like using an Eero, uh, with the IRO secure feature turned on, then you're really protecting her because you don't need the physical, physical key.

And you'll know if somebody is either tampering with the pin pad and who is it? Is she coming in based on the pin that you're giving them. So you're actually tracking based on pins who is coming in and out of your studio. Additionally, there's things like security systems. Now there's many ways to do a security system. The one I personally recommend again, is a company that Amazon acquired go figure it's called ring. Now, the funny thing is I use both these products before Amazon acquired them, but just so happens that Amazon acquired both again, ring is, um, you know, ran separate from Amazon. There are integrations between Eero and Amazon, as well as ringing Amazon. But the ran as a separate business ring is $100 a year to protect your property $100 a year, which includes use real time monitoring, right from a legit, a legitimate, um, alarm monitoring service will actually monitor your alarm.

And again, we based on pins and a lot of stuff you can track who's coming in and out and turning on and off your alarm. But also you can actually add centers for motion and you can add sensors for doors and windows. Um, there's even a mailbox sensor. So if you did want to put something inside of a lockbox for equipment, you can do that and really call it a mailbox, even though it's a lockbox for your equipment, right? There's all these different things. And again, it's $100 a year. That includes, that includes, uh, all the cameras that you might set up around, outside and inside. And that includes all that recording time that you get the cloud recording time. Sure. There's local alarm systems. You can use, uh, that you either not connected to a monitoring company, or you'd have to find one that works with whatever local system you're using on your own network.

But I like the ring one because one it's wifi based, two it's cell backup, and three it's quite affordable. And it works really, really well. So I've tried simply safe. It failed on me so many times. Uh, the, uh, it actually was not even wifi based at the time. Now it is, it was only cell based and landline, but didn't have a landline. And the cell constantly ran out and then the hardware failed a couple of times. So I, I switched to ring, uh, and it's a lot cheaper, a hundred dollars a year. So those are the three things I would recommend to protect your studio. Just one more time. That is Eero for network security. That is one password for password and act legal, credential security. And then that is ring for physical security. I would love to know if you have any other recommendations you would like to share as far as securing your photography studio. Just go to imagely.com/podcast/121, and let us know what you would add to this list. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.