Next up, a little news you can use to protect yourself from scammers.

You'll likely recognize some of these.

"You owe money for unpaid tolls, click this link."

"Your McAfee subscription has expired, call this number."

"Your Amazon account is frozen and password needs to be reset, click here."

All examples of phishing texts or emails designed to steal your personal information and ultimately your money.

"Carolina Impact's" Jason Terzis joins us with a story of how one local organization dealt with potential threats while undergoing a move.

- Well, the word cybersecurity, it refers to any technologies, practices and policies designed for preventing cyber attacks or at least limiting their impact.

The goal is to protect computer systems, applications, devices, data, passwords, and financial assets against malware, ransomware, or any other type of security breach.

But how would a nonprofit organization that may not have the funds for the latest in security technology protect itself, especially when going through a move?

(graphics whooshing) - And then down this way, we have additional exam rooms in this space, which will allow us to see additional patients.

- [Jason] Director of communications, Jennifer Andrews leads us on a tour of Care Ring's brand new healthcare facility.

- This is a new space we're able to have.

This is the medical assistance space.

This is a homecoming of sorts for us.

We are back in the community where it all started.

- [Jason] Originally founded as the Community Health Association, the Care Ring story dates back 70 years.

- Care Ring has been around since 1955.

We are the oldest health clinic in Mecklenburg County.

We were started by a community health nurse, Maribelle Connerat.

She wanted to help create a bridge for the divide between those that had and those that did not have as it related to healthcare.

- [Jason] Today, Care Ring staff continues that very same mission and vision, providing healthcare services for the uninsured, underinsured or those lacking access to affordable healthcare.

- We are serving around 8,000 individuals a year - [Jason] Over its seven decades, Care Ring is called multiple buildings home from Brevard Street in the '60s and '70s to 7th Street in the '80s and '90s to 5th Street in the 2000s.

And now in 2025 after construction was completed and official opening ceremonies held in February, Care Ring is now in its brand new headquarters on North Graham Street.

- This new location is going to allow us to not only grow, but continue to deepen the services that we're offering.

- [Jason] The non-profit employs 80 people, but none in information technology.

So when an organization of this size picks up and moves across town, what happens with all the infrastructure and what are the chances of leaving the door open for potential security breaches?

- What's your infrastructure gonna look like?

Where's all your network connectivity gonna go?

- Nonprofits are especially vulnerable in the space as it relates to cybersecurity and they don't want us to be a target.

- And that's really where Apparo comes in.

We're here to be thought partners for the nonprofits around the technology space.

- [Jason] Care Ring partnered with Apparo, a Charlotte based nonprofit whose mission is to help other nonprofits.

- So a nonprofit reaches out to us.

We have an initial conversation through what we call our tech therapy program, which is our advice and guidance and we find out what the need is.

- [Jason] What Apparo's tech team does is conduct a review of current security measures.

- For example, the first question is, have you identified the confidential data, credit card numbers, social security numbers, et cetera, collected or stored by your organization?

So the questions are different, you know, different areas.

- [Jason] Then based on those responses, Apparo makes suggestions for best practices and ways to improve.

- This was their initial responses over here.

We'll plug their answer in here and it will give them a score.

- So a lot of nonprofits don't think that these bad actors out there want their data and they do.

- We've been on this project for the transition for about a year now.

So after the cybersecurity assessment went to our board of directors to make sure that this was an uplift that we wanted to do to adopt new tools, make sure that it was within our budget to be able to afford to do so.

- [Todd] You can see where it's been populated with specific remediation tasks and they've been ranked as a high, low, or medium priority.

- They were able to provide us with tools and recommendations that we adopted.

And part of it led to our securing a new technology vendor that's been able to help support us on a charitable basis to make sure we're closing those gaps.

- [Jason] The technology vendor Apparo connected Care Ring with was Matthews based Divergent IT.

- We are what people call a managed service provider.

We like to call ourselves more of a technology solution provider, so an acronym of TSP.

We do predominantly all of the cybersecurity that organizations, small businesses from one up to 250 user environments are required to have.

- [Jason] Matthew Galimi co-founded Divergent IT with the intention of investing and empowering in Charlotte's communities.

As part of that mission, he's made giving back a priority.

So Divergent IT does work in the non-profit sector pro bono.

Meaning they don't get paid for their services.

- We are here to serve, right?

And when you talk to some of these nonprofits and you see what they're doing for the communities, like, I said, that we're living in, that we want to be in, like, we would never be able to do that reach on our own.

So being able to support them at what we are exceptional at, you just see their eyes light up, like, "Oh my God, you're willing to help."

Absolutely, we're gonna help.

We want to help.

We don't want to just be, you know, your IT company.

We do wanna be that partner.

- They've assisted us with other tools like Microsoft Office 365 explorations with us understanding how we can utilize volunteers to support our various needs as well.

- [Jason] It's not every day that a business or in this case, nonprofit picks up and moves its entire organization and that obviously brings up multiple challenges.

- They needed someone like us to go in, set up all of the IT infrastructure, whether cabling, firewalls, access points for Wi-Fi, right?

Security, access control cameras, right?

We did all that.

Set up all the new machines, make sure they can get logged in.

Make sure it's safe, make sure it's secure, and give them, you know... To support at the end, "Hey, I wanna move my monitor from here to here.

Can you help with that?"

Right.

Absolutely.