Craig Peterson - Secure Your Business, Your Privacy, and Save Your Sanity

Welcome!  

Since most of us are working at home or stuck at home without work I decided that we should go over the tools, techniques, and tactics we can use to make working from home easier.  Then for those who don't have work and want to do something, I go over companies that are hiring with remote work or work at home opportunities.  It is going to be a busy and informative show -- so sit back and listen in. 

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Hello everybody, Craig Peterson back here on WGAN. You know, by the way, I went ahead and checked out that new show on Netflix. It must be relatively new because it seems to have some footage from late last year in it. But this Tiger King show I don't know if you've seen it. People said you know you just can't stop watching it. I found it interesting and intriguing. I'm particularly interested in the fact that some of the people in this show our nuts, and this one particularly nutty woman has now come out this week and said, "No, I did not kill my husband and put him in the meat grinder and feed him to the lions." Now, the fact that she came out and said that I think tells you something. Right now, the police have opened an investigation. It is quite a fascinating show about peculiar people, frankly weird people, that own big cats. At least as they're portrayed in this show. I guess you have to take all of that with a grain of salt. Hey, for the past two weeks, I've been doing webinars twice a day pretty much. We've been talking about security what you need to do when you're working from home. I am not turning everybody into security experts, right. Most people don't want to be security experts. They just want to keep their information safe, but hundreds of you have been attending, and that's a fantastic thing. I'm so glad that you guys have, and I hope you're getting a lot out of it. I know a lot of people are trying to attend so that they understand this better. When they do get together and back to work as the office manager, whatever that role, maybe they have an understanding of what this is all about and what they need to do and how they need to do it.
In many cases, a lot of business owners have been on these calls as well. I'm so happy to do it and for free. I'm not sitting there pounding you trying to sell you something. Somebody got kind of upset with me this week because they wanted me to quit with the soft sell and I said, Well, I don't have anything to sell. So unless you want to buy something and in that case ask me. It isn't a soft sell. I'm just trying to teach you guys stuff. And I think we've all become a little jaded here over the years because everything it seems is trying to sell us something. We've certainly seen that you look at like the Kylie Jenner and the whole Kardashian clan, who get paid to advertise, although it's not an advertisement as it is not marketed as such. She sent out a picture of her with something she's wearing or makeup or whatever. She sends it out to millions of people who see it, and she gets paid a million bucks. It's just astounding to me. I'm jaded. I get it, but these webinars are to help you guys out. Just like I'm here every Saturday at 1 pm to help you guys out to kind of review the news and what's going on the technology side of things, right? Alright, let's get back into all of our collaboration stuff, which we were talking about before. Now I've been going through this article a little bit while I'm actually not even going through it, I'm just looking for what they've rated as the top ones and then giving my commentary. They've also got one listed here called liquid planner. I have never used that. They're saying it's best for complex projects. Now is that regular small business, you probably don't have these complex projects, and you know, if you're the SBA calls a small business 500 people, and under you, if you're at the upper end of that, you might well have some complex projects. If you're at the lower end of that, you probably don't, so I'm not going to get into it right now. Also, because the liquid planner is expensive, it is a full-fledged project management piece of software. So we're not going to delve into that. They've got something called pod-to pod IO and they are saying that this is best for a work hub. They say it's incredibly flexible, highly customizable, for working communication. I have never used it, and maybe I should look at it. They advertise it's so user friendly and scales easily for growing business. It is an editor's choice. I'm just not familiar with it. I don't know anyone that is using it. We'll just skip that one. Slack I have used extensively. I used it for years before I switched on to the secure platform, that is, the WebEx team's platform used to be called Spark, but now it is WebEx teams. And, with the WebEx teams, you have everything integrated. So our phone systems are where teleconferencing, video conferencing collaboration is all integrated and is all secured and it is just absolutely phenomenal. And we're setting up right now with some school districts that are having they've sent their teachers and their students home. We're setting them up with some of these Cisco WebEx teams stuff for the schools to use because it meets all of the state and federal regulations. Unlike Slack, and Zoom, that so many are currently using. But Slack, you could not have a more straightforward tool to use. It is a team messaging app that works very well. It also has a lot of integrations, probably the most of anything.

You can tie Slack into your website, for instance. So if somebody has a question, they can just put it in on the site, and it's going to show up in your Slack channel. You know, how, how much simpler could it get than that? It's phenomenal. And then you can respond to it in the Slack channel. There are tons of integrations for its Really among the best when you're talking about a messaging app, and it's also the most expensive and now, and that's not too bad, you're going to be spending about $35 a month per team member. So it does add up pretty fast.

Leankit is something these guys like is what's called a Kanban app. Kanban is a technique that came out of Japan. I think it was Toyota if I remember right was the first came out with this. A lot of the software we've already talked about is Kanban compatible. It came from this hole just-in-time manufacturing process. You might have remembered that was all the rage in the 70s and early 80s. Yeah, it was developed by an industrialist engineer at Toyota. I just looked it up online and basically You can think of it as kind of a big board and you have sticky notes on the board.

The sticky note represents a task, so you put it on the left-hand side of the board, say, Okay, here's all of the things we're going to have to accomplish. Then as you work on them, you move them to the right into different columns, so you know, it's to be done, and then you might move it into, okay, it's underway, or it is stalled is another very popular column, and Kanban means it's complete. This is all part of what's known as agile development. Remember, I mentioned earlier the rugby references while Scrum is another agile process used to help to focus on delivering real business value real goals and objectives being done by everybody in the team in the shortest time possible. So rather than using regular project managers who will say, well, this has to be done by April 10. Now, you know, if you said it has to be done by April 10. It's not going to be done a minute before April 10. What are the odds is not going to come in until April 20. The odds are pretty good that they're not going to meet that April 10 deadline, right. But when you're using this Kanban method, a scrum kind of development or business process method. The idea is you get something done a small task and narrow tasks, get it done as soon as you can. Once it's done, you just grab the next sticky note off the left side of the board. Now, I like a couple of different packages out there that you can use for Kanban. I've used JIRA before, and I have used Trello. If you're just starting, and you wish to track some projects, and it's just you, maybe you and a couple of other people, I want you to check out Trello online T-R-E-L-L-O. I have used Trello extensively over the years and have just found it to be golden. It's so easy to use; it uses this Kanban type of board methodology. So does JIRA. However, JIRA gets more complicated and ties into other packages like Confluence and things that are all part of the same thing. But have a look at that. I really do like it a lot. That's what LeanKit does. So it's pretty darn cool. So when we come back, we're going to talk about my favorite little database now use that term within air quotes. You might have heard me put little air quotes up there. We'll talk about that out and more when we get back here. I'll give you a little understanding of what is collaboration software? What can we use? Now that we're working from home? Now that we have fewer employees, people are out sick, how can we make sure things are getting done that need to be done? And with repetitive tasks? Again, I'm going to kind of recommend the Asana stuff. But you know, these can band boards can be incredible, depending on what type of repetitive task you have. Now, if you have any questions for me any comments, if you want to attend any of the upcoming free webinars, these are like an hour-long we delve deep into a security topic or collaboration topic. Make sure you check me out—Craig Peterson dot com. You're listening to WGAN, so stick around. I'll be right back.

Hey, Craig Peterson here, back on WGAN. For those of you that are interesting in these webinars or what's going on, I have been holding them twice a day, at 4 pm and 7:30 pm, for about an hour. These are live webinars answering all of your questions and doing some slightly deeper dives into topics that everybody needs to know about when it comes to security, securing your data when at home securing your offices tying offices together, Tonya home in right all these different types of things that we frankly we need to do in this day and age. And we're going to be doing more and more of because honestly, working from home that the whole concept of remote workers is going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on. So kind of keep your ear to the ground. But you will get emails from me, and I've got a lot of Mainers who have been attending these and enjoying them are just nothing but great feedback. I got hundreds of positive comments on these things and hundreds attending to, so make sure you get signed up and Attend some of these. I'm not repeating the topics from day to day, every day within the day like the 4 pm, and the 730 are the same topics. So I will be answering different questions if there are different people on it, but I will be teaching the same necessary information. So you can choose either one of those webinars during the day. But, you know, one day to the next day, I will be in I am teaching different topics. Okay, so that's kind of the bottom line there. And I'd love it if you would join us. It makes me feel really good to know that I've helped people. The more people that show up, the better and by all means, invite friends and relatives to these things because we're now opening them up. I did not widely open them up before, but starting next week; they will be open to pretty much everybody, not just the listeners. Okay, so we were talking earlier about LeanKit and Kanban and the types of, you know, processes that are behind that. JIRA, Trello, J-I-R-A in case you're wondering, and T-R-E-L-L-O. I promised to talk about the database side.

I have used Airtable extensively, and I love it. For the radio show, for instance, we have an AirTable setup, and there are fixed things that must happen every week, right? We might have to find topics, or we might want to locate guests to have on the show. All of that is set up in the table. So that when so and so, you know, for instance, Karen will find the guests to have on, and will reach out to the guest and get their bio, get some talking points, and then I will put it up on the website. Steve will do some reviewing of it. Then Karen's going to have to do a pre-interview with them. Then it is time to schedule them for the actual interview for the radio show. That's the normal flow when we book a guest, just to give you an idea of how much work we put into the show. It is totally a labor of love. Let me tell you, but with Airtable, all of this can be automated, you know, informing someone. Okay, we've chosen a topic. Now we got to find guests and then Okay, we found a guest. What do we do now and they can put right into the Airtable because it's kind of a database as well. Think of it as a spreadsheet, if you will, that has a database behind it. It's really phenomenal. They can put the guest's bio right into a cell on the air table. They can put the recorded interview right into a cell on the air table. It is just absolutely phenomenal. They have a free plan and they have various paid plans. It has to be one of the most straightforward database tools you've ever seen. It is just like a spreadsheet and designed to be useful and honest. You can manage information about anything you can manage the flow, the pass on, it is kind of just like We were talking about a little bit earlier. It's kind of a can man thing too with databases and integrated with spreadsheets. It's kind of hard to describe. But that's, I guess my best description of it. So check it out air table.com you might love it. I absolutely love it. I know I do. We're not using it right now because we've scaled back, but we'll be right back there with Airtable and then Monday is something else is kind of similar to that. And it is designed to be able to track the tasks and move them around called monday.com. And remember what their old name was actually, maybe a month I think Monday is their current name. Let me just look that up. Make sure it's not the old name because they had a simple name before and that now eludes me. Yeah, it is. It's Monday.com. And it is again, phenomenal here for project tracking, Process Management. And it is they call it a Work operating system and you know what I think it really is Monday.com check it out. Over 100,000 organizations are using it according to their website including Costco, wholesale club, PayPal, Uber, Hulu, eBay, Walmart, GE, it is incredible. It's very, very simple to use. And again, it's kind of setup in the same way that you would think of using a spreadsheet. So you're gonna love it like that. Monday comm I don't think it's listed at all here. No, it's not on this PC mag site, but it's something I highly recommend and used before. So they also here on monday.com while they're talking about the collaboration tools, bring up Basecamp now Basecamp is something that I have used as well. It has been, what four or five years Since I used it, and we gave up on it because it just wasn't what we wanted what we needed, but it might be something that's going to work for you, I don't know. But Basecamp is known for what's called a sandbox-style collaboration. So pretty much everything's in a box, okay? It's designed to allow you to transition your whole team to remote work quickly. Frankly, it puts everything together. That's the entire sandbox concept. So it's not all over the place. Now, that's one of the things I did not like about Asana is, even though it was for organizing, I didn't feel that it organized things the way we wanted to work and that we were used to working. So you're going to have to look at some of these yourself. But Basecamp is one of the oldest out there by far, and they developed a whole language A few programming languages called Ruby on Rails, you might have heard of Ruby on Rails is phenomenal. And that was that language was designed so the base camp could be written and ultimately could scale. And this is how they are running their company to remotely. They're using Basecamp for it, and I'll have to give it a try again, they're saying by the way that 6400 companies signed up last week alone to try out Basecamp which is something to look at it. I'm looking at their numbers here. Yep. 2004 they had 45 companies, you know, it might have been longer than five years ago. Now looking at this, that I tried it so I'll have to try that again. But check it out. And PC mag as I said, they seem to like it. It is not bad, I'm sure.

A document collaboration they like glip. We have in our business. We have loved the WebEx teams, and we'll talk more about that when we get back in the next segment. But we use that for document collaboration along with the professional version, the secured version of Dropbox, not the, not the dropbox that you just use at home. Okay. But we liked that, and glip they didn't give an excellent rating on they gave it like, three and a half stars if you will. Then for fast setup, they like right Wrike, but you can check that out if you'd like. So what it boils down to my favorite of all of these by far are the WebEx teams. Then next to that is probably Monday, and then we like Trello for some things, and you know, we just talked about it. If you want to listen to any of these, check me out online, go to Craig Peterson dot com, you'll see all of my podcasts posted there or sign up. Craig Peterson dot com slash tune in. Stick around. We'll be right back here on WGAN

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peters on here on w GAN. Did you know you can hear me during drive time on Wednesday mornings? Yeah, I'm on with Matt. And of course, we talk about the latest news lately. That's kind of been working from home and working from home safely, which somehow isn't a surprise is it to any of us. I've been doing webinars, and here are some of the titles and what we've been talking discussing. We've been talking about routers and firewalls and why fi and browser efficiency plugins you can use to keep your privacy, how to do some of the backup stuff to make sure backups are working updates and patches and how to turn them on automatically. VPN security. It has It's been quite the ride. And we're going to be starting this all up again next week. So I want to make sure you guys know about it and have access to it. So I'm going to be sending out emails to let you know about it. And the only way you're going to find out is if you're on my email lists. So make sure you sign up if you're not already there. Just go to Craig Peterson comm. You will see it right there on the top of the page if you kind of slide it up. If you want a little help if you have questions about what we talked about today, any of this online collaboration software, any questions about any of this stuff, if you're having trouble working from home, or you're not working from home, and you're just having trouble? Make sure you reach out to me, and you can schedule a phone call with me just by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash help. Couldn't be much easier, could it Craig peterson.com. slash help. It is just I think it's an important time for us all to work together to help each other out because we are all in the same boat right now. Yeah. kind of reminded me of something else. Well, we won't get into that right now. So I promised that we would talk a little bit about what Cisco is doing on the collaboration front. And Cisco has something called WebEx. And it is phenomenal when it comes to collaboration. You know, I mentioned in the last segment, that we use it also for file collaboration. So we have all kinds of groups. And we have a group for each client, for instance, and we have a group for our internal tech support people. And then within each group, we have channels that are specific to you know, the various topics or various things that we're working on. For the client. So if you have a project for our client or project for ourselves, we'll have a space for that within the WebEx teams. And then you can drop files into it. You can search right from that space for on that team. You can start a little video conference call for everybody to talk, or on an audio conference call. It integrates with the app on your phone or your smartphone. I have and we all have desk phones. And those desk phones have built-in video, and it's phenomenal. The whole thing is seamless, and it meets almost every security standard out there. In fact, that's what the President has on his desk. He has a slightly upgraded version of this because he needs the highest military-grade, but as far as HIPAA compliance or PCI compliance or most of the regular compliance, including the CMC I Tara All those types of guidelines, it is fully compliant. So WebEx has decided that they are going to give a 90-day free trial to anybody that wants it, which is I think phenomenal. Now for many companies, 90 days is all you're going to need. Hopefully, the governor is going to say get back to work within what a month or two. So the three-month window should fit for you. And you can sign up for free at WebEx dot com you're going to love it. Now, if you go through my company now you know that we sell and maintain Cisco equipment, including WebEx, and we've installed some large Cisco phone systems that also tie into WebEx we've installed small phone systems for like dentists offices and construction companies and manufacturers that have the video conferencing in it and everything works. Everything is all integrated. It's, it is unbelievable how well it works plus it is secure, which is just mind-blowing. But if you go through us, we can give you an even better free deal. How's that a that, we can offer prospects, and that's what it's all about right that they have this for us so we can do prospecting. Our offer doubles the free stuff, and all of the numbers of attendees in the conferences and the sizes of the files, you can share, etc., doubles it basically from what you can get by just signing up on WebEx dot com for yourself. If you want to talk to me about it again, you can just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash help. And we can talk about these different types of conferencing systems. We can talk about the collaboration stuff we just talked about in the last segment, but check it out. You can just get it yourself. If you want, but you will not get all of the features as you'd get for me from for free as well. But check it out @webex.com. As I mentioned earlier today in the broadcast, we all have this set up now for some schools, and school districts are using it. So far, they love it because it gives very fine-grained control over everything that they need to make sure that the kids aren't messing around getting on other people's accounts. like the zoom bombing, that we talked about a little bit earlier.

Now, let's get to this because I had promised this before right at the top of the show. We're getting close to the end. Here is some career advice from Forbes, that I thought I'd mentioned because I'm sure right now there are a lot of us that are at home and have lost our jobs. Hopefully, just temporarily, and that includes you know, people who are waiters, waitresses, and the small businesses they were working for. I thought you might like this. So you can check it out. It is on forbes.com. And he'll we'll kind of run through these, but I noticed it because one of the large areas that's on there is the computer and it jobs. But first of all, it's talking about accounting and finance jobs. These are support strategies. And since people are using QuickBooks nowadays, like QuickBooks Online from Intuit or some of these other online accounting systems, it has made it a breeze for bookkeepers and accountants to be able to provide some specialized on-demand accounting services. If you know this stuff, and you can do bookkeeping as a work from home job. They are hiring right now accountants and bookkeepers, so check that out in support strategies, and you can find them online as well at Flex Jobs, flex jobs.com. You might want to check that out. That's the first one. The next category that Forbes is suggesting is computer jobs. And they have three different listings here. LiveArea is a company that helps with digital commerce. They do design strategy, technology, digital marketing, best practices, and they've got jobs open right now that you can do from home. They are a company that started as a database company that's still their bread and butter for the most part. They have accounting software now, ERP systems that they downscaled for small businesses, and they're hiring right now, including database administrators that can work from home and talking about a job. That's a great work from home job, DBAs database administrators. I've hired more than one of those over the years. Red Hat, which was bought by IBM last year, is also offering some jobs right now, again, work from home jobs, including sales force, configuration engineers, architects, healthcare, all kinds of job openings there. When we get back, we'll kind of run through some more openings, some ideas for some work at home jobs, because I've had quite a few people. Sign up for my webinars, thinking it was about jobs you can get to work at home. No, no, my webinars are about the technology and security for working from home. But check them out. Sign up Craig Peterson dot com. We'll be right back on WGAN.

Welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN. We are talking about some of the technologies surrounding work at home. We've covered collaboration today. What are the top collaboration tools, file sharing tools, the top tools for having meetings, and even a little bit of bumbler conversation? It's important, right? Many of us are stuck in our apartments, or in our homes, and we don't see anybody else. It is kind of a shame. It is important for us all to get together and maybe even have a happy hour. I know a couple of companies that have done that. They get together at their WebEx conference, where they all have their own drinks and just enjoy each other's company. You got to let the hair down. I think it's a great thing. They're doing. We were talking before the break about some of the jobs listed in this forbes.com article about working at home. We ran through some accounting and finance job categories and actual jobs that they provide links to. Then we covered some computer and IT jobs. Those are the ones that already have been kind of out-sourced and or have been work from home. Think about all of the remote workers in the Philippines, India, and China that have been doing exactly that. Working from their homes now for years. I see that as true going forward for quite a while. Construction jobs are another one right now called a renovation project consultant. There are job listings for them here. They're looking for people who have experience viewing contracts. Here is a work from home part-time contract creation jobs for content creators/writers which is another one we see out-sourced for a very, very long time. If you read articles online, you will not see these on my site. But if you read articles online, there is a technology called spinning. Have you heard of that before? They'll take an existing article, and they will spin it, which means they run it through some special software that changes the words around uses different words to make it so that it is not technically stolen but when you read it doesn't make sense much of the time. So I know you've seen those types of articles because I've seen them you say, Whoa, a native English speaker, did not write this. Well, It might have been put up by a native English speaker who just uses spinning software. But there are still jobs for real writers. They've got listings here for fandom writers who can write about favorites like Star Trek or Doctor Who. However, this last season, I haven't liked Doctor Who. Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, and more, right all these different fan shows.
There are digital health content producers and other creative jobs. I know a lot of people who use video editors to put together their marketing videos. So they'll shoot them like, like I do all of it myself, right I shoot the videos, I record them, I edit them, and I put them up online, and you can tell. But there are a lot of openings for video editors to work at home animators as well. Vitamin T is a creative talent agency that connects freelance creative-work that occurs with digital marketing firms and advertising agencies. You can find that in this article too. If you want me to send it to you, just email me at Craig Peterson dot com, and I can make sure I get it to you. But you can just find it out on Forbes. Continuum global solutions have got contact center solutions and jobs to fortune 500 companies that bringing in customer service reps.

LiveOps is a cloud contacting customer service Solution Center. And they've got worked from home jobs, including call center reps, call center, licensed insurance, people, education and training jobs. It goes on and on. These are jobs that are going to stay out there in the remote work category. Even the food industry which kind of surprised me. But then I said Ah, of course. They're talking about chef instructors. It is a remote opportunity where they are helping people learn, they're supervising in the kitchens. Remember now with the, with the smartphones, the guys and gals working in the kitchen can just pull it out, show you what they're doing. Media jobs, Thomson Reuters is looking for people, Vox media brands who were just reading from one of their articles well not reading it, but looking at their list. They've got film editors, community managers, TV, transcription, jobs, medical jobs. It goes on and on the categories, and I just don't want to spend all the time we only have five minutes left here in the show today, but lots of them Translation jobs, Science jobs, Sales and marketing jobs, Medical and Health jobs. Check it out. Just do some searching online. Look into your favorite career opportunities site. Or see if you can find this article here from our friend over @forbes.com. A couple of the things to get to before we go away. If you are looking at working from home and you're overwhelmed, we've got some tips here for you. Okay, you need to have a bit of a flexible routine, instead of a rigid schedule, you know, time was you were driving into work, you might take half an hour an hour or if you live in LA three hours to get to work every day. Well, you know, make sure that you're not just sitting there all day long. Use that Pomodoro technique that I talked about earlier. In the show today. Look it up. It is Italian for tomato, in case you're trying to find it online, where you're doing little 20 minute stretches, and that ties in with the Kanban and scratching methodology that we were talking about earlier. But understand that you're not going to be at your maximum productivity right now, we're all overwhelmed. Turn off that news channel, don't sit there watching it all day long, because he can drive you crazy, and is going to make you feel even more overwhelmed than you need to be. Okay, so a few tips there from our friends over at Google, working at home, and being efficient. That's why in some of these webinars that I've been giving and will give over the course the next week or so, I talk about some of the extension some of the tools you can use to make your life easier to make it faster to make it more secure. But employers can boost productivity and reduce their turnover. And of course, that means lowering your costs by giving people that flexibility even before The Coronavirus hit. The majority of workers in the United States had been working at home one day a week. And I think this is going to change it all we're going to be working more and more at home. But you need to make sure you've got all of the technology you need that you have a fast enough internet that you are secure. I separate workspaces, and I have a completely separate workspace at home. Just find a room or even just a corner of the room, that you can use and that you have the right kind of internet service, a workable schedule, etc.

The top fields for remote work again, computers and IT education and training, health care, customer service reps, virtual assistants, data entry, transcription teachers, of course, a lot more if you need to find a new job. Okay, that's a great way to look at it. Right now, a majority of the top firms out there have remote work in the IT biz like Amazon and Dell. In the medical space Humana, you've got Kaplan, SalesForce, all offering remote work opportunities, and that means you can work from home and be efficient and effective. So many people now are doing a little bit of homeschooling. I think many parents are overwhelmed by it. If you have listened to me for a while, you know my wife and I homeschooled our eight kids, all the way up to college. That's a lot of years of homeschooling, my wife is going a little gray, but we haven't lost our hair over it. If you think you might want to do it, do it. Remember the mathematics from 10 to 1040. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday type schedule that they might have at school does not fit a homeschool environment. Again, that rigid environment is just isn't going to work, and there's no way it's going to work into homeschool. Be flexible. But whatever your kids are interested in at the time, turn it into a learning opportunity. If, as one of our daughters was interested in cooking, remember we had eight kids, that's a lot of food, you know, for ten people, and you're looking at a recipe designed for four, so she learned how to do mental fractions. She's gone on now she has her Master Mariners license for unlimited oceans, unlimited tonnage, unlimited vessels, she could command any US Navy vessel at sea. That's all before she's 30. And yeah, she's got an MBA, now she's working on her doctorate. That's just phenomenal. And it all started with her home school, interested in fractions, learning together. She was curious and determined to do them in her head, multiplying and dividing fractions and look at where she's at now right understanding and calculating celestial navigation and everything else. She loves it. We have other kids one has gone on to be a regional Operations Manager for an International Bank, and also has an MBA. You know, I've got two other of my kids who are working with me who are fire jumper security experts and understand networking inside out and backward like hardly anyone else I've ever met. Just amazing. I've got yet another son, a mechanical engineer now, and he is finishing up a master's program this year. You can do it, and I think it is important. If you can homeschool, it is the best thing you can do for your kids. We homeschool while working from home, for much of it, I was working here at home during parts of it while was doing contract engineering and was on the road. My wife was doing almost everything all the time. It isn't a regiment where you're sitting there, sitting there at 10 to 10:40 with mathematics, etc, etc. It is life. It is living the best thing we can teach our kids, and the best thing we can give them is a love of learning. If you can pull it off, it's a fantastic thing, and it is so rewarding. We've had success with all eight kids. It's just been phenomenal. Hey, I hope you have a great week. Any questions? If you need a little help go to Craig Peterson comm slash help and make sure you sign up anyways at Craig Peterson calm. We'll be back next week with webinars and more on Wednesday morning.

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Welcome!

Since most of us are working at home or stuck at home without work I decided that we should go over the tools, techniques, and tactics we can use to make working from home easier. Then for those who don't have work and want to do something, I go over companies that are hiring with remote work or work at home opportunities. It is going to be a busy and informative show -- so sit back and listen in.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Hello everybody, Craig Peterson back here on WGAN. You know, by the way, I went ahead and checked out that new show on Netflix. It must be relatively new because it seems to have some footage from late last year in it. But this Tiger King show I don't know if you've seen it. People said you know you just can't stop watching it. I found it interesting and intriguing. I'm particularly interested in the fact that some of the people in this show our nuts, and this one particularly nutty woman has now come out this week and said, "No, I did not kill my husband and put him in the meat grinder and feed him to the lions." Now, the fact that she came out and said that I think tells you something. Right now, the police have opened an investigation. It is quite a fascinating show about peculiar people, frankly weird people, that own big cats. At least as they're portrayed in this show. I guess you have to take all of that with a grain of salt. Hey, for the past two weeks, I've been doing webinars twice a day pretty much. We've been talking about security what you need to do when you're working from home. I am not turning everybody into security experts, right. Most people don't want to be security experts. They just want to keep their information safe, but hundreds of you have been attending, and that's a fantastic thing. I'm so glad that you guys have, and I hope you're getting a lot out of it. I know a lot of people are trying to attend so that they understand this better. When they do get together and back to work as the office manager, whatever that role, maybe they have an understanding of what this is all about and what they need to do and how they need to do it. In many cases, a lot of business owners have been on these calls as well. I'm so happy to do it and for free. I'm not sitting there pounding you trying to sell you something. Somebody got kind of upset with me this week because they wanted me to quit with the soft sell and I said, Well, I don't have anything to sell. So unless you want to buy something and in that case ask me. It isn't a soft sell. I'm just trying to teach you guys stuff. And I think we've all become a little jaded here over the years because everything it seems is trying to sell us something. We've certainly seen that you look at like the Kylie Jenner and the whole Kardashian clan, who get paid to advertise, although it's not an advertisement as it is not marketed as such. She sent out a picture of her with something she's wearing or makeup or whatever. She sends it out to millions of people who see it, and she gets paid a million bucks. It's just astounding to me. I'm jaded. I get it, but these webinars are to help you guys out. Just like I'm here every Saturday at 1 pm to help you guys out to kind of review the news and what's going on the technology side of things, right? Alright, let's get back into all of our collaboration stuff, which we were talking about before. Now I've been going through this article a little bit while I'm actually not even going through it, I'm just looking for what they've rated as the top ones and then giving my commentary. They've also got one listed here called liquid planner. I have never used that. They're saying it's best for complex projects. Now is that regular small business, you probably don't have these complex projects, and you know, if you're the SBA calls a small business 500 people, and under you, if you're at the upper end of that, you might well have some complex projects. If you're at the lower end of that, you probably don't, so I'm not going to get into it right now. Also, because the liquid planner is expensive, it is a full-fledged project management piece of software. So we're not going to delve into that. They've got something called pod-to pod IO and they are saying that this is best for a work hub. They say it's incredibly flexible, highly customizable, for working communication. I have never used it, and maybe I should look at it. They advertise it's so user friendly and scales easily for growing business. It is an editor's choice. I'm just not familiar with it. I don't know anyone that is using it. We'll just skip that one. Slack I have used extensively. I used it for years before I switched on to the secure platform, that is, the WebEx team's platform used to be called Spark, but now it is WebEx teams. And, with the WebEx teams, you have everything integrated. So our phone systems are where teleconferencing, video conferencing collaboration is all integrated and is all secured and it is just absolutely phenomenal. And we're setting up right now with some school districts that are having they've sent their teachers and their students home. We're setting them up with some of these Cisco WebEx teams stuff for the schools to use because it meets all of the state and federal regulations. Unlike Slack, and Zoom, that so many are currently using. But Slack, you could not have a more straightforward tool to use. It is a team messaging app that works very well. It also has a lot of integrations, probably the most of anything.

You can tie Slack into your website, for instance. So if somebody has a question, they can just put it in on the site, and it's going to show up in your Slack channel. You know, how, how much simpler could it get than that? It's phenomenal. And then you can respond to it in the Slack channel. There are tons of integrations for its Really among the best when you're talking about a messaging app, and it's also the most expensive and now, and that's not too bad, you're going to be spending about $35 a month per team member. So it does add up pretty fast.

Leankit is something these guys like is what's called a Kanban app. Kanban is a technique that came out of Japan. I think it was Toyota if I remember right was the first came out with this. A lot of the software we've already talked about is Kanban compatible. It came from this hole just-in-time manufacturing process. You might have remembered that was all the rage in the 70s and early 80s. Yeah, it was developed by an industrialist engineer at Toyota. I just looked it up online and basically You can think of it as kind of a big board and you have sticky notes on the board.

The sticky note represents a task, so you put it on the left-hand side of the board, say, Okay, here's all of the things we're going to have to accomplish. Then as you work on them, you move them to the right into different columns, so you know, it's to be done, and then you might move it into, okay, it's underway, or it is stalled is another very popular column, and Kanban means it's complete. This is all part of what's known as agile development. Remember, I mentioned earlier the rugby references while Scrum is another agile process used to help to focus on delivering real business value real goals and objectives being done by everybody in the team in the shortest time possible. So rather than using regular project managers who will say, well, this has to be done by April 10. Now, you know, if you said it has to be done by April 10. It's not going to be done a minute before April 10. What are the odds is not going to come in until April 20. The odds are pretty good that they're not going to meet that April 10 deadline, right. But when you're using this Kanban method, a scrum kind of development or business process method. The idea is you get something done a small task and narrow tasks, get it done as soon as you can. Once it's done, you just grab the next sticky note off the left side of the board. Now, I like a couple of different packages out there that you can use for Kanban. I've used JIRA before, and I have used Trello. If you're just starting, and you wish to track some projects, and it's just you, maybe you and a couple of other people, I want you to check out Trello online T-R-E-L-L-O. I have used Trello extensively over the years and have just found it to be golden. It's so easy to use; it uses this Kanban type of board methodology. So does JIRA. However, JIRA gets more complicated and ties into other packages like Confluence and things that are all part of the same thing. But have a look at that. I really do like it a lot. That's what LeanKit does. So it's pretty darn cool. So when we come back, we're going to talk about my favorite little database now use that term within air quotes. You might have heard me put little air quotes up there. We'll talk about that out and more when we get back here. I'll give you a little understanding of what is collaboration software? What can we use? Now that we're working from home? Now that we have fewer employees, people are out sick, how can we make sure things are getting done that need to be done? And with repetitive tasks? Again, I'm going to kind of recommend the Asana stuff. But you know, these can band boards can be incredible, depending on what type of repetitive task you have. Now, if you have any questions for me any comments, if you want to attend any of the upcoming free webinars, these are like an hour-long we delve deep into a security topic or collaboration topic. Make sure you check me out—Craig Peterson dot com. You're listening to WGAN, so stick around. I'll be right back.

Hey, Craig Peterson here, back on WGAN. For those of you that are interesting in these webinars or what's going on, I have been holding them twice a day, at 4 pm and 7:30 pm, for about an hour. These are live webinars answering all of your questions and doing some slightly deeper dives into topics that everybody needs to know about when it comes to security, securing your data when at home securing your offices tying offices together, Tonya home in right all these different types of things that we frankly we need to do in this day and age. And we're going to be doing more and more of because honestly, working from home that the whole concept of remote workers is going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on. So kind of keep your ear to the ground. But you will get emails from me, and I've got a lot of Mainers who have been attending these and enjoying them are just nothing but great feedback. I got hundreds of positive comments on these things and hundreds attending to, so make sure you get signed up and Attend some of these. I'm not repeating the topics from day to day, every day within the day like the 4 pm, and the 730 are the same topics. So I will be answering different questions if there are different people on it, but I will be teaching the same necessary information. So you can choose either one of those webinars during the day. But, you know, one day to the next day, I will be in I am teaching different topics. Okay, so that's kind of the bottom line there. And I'd love it if you would join us. It makes me feel really good to know that I've helped people. The more people that show up, the better and by all means, invite friends and relatives to these things because we're now opening them up. I did not widely open them up before, but starting next week; they will be open to pretty much everybody, not just the listeners. Okay, so we were talking earlier about LeanKit and Kanban and the types of, you know, processes that are behind that. JIRA, Trello, J-I-R-A in case you're wondering, and T-R-E-L-L-O. I promised to talk about the database side.

I have used Airtable extensively, and I love it. For the radio show, for instance, we have an AirTable setup, and there are fixed things that must happen every week, right? We might have to find topics, or we might want to locate guests to have on the show. All of that is set up in the table. So that when so and so, you know, for instance, Karen will find the guests to have on, and will reach out to the guest and get their bio, get some talking points, and then I will put it up on the website. Steve will do some reviewing of it. Then Karen's going to have to do a pre-interview with them. Then it is time to schedule them for the actual interview for the radio show. That's the normal flow when we book a guest, just to give you an idea of how much work we put into the show. It is totally a labor of love. Let me tell you, but with Airtable, all of this can be automated, you know, informing someone. Okay, we've chosen a topic. Now we got to find guests and then Okay, we found a guest. What do we do now and they can put right into the Airtable because it's kind of a database as well. Think of it as a spreadsheet, if you will, that has a database behind it. It's really phenomenal. They can put the guest's bio right into a cell on the air table. They can put the recorded interview right into a cell on the air table. It is just absolutely phenomenal. They have a free plan and they have various paid plans. It has to be one of the most straightforward database tools you've ever seen. It is just like a spreadsheet and designed to be useful and honest. You can manage information about anything you can manage the flow, the pass on, it is kind of just like We were talking about a little bit earlier. It's kind of a can man thing too with databases and integrated with spreadsheets. It's kind of hard to describe. But that's, I guess my best description of it. So check it out air table.com you might love it. I absolutely love it. I know I do. We're not using it right now because we've scaled back, but we'll be right back there with Airtable and then Monday is something else is kind of similar to that. And it is designed to be able to track the tasks and move them around called monday.com. And remember what their old name was actually, maybe a month I think Monday is their current name. Let me just look that up. Make sure it's not the old name because they had a simple name before and that now eludes me. Yeah, it is. It's Monday.com. And it is again, phenomenal here for project tracking, Process Management. And it is they call it a Work operating system and you know what I think it really is Monday.com check it out. Over 100,000 organizations are using it according to their website including Costco, wholesale club, PayPal, Uber, Hulu, eBay, Walmart, GE, it is incredible. It's very, very simple to use. And again, it's kind of setup in the same way that you would think of using a spreadsheet. So you're gonna love it like that. Monday comm I don't think it's listed at all here. No, it's not on this PC mag site, but it's something I highly recommend and used before. So they also here on monday.com while they're talking about the collaboration tools, bring up Basecamp now Basecamp is something that I have used as well. It has been, what four or five years Since I used it, and we gave up on it because it just wasn't what we wanted what we needed, but it might be something that's going to work for you, I don't know. But Basecamp is known for what's called a sandbox-style collaboration. So pretty much everything's in a box, okay? It's designed to allow you to transition your whole team to remote work quickly. Frankly, it puts everything together. That's the entire sandbox concept. So it's not all over the place. Now, that's one of the things I did not like about Asana is, even though it was for organizing, I didn't feel that it organized things the way we wanted to work and that we were used to working. So you're going to have to look at some of these yourself. But Basecamp is one of the oldest out there by far, and they developed a whole language A few programming languages called Ruby on Rails, you might have heard of Ruby on Rails is phenomenal. And that was that language was designed so the base camp could be written and ultimately could scale. And this is how they are running their company to remotely. They're using Basecamp for it, and I'll have to give it a try again, they're saying by the way that 6400 companies signed up last week alone to try out Basecamp which is something to look at it. I'm looking at their numbers here. Yep. 2004 they had 45 companies, you know, it might have been longer than five years ago. Now looking at this, that I tried it so I'll have to try that again. But check it out. And PC mag as I said, they seem to like it. It is not bad, I'm sure.

A document collaboration they like glip. We have in our business. We have loved the WebEx teams, and we'll talk more about that when we get back in the next segment. But we use that for document collaboration along with the professional version, the secured version of Dropbox, not the, not the dropbox that you just use at home. Okay. But we liked that, and glip they didn't give an excellent rating on they gave it like, three and a half stars if you will. Then for fast setup, they like right Wrike, but you can check that out if you'd like. So what it boils down to my favorite of all of these by far are the WebEx teams. Then next to that is probably Monday, and then we like Trello for some things, and you know, we just talked about it. If you want to listen to any of these, check me out online, go to Craig Peterson dot com, you'll see all of my podcasts posted there or sign up. Craig Peterson dot com slash tune in. Stick around. We'll be right back here on WGAN

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peters on here on w GAN. Did you know you can hear me during drive time on Wednesday mornings? Yeah, I'm on with Matt. And of course, we talk about the latest news lately. That's kind of been working from home and working from home safely, which somehow isn't a surprise is it to any of us. I've been doing webinars, and here are some of the titles and what we've been talking discussing. We've been talking about routers and firewalls and why fi and browser efficiency plugins you can use to keep your privacy, how to do some of the backup stuff to make sure backups are working updates and patches and how to turn them on automatically. VPN security. It has It's been quite the ride. And we're going to be starting this all up again next week. So I want to make sure you guys know about it and have access to it. So I'm going to be sending out emails to let you know about it. And the only way you're going to find out is if you're on my email lists. So make sure you sign up if you're not already there. Just go to Craig Peterson comm. You will see it right there on the top of the page if you kind of slide it up. If you want a little help if you have questions about what we talked about today, any of this online collaboration software, any questions about any of this stuff, if you're having trouble working from home, or you're not working from home, and you're just having trouble? Make sure you reach out to me, and you can schedule a phone call with me just by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash help. Couldn't be much easier, could it Craig peterson.com. slash help. It is just I think it's an important time for us all to work together to help each other out because we are all in the same boat right now. Yeah. kind of reminded me of something else. Well, we won't get into that right now. So I promised that we would talk a little bit about what Cisco is doing on the collaboration front. And Cisco has something called WebEx. And it is phenomenal when it comes to collaboration. You know, I mentioned in the last segment, that we use it also for file collaboration. So we have all kinds of groups. And we have a group for each client, for instance, and we have a group for our internal tech support people. And then within each group, we have channels that are specific to you know, the various topics or various things that we're working on. For the client. So if you have a project for our client or project for ourselves, we'll have a space for that within the WebEx teams. And then you can drop files into it. You can search right from that space for on that team. You can start a little video conference call for everybody to talk, or on an audio conference call. It integrates with the app on your phone or your smartphone. I have and we all have desk phones. And those desk phones have built-in video, and it's phenomenal. The whole thing is seamless, and it meets almost every security standard out there. In fact, that's what the President has on his desk. He has a slightly upgraded version of this because he needs the highest military-grade, but as far as HIPAA compliance or PCI compliance or most of the regular compliance, including the CMC I Tara All those types of guidelines, it is fully compliant. So WebEx has decided that they are going to give a 90-day free trial to anybody that wants it, which is I think phenomenal. Now for many companies, 90 days is all you're going to need. Hopefully, the governor is going to say get back to work within what a month or two. So the three-month window should fit for you. And you can sign up for free at WebEx dot com you're going to love it. Now, if you go through my company now you know that we sell and maintain Cisco equipment, including WebEx, and we've installed some large Cisco phone systems that also tie into WebEx we've installed small phone systems for like dentists offices and construction companies and manufacturers that have the video conferencing in it and everything works. Everything is all integrated. It's, it is unbelievable how well it works plus it is secure, which is just mind-blowing. But if you go through us, we can give you an even better free deal. How's that a that, we can offer prospects, and that's what it's all about right that they have this for us so we can do prospecting. Our offer doubles the free stuff, and all of the numbers of attendees in the conferences and the sizes of the files, you can share, etc., doubles it basically from what you can get by just signing up on WebEx dot com for yourself. If you want to talk to me about it again, you can just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash help. And we can talk about these different types of conferencing systems. We can talk about the collaboration stuff we just talked about in the last segment, but check it out. You can just get it yourself. If you want, but you will not get all of the features as you'd get for me from for free as well. But check it out @webex.com. As I mentioned earlier today in the broadcast, we all have this set up now for some schools, and school districts are using it. So far, they love it because it gives very fine-grained control over everything that they need to make sure that the kids aren't messing around getting on other people's accounts. like the zoom bombing, that we talked about a little bit earlier.

Now, let's get to this because I had promised this before right at the top of the show. We're getting close to the end. Here is some career advice from Forbes, that I thought I'd mentioned because I'm sure right now there are a lot of us that are at home and have lost our jobs. Hopefully, just temporarily, and that includes you know, people who are waiters, waitresses, and the small businesses they were working for. I thought you might like this. So you can check it out. It is on forbes.com. And he'll we'll kind of run through these, but I noticed it because one of the large areas that's on there is the computer and it jobs. But first of all, it's talking about accounting and finance jobs. These are support strategies. And since people are using QuickBooks nowadays, like QuickBooks Online from Intuit or some of these other online accounting systems, it has made it a breeze for bookkeepers and accountants to be able to provide some specialized on-demand accounting services. If you know this stuff, and you can do bookkeeping as a work from home job. They are hiring right now accountants and bookkeepers, so check that out in support strategies, and you can find them online as well at Flex Jobs, flex jobs.com. You might want to check that out. That's the first one. The next category that Forbes is suggesting is computer jobs. And they have three different listings here. LiveArea is a company that helps with digital commerce. They do design strategy, technology, digital marketing, best practices, and they've got jobs open right now that you can do from home. They are a company that started as a database company that's still their bread and butter for the most part. They have accounting software now, ERP systems that they downscaled for small businesses, and they're hiring right now, including database administrators that can work from home and talking about a job. That's a great work from home job, DBAs database administrators. I've hired more than one of those over the years. Red Hat, which was bought by IBM last year, is also offering some jobs right now, again, work from home jobs, including sales force, configuration engineers, architects, healthcare, all kinds of job openings there. When we get back, we'll kind of run through some more openings, some ideas for some work at home jobs, because I've had quite a few people. Sign up for my webinars, thinking it was about jobs you can get to work at home. No, no, my webinars are about the technology and security for working from home. But check them out. Sign up Craig Peterson dot com. We'll be right back on WGAN.

Welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN. We are talking about some of the technologies surrounding work at home. We've covered collaboration today. What are the top collaboration tools, file sharing tools, the top tools for having meetings, and even a little bit of bumbler conversation? It's important, right? Many of us are stuck in our apartments, or in our homes, and we don't see anybody else. It is kind of a shame. It is important for us all to get together and maybe even have a happy hour. I know a couple of companies that have done that. They get together at their WebEx conference, where they all have their own drinks and just enjoy each other's company. You got to let the hair down. I think it's a great thing. They're doing. We were talking before the break about some of the jobs listed in this forbes.com article about working at home. We ran through some accounting and finance job categories and actual jobs that they provide links to. Then we covered some computer and IT jobs. Those are the ones that already have been kind of out-sourced and or have been work from home. Think about all of the remote workers in the Philippines, India, and China that have been doing exactly that. Working from their homes now for years. I see that as true going forward for quite a while. Construction jobs are another one right now called a renovation project consultant. There are job listings for them here. They're looking for people who have experience viewing contracts. Here is a work from home part-time contract creation jobs for content creators/writers which is another one we see out-sourced for a very, very long time. If you read articles online, you will not see these on my site. But if you read articles online, there is a technology called spinning. Have you heard of that before? They'll take an existing article, and they will spin it, which means they run it through some special software that changes the words around uses different words to make it so that it is not technically stolen but when you read it doesn't make sense much of the time. So I know you've seen those types of articles because I've seen them you say, Whoa, a native English speaker, did not write this. Well, It might have been put up by a native English speaker who just uses spinning software. But there are still jobs for real writers. They've got listings here for fandom writers who can write about favorites like Star Trek or Doctor Who. However, this last season, I haven't liked Doctor Who. Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, and more, right all these different fan shows. There are digital health content producers and other creative jobs. I know a lot of people who use video editors to put together their marketing videos. So they'll shoot them like, like I do all of it myself, right I shoot the videos, I record them, I edit them, and I put them up online, and you can tell. But there are a lot of openings for video editors to work at home animators as well. Vitamin T is a creative talent agency that connects freelance creative-work that occurs with digital marketing firms and advertising agencies. You can find that in this article too. If you want me to send it to you, just email me at Craig Peterson dot com, and I can make sure I get it to you. But you can just find it out on Forbes. Continuum global solutions have got contact center solutions and jobs to fortune 500 companies that bringing in customer service reps.

LiveOps is a cloud contacting customer service Solution Center. And they've got worked from home jobs, including call center reps, call center, licensed insurance, people, education and training jobs. It goes on and on. These are jobs that are going to stay out there in the remote work category. Even the food industry which kind of surprised me. But then I said Ah, of course. They're talking about chef instructors. It is a remote opportunity where they are helping people learn, they're supervising in the kitchens. Remember now with the, with the smartphones, the guys and gals working in the kitchen can just pull it out, show you what they're doing. Media jobs, Thomson Reuters is looking for people, Vox media brands who were just reading from one of their articles well not reading it, but looking at their list. They've got film editors, community managers, TV, transcription, jobs, medical jobs. It goes on and on the categories, and I just don't want to spend all the time we only have five minutes left here in the show today, but lots of them Translation jobs, Science jobs, Sales and marketing jobs, Medical and Health jobs. Check it out. Just do some searching online. Look into your favorite career opportunities site. Or see if you can find this article here from our friend over @forbes.com. A couple of the things to get to before we go away. If you are looking at working from home and you're overwhelmed, we've got some tips here for you. Okay, you need to have a bit of a flexible routine, instead of a rigid schedule, you know, time was you were driving into work, you might take half an hour an hour or if you live in LA three hours to get to work every day. Well, you know, make sure that you're not just sitting there all day long. Use that Pomodoro technique that I talked about earlier. In the show today. Look it up. It is Italian for tomato, in case you're trying to find it online, where you're doing little 20 minute stretches, and that ties in with the Kanban and scratching methodology that we were talking about earlier. But understand that you're not going to be at your maximum productivity right now, we're all overwhelmed. Turn off that news channel, don't sit there watching it all day long, because he can drive you crazy, and is going to make you feel even more overwhelmed than you need to be. Okay, so a few tips there from our friends over at Google, working at home, and being efficient. That's why in some of these webinars that I've been giving and will give over the course the next week or so, I talk about some of the extension some of the tools you can use to make your life easier to make it faster to make it more secure. But employers can boost productivity and reduce their turnover. And of course, that means lowering your costs by giving people that flexibility even before The Coronavirus hit. The majority of workers in the United States had been working at home one day a week. And I think this is going to change it all we're going to be working more and more at home. But you need to make sure you've got all of the technology you need that you have a fast enough internet that you are secure. I separate workspaces, and I have a completely separate workspace at home. Just find a room or even just a corner of the room, that you can use and that you have the right kind of internet service, a workable schedule, etc.

The top fields for remote work again, computers and IT education and training, health care, customer service reps, virtual assistants, data entry, transcription teachers, of course, a lot more if you need to find a new job. Okay, that's a great way to look at it. Right now, a majority of the top firms out there have remote work in the IT biz like Amazon and Dell. In the medical space Humana, you've got Kaplan, SalesForce, all offering remote work opportunities, and that means you can work from home and be efficient and effective. So many people now are doing a little bit of homeschooling. I think many parents are overwhelmed by it. If you have listened to me for a while, you know my wife and I homeschooled our eight kids, all the way up to college. That's a lot of years of homeschooling, my wife is going a little gray, but we haven't lost our hair over it. If you think you might want to do it, do it. Remember the mathematics from 10 to 1040. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday type schedule that they might have at school does not fit a homeschool environment. Again, that rigid environment is just isn't going to work, and there's no way it's going to work into homeschool. Be flexible. But whatever your kids are interested in at the time, turn it into a learning opportunity. If, as one of our daughters was interested in cooking, remember we had eight kids, that's a lot of food, you know, for ten people, and you're looking at a recipe designed for four, so she learned how to do mental fractions. She's gone on now she has her Master Mariners license for unlimited oceans, unlimited tonnage, unlimited vessels, she could command any US Navy vessel at sea. That's all before she's 30. And yeah, she's got an MBA, now she's working on her doctorate. That's just phenomenal. And it all started with her home school, interested in fractions, learning together. She was curious and determined to do them in her head, multiplying and dividing fractions and look at where she's at now right understanding and calculating celestial navigation and everything else. She loves it. We have other kids one has gone on to be a regional Operations Manager for an International Bank, and also has an MBA. You know, I've got two other of my kids who are working with me who are fire jumper security experts and understand networking inside out and backward like hardly anyone else I've ever met. Just amazing. I've got yet another son, a mechanical engineer now, and he is finishing up a master's program this year. You can do it, and I think it is important. If you can homeschool, it is the best thing you can do for your kids. We homeschool while working from home, for much of it, I was working here at home during parts of it while was doing contract engineering and was on the road. My wife was doing almost everything all the time. It isn't a regiment where you're sitting there, sitting there at 10 to 10:40 with mathematics, etc, etc. It is life. It is living the best thing we can teach our kids, and the best thing we can give them is a love of learning. If you can pull it off, it's a fantastic thing, and it is so rewarding. We've had success with all eight kids. It's just been phenomenal. Hey, I hope you have a great week. Any questions? If you need a little help go to Craig Peterson comm slash help and make sure you sign up anyways at Craig Peterson calm. We'll be back next week with webinars and more on Wednesday morning.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Welcome! 

Hey everyone.  I hope you are all doing well during this period of social distancing we are experiencing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

If you are new to doing remote work or working from home then you are going to want to attend the series of webinars on tools, techniques, and tactics you can use to make this easier for you.  These are all offered at no charge. Later next week, I will be offering a live training course on securing your computers, networks, and browsers. This will be deeply discounted. No pressure, but if you are interested, I would appreciate your business.

I was on with Jim Polito who was sitting in his kitchen under self-quarantine because the State of Massachusetts has advised their residents to stay home and avoid unnecessary travel and other unnecessary activities during this two-week time period. We discussed VPNs. What they are and when and why to use them and how to use them correctly. So, here we go with Jim Polito.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
You are on a laptop, if you're at home, If you're on an airplane, at the airport, at a coffee shop, and you are using a VPN to connect into the network at work. You are now exposing the business network at work to everything around you in that coffee shop.

Craig
Mr. Jim Polito, this morning had me do a quick rundown of VPNs and why they might not be the right thing for you. And I talked a little bit about, but man some of the real cons to it and what can they do? And that's all part of what's happening later on. Today. I'm doing some intense stuff here on VPN, about an hour's worth answering all your questions, and helping you to understand the house the whys and the when should you use it when it comes to VPN? Of course, you're listening to Craig Peterson, and here we go with Mr. Jim Polito.

Jim
There is nothing weird about Craig Peterson, nothing at all because he is our good friend. He is a source of invaluable information 365 days a year, but especially during this whole Coronavirus work at home time. He's just second to none. Joining me now, our tech talk guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig
Hey, good morning, Jim. Yeah, I've been very, very busy with webinars. I did them every day, twice a day now for the last week and a half. I've got another probably two weeks' worth, I think. We're going to be doing a live webinar, or two of them one at 4 pm and one at 7:30 pm. But webinars where I'm answering everybody's questions and I'm doing training. Today's topic is a VPN because it's very misunderstood. A lot. A lot of people need a VPN, but when do you need them? How can you use them? When should you use them? When are they useful? And even give some recommendations of some different VPN that you can use out there. So it's been going well, I haven't had a single, negative comment. And so far I've done about, I think it's 12 or 14 of these live webinars just talking about remote workers working from home, what's the technology need to use? What are the threads? How, how are they the home workers now endangering the office, but today's VPN, we're going to have more every day for the next two weeks, and it's right there on my homepage.

Jim
All right, and Craig, you've been making that available to our listeners, and you made it possible to listeners before you opened it up to everybody else. Greg, why don't you give us just a brief tutorial on a VPN, and that is, You know, so people understand it. I didn't know what it was until about five years ago, myself, and you know what a VPN is? And it's something that yes, in the right circumstances, can protect your data and protect everything else.

Craig
Yeah, you're right. It's VPN is the host. Again, we have a lot of TLS in this business, which stands for three-letter acronyms. VPN stands for Virtual private network. The idea is that you can hook up two networks together, that's where it came from initially. You know, way back when we'd have to have a T-one line going from one point to another. And you probably remember those Jim because radio stations were using them for years of leased lines to connect to the transmitter. Yeah, and yeah, TV stations everybody. So that's how it started. Well, those were expensive. I had two T-one lines coming to my house 25 years ago, and that cost me almost $6,000 a month. Very, very expensive. Things have changed today, and VPN came into being to replace those expensive leased lines. So with the Internet, what you could do is just have an internet connection and connect the remote office with the main office. And instead of having to have that expensive leased line, now you had a highly encrypted data channel, and it connects the two networks. So that's where it started. Today what we're using it for is very, very similar. We're still using it to connect networks. And that's the beauty of it. And that's the curse of it. And here's the curse smarts. You know, if you are on a laptop, if you're at home if you're on an airplane, At the airport at a coffee shop, and you are using a VPN to connect into the network at work. You are now opening up your business network at work to everything around you in that coffee shop.

Jim
So you've been talking about open 19

Craig
Yeah, exactly. And Covid-19. What are we trying to do right now? Isolate?

Jim
Isolate? We're trying to die. That's the key.

Craig
Yeah. Because here's your significant danger. You walk into the house, and you bring Covid-19 into a home. And now all of a sudden people have it, and they're dying. Well, what do you think happens when you connect on a home computer? That is a pretty high likelihood that it's infected somehow? What happens when you connect that VPN now to the business network, you're spreading disease so VPNs on No, no, no, you have to be very, very careful. So here's another problem with the VPN.

Jim
So I guess the way you look at it is no, but the way you look at it is, so the VPN is that secure connection. But if your connection to that secure connection is lousy, then what's the sense of having that other secure connection between you and your employer?

Craig
You're making things worse. Exactly. Yeah, the connection may be secure. Yeah. So here's your other problem, you go out. And let's say you get a Norton VPN or something. And we're going to talk a lot more about this. Today, I'm going to show graphics about how this all works. So I help people understand. But you get one of these free VPN services or even one of these paid VPN services. Your data is only secure from your device to the VPN server. So let's say you're using one of these paid VPNs and you're connecting to the bank, and somehow you think And it's giving you additional security. It's not, and it is not at all. It might be making it worse, particularly with the free VPN services that are out there, you will be less secure because they are: what the old Willie Sutton quote, "why did he rob banks because that's where the money is," with VPNs that's where the money is going.

Craig
Yeah, the attackers are going after these three VPN servers and other VPN services, because they know that's where all of the connections are. And some of these VPN services are even tracking everything you do, everywhere you go, and some of them are also evil. I've seen VPN services that are running through Russia that require you to install this unique key so that you can use it and are doing a man in the middle attack. So that's why we're going to cover for an hour today. It will be at 7:30 pm. I am going through this and helping people understand. They can be useful, they can be necessary, but they must be appropriately secured and used correctly.

Jim
Alright, so Craig, there's a lot of different ways that folks can get information from you. Now, I know you've got a landing page on your website, and I'm going to I want you to give that out. But the first way is to get other information from you that you put out weekly to me, and then we share here, and that's by texting my name to this number.

Craig
to 855-385-5553. So just texting Jim 2855385 5553

Jim
Standard data and text rates apply now, Craig, for folks to get to your website, and to find out about this webinar, the VPN information how do they do that?

Craig
Well, we have a registration on the site. The one that's up there right now is for last night. I haven't checked Just this morning, but I will be changing as soon as we get off the phone. Go to Craig Peterson dot com. It'll be right there at the bottom of the homepage at Craig Peterson dot com. That's s-o-n calm.

Jim
Alright, Greg, thank you so much. I appreciate the time, and we'll catch up with the next week. Unless, of course, something comes up, then you're always welcome here in between.

Craig
Alright, hey, thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim
Take care. Bye-bye, Craig Peterson everybody a great resource. All right, a final word. When we return. You're listening to the Jim Pulido show from my kitchen with pops. Your safe space.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Welcome! 

Hey everyone.  I hope you are all doing well during this period of social distancing we are experiencing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

If you are new to doing remote work or working from home then you are going to want to attend the series of webinars on tools, techniques, and tactics you can use to make this easier for you.  These are all offered at no charge. Later next week, I will be offering a live training course on securing your computers, networks, and browsers. This will be deeply discounted. No pressure, but if you are interested, I would appreciate your business.

I was on with Jim Polito who was sitting in his kitchen under self-quarantine because the State of Massachusetts has advised their residents to stay home and avoid unnecessary travel and other unnecessary activities during this two-week time period. We discussed VPNs. What they are and when and why to use them and how to use them correctly. So, here we go with Jim Polito.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
You are on a laptop, if you're at home, If you're on an airplane, at the airport, at a coffee shop, and you are using a VPN to connect into the network at work. You are now exposing the business network at work to everything around you in that coffee shop.

Craig
Mr. Jim Polito, this morning had me do a quick rundown of VPNs and why they might not be the right thing for you. And I talked a little bit about, but man some of the real cons to it and what can they do? And that's all part of what's happening later on. Today. I'm doing some intense stuff here on VPN, about an hour's worth answering all your questions, and helping you to understand the house the whys and the when should you use it when it comes to VPN? Of course, you're listening to Craig Peterson, and here we go with Mr. Jim Polito.

Jim
There is nothing weird about Craig Peterson, nothing at all because he is our good friend. He is a source of invaluable information 365 days a year, but especially during this whole Coronavirus work at home time. He's just second to none. Joining me now, our tech talk guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig
Hey, good morning, Jim. Yeah, I've been very, very busy with webinars. I did them every day, twice a day now for the last week and a half. I've got another probably two weeks' worth, I think. We're going to be doing a live webinar, or two of them one at 4 pm and one at 7:30 pm. But webinars where I'm answering everybody's questions and I'm doing training. Today's topic is a VPN because it's very misunderstood. A lot. A lot of people need a VPN, but when do you need them? How can you use them? When should you use them? When are they useful? And even give some recommendations of some different VPN that you can use out there. So it's been going well, I haven't had a single, negative comment. And so far I've done about, I think it's 12 or 14 of these live webinars just talking about remote workers working from home, what's the technology need to use? What are the threads? How, how are they the home workers now endangering the office, but today's VPN, we're going to have more every day for the next two weeks, and it's right there on my homepage.

Jim
All right, and Craig, you've been making that available to our listeners, and you made it possible to listeners before you opened it up to everybody else. Greg, why don't you give us just a brief tutorial on a VPN, and that is, You know, so people understand it. I didn't know what it was until about five years ago, myself, and you know what a VPN is? And it's something that yes, in the right circumstances, can protect your data and protect everything else.

Craig
Yeah, you're right. It's VPN is the host. Again, we have a lot of TLS in this business, which stands for three-letter acronyms. VPN stands for Virtual private network. The idea is that you can hook up two networks together, that's where it came from initially. You know, way back when we'd have to have a T-one line going from one point to another. And you probably remember those Jim because radio stations were using them for years of leased lines to connect to the transmitter. Yeah, and yeah, TV stations everybody. So that's how it started. Well, those were expensive. I had two T-one lines coming to my house 25 years ago, and that cost me almost $6,000 a month. Very, very expensive. Things have changed today, and VPN came into being to replace those expensive leased lines. So with the Internet, what you could do is just have an internet connection and connect the remote office with the main office. And instead of having to have that expensive leased line, now you had a highly encrypted data channel, and it connects the two networks. So that's where it started. Today what we're using it for is very, very similar. We're still using it to connect networks. And that's the beauty of it. And that's the curse of it. And here's the curse smarts. You know, if you are on a laptop, if you're at home if you're on an airplane, At the airport at a coffee shop, and you are using a VPN to connect into the network at work. You are now opening up your business network at work to everything around you in that coffee shop.

Jim
So you've been talking about open 19

Craig
Yeah, exactly. And Covid-19. What are we trying to do right now? Isolate?

Jim
Isolate? We're trying to die. That's the key.

Craig
Yeah. Because here's your significant danger. You walk into the house, and you bring Covid-19 into a home. And now all of a sudden people have it, and they're dying. Well, what do you think happens when you connect on a home computer? That is a pretty high likelihood that it's infected somehow? What happens when you connect that VPN now to the business network, you're spreading disease so VPNs on No, no, no, you have to be very, very careful. So here's another problem with the VPN.

Jim
So I guess the way you look at it is no, but the way you look at it is, so the VPN is that secure connection. But if your connection to that secure connection is lousy, then what's the sense of having that other secure connection between you and your employer?

Craig
You're making things worse. Exactly. Yeah, the connection may be secure. Yeah. So here's your other problem, you go out. And let's say you get a Norton VPN or something. And we're going to talk a lot more about this. Today, I'm going to show graphics about how this all works. So I help people understand. But you get one of these free VPN services or even one of these paid VPN services. Your data is only secure from your device to the VPN server. So let's say you're using one of these paid VPNs and you're connecting to the bank, and somehow you think And it's giving you additional security. It's not, and it is not at all. It might be making it worse, particularly with the free VPN services that are out there, you will be less secure because they are: what the old Willie Sutton quote, "why did he rob banks because that's where the money is," with VPNs that's where the money is going.

Craig
Yeah, the attackers are going after these three VPN servers and other VPN services, because they know that's where all of the connections are. And some of these VPN services are even tracking everything you do, everywhere you go, and some of them are also evil. I've seen VPN services that are running through Russia that require you to install this unique key so that you can use it and are doing a man in the middle attack. So that's why we're going to cover for an hour today. It will be at 7:30 pm. I am going through this and helping people understand. They can be useful, they can be necessary, but they must be appropriately secured and used correctly.

Jim
Alright, so Craig, there's a lot of different ways that folks can get information from you. Now, I know you've got a landing page on your website, and I'm going to I want you to give that out. But the first way is to get other information from you that you put out weekly to me, and then we share here, and that's by texting my name to this number.

Craig
to 855-385-5553. So just texting Jim 2855385 5553

Jim
Standard data and text rates apply now, Craig, for folks to get to your website, and to find out about this webinar, the VPN information how do they do that?

Craig
Well, we have a registration on the site. The one that's up there right now is for last night. I haven't checked Just this morning, but I will be changing as soon as we get off the phone. Go to Craig Peterson dot com. It'll be right there at the bottom of the homepage at Craig Peterson dot com. That's s-o-n calm.

Jim
Alright, Greg, thank you so much. I appreciate the time, and we'll catch up with the next week. Unless, of course, something comes up, then you're always welcome here in between.

Craig
Alright, hey, thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim
Take care. Bye-bye, Craig Peterson everybody a great resource. All right, a final word. When we return. You're listening to the Jim Pulido show from my kitchen with pops. Your safe space.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Welcome!

Hey everyone. I hope you are all doing well during this period of social distancing we are experiencing due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

If you are new to doing remote work or working from home then you are going to want to attend the series of webinars on tools, techniques, and tactics you can use to make this easier for you. These are all offered at no charge. Later next week, I will be offering a live training course on securing your computers, networks, and browsers. This will be deeply discounted. No pressure, but if you are interested, I would appreciate your business.

I was on with Jim Polito who was sitting in his kitchen under self-quarantine because the State of Massachusetts has advised their residents to stay home and avoid unnecessary travel and other unnecessary activities during this two-week time period. We discussed VPNs. What they are and when and why to use them and how to use them correctly. So, here we go with Jim Polito.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig You are on a laptop, if you're at home, If you're on an airplane, at the airport, at a coffee shop, and you are using a VPN to connect into the network at work. You are now exposing the business network at work to everything around you in that coffee shop.

Craig Mr. Jim Polito, this morning had me do a quick rundown of VPNs and why they might not be the right thing for you. And I talked a little bit about, but man some of the real cons to it and what can they do? And that's all part of what's happening later on. Today. I'm doing some intense stuff here on VPN, about an hour's worth answering all your questions, and helping you to understand the house the whys and the when should you use it when it comes to VPN? Of course, you're listening to Craig Peterson, and here we go with Mr. Jim Polito.

Jim There is nothing weird about Craig Peterson, nothing at all because he is our good friend. He is a source of invaluable information 365 days a year, but especially during this whole Coronavirus work at home time. He's just second to none. Joining me now, our tech talk guru Craig Peterson. Good morning, sir.

Craig Hey, good morning, Jim. Yeah, I've been very, very busy with webinars. I did them every day, twice a day now for the last week and a half. I've got another probably two weeks' worth, I think. We're going to be doing a live webinar, or two of them one at 4 pm and one at 7:30 pm. But webinars where I'm answering everybody's questions and I'm doing training. Today's topic is a VPN because it's very misunderstood. A lot. A lot of people need a VPN, but when do you need them? How can you use them? When should you use them? When are they useful? And even give some recommendations of some different VPN that you can use out there. So it's been going well, I haven't had a single, negative comment. And so far I've done about, I think it's 12 or 14 of these live webinars just talking about remote workers working from home, what's the technology need to use? What are the threads? How, how are they the home workers now endangering the office, but today's VPN, we're going to have more every day for the next two weeks, and it's right there on my homepage.

Jim All right, and Craig, you've been making that available to our listeners, and you made it possible to listeners before you opened it up to everybody else. Greg, why don't you give us just a brief tutorial on a VPN, and that is, You know, so people understand it. I didn't know what it was until about five years ago, myself, and you know what a VPN is? And it's something that yes, in the right circumstances, can protect your data and protect everything else.

Craig Yeah, you're right. It's VPN is the host. Again, we have a lot of TLS in this business, which stands for three-letter acronyms. VPN stands for Virtual private network. The idea is that you can hook up two networks together, that's where it came from initially. You know, way back when we'd have to have a T-one line going from one point to another. And you probably remember those Jim because radio stations were using them for years of leased lines to connect to the transmitter. Yeah, and yeah, TV stations everybody. So that's how it started. Well, those were expensive. I had two T-one lines coming to my house 25 years ago, and that cost me almost $6,000 a month. Very, very expensive. Things have changed today, and VPN came into being to replace those expensive leased lines. So with the Internet, what you could do is just have an internet connection and connect the remote office with the main office. And instead of having to have that expensive leased line, now you had a highly encrypted data channel, and it connects the two networks. So that's where it started. Today what we're using it for is very, very similar. We're still using it to connect networks. And that's the beauty of it. And that's the curse of it. And here's the curse smarts. You know, if you are on a laptop, if you're at home if you're on an airplane, At the airport at a coffee shop, and you are using a VPN to connect into the network at work. You are now opening up your business network at work to everything around you in that coffee shop.

Jim So you've been talking about open 19

Craig Yeah, exactly. And Covid-19. What are we trying to do right now? Isolate?

Jim Isolate? We're trying to die. That's the key.

Craig Yeah. Because here's your significant danger. You walk into the house, and you bring Covid-19 into a home. And now all of a sudden people have it, and they're dying. Well, what do you think happens when you connect on a home computer? That is a pretty high likelihood that it's infected somehow? What happens when you connect that VPN now to the business network, you're spreading disease so VPNs on No, no, no, you have to be very, very careful. So here's another problem with the VPN.

Jim So I guess the way you look at it is no, but the way you look at it is, so the VPN is that secure connection. But if your connection to that secure connection is lousy, then what's the sense of having that other secure connection between you and your employer?

Craig You're making things worse. Exactly. Yeah, the connection may be secure. Yeah. So here's your other problem, you go out. And let's say you get a Norton VPN or something. And we're going to talk a lot more about this. Today, I'm going to show graphics about how this all works. So I help people understand. But you get one of these free VPN services or even one of these paid VPN services. Your data is only secure from your device to the VPN server. So let's say you're using one of these paid VPNs and you're connecting to the bank, and somehow you think And it's giving you additional security. It's not, and it is not at all. It might be making it worse, particularly with the free VPN services that are out there, you will be less secure because they are: what the old Willie Sutton quote, "why did he rob banks because that's where the money is," with VPNs that's where the money is going.

Craig Yeah, the attackers are going after these three VPN servers and other VPN services, because they know that's where all of the connections are. And some of these VPN services are even tracking everything you do, everywhere you go, and some of them are also evil. I've seen VPN services that are running through Russia that require you to install this unique key so that you can use it and are doing a man in the middle attack. So that's why we're going to cover for an hour today. It will be at 7:30 pm. I am going through this and helping people understand. They can be useful, they can be necessary, but they must be appropriately secured and used correctly.

Jim Alright, so Craig, there's a lot of different ways that folks can get information from you. Now, I know you've got a landing page on your website, and I'm going to I want you to give that out. But the first way is to get other information from you that you put out weekly to me, and then we share here, and that's by texting my name to this number.

Craig to 855-385-5553. So just texting Jim 2855385 5553

Jim Standard data and text rates apply now, Craig, for folks to get to your website, and to find out about this webinar, the VPN information how do they do that?

Craig Well, we have a registration on the site. The one that's up there right now is for last night. I haven't checked Just this morning, but I will be changing as soon as we get off the phone. Go to Craig Peterson dot com. It'll be right there at the bottom of the homepage at Craig Peterson dot com. That's s-o-n calm.

Jim Alright, Greg, thank you so much. I appreciate the time, and we'll catch up with the next week. Unless, of course, something comes up, then you're always welcome here in between.

Craig Alright, hey, thanks, Jim. Take care.

Jim Take care. Bye-bye, Craig Peterson everybody a great resource. All right, a final word. When we return. You're listening to the Jim Pulido show from my kitchen with pops. Your safe space.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

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For questions, call or text:

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Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath this morning. We discussed the Coronavirus, Covid-19, and how it is going to change business and education forever. Here we go with Jack.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
Whereas before, it would be so unprofessional to hear a cat meow or child crying in the background that is now acceptable. You know you don't want to be in the middle of a ruckus while you're trying to do work, but overall, it is changing all of our attitudes. We're realizing, you know, people have lives outside of this. And we see this massive shift.

Craig
A good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Hopefully, you're doing okay with this whole SARS2 Covid-19 thing that's been going around it, hey, it's a drag at the very least, right? Very, very stressful for so many of us for frankly, some good reasons. Anyhow, and that was me this morning with Mr. Jack Heath, and I tried to stick to the good news on the technology front, and frankly, I think everything is about to change.

Jack
There's Craig Peterson from Tech Talk joins us live. Craig, good morning. You look at remote learning and people working from home, these changes are profound, and they're not going to go away anytime soon. I think a lot of businesses are studying how this is working. When they find out that a good group of their workforce can do it from home just as efficiently, even when this virus is less of a threat. I don't think these changes to you.

Craig
Yeah, I don't either. I think it's kind of interesting. You know, I homeschooled all of our kids, my wife and I Ollie kids up, I'll call it because now they've gone on to get MBAs and everything else. But it is easier to do homeschooling most people I think realize and it's a much better product, I think as well. And so we're going to see a surge in homeschooling, we are going to see a continued surge in people working from home. I listened to your prior guests talking about what the monthly nut is only for the real estate, and some of the other things they have to do. You know for businesses that can be mostly virtual, which is what my business has been for more than 20 years, why would I be paying for office space and other things when people already they have a home?

Jack
Justin wants me to ask you a question, Craig since you work at home, do you ever get lost go into work in the morning?

Craig
Sometimes I stumbled down the stairs.

Jack
I've been reading, you know, Craig, you know, just a few bits, you know, a month or two ago, which is to seems like an eternity ago. Many people right now listening to us going into the course. We have more people looking to us from all over the map because people want this information. But people for a business meeting in Boston, many people would have to leave at 5 am for the old nine o'clock as the traffic and a lot of companies. They're looking at, you know, space in Boston high rent, they're going to say wait a minute. Is this better for everyone if they can start working at eight o'clock at home versus 11 o'clock to recover from a stressful commute, and Gonna start looking at this stuff?

Craig
Yeah, it's taking away the stigma. I have noticed this as well because we get phone calls all the time, and one of our daughters works for, in fact, Fidelity right here in Merrimack, and she is working from home now. She and her co-workers have a cat, and they have dogs, they have kids. And so they're on the phone with people. Whereas before, it would be so unprofessional to hear cat meow or child crying in an acceptable background. You know you don't want to be in the middle of all of the ruckus while you're trying to do work. But that is changing all of our attitudes. And we're realizing, you know, people have lives outside of this. And we see that vast shift. You know, another change I've seen here very recently is this whole thing about 3d printers. We've got some new technology out there right now. For instance, the FDA authorized to test last week, that is, they're expecting to ramp up this week that is a five- minute Covid-19 tests. And it's designed for small clinics and you know, the walk-ins and doctor's offices, etc. There's already about 80,000 of these machines out in the field. And they expect this week to see that test available right then and there. It's the size of a toaster. We're seeing 3d printers getting used, and right now, the FDA is working with people. They're going to be releasing designs approved for say smash, nasal swabs, etc. And people are working at home building these things. There are whole groups of people right now that are dedicating their home 3d printers. This one company is cranking out 100,000 nasal swabs a day. Just using these types of printers. People are getting together online using designs that came out of Europe to make some of these medical devices not yet been approved here in the US by the FDA. They have to be careful to meet some of the medical requirements. But they're also printing up some of these supplies that are needed by the medical community. That's all coming together. Yeah.

Jack
I love this innovation with entrepreneurs stepping forward like our previous guests, the lacrosse helmet company in Exeter cascade to make protective gear for medical it's just a great way to keep people employed and help us out. Craig Peterson. Thank you very much, Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks, Craig.

Craig
Take care.

Craig
Hey, I want to point out if you have not been attending these webinars, you are missing out. I've been offering them to my best listeners, really the best followers who are on my email list. But the bottom line I've had nothing but great features. Back from everybody. And I appreciate you guys for doing that too. I do have a sign up on my homepage right now. And you're going to have to sign up for each of these individually. They are different topics, but I think it's all very, very important. And I've been sending out reminders to people too, so check it out. Craig peterson.com Craig Peterson dot com. And right there at the bottom of the screen, you'll see the little signup thing. Have a great day, everybody. I will be busy. I'm doing two webinars today. I'm doing two webinars a day, but sometimes three scheduled anyways here for the next seven days, and it's all about security, remote working workers from home working from home. Just that whole thing. What do you need to know what do you need to do? So make sure you take advantage of this, especially if you have some time right now. It is all free. Your home For Cova 19 time to learn something. All right, everybody, take care. Bye-bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath this morning. We discussed the Coronavirus, Covid-19, and how it is going to change business and education forever. Here we go with Jack.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

--- 

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig
Whereas before, it would be so unprofessional to hear a cat meow or child crying in the background that is now acceptable. You know you don't want to be in the middle of a ruckus while you're trying to do work, but overall, it is changing all of our attitudes. We're realizing, you know, people have lives outside of this. And we see this massive shift.

Craig
A good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Hopefully, you're doing okay with this whole SARS2 Covid-19 thing that's been going around it, hey, it's a drag at the very least, right? Very, very stressful for so many of us for frankly, some good reasons. Anyhow, and that was me this morning with Mr. Jack Heath, and I tried to stick to the good news on the technology front, and frankly, I think everything is about to change.

Jack
There's Craig Peterson from Tech Talk joins us live. Craig, good morning. You look at remote learning and people working from home, these changes are profound, and they're not going to go away anytime soon. I think a lot of businesses are studying how this is working. When they find out that a good group of their workforce can do it from home just as efficiently, even when this virus is less of a threat. I don't think these changes to you.

Craig
Yeah, I don't either. I think it's kind of interesting. You know, I homeschooled all of our kids, my wife and I Ollie kids up, I'll call it because now they've gone on to get MBAs and everything else. But it is easier to do homeschooling most people I think realize and it's a much better product, I think as well. And so we're going to see a surge in homeschooling, we are going to see a continued surge in people working from home. I listened to your prior guests talking about what the monthly nut is only for the real estate, and some of the other things they have to do. You know for businesses that can be mostly virtual, which is what my business has been for more than 20 years, why would I be paying for office space and other things when people already they have a home?

Jack
Justin wants me to ask you a question, Craig since you work at home, do you ever get lost go into work in the morning?

Craig
Sometimes I stumbled down the stairs.

Jack
I've been reading, you know, Craig, you know, just a few bits, you know, a month or two ago, which is to seems like an eternity ago. Many people right now listening to us going into the course. We have more people looking to us from all over the map because people want this information. But people for a business meeting in Boston, many people would have to leave at 5 am for the old nine o'clock as the traffic and a lot of companies. They're looking at, you know, space in Boston high rent, they're going to say wait a minute. Is this better for everyone if they can start working at eight o'clock at home versus 11 o'clock to recover from a stressful commute, and Gonna start looking at this stuff?

Craig
Yeah, it's taking away the stigma. I have noticed this as well because we get phone calls all the time, and one of our daughters works for, in fact, Fidelity right here in Merrimack, and she is working from home now. She and her co-workers have a cat, and they have dogs, they have kids. And so they're on the phone with people. Whereas before, it would be so unprofessional to hear cat meow or child crying in an acceptable background. You know you don't want to be in the middle of all of the ruckus while you're trying to do work. But that is changing all of our attitudes. And we're realizing, you know, people have lives outside of this. And we see that vast shift. You know, another change I've seen here very recently is this whole thing about 3d printers. We've got some new technology out there right now. For instance, the FDA authorized to test last week, that is, they're expecting to ramp up this week that is a five- minute Covid-19 tests. And it's designed for small clinics and you know, the walk-ins and doctor's offices, etc. There's already about 80,000 of these machines out in the field. And they expect this week to see that test available right then and there. It's the size of a toaster. We're seeing 3d printers getting used, and right now, the FDA is working with people. They're going to be releasing designs approved for say smash, nasal swabs, etc. And people are working at home building these things. There are whole groups of people right now that are dedicating their home 3d printers. This one company is cranking out 100,000 nasal swabs a day. Just using these types of printers. People are getting together online using designs that came out of Europe to make some of these medical devices not yet been approved here in the US by the FDA. They have to be careful to meet some of the medical requirements. But they're also printing up some of these supplies that are needed by the medical community. That's all coming together. Yeah.

Jack
I love this innovation with entrepreneurs stepping forward like our previous guests, the lacrosse helmet company in Exeter cascade to make protective gear for medical it's just a great way to keep people employed and help us out. Craig Peterson. Thank you very much, Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks, Craig.

Craig
Take care.

Craig
Hey, I want to point out if you have not been attending these webinars, you are missing out. I've been offering them to my best listeners, really the best followers who are on my email list. But the bottom line I've had nothing but great features. Back from everybody. And I appreciate you guys for doing that too. I do have a sign up on my homepage right now. And you're going to have to sign up for each of these individually. They are different topics, but I think it's all very, very important. And I've been sending out reminders to people too, so check it out. Craig peterson.com Craig Peterson dot com. And right there at the bottom of the screen, you'll see the little signup thing. Have a great day, everybody. I will be busy. I'm doing two webinars today. I'm doing two webinars a day, but sometimes three scheduled anyways here for the next seven days, and it's all about security, remote working workers from home working from home. Just that whole thing. What do you need to know what do you need to do? So make sure you take advantage of this, especially if you have some time right now. It is all free. Your home For Cova 19 time to learn something. All right, everybody, take care. Bye-bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553

Welcome,

Good Monday morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on with Jack Heath this morning. We discussed the Coronavirus, Covid-19, and how it is going to change business and education forever. Here we go with Jack.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Whereas before, it would be so unprofessional to hear a cat meow or child crying in the background that is now acceptable. You know you don't want to be in the middle of a ruckus while you're trying to do work, but overall, it is changing all of our attitudes. We're realizing, you know, people have lives outside of this. And we see this massive shift.

Craig A good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. Hopefully, you're doing okay with this whole SARS2 Covid-19 thing that's been going around it, hey, it's a drag at the very least, right? Very, very stressful for so many of us for frankly, some good reasons. Anyhow, and that was me this morning with Mr. Jack Heath, and I tried to stick to the good news on the technology front, and frankly, I think everything is about to change.

Jack There's Craig Peterson from Tech Talk joins us live. Craig, good morning. You look at remote learning and people working from home, these changes are profound, and they're not going to go away anytime soon. I think a lot of businesses are studying how this is working. When they find out that a good group of their workforce can do it from home just as efficiently, even when this virus is less of a threat. I don't think these changes to you.

Craig Yeah, I don't either. I think it's kind of interesting. You know, I homeschooled all of our kids, my wife and I Ollie kids up, I'll call it because now they've gone on to get MBAs and everything else. But it is easier to do homeschooling most people I think realize and it's a much better product, I think as well. And so we're going to see a surge in homeschooling, we are going to see a continued surge in people working from home. I listened to your prior guests talking about what the monthly nut is only for the real estate, and some of the other things they have to do. You know for businesses that can be mostly virtual, which is what my business has been for more than 20 years, why would I be paying for office space and other things when people already they have a home?

Jack Justin wants me to ask you a question, Craig since you work at home, do you ever get lost go into work in the morning?

Craig Sometimes I stumbled down the stairs.

Jack I've been reading, you know, Craig, you know, just a few bits, you know, a month or two ago, which is to seems like an eternity ago. Many people right now listening to us going into the course. We have more people looking to us from all over the map because people want this information. But people for a business meeting in Boston, many people would have to leave at 5 am for the old nine o'clock as the traffic and a lot of companies. They're looking at, you know, space in Boston high rent, they're going to say wait a minute. Is this better for everyone if they can start working at eight o'clock at home versus 11 o'clock to recover from a stressful commute, and Gonna start looking at this stuff?

Craig Yeah, it's taking away the stigma. I have noticed this as well because we get phone calls all the time, and one of our daughters works for, in fact, Fidelity right here in Merrimack, and she is working from home now. She and her co-workers have a cat, and they have dogs, they have kids. And so they're on the phone with people. Whereas before, it would be so unprofessional to hear cat meow or child crying in an acceptable background. You know you don't want to be in the middle of all of the ruckus while you're trying to do work. But that is changing all of our attitudes. And we're realizing, you know, people have lives outside of this. And we see that vast shift. You know, another change I've seen here very recently is this whole thing about 3d printers. We've got some new technology out there right now. For instance, the FDA authorized to test last week, that is, they're expecting to ramp up this week that is a five- minute Covid-19 tests. And it's designed for small clinics and you know, the walk-ins and doctor's offices, etc. There's already about 80,000 of these machines out in the field. And they expect this week to see that test available right then and there. It's the size of a toaster. We're seeing 3d printers getting used, and right now, the FDA is working with people. They're going to be releasing designs approved for say smash, nasal swabs, etc. And people are working at home building these things. There are whole groups of people right now that are dedicating their home 3d printers. This one company is cranking out 100,000 nasal swabs a day. Just using these types of printers. People are getting together online using designs that came out of Europe to make some of these medical devices not yet been approved here in the US by the FDA. They have to be careful to meet some of the medical requirements. But they're also printing up some of these supplies that are needed by the medical community. That's all coming together. Yeah.

Jack I love this innovation with entrepreneurs stepping forward like our previous guests, the lacrosse helmet company in Exeter cascade to make protective gear for medical it's just a great way to keep people employed and help us out. Craig Peterson. Thank you very much, Craig Peterson dot com. Thanks, Craig.

Craig Take care.

Craig Hey, I want to point out if you have not been attending these webinars, you are missing out. I've been offering them to my best listeners, really the best followers who are on my email list. But the bottom line I've had nothing but great features. Back from everybody. And I appreciate you guys for doing that too. I do have a sign up on my homepage right now. And you're going to have to sign up for each of these individually. They are different topics, but I think it's all very, very important. And I've been sending out reminders to people too, so check it out. Craig peterson.com Craig Peterson dot com. And right there at the bottom of the screen, you'll see the little signup thing. Have a great day, everybody. I will be busy. I'm doing two webinars today. I'm doing two webinars a day, but sometimes three scheduled anyways here for the next seven days, and it's all about security, remote working workers from home working from home. Just that whole thing. What do you need to know what do you need to do? So make sure you take advantage of this, especially if you have some time right now. It is all free. Your home For Cova 19 time to learn something. All right, everybody, take care. Bye-bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

---

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Message Input:

Message #techtalk

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

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For questions, call or text:

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This week is a replay of the show aired originally on 7 Mar 2020

Welcome!  

We are going to hit a number of topics today from the world of Technology.  I am quite disappointed with Mozilla, they are letting marketers and politicians define their technology. Listen in to find out why I feel that way. Compliance is an issue for many companies and I have some solutions that will help you and it includes a diet but probably not the kind you are thinking.  Do you ever get nostalgic for "the good old days?" Well, I have something that might help, listen in to find out more. I will tell you happened to one of the Sharks from Shark Tank? How you can prevent it from happening to you and more.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

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DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is not the Panacea the Marketers Are Leading you to Believe

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN and, of course, online at Craig Peterson, dot com and heard streaming all over the world on your favorite streaming site. I'm so glad to be here today and be able to talk with you a little bit about what are the top news stories this week? How can you keep safe that's kind of one of my themes because I freaked out when my company got attacked some years ago. You know, just a regular business guy trying to run a small business and man did hurt me bad back in the day. I'm just trying to get all of the information I've put together over the years and learn, and I continue to study this stuff and continue to look at what are the best ways to defend ourselves. I try and get all of that and put it together into neat packages for you. One of them, of course, is the radio show. I also get on with Facebook Lives. YouTube lives, and also do various types of pieces of training and tutorials and things out there. Where in fact, for the next course I have coming up, we're going to have implementation calls, where we are talking specifically about what to do when you do it. So you try and implement something, you have some issues. I'm going to get on the phone with you guys. So I think that's going to be great. And then the upcoming class here in a few weeks. And then, of course, the tutorials leading up to that class where I'll take your questions live, sometimes those little tutorial sessions on, you know what it's webinar technology. On these webinars, sometimes we go a couple of hours so I can answer all of your questions. That's what it's about here. All right, because I understand most people, not I know I'm this way too. I get contacted by somebody, and they're trying to sell me something that happened just over the weekend. Last weekend somebody knocked at the door, trying to sell windows, right. I think it was like Renewal by Andersen or something like that. And they were walking around knocking on doors. I see you know, immediately just knee jerk said, No, No thanks, my windows are fine. It got me to thinking about the whole situation in the security realm. Because that's what we do, right? What we've been doing for years decades, sometimes we have the antivirus software, every once in a while when we hear about a real big vulnerability, we go ahead and apply patches. You know, it's been the same old, same old, but we just can't do that anymore. And because really, we see huge, huge problems and businesses going out of business because of them. So that's what this is all about. So if you're a new listener, welcome. If you've been listening to me for a while, of course, Welcome, Welcome to you too. And I want to get this information out. So one of the best ways to make sure you have all of the latest information you need is to go online go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and that'll get you on my email list. Then once you're there, you will be able to keep up on up to date on things I do, try and get those out. I have a newsletter that's every Saturday morning. Then when I'm doing training, I'll send something that's a little out of the band if I'm doing a live or various other things. I thought because of the way it works with the emails I send out, if you want to unsubscribe, you will be guaranteed to never hear from me again. Maybe that's a great thing that is right for some people. But for other people, I came to realize that perhaps they didn't care about the training, they just wanted the newsletter, or perhaps they wanted the pieces of training but didn't want any emails. Some wanted on courses but not other courses, etc., etc. So I'm going to try and do something a little bit different right now, and there's a pretty nasty warning as a footnote. If you unsubscribe, I can't send you anything anymore. I won't send you anything even if you want a course, you'll not hear from me again, because you unsubscribed and marked as somebody that doesn't ever want to hear from me again. That's fine. I know we all have our lives, and maybe you think you're safe enough. Perhaps you're going to reach out to me when everything falls apart around you. At which point, I can't respond to you because I will have your email blocked. That is because I don't want to bother you. I want to comply with the can-spam app act. Although, you know, most people don't seem to care about that as well as the GDPR. Also, The New California regulations, the Massachusetts regulations, and new federal regulations that are going into effect. They all place requirements on when and where I'm not supposed to contact you. If you say No. Then No means no, right. I'm going to change things a little bit with these upcoming training and courses that I'm going to be doing. I'm going to make it so you can just unsubscribe from those, so you're not going to lose contact with me. I've had some people complain, and in the end, it becomes a bit of a pain to try and add them back in. We're going to try and make this a little bit easier for you guys, so keep an eye out for that. You already know right based on what I'm saying, as well as what I've done in the past that I won't spam you guys, I don't sell your name to other people your email address. Most of you I know are kind of the older generations, the younger guys they don't care we've already talked about that. They will sell their email address and name for a donut. But us older folk were a little bit more cautious about it. I think that's probably a good thing. We're less likely to get ripped off the senior population in some ways less likely to get ripped off, and other ways more likely get ripped off. It's interesting. Again, we tend to trust phone calls more. You know what I have, frankly, I don't answer my phone anymore. It just goes to voicemail. And I have somebody else look at it because there are so many scams coming in. But we tend to trust the phones more in the generation, you know, the men and women older than me, other baby boomers, they are a little bit more susceptible to those types of scams. So be careful with those types of scams as well just you know, be careful all the way around, frankly. And that brings us to our first story of the day today. And this is something I found that I thought was cool. So I thought I'd share it with you. It's a tech thing. I was just a few weeks ago talking on the radio. One of the radio shows I appear on as a guest. And we were talking about Betamax versus VHS. And I knew I knew that the radio host I was talking to there's no way he just loves tech. There's no way he did not have Betamax. And he did. He had hundreds, apparently of beta tapes in his closet. But this is all about that Era of the 1990s. I'm sure you guys had VCRs right back in the day. And of course, the winner of that war was VHS, and it wasn't because it was better technology, but we're not going to delve into that right now. And those VHS tapes, at this point, about 20,000 of them have been put into an online vault. Now, if you've never used the Wayback Machine, you have to check it out. You can find it online. At archive.org, that's the name of it. It is an Internet Archive, and it shows web pages going way back, you can look at my web page from back in the very, very, very early days of the Internet. When you know, love the not the Internet, but of when the whole web thing came about, which was 9293 is when it started to go. I didn't have a webpage back in 85. When I first registered my domain that's been around for a while. And then, of course, I was using other domains. Before that, I've used my ham radio call sign is my domain. And before that, but the Wayback Machine is this archive, you can browse the history of any major site, many miners sites that are out there. They have used it in court cases. It's used by me, just for kind of memories of things as the way they were. Now you can use it for something brand new. I didn't know that they had, and that is They've got something out there on the Wayback Machine that's called the VHS vault V-H-S just like the VHS tapes that we had or that ken didn't have because he had Betamax. Right now, I'm looking at says there are almost 21,000 results. So they've taken these VHS tapes that were submitted, and they have effectively ripped them. They've turned them into digital video, right. And some of these are just amazing, like a warm-up to Traci Lords. It's an exercise program. Of course, Traci Lords was involved in some adult films back in the day. Man, I love this mystery science theater. 3000 Timothy Leary is a guest on MTV with John Lennon, Les Miserables from 1935, rush to judgment. There are some many cool things The Lion King in full VHS tapes. Now some of this information is probably still copyrighted, but as a general rule, archive.org doesn't get nailed for copyright violations.

SpongeBob SquarePants Oh, this is the Fairy Fairy Godmother I think is what this cartoon was called and trying to remember my kids used to like it. Some bootleg tapes, everything, but you can find it online I think you would have a gas looking through these. I want you to go to archive.org as you're listening to the show, or maybe some other time during the week, you're sitting there watching some TV with your smartphone or your computer. Archive.org and look for the VHS vault. The actual URL is archive.org slash details slash VHS vault. You will see all kinds of fun stuff that's in there. They have many different collections

You can search this you can go in by year when They did it. They have Flemish dog collection. There's another one. There are collections I've used in some of the training videos I put together. There are collections of old black and white art, and pencil art, and engineering diagrams that are well, well auto copyright and you'll find all that [email protected] Check it out, I think you will have a gas checking it out. If you're like me, it's certainly brought back a lot of memories. 

When we get back, we're going to be talking about something that you should be doing, whether you're a home user or business user. You know, the things that we have to be worried about are the things that can be stolen from us, right, in the online world. Okay, this is what we will be talking about. What can be taken from us, but also what can be used to kind of hold our feet to the fire in ransomware. So we're going to talk about how to reduce your risk with Craig Peterson here on WGAN Stick around. We'll be right back.

Hey everybody Craig Peterson back here on WGAN online, and of course, at Craig Peterson dot com. Yeah, you know it by now, right? Well, hopefully, you had a chance to [email protected], definitely check it out. It's called the Wayback Machine, at least that was its original name. And they may still have that domain, the Wayback machine.com. But now it's known as archive.org. It is a wonderful, wonderful trip down memory lane, at least for me. If, if you are a little bit older, you might remember the Internet back in the days fun looking at some of the original search pages at AltaVista. Man, I miss AltaVista. I used to like to use the Boolean algebra that you could do in AltaVista. By the way, if you are a geek like me when it comes to searching and you want to be able to dig into it. There's a tool I use, and I think that you'd like it also. It's not cheap, that's for sure, but not that expensive either, but it's called DEVONthink, D-E-V-O-N T-H-I-N-K. It allows you to set up searches using all kinds of Boolean constructs, which is very, very, very handy, at least as far as I'm concerned. You can set it up to do automatic search sets every day looking for different things. It's one of the tools I use to find the information that we talk about here on this show because so much of it just isn't generally speaking, available. It certainly isn't spoken about by the mainstream media, right? You know that right. That's why you listen to the show and why you follow me. I am on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter, YouTube, and my website as well. I appreciate all you guys who do follow and who comment. Now, if you're a business person, this is for you, but there are some things that you can do as an individual as well that are going to make a big difference for yourself and your safety online. Businesses are concerned about the GDPR, which we've talked about on the show before. That's the European privacy regulation. We're also very concerned right now with CCPA. I just had a company that makes optics. I use their optics here in the studio if you have ever seen me on a webinar or one of these videos or pop up training or anything. I'm in the studio, and my cameras here the lenses use the glass made by this company. I had no idea, but they reached out to us due to their operations in California. They have a sales operation there because, again, they're selling their optical glass for use in lenses, and all kinds of other devices. They reached out because they were concerned about what is happening, what could happen with these new California privacy regulations? Is it going to mess up their business? How is it going to mess up their business? How is it going to make things better or worse? I think they had some outstanding questions. So they called us in, and they paid us to do an audit of the systems they have. How are the systems working? What is it that we need to be worried about? You know, it's something that takes a few weeks and a couple of on-site visits in New York? New York State, which by the way, is going to have their own set of privacy regulations that are going to affect them pretty dramatically. But basically, what it came down to was if they were compliant with the European regulations, they were probably most of the way towards the California regulations. So they think that they're compliant. But when we got in and started having to look at it, it turned out No, no, no. They are not anywhere near compliant with either set of regulations. Even though their IT people told them they are because they have full-time programmers who are programming their systems. They thought, Oh, no, no, we're fine. We're fine. No, they weren't. So what do you do if your regular business? Enough moaning and groaning about the optical manufacturer, who has fantastic optics, which is why I use them. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about your business, your small business, your larger business, this is true, you should be paying attention if you are a medium or large business as well. One of the best things you can do, and it is hard to get through to a lot of CEOs and other business owners. But one of the best things you can do to reduce your risks is to reduce the data that you are maintaining. Right? If you want to reduce the chance of getting shot at, don't go out in the streets where they're shooting, right? If you want to reduce the risk of having your data stolen, then don't have the data out there for them to steal. If you don't want to get nailed by one of these new regulations, that says, hey, personally identifiable information has to be maintained in this way and that way. If someone asks you what data do you have on me? Do you realize now you only have one week to respond? You must provide that data to them. If you have any sort of a California Nexus or European Nexus, in other words, doing business in either one of those places. Now, it's down to I think five days it's not a week to respond, saying, Here's all of the data that we have about you. That's what you have to be able to do. We have to be able to do it right now. You also have to be able to tell them, here are all of the people within my organization as well our contractors that saw your data and had access to your data. That is a very, very big deal, frankly. The landscape is constantly changing your obligations for that data, and the data disclosure and the data-keeping keeps getting more strict. What's the right thing for you to do? Ultimately, well, it's to get rid of the damn data, right? It's a very, very solid first step in reducing your risk. Now I'm going to be publishing next week, a little guide that you can use yourself, right, you don't have to have me involved, or anything else is just for you, that you can use to do an inventory of all of the data that you have in your business. What we've done is we've gone through and looked at different parts of the businesses that we've worked with over the years and evaluated the kind of data they often have. You have to do that first, right? You must identify what your risks are. You must determine what data you have. I'll make that available for those people on my email list. It will be part of this ramp-up here, a precursor to the pieces of training that I will be doing. There will be different free pieces of training and tutorials in my ramp-up to my courses. You don't have to be in the course to participate in the free tutorials, okay? You don't have to buy anything from me. It is all free, no hype or anything else. Okay. I'm not trying to hard-sell anybody I want to help you. That is the first step -- doing this inventory the data you have, and it is one of the best things you can do. Put your company on a data diet. Now, you know, last week we had Barry Friedman on the show, talking about a sugar diet. Right. It's a lot like that, and it's getting rid of these addictive pieces of data that we keep on our clients on our prospects, everything else that's out there, right. Let's look at it as a lens. When you're looking at your data when you're doing an inventory of these data assets, ask yourself, do I need this? Will this provide what I need? Think about maybe like a food diet as Barry does with sugar? Do I need sugar? We know is sugar going to provide us the nutrients that we need? The answer to that is no. When it comes to sugar, right. We found that out from Barry last week. But we need to work to minimize sensitive data and ask ourselves, do we need this sensitive data to conduct business right now? And will we need this sensitive data to conduct business in the future? If the answer's no, securely dispose of that data. It is the only way to comply with these regulations that are already in place here in the US and Europe as well. All right, when we get back, we're going to talk about how did we get here? How did we? How did ransomware grow to be a multi-billion dollar industry? What did we do to get here? What should we do to try and get beyond all of this? You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. And of course online at Craig Peterson. dot com, live on youtube, live on Facebook everywhere out there. Stick around. We'll be right back.

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN, and of course online at Craig Peterson dot com. In case you missed it. We've been busy today talking about the internet archives VHS vault. Again, that's archive.org. Check it out. It is kind of cool. We just talked about reducing risk using the cheapest mechanism possible. Data minimization will save you money and help you be compliant. Now I'm going to talk about ransomware. We've been warned recently about ransomware's rise. Many people thought it's kind of past. In some ways, it has. 2018 was kind of the banner year for the standard ransomware that out there, but it is back, and it is back with a vengeance. We talked about some of the statistics about a month ago and showed how it had gone up a bit almost doubled just between the third and fourth quarters last year, which is just absolutely dramatic. I had a course before, where we talked a little bit about backups. I've certainly talked about it here on the show before, and how backups help stop ransomware. Let's just spend a couple of minutes on that right now, although it's not 100% accurate anymore. It is essential to do for just a whole plethora of reasons. Backups are kind of the very first stage of what you need.

I read an article yesterday from a guy who is in some of the highest circles in the country. He had the phone numbers, the direct cell numbers of presidents and you name it, really just anybody who's anybody was on his phone. It was an Android phone. He had assumed that it was backed up into the cloud or something. His phone broke. He got a new phone and realized at that point that his phone had that never, ever, ever, been backed up. He lost the phone numbers from all of these people. Good luck getting them back, cell phone numbers, other contact information. Think of all the things that are on our phones nowadays. Losing your phone, having a hard disk crash on your laptop, or your desktop computer. Losing those can be devastating, no question about it. If you're a larger business and you think that you're doing backups, double-check them. I'd say three times quarters of the time, and I can't think of an exception to this, your backups will not work correctly for that business. I've never seen a case where all backups are working correctly, ever, ever going into a business. I know you, Craig, you're just crazy. It's silly. You're trying to build a business and scare people. No, I have never walked into a company and found their backups to be working correctly. We see things like, and I don't mean, they're not working in a way that is ideal or optimal for the business. Right? Certainly that on top of it. I mean, they weren't working.

We had one company that we went into, and they were dutifully doing backups, and the operations manager had five external hard disks. Every day he brought a hard drive in, he plugged it into the server and took it home at the end of the day. So we had Monday through Friday, hard disks that you brought back home with them. So they were off-site, which is, you know, great idea, by the way. The server itself had a RAID configuration on it and is called a raid five. It had three hard disks so that if a drive failed, they wouldn't lose all of their data. We went in because they wanted to do some upgrades. They hoped to move over to Apple infrastructure, where people could use iPads and iMacs on their desks to have a better working environment for everyone by moving away from windows. By the way, this is an excellent idea. They still had some Windows software that they had to run, so we helped them with that and got that all working running correctly. The backups you know, they were trying to do the right thing. But you know, you know what, there were a couple of problems one, their server had not written to any of those external disks for the last 18 months. They went a year and a half without ever having had a good backup. Think about that. What would happen to that business? What would happen to your company? After 18 months of no good backups and losing all your data?

Oh, and their server, an HP server, that cute little HP server had that RAID array, right a raid five where you can lose a disk and not lose data. Well, they had lost a drive. We were estimating based on the logs about a year before. There they were with no backups and no redundancy in their server disks on their server. That's an example right now, and I could go on and on. We had a company division of a Fortune 100 company that had paid for backups, and they had a dedicated data line. We put some next-generation firewalls in place that monitored the data and watched for data exfiltration to make sure that the plans and designs and social security numbers and bank accounts and everything were not being stolen or taken off off-site, right.

Guess what we found there? After six weeks of monitoring everything that's been going on because that's the first step right. Let's make sure we understand what the normal operations are. Didn't you tell us that you had an off-site backup of your mini computer going to another backup site? Oh, yeah, yeah, we do. It gets backed up in real-time. We're paying for the backups to go off-site. If something were to happen to our facility here, or to our computer, which is a big server, then they'd take over immediately we'd be off and running during those six weeks that we were in there we hadn't been involved with these operations.

Ultimately, we were in there for decades. Guess what we found? Yeah, exactly. None of the backups were occurring. They were paying for all of these things, right? They were paying for them. What we ended up doing is we came in, and we made sure that backups were happening. Unfortunately, they didn't have us do those backups. The company doing it for them was incompetent. And yet they decided to have them continue to do it. It doesn't make sense. We took over the rest of the backups. We had equipment on site, which we do at most of our clients. In case there's a problem, there are failovers that can occur. In this case, we'd have them back online in four hours, a requirement of publicly traded companies and their divisions. Again, they're just not doing anyways. Ramble. Ramble.

Wow, we've only got a couple of minutes left here in this segment. When it comes to backups, here's what you have to be careful of, and that is, make sure they are happening. Check the backups. Try and restore from your backups. Now, we're talking about ransomware. It is a seven and a half-billion-dollar industry. They are coming for you, and one of the best things you can do is have a backup. Still, there's another side to ransomware, nowadays, that backup won't help you with, and that is that they have your data, and they hold a ransom saying, if you don't pay us, we're going to release this onto the Internet. Then you're in real trouble. If you have personally identifiable information, or if you have your intellectual property out there, and it gets out to the Internet because you don't pay that ransom, you are in real trouble, plus if they encrypt your data, you'll need that backup. 

All right, stick around. We will be right back. And we're going to be talking about our next topic for the day, which is how do you answer a non-technical executive, who asks, how secure are we? Your listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey, have you ever been asked that question? Well, we'll tell you about how to answer it, coming right up.

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online, of course at Craig Peterson dot com. No surprise there.

Our next one is an interesting article and poses an interesting question. It is one that I'm sure you ask or have been asked, right? How secure are we? You are the Calvary, is the bottom line. You're the person who your family comes to, or the business owner comes to, the business asks whenever they have a tech question, right? You wouldn't be listening otherwise. It is how you get ahead. It is how you learn. You listen to me and others, read articles. You are the Calvary. How does the Calvary answer that question, when you're asked, How secure are we? You know, there's the obvious answer. Well, you know, we got this, and we got that. We have an Anti-virus, and we have a firewall. Those, frankly, are buzzwords that many of us use just to obfuscate the real answer to that question. I know that many times when we go into a business, and we secure it, we put together a proposal. Most of the time, our recommendations are not accepted. Most of the time, when we go into a business, and we say, here's what you need.

Here's what you need to do to stay secure, they say No, thank you, and prefer to run with blinders. Hopefully, they won't stumble in the middle of the night get or tossed by that horse, of just kind of ignoring it, right. Blinders or maybe you might want to call it ostrich-ing and to put their head in the sand or whatever, you want to call it, But most of the time, in reality, the businesses just don't do anything. Sometimes they do, right. That's how I stay in business. I stay in business because of the companies that want to remain secure. I stay in business because of the people that are the Calvary. They're like you who want to buy my courses to understand more to get step by step instructions know, not just the stories behind things, but the strategy in the exact tactics that they have to take. And that's you, I suspect, right? I think you're probably a lot like me in that way. That's how I like to learn, and that's how I teach as well. Well, this article is from our friends over Dark Reading. And the question is, uh, how secure are we? And how should we answer that? There's a great response by Kurtis Minder, the CEO, and Co-Founder of GroupSense. He says it depends. You've got to look at your executive team and qualify their level of understanding. Answering the question with the answer of well, we have antivirus, we have a firewall, and we have mail filters. You know, a lot of people nowadays say, "well, we're in the cloud," and there's nothing to worry about, which we already know, isn't true, right?

There's way more to worry about if you're in the cloud than if you have a local server. For those of you who are the kind of computer security people for your organization addressing this requires finding out where they are coming from who they are comparing. For instance, is it to what the Payment Card Industry PCI-DSS says we're supposed to do? Are we supposed to compare ourselves to the HIPAA-HiTech regulations? In other words, we have some medical data, which by the way, every company does, if you have any sort of a Health Insurance Program, right? Are we supposed to compare ourselves to the NIST 171 standard? There's, even more, there is the CMMC. There's, there's a lot of different criteria that are out there. You must understand the HOW before you answer this question. How secure we compared to similar companies in our industry? Or companies that are similar in size to us? No matter how you're going to answer that question, when the boss comes a-knockin or the kids or your wife comes a-knockin saying, How secure are we? No matter who it is you're talking to, I think the one thing you have to make sure of is that they understand that the whole security threat landscape is fluid. It's always changing, and your security programs need to be fluid as well. That's the reason I have consulting clients, right. That's the reason I have a membership program. The people who are the Calvary can follow and understand what it is they need to know. Now I want to hop over to this other guy here. His name is Matt Combs. And he is a global cybersecurity practice leader for an executive recruiter called Russell Reynolds Associates. It is absolutely a phenomenal interview on CIO.com. He's saying many companies were blissfully unaware t, especially those that don't have credit card information. How many times have I said that, right? It takes at least six months for the average company to figure out a breach occurred. Why did Matt say, especially those that don't have credit card information? It's because if they have credit card information, that information is likely to be sold on the open market very quickly. Once sold, the credit card companies are going to notice, right? Many companies have only learned that a breach occurred after the FBI came knocking on the door and told them they had a problem. Look at Home Depot. What happened? The FBI traced the dots. Home Depot, was compromised through their point of sale equipment. Can you believe that? people sitting in the parking lot of Home Depot hacked them? They didn't even know it until the FBI knocked on the door. That's a pretty big deal, on a pretty big company. I think they are the second-largest retailer in the country? When it comes to dollar-to-dollar value? Are you sold? Okay. If you don't have the credit card information, how would you even know that a breach happened? It goes ties back into the fluidity of security. It seems so obvious. Now when you look back at Home Depot and say, What were they thinking? I look at the target the TJX companies, and their hack they had security equipment, and that security equipment was quite good. It was alerting them, "whoa, wait a minute, guys, we've got a breach, okay." Did they take care of it? No, because they didn't know how to read the output, and they didn't have enough people to look at the logs, which is something else we keep telling you all. You have to watch the logs. You have to watch them closely. It's a full-time job. It's a highly skilled job, a highly trained job. It is not cheap, okay. I know a hotel company with 500 hotels in the United States, of course, you can look that up to find out who it is. They have a chief information security officer who is an information security group of one. Think about that 500 hotels, just the business itself, all of the data that they have, the liability that they have, and he doesn't have anyone working for him. Not even a support person. He has to beg, borrow, and steal help from it, and from the CIO, the Chief Information Officer. So when the executive asks you how secure are we, you have to say, Hey, listen, you know we can lock down the doors, we can lock down the windows, but the odds are if someone wants to breach us, they will be able to. However, make sure you are locking down the doors and locking down the windows. You got to close it all up. There was one other thing I think you should do when this non-tech executive asks you about how secure we are. That is, what's your nightmare, Mr. Executive? Which systems? Are you most concerned about being compromised? You should go back to the question I asked a little bit earlier, which is, what data do we have that maybe we shouldn't have? What data do we have that we are most concerned about losing? What are the Family Jewels in our organization? What is the data that if we were to lose it, we'd be in a lot of trouble, either because we could not conduct business anymore, or maybe we would get nailed by the regulators out there? Anyway, a lot of really, really good questions to ask because you're never 100% secure. All it takes is for one employee to click on the wrong link on an email. What I was just talking about will come up a little later on today. I talked about it this week on several radio stations. What happened with Barbara Cochran, an investor from Shark Tank. Stay tuned as we'll talk about it a little bit later on. All it takes and frankly, employee negligence such as accidental loss of data, accidental clicking on things. Employee negligence is still the main cause of data breaches. In a report from ShredIT now, of course, they're in the business of shredding documents of getting rid of these things. Shredding hard disk drives when you take them out of a computer. Remote workers and external vendors are also now a major cause of the increase in data breaches. That's one of the things we're going to be covering here in my course coming up in a couple of weeks, and that is the upstream-downstream risk. And the US military is totally into this now, because they had two or three major breaches last year that came through vendors. So hackers are no match for human error when it comes to sheer numbers. You also have the insider threats of people who are stealing from you. So they can get a better job, take it with them to another job. You have people who are upset with you and are just making an absolute mess of things on the way out the doors. So be very careful about that because it's huge data breaches cost an average of $3.6 million globally average that was in 2017. Some of those prices have gone up. The faster you respond to a breach, the more money that you'll save. They found that if you can respond to a breach within 30 days, on average, you'll save over a million dollars. Think of that. The odds are good that you will get breached. You will save, on average, a million dollars. Yet you're not funding the security people either by going to an external contractor, like me, to take care of it for you. Or you don't provide the resources to the internal people they need to do it. It is a huge, huge job. All right, top of the hour course, on the radio stations, we've got the news, traffic, weather, all that sort of stuff coming up. Then when we get back, we're going to talk about a new metric in security. The next-gen security metrics. Stick around, and you are listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online.  

Hey everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, on WGAN and, of course, online at Craig Peterson dot com. We have already covered a bunch today. I would refer you over to my website. If you'd like to find out a little bit more, of course, I'm also on the streaming services. You can find it there. We've covered the internet archive. They've got this cool, new VHS vault. We discussed ways to reduce your risk of data loss. It's all about identifying your data. and then minimizing your data, how we enabled ransomware to become a multi-billion dollar industry. And I also gave some good advice on backups and the fact that 100% of the businesses I've ever walked into have had a failed backup strategy and failed in a bunch of different ways. It is big for all of us who are out there who are members of the Calvary, who are trying to help our friends, our family with their computer issues, and the businesses for whom we work. Then we got to how to answer questions that we get that have to do with our level of security? How secure are we? How secure is the business? That's what we have covered so far today. I love our next topic. It's phenomenal. It's from Thread Post.com. But they're talking about different types of security metrics. Now, metrics, of course, our measurements, or the ways we measure things. We always have to measure progress to be able to know have we gotten to where we need to be, right. Progress can be difficult to measure. There are a lot of different types of measurements when it comes to our security. Say for Microsoft Windows, one of the big things is, are you ready every Patch Tuesday. Then a little bit more, as Microsoft sometimes comes with out-of-cycle patches. They got nailed a few years ago, through criticisms about them releasing new patches, like constantly, because they needed to release them. And so instead of fixing their problem, which would be almost impossible to do, and that is rewriting windows and making it much more secure design, they decided they would just go ahead and release patches once a month. And that way, of course, you're not getting them every day. So who's getting noticed that in fact, there are a whole lot of vulnerabilities and Windows. So that was another measurement that we had. Did you get your Patch Tuesday stuff done? That's been around a very long time? Well, we've got a new metric here, and it's called hardening. Now, I don't know about you guys, but my wife thinks that most people don't know what the name hardening is. So I'll explain it a little bit. Hardening is where we close holes in our networks and our Windows computers. That's really what our emphasis is going to be coming up here next week when we start our whole hardening series. By the time you finish this series and the courses, you'll be able to lock down any Windows or Mac computer yourself. You are going to be able to lock down your small business network, and you're going to stop worrying about being the victim of the bad guys. We're also going to train you on how to test everything yourself. That you can make sure that they can't get in, right. If not tested, how will you know it works. It's like I was talking about with backups. How do you know they are working? How do you know it's effective? How effective is it? So we're going to teach all of that, and I think that's just going to be amazing for you guys, man. We're looking to do something you guys are going to love. Hardening in the case of our computers includes our computers, browsers, firewalls, and routers. In other words, there, we're using all of the options, all of the available software to make sure that bad guys are not easily going to get in is our Windows Firewall harden on our computers? Did you even know you had a firewall on a Windows computer? Well, it's almost useless. Because Windows has a firewall, it is turned on by default, but they have all kinds of services turned on and available to be used. All of these things are kind of crazy. When we get down to it, there are things we can do. That's what we're going to be covering starting in about a week with some of these tutorials. And with our great course that we have coming up. Now, let's talk about what's holding us back and what mean time to harden means. We're looking at vulnerabilities, when we're talking about a zero-day-attack, it is one that no one has seen before and where there is not a patch or workaround for it. It's really kind of a nasty thing. When it comes to hardening, you want to make sure that you have as few services as possible on your computer, firewall, and browser. That again makes your attack surface smaller. But when we're talking about those types of zero-day attacks, it typically takes an organization 15 times longer to close a vulnerability than it does for the attackers to weaponize that vulnerability and exploit it. So basically, we're talking about one week for the bad guys to take a vulnerability one of those zero-day things. It takes one week to weaponize it, and it takes us about 102 days to patch it. Let that sink in for just a minute here. Once vulnerabilities get disclosed, It's a time-race here to either secure this hole before the bad guys to exploit it. Now we saw that with the Equifax breach where here's a major, major breach against a major company out there, and only happened because they hadn't applied the patches that they needed to apply. It's just really that simple. Microsoft has a patch let's give an example right now, BlueKeep. BlueKeep is a way to break into Microsoft machines. Microsoft released patches for BlueKeep in the May 2019 Patch Tuesday security fixes. Microsoft released it in May, and as of December 2019, seven months later, there were still over 700,000 machines at risk. Let me see here now May to June July, August, September, October, November, December. That, to me, sounds like seven months. That's huge. Sophos has some security software. In their recent report about WannaCry, which is ransomware. The patch against the exploit WannaCry was using has not been installed on a countless number of machines. Still despite being released more than two years ago. It's crazy, isn't it? Do you guys agree with me? Am I just being kind an alarmist? Now the average time to weaponize this is seven days. Many weaponization comes in less than seven days. Like the infamous ApacheStruts vulnerability. You have effectively 72 hours to harden new systems. Now the numbers are even worse. When we're talking about incident response. There's a new rule out from a company called CrowdStrike. You might have heard of them before, they've been in the news for some political stuff as well. But they are a security company. They do a lot of investigations after the fact and try to figure out what happened and try and clean things up. CrowdStrike has a new rule. It's called the 1-10-60 rule. And it's based on what they call breakout time. So here's what that is.

Most nation-state actors, in other words, the more advanced hackers out there, move laterally from an initial attack within two hours on average. In other words, if there is a country that's coming after you say, for instance, China. Most say now it isn't like China is going to go after me. I'm not Military and not a military contractor. China comes after you to steal your intellectual property. Once they have gotten inside of your network, they will move around inside your system. What this means is it gives defenders of a network one minute to detect a breach, 10 minutes to understand what has happened and that it was a breach and one hour to contain that breach from the initial incursion. That is huge. Now, this is part of this meantime to hardening and goal response that we're trying to achieve. If you're a regular business, and it's six months before you even notice that a hack occurred, if you ever even notice, which is par for the course, and one that we see that quite frequently. We will come in and look for signs of hacking. Many times, companies don't want to know. They just want to know if there are any openings that they should be closing right now. Why? If you see a hack occurred, there are specific legal responsibilities that you have. Companies say, Listen, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Without monitoring and watching what our organizations are doing, if we're not at the very least, patching and hardening, we're in real trouble. Now, I know you guys know how to patch it's not that difficult to do. We're not going to spend a lot of time on that in the upcoming tutorials or courses, but we are going to spend a lot of time in the course on Hardening because it is one of your best defenses. It's kind of like having a package on the front porch that was just delivered by Amazon people, right? If there is no package on the porch, the porch pirates are not going to show up and to steal the box. It's the same type of thing here. If you do not have services available on your machines inside your network, there is no way for the bad guys to move laterally. There's no way for them to get in remotely. That is our goal in our hardening courses, how to harden your Windows machine. That's coming up in about a week, week and a half. So make sure you are on my email list. You get all of that free training. You can find out about the courses as well that we are putting together for this. All of that at Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. You're listening to me here on WGAN. You can always send questions to me -- me at Craig Peterson dot com.

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson online at Craig Peterson dot com and right here on WGAN. I am also putting these up on Facebook and making them available on YouTube. For those that are interested. 

I want to talk a little bit right now about Clearview AI. You know, again, I've said so many times that we've got to be careful with our data online. Clearview AI is this company that we talked about a few weeks ago, that has been scraping all of the information it could get online, mainly related to photographs. All of the pictures that you posted on Facebook or that you put up on any photo sharing sites, all of that stuff, Clearview scraped. Now, they have this app that allows you to take a picture, and then it will do facial recognition to find all of the places online that that picture appears. And it has been used by looks like more than 2200 different organizations, many of them police department to track people down. So if you have a picture, even if it's not a great picture, that picture can then be put into the clear view AI app. And it'll show you here you go, here's where we found this guy or gal online. And even if you didn't take the picture, and you are in a photograph, it is going to show up in clear view is going to find it. Now, Clearview AI grabbed all of these photographs online without asking permission of anyone. I don't think they asked your permission, did they? They didn't get my permission. They scraped them from Twitter, who they didn't ask permission. They scraped them from Facebook. They scraped them from all over the internet. They ended up with billions of photographs. They logged it all along with where they found them online. That way, if the police department is looking for this person, they have a photo of them. They can put it into the Clearview AI app and can authenticate where online it was found. And then the police department just goes there and says, Oh, well, that's a Mary Jane's homepage. Here's more about Mary Jane, where she lives and everything else and now off they go to get Mary Jane. Now remember, of course, first off, these things are not 100% accurate. They could be false. There are false positives, although in many cases, they have been very successful at identifying people, and they have helped to solve some crimes, which is I guess a good thing, right. I think that's what you might want to say, okay. In a notification that The Daily Beast reviewed, Clearview AI told them that there had been an intruder that gained unauthorized access to its list of customers, and they got access to many accounts they've set up and the searches they have run.

Now, this disclosure also claimed that there was no breach of Clearview AI servers and that there was no compromise of Clearview AI systems or networks. That puzzles me makes me wonder, well, maybe they were using a cloud service, and they had it stored up there, and that's how it got stolen. It's hard to say. Clearview AI went on to say that it patched the unspecified hole that let the intruder in and that whoever was didn't manage to get their hands on their customer's search histories. Now there's a release from a Clearview AI attorney, and his statement said that security is Clearview AI top priority, which is total crap, right? They did everything they could to breach ethics and security of the user agreements from all of these websites from which they scraped our information. Unfortunately, data breaches their attorney says are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw and continue to work to strengthen our security. All of this is in a report on naked security dot com. Now, this, frankly, is very concerning to me from several different standpoints, right. First of all, Clearview AI had this massive database of facial images that they had sold to hundreds of law enforcement agencies.

In many cases, it wasn't like the overall agency. It was just a police officer themself that subscribed. It may be a detective, etc. The New York Times ran a front-page article in January, saying that Clearview AI may end privacy as we know it and man, is that ever true. They have been quietly selling access to these facial images and facial recognition software to over 600 law enforcement agencies. Now with this data breach, it looks like it's more than 2200. Although we have not seen the list posted online yet, we may end up seeing the posted online. It depends on who did this and if it was a nation-state, which is entirely possible. They are trying to find out a little bit more about us or whether it was somebody else. 

It reminds me of a lot about the founding of Facebook and why I've been against Facebook over the years, right? Facebook had a very unethical at its start. They stole all the photos of women going to Harvard University and then had people be able to go to their little website and rate the women, right? Rate them? Yeah, on their looks using all stolen photos. That's the allegation behind it all. It certainly seems to be true. Microsoft, that's another reason I just, I don't use the word hate very often believe me, but I do hate Microsoft and the way they started. They unethically sued people and play games with trying to buy them by lying about the rights that they had. Bill Gates outright lying to IBM and others, back in the early days. I have a good friend of mine who says Craig if you didn't have any ethics, you would be one of the wealthiest people in the country. Your ethics kept you from doing them, yet you bent over backward to help people. Companies, like these need to go out of business and need to go out of business fast, it's crazy. We've got the Biometric Information Privacy Act that Clearview AI has violated.

ClearView AI has also been told by Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube to stop scraping. Those companies have ordered it to stop that. It is against the policies. The Times noted that there's a strong use case for ClearView AI technology finding the victims of child abuse. News. It makes a lot of sense. One, retired Chief of Police said that running images of 21 victims of the same offender returned nine or 14 miners identifications, the youngest of whom was 13. So where do we draw the law watch line, I should say, what should we be doing here? It goes back to the whole fruit of the poisoned tree principle that exists in the law. That you've seen on TV and in movies many times, any evidence illegally obtained can't be used nor anything that comes of that evidence. It is why some Federal investigators play games with where did you get this evidence? Russia? Did it come from Christopher Steele? Should we have something similar In this case, and I think that we should if they stole information from these companies, which they did. It's, frankly, intellectual property theft at the very least. That means it is of no use in any sort of a police case that started an investigation and any legal matters that follow. That's my opinion. I don't know what yours is. I'd love to hear from you email Me at Craig Peterson dot com. Thank God they were able to find some of these victims of child abuse. But at the same time here, we should have some rights to privacy. It may already be too late. I guess we'll know. Soon enough. 

Hey, when we get back, we're going to talk about Barbara Cochran. She's the star of Shark Tank, and she just lost 400 grand in a scam will tell you all about it. You are listening to Craig Peterson and WGAN. And make sure you sign up online at Craig Peterson dot com.

Hi, everybody. Yeah, that means we're back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. 

We're going to talk right now about a TV show that I have enjoyed watching over the years. There are a few shows that I watch pretty regularly. Of course, there are some sci-fi shows we won't talk about those right now. But a couple of them are The Profit I enjoy that show. I like the guy who is the main character on that show, and his name is Marcus Lemonis. He owns a considerable interest in Camping World, as well as GoodSam Club, and he invests in small businesses. I disagree with him almost 100% on politics, but he does try and help people out which I think is fantastic and, and he goes into these businesses that are struggling, that are trying to figure out how do we move to the next step or how do we even survive? Then he helps him out, and he frequently invests in them. When he invests, he takes a good chunk, usually enough so that he has a controlling interest in other words 51% sort of a thing. Then he's often running, and he helps build them into real successful companies. Now, I guess it goes back to the question of, would you rather have a small slice of a massive pie as an owner, or would you rather have 100% of a tiny pie, that may end up collapsing in on itself at some point in time. That's kind of the decision these people have to face as they are talking with him and trying to figure it out. So I like that show. He had a good episode, recently that I found very, very fascinating. Check that one out, The Profit. Another one that I've enjoyed over the years is Shark Tank. Now Shark Tank is if you haven't seen it, it is a show, and there are a number of them. It's called Dragon's Den overseas. There's one in the UK. There's a shark tank in Canada, and there's a shark tank in Australia, all called slightly different things. The idea behind Shark Tank is you go in there you make a pitch to these investors, and the investors decide if they're going to throw some money at you. They will make a deal saying okay, I'll give you 20% for 20% of your company, I'll give you this much money, or you know, I'll bring in people to help out, but I want controlling interest or whatever it is. Well, one of the business moguls on there that part of this whole judging team on Shark Tank just last week lost nearly $400,000. It was disclosed that the 400 grande loss came through an email scammer. Now, if she had been listening to this show, she would have known about it. She would have known what's happening. She has enough money that she kind of brushed it off. Oh well, she thinks that she'll never get the money back. And you know what? She's probably right. We've seen that happen many times, even with the FBI getting involved most of the time that money never, ever comes back to you. According to media reports, a scammer who was posing as Barbara Cochran's executive assistant forwarded to her bookkeeper an invoice requesting that payment. I'm looking at the email right now. Barbara released it, which is great as that way people can see what happened. It's an email it's from, Jake somebody. Sent on Friday, February 21, and addressed to Emily carbon copy Michelle. The subject was forward Invoice 873, and it's got the name of a German company. It begins, Hello Emily. Please see the attached invoice below for payment. We are ready to proceed, and we are shipping next week. Please ensure the invoice is paid on time, shipping charges are additional. It appears like a little real invoice. It's got the due date on it, which was due on the 27th, and the amount was $388,700 and 11 cents. And it looks as I said kind of like a standard invoice. Dear customer. Please see the attached invoice. Wire transfers should be directed to FFH concept GMbH address in Berlin, Germany. Bank details include the bank name, the account name, bank address As the IBN number, the swift number, thank you for your business, we appreciate it very much. 

The truth was, this email did not originate from Barbara Cochran's executive assistant. Instead, what happened here is that the scammers and created an email address that looked the same as her executive assistant. It had one letter different in it. At first glance, it seems legitimate, yeah, this is from the Executive Assistant. You and I look at 400,000 and say, Whoa, wait a minute now. I don't even have that much. In this case, Barbara Cochran, this was pretty normal for her. There's not only this amount because she is involved in so many real estate deals. That's how she made her money was in real estate. She gets these invoices from these companies all over the world. It did not look that strange. All the bad guys, in this case, had to do was a little bit of research. They found out what the executive assistant's name, they found out what the email address was. The bookkeeper did not spot this little spelling error, if you will, in the email address. When she asked questions about the purpose of the payment, all communication went straight to the scammer's and not to the assistant. What did she do? She hit reply, and the response went straight to the scammers, and the scammers gave him what looked to be or gave her what appeared to be a reasonable answer, right. On Tuesday last week, seemingly satisfied by the answers she'd received by the scammers posing as Barbara Cochran's executive assistant. The bookkeeper transferred almost $400,000 into the bank account contract controlled by the scammers. It was only one the bookkeeper manually CC'd Cochran's assistant directly with confirmation that the invoice had was paid. It became clear what happened. So, again, that tells you don't respond to emails, right? Look it up, use a contact list, use your autocomplete to try and reach out to somebody to verify it. I always go one more step further, and that is to get on the phone and confirm the transaction. Now in speaking to people magazine, Barbara Corcoran again apparently was pretty okay about the theft. She says quote, I lost the 400,000 as a result of a fake email sent to my company. It was an invoice supposedly sent by my assistant to my bookkeeper, approving the payment for real estate renovation. There was no reason to be suspicious. I invest in quite a bit of real estate. I disagree with that there was reason to be suspicious.

Anyhow, I was upset at first, but then remember, it's only money good for her. Frankly, she posted on Twitter about it. Lesson learned. Be careful when you wire money. She retweeted something from TMZ about her getting hooked in this scam. I'm glad she has a positive attitude about it. It's very unlikely, as I said earlier, that she'll ever recover a dime from these fraudsters because of the way the money was wired. Ninety seconds later is all it takes for the cash to be gone and out of reach. And they probably went ahead and transferred it from German banks to other banks, and it continues to move the money around. It's kind of like what happened in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, with a billion dollars in aid that we sent that ended up bouncing around between multiple companies in multiple countries to hide whose pocket it ended up. It's just kind of crazy. It can happen to anyone, and it can happen to any of us. Every last one of us, business person or otherwise, needs to be on guard. Don't reply to emails. Always make sure you enter in the email address if it's anything that might be of concern. Remember that banks and other places are unlikely, including the IRS tax time, to be sending you emails about some of this stuff. Just double-check and phone them, look them up online, and phone that number. Ask a question from their help people over on their website. 

Well, we've got one last segment here, and we're going to be talking about new security features from Firefox that means insecurity to you. This is Craig Peterson on WGAN, and you know, I like Firefox, right?

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson, here on WGAN and online Craig Peterson dot com. Well, that's Peterson with an -On dot com. 

Hey, thanks for joining us today we've had a great day, we've talked about where you find a little bit of nostalgia online over at the Internet Archive. We talked about reducing the risk through data minimization. I described how ransomware became a multi-billion dollar industry. We talked about the changes that have recently happened with ransomware that will require you to make a change in what you're doing to stop becoming a victim. Then we got into how should you answer a non-technology related executive who asks you, how secure are we? How do you answer that question to your family as well? Because we are all the Calvary, right? We're the people that our friends, family, our people from church, the business people, they all come to us. So I wanted to make sure we covered that the next generation here of security metrics, how long does it take to harden your systems, and we've got a course coming up on that here in a couple of weeks and a bunch of tutorials to help you out. The company that we talked about clear view AI, very, very bad guys, frankly, very unethical. They just lost their entire database of Facebook buying clients to hackers. And then they brushed it off like it's no big thing.

Hey, you know, everybody gets hacked nowadays. Man is talking about a company with no ethics at all. We talked about them, and then, of course, most recently, we just talked about business email compromise. We gave you a specific example here of Barbara Corcoran. She is one of the business moguls over on Shark Tank. How she lost almost $400,000 in a scam, and what you can do to help protect yourself. And we gave away some actual clues here precisely what the bad guys are doing to try and get that information or get us to to to do that, right? What kind of information are they gathering about us?

Well, I want to talk about Firefox here for a few minutes, all web browser thing. And this has to do with security. And this is an article over on we live security.com that made me think about what is going on with Firefox and Mozilla. Now, if you've been on any of my training courses, you know, the browser you absolutely should never use ever, ever, ever unless there is a gun to your head, and then it's okay. Is Internet Explorer is just one of the worst browsers ever? You know, it's just terrible. It's right up there with the original browser, the NCSA Mosaic, but at least it was changing the industry. Internet Explorer was just a huge security hole. I mean crazy. The things that allowed programmers to do, and it was such an avenue for hacking. You know that right, don't ever use Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Then they came out with the Edge browser, and they had problems with that, so now they've scrapped the Edge browser for the Edge browser. Yes, I said that. Microsoft, you know how it goes with them, right I used to get so upset, and I just let it go. You know, they call the database server SQL Server as though they invented sequel. IBM created that decades ago, but no, no, they took the copyright for it. Okay.

Man, now they've got their new power shell as though it's a new concept. Are you kidding me? We have been using shells in the computer business since forever, since the 60's certainly, in the Unix world. Anyhow, on and on and on and on. So they threw out their Edge browser. And they started to use Mike or not Microsoft, Microsoft started to use Google's Chrome browser, chromium as the base for the New Edge browser. And there are still some problems with it. We're having some issues with the Edge browser and a couple of our customer's sites, mainly dealing with updates and getting it to update correctly. I don't know if any of you guys are having that problem. It's interesting because the machines that have regular windows ten on them that were factory installed Windows 10 and then cleaned up afterward. Those are the ones that are having trouble updating the Edge browser. And the machines that are using an image that we built from scratch, which is what we usually like to do for our customers is working just fine. If you're having issues with the Edge browser, let me know, I'd love to know. 

Next, down near the bottom of the list is Google's Chrome. Now, Chrome is pretty secure, generally speaking. There are a few extensions that you want to use with any browser, including Chrome. We'll be covering them starting next week guaranteed, so keep an eye on your email box. These will be free tutorials. I'm not selling you, blah, blah, right? These extensions are ones you're going to want to use. The biggest problem I have with Chrome is Google collecting all of the information in the world and selling it to the highest bidder. Okay, that's the biggest problem I have with Chrome. And then I use either Firefox or opera. Those are my two go-to browsers for the most part. Firefox has been very, very good, and if you're a Facebook user, Firefox has some fantastic features. Firefox does fencing on Facebook so that Facebook cannot look at the other tabs that you have on your machine. It cannot look at the cookies your computer has that are set by other sites. It puts a fence up around Facebook's website, which is fantastic, right? Good for you and Firefox, probably the best browser out there when it comes to using this type of fencing technology for fire for our friends over at Facebook. Opera is known to be very fast, which is kind of their claim to fame. They also adopted Google's chromium base, but they've done a lot of good stuff on top of it. Those are the two I've been recommending and talked about them frequently, basically for a few years now. Those are the two you want to use. Well, Firefox is now turning on something called DNS over HTTPs. It's turning it on by default for US users. I want the Calvary to be aware of this. The Calvary is you guys. It's everybody that people come running to when there's a problem. Okay? So I want you guys to be aware of this. Why? It breaks security systems. Now, you might stop and say, Well, wait a minute. My wife said, What do you mean, Craig, this is contradictory. You're usually saying the opposite.

HTTPS is, you know, is the Secure Sockets version of web browsing online and is based on TLS. It's SSL, right? All of these things. It is security, and the thinking behind this short name is DoH, which is DNS over HTTPS. The reasoning behind this is when you are at home, and you are going to a website, you have to turn the name into an IP address because you can remember the IP address. You're going to ask your internet service provider, what's the IP address for this? Or maybe you're going to ask a third-party for the conversion of the name to an IP address. When you ask for it, it gets sent in the clear, and it is possible to deflect it.

Some ISPs do intercept now, but it isn't necessarily nefarious. Some manipulate it to insert a little crap into it. Some of them play those types of games, which I disagree with, but it's not necessarily nefarious. So the idea is if they use encryption to make that DNS request to a DNS server, then that problem goes away. No one in the middle can sit there and watch your DNS requests to know where you're going online. They can't muck with them either, right? That's the other side of this idea. So here's what you guys in the Calvary need to know. That is, if it is encrypting DNS by default, which Firefox is starting to do, it means that we can not any longer use third-party DNS services without making some configuration changes on our user's computers. Whether it's a family, whether it's a business, whatever it might be. So coming up here, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be having a webinar on how to use particular DNS services to stop the spread of ransomware hackers and everything else, right, I'm going to walk you through what the strategy is, what are the tactics are behind it. What are you going to do? How are you going to do that? Why you should do it. This type of thing that Firefox is going to do is a double-edged sword. There is no privacy added by DNS over HTTPS. Okay, absolutely none. It's a lie that the marketers and proponents are trying to tell to cover up the real motives. The DNS over TLS offers the same privacy. They both rely on TLS here, right? But it can have amazingly negative implications for security. How do you now identify malware communicating because it can masquerade as regular HTTPS traffic on the networks? There are multiple ways to deal with the changes. I'll be adding this into my course coming up as this is going to be a bit of a big deal. When we're talking about these DNS services that you can use the free ones and the paid ones, and I'm going to show you how to use them to improve your security dramatically. The free ones are great for a small office, home office, or for families. I'll tell you how to do all of that. I'm a little concerned and more than a bit disappointed by our friends over at Mozilla for doing this. I have mixed feelings again, but because you're the Calvary. I thought you needed to know, and so I am telling you right now, so that's a wrap up for today's show. 

I want to encourage everyone if you do not get my Saturday morning newsletter, that you sign up for it right away. I have links to these articles and other articles that you need to handle. Also, some of the security patches as they come out, the most critical patches. I tell you about them and give you links to install them. It is free, and you can get that by just going to Craig Peterson dot com, slash subscribe. You'll also find out about the tutorials I have coming up and some of the training that we have, our implementation calls and guides. We have playbooks, we've got so much cool stuff to help you guys out. It is part of my give back. For many of you, it will be the turning point in your security, in business, and at home. Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe listening on WGAN and online.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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This week is a replay of the show aired originally on 7 Mar 2020

Welcome!  

We are going to hit a number of topics today from the world of Technology.  I am quite disappointed with Mozilla, they are letting marketers and politicians define their technology. Listen in to find out why I feel that way. Compliance is an issue for many companies and I have some solutions that will help you and it includes a diet but probably not the kind you are thinking.  Do you ever get nostalgic for "the good old days?" Well, I have something that might help, listen in to find out more. I will tell you happened to one of the Sharks from Shark Tank? How you can prevent it from happening to you and more.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Related Articles:

Getting Your Fix of Nostalgia

Don’t Store Data You Don’t Need

Cryptocurrencies and Insurance Increases Ransomware Profitability

Are you Secure -- Depends on Many Things

You Don’t Have Much Time To Stop An Attack

Hackers Target Large Databases

Anyone Can Be A Victim - Business Email Compromise Does Not Play Favorites 

DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is not the Panacea the Marketers Are Leading you to Believe

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN and, of course, online at Craig Peterson, dot com and heard streaming all over the world on your favorite streaming site. I'm so glad to be here today and be able to talk with you a little bit about what are the top news stories this week? How can you keep safe that's kind of one of my themes because I freaked out when my company got attacked some years ago. You know, just a regular business guy trying to run a small business and man did hurt me bad back in the day. I'm just trying to get all of the information I've put together over the years and learn, and I continue to study this stuff and continue to look at what are the best ways to defend ourselves. I try and get all of that and put it together into neat packages for you. One of them, of course, is the radio show. I also get on with Facebook Lives. YouTube lives, and also do various types of pieces of training and tutorials and things out there. Where in fact, for the next course I have coming up, we're going to have implementation calls, where we are talking specifically about what to do when you do it. So you try and implement something, you have some issues. I'm going to get on the phone with you guys. So I think that's going to be great. And then the upcoming class here in a few weeks. And then, of course, the tutorials leading up to that class where I'll take your questions live, sometimes those little tutorial sessions on, you know what it's webinar technology. On these webinars, sometimes we go a couple of hours so I can answer all of your questions. That's what it's about here. All right, because I understand most people, not I know I'm this way too. I get contacted by somebody, and they're trying to sell me something that happened just over the weekend. Last weekend somebody knocked at the door, trying to sell windows, right. I think it was like Renewal by Andersen or something like that. And they were walking around knocking on doors. I see you know, immediately just knee jerk said, No, No thanks, my windows are fine. It got me to thinking about the whole situation in the security realm. Because that's what we do, right? What we've been doing for years decades, sometimes we have the antivirus software, every once in a while when we hear about a real big vulnerability, we go ahead and apply patches. You know, it's been the same old, same old, but we just can't do that anymore. And because really, we see huge, huge problems and businesses going out of business because of them. So that's what this is all about. So if you're a new listener, welcome. If you've been listening to me for a while, of course, Welcome, Welcome to you too. And I want to get this information out. So one of the best ways to make sure you have all of the latest information you need is to go online go to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe, and that'll get you on my email list. Then once you're there, you will be able to keep up on up to date on things I do, try and get those out. I have a newsletter that's every Saturday morning. Then when I'm doing training, I'll send something that's a little out of the band if I'm doing a live or various other things. I thought because of the way it works with the emails I send out, if you want to unsubscribe, you will be guaranteed to never hear from me again. Maybe that's a great thing that is right for some people. But for other people, I came to realize that perhaps they didn't care about the training, they just wanted the newsletter, or perhaps they wanted the pieces of training but didn't want any emails. Some wanted on courses but not other courses, etc., etc. So I'm going to try and do something a little bit different right now, and there's a pretty nasty warning as a footnote. If you unsubscribe, I can't send you anything anymore. I won't send you anything even if you want a course, you'll not hear from me again, because you unsubscribed and marked as somebody that doesn't ever want to hear from me again. That's fine. I know we all have our lives, and maybe you think you're safe enough. Perhaps you're going to reach out to me when everything falls apart around you. At which point, I can't respond to you because I will have your email blocked. That is because I don't want to bother you. I want to comply with the can-spam app act. Although, you know, most people don't seem to care about that as well as the GDPR. Also, The New California regulations, the Massachusetts regulations, and new federal regulations that are going into effect. They all place requirements on when and where I'm not supposed to contact you. If you say No. Then No means no, right. I'm going to change things a little bit with these upcoming training and courses that I'm going to be doing. I'm going to make it so you can just unsubscribe from those, so you're not going to lose contact with me. I've had some people complain, and in the end, it becomes a bit of a pain to try and add them back in. We're going to try and make this a little bit easier for you guys, so keep an eye out for that. You already know right based on what I'm saying, as well as what I've done in the past that I won't spam you guys, I don't sell your name to other people your email address. Most of you I know are kind of the older generations, the younger guys they don't care we've already talked about that. They will sell their email address and name for a donut. But us older folk were a little bit more cautious about it. I think that's probably a good thing. We're less likely to get ripped off the senior population in some ways less likely to get ripped off, and other ways more likely get ripped off. It's interesting. Again, we tend to trust phone calls more. You know what I have, frankly, I don't answer my phone anymore. It just goes to voicemail. And I have somebody else look at it because there are so many scams coming in. But we tend to trust the phones more in the generation, you know, the men and women older than me, other baby boomers, they are a little bit more susceptible to those types of scams. So be careful with those types of scams as well just you know, be careful all the way around, frankly. And that brings us to our first story of the day today. And this is something I found that I thought was cool. So I thought I'd share it with you. It's a tech thing. I was just a few weeks ago talking on the radio. One of the radio shows I appear on as a guest. And we were talking about Betamax versus VHS. And I knew I knew that the radio host I was talking to there's no way he just loves tech. There's no way he did not have Betamax. And he did. He had hundreds, apparently of beta tapes in his closet. But this is all about that Era of the 1990s. I'm sure you guys had VCRs right back in the day. And of course, the winner of that war was VHS, and it wasn't because it was better technology, but we're not going to delve into that right now. And those VHS tapes, at this point, about 20,000 of them have been put into an online vault. Now, if you've never used the Wayback Machine, you have to check it out. You can find it online. At archive.org, that's the name of it. It is an Internet Archive, and it shows web pages going way back, you can look at my web page from back in the very, very, very early days of the Internet. When you know, love the not the Internet, but of when the whole web thing came about, which was 9293 is when it started to go. I didn't have a webpage back in 85. When I first registered my domain that's been around for a while. And then, of course, I was using other domains. Before that, I've used my ham radio call sign is my domain. And before that, but the Wayback Machine is this archive, you can browse the history of any major site, many miners sites that are out there. They have used it in court cases. It's used by me, just for kind of memories of things as the way they were. Now you can use it for something brand new. I didn't know that they had, and that is They've got something out there on the Wayback Machine that's called the VHS vault V-H-S just like the VHS tapes that we had or that ken didn't have because he had Betamax. Right now, I'm looking at says there are almost 21,000 results. So they've taken these VHS tapes that were submitted, and they have effectively ripped them. They've turned them into digital video, right. And some of these are just amazing, like a warm-up to Traci Lords. It's an exercise program. Of course, Traci Lords was involved in some adult films back in the day. Man, I love this mystery science theater. 3000 Timothy Leary is a guest on MTV with John Lennon, Les Miserables from 1935, rush to judgment. There are some many cool things The Lion King in full VHS tapes. Now some of this information is probably still copyrighted, but as a general rule, archive.org doesn't get nailed for copyright violations.

SpongeBob SquarePants Oh, this is the Fairy Fairy Godmother I think is what this cartoon was called and trying to remember my kids used to like it. Some bootleg tapes, everything, but you can find it online I think you would have a gas looking through these. I want you to go to archive.org as you're listening to the show, or maybe some other time during the week, you're sitting there watching some TV with your smartphone or your computer. Archive.org and look for the VHS vault. The actual URL is archive.org slash details slash VHS vault. You will see all kinds of fun stuff that's in there. They have many different collections

You can search this you can go in by year when They did it. They have Flemish dog collection. There's another one. There are collections I've used in some of the training videos I put together. There are collections of old black and white art, and pencil art, and engineering diagrams that are well, well auto copyright and you'll find all that [email protected] Check it out, I think you will have a gas checking it out. If you're like me, it's certainly brought back a lot of memories. 

When we get back, we're going to be talking about something that you should be doing, whether you're a home user or business user. You know, the things that we have to be worried about are the things that can be stolen from us, right, in the online world. Okay, this is what we will be talking about. What can be taken from us, but also what can be used to kind of hold our feet to the fire in ransomware. So we're going to talk about how to reduce your risk with Craig Peterson here on WGAN Stick around. We'll be right back.

Hey everybody Craig Peterson back here on WGAN online, and of course, at Craig Peterson dot com. Yeah, you know it by now, right? Well, hopefully, you had a chance to [email protected], definitely check it out. It's called the Wayback Machine, at least that was its original name. And they may still have that domain, the Wayback machine.com. But now it's known as archive.org. It is a wonderful, wonderful trip down memory lane, at least for me. If, if you are a little bit older, you might remember the Internet back in the days fun looking at some of the original search pages at AltaVista. Man, I miss AltaVista. I used to like to use the Boolean algebra that you could do in AltaVista. By the way, if you are a geek like me when it comes to searching and you want to be able to dig into it. There's a tool I use, and I think that you'd like it also. It's not cheap, that's for sure, but not that expensive either, but it's called DEVONthink, D-E-V-O-N T-H-I-N-K. It allows you to set up searches using all kinds of Boolean constructs, which is very, very, very handy, at least as far as I'm concerned. You can set it up to do automatic search sets every day looking for different things. It's one of the tools I use to find the information that we talk about here on this show because so much of it just isn't generally speaking, available. It certainly isn't spoken about by the mainstream media, right? You know that right. That's why you listen to the show and why you follow me. I am on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter, YouTube, and my website as well. I appreciate all you guys who do follow and who comment. Now, if you're a business person, this is for you, but there are some things that you can do as an individual as well that are going to make a big difference for yourself and your safety online. Businesses are concerned about the GDPR, which we've talked about on the show before. That's the European privacy regulation. We're also very concerned right now with CCPA. I just had a company that makes optics. I use their optics here in the studio if you have ever seen me on a webinar or one of these videos or pop up training or anything. I'm in the studio, and my cameras here the lenses use the glass made by this company. I had no idea, but they reached out to us due to their operations in California. They have a sales operation there because, again, they're selling their optical glass for use in lenses, and all kinds of other devices. They reached out because they were concerned about what is happening, what could happen with these new California privacy regulations? Is it going to mess up their business? How is it going to mess up their business? How is it going to make things better or worse? I think they had some outstanding questions. So they called us in, and they paid us to do an audit of the systems they have. How are the systems working? What is it that we need to be worried about? You know, it's something that takes a few weeks and a couple of on-site visits in New York? New York State, which by the way, is going to have their own set of privacy regulations that are going to affect them pretty dramatically. But basically, what it came down to was if they were compliant with the European regulations, they were probably most of the way towards the California regulations. So they think that they're compliant. But when we got in and started having to look at it, it turned out No, no, no. They are not anywhere near compliant with either set of regulations. Even though their IT people told them they are because they have full-time programmers who are programming their systems. They thought, Oh, no, no, we're fine. We're fine. No, they weren't. So what do you do if your regular business? Enough moaning and groaning about the optical manufacturer, who has fantastic optics, which is why I use them. Let's talk about you. Let's talk about your business, your small business, your larger business, this is true, you should be paying attention if you are a medium or large business as well. One of the best things you can do, and it is hard to get through to a lot of CEOs and other business owners. But one of the best things you can do to reduce your risks is to reduce the data that you are maintaining. Right? If you want to reduce the chance of getting shot at, don't go out in the streets where they're shooting, right? If you want to reduce the risk of having your data stolen, then don't have the data out there for them to steal. If you don't want to get nailed by one of these new regulations, that says, hey, personally identifiable information has to be maintained in this way and that way. If someone asks you what data do you have on me? Do you realize now you only have one week to respond? You must provide that data to them. If you have any sort of a California Nexus or European Nexus, in other words, doing business in either one of those places. Now, it's down to I think five days it's not a week to respond, saying, Here's all of the data that we have about you. That's what you have to be able to do. We have to be able to do it right now. You also have to be able to tell them, here are all of the people within my organization as well our contractors that saw your data and had access to your data. That is a very, very big deal, frankly. The landscape is constantly changing your obligations for that data, and the data disclosure and the data-keeping keeps getting more strict. What's the right thing for you to do? Ultimately, well, it's to get rid of the damn data, right? It's a very, very solid first step in reducing your risk. Now I'm going to be publishing next week, a little guide that you can use yourself, right, you don't have to have me involved, or anything else is just for you, that you can use to do an inventory of all of the data that you have in your business. What we've done is we've gone through and looked at different parts of the businesses that we've worked with over the years and evaluated the kind of data they often have. You have to do that first, right? You must identify what your risks are. You must determine what data you have. I'll make that available for those people on my email list. It will be part of this ramp-up here, a precursor to the pieces of training that I will be doing. There will be different free pieces of training and tutorials in my ramp-up to my courses. You don't have to be in the course to participate in the free tutorials, okay? You don't have to buy anything from me. It is all free, no hype or anything else. Okay. I'm not trying to hard-sell anybody I want to help you. That is the first step -- doing this inventory the data you have, and it is one of the best things you can do. Put your company on a data diet. Now, you know, last week we had Barry Friedman on the show, talking about a sugar diet. Right. It's a lot like that, and it's getting rid of these addictive pieces of data that we keep on our clients on our prospects, everything else that's out there, right. Let's look at it as a lens. When you're looking at your data when you're doing an inventory of these data assets, ask yourself, do I need this? Will this provide what I need? Think about maybe like a food diet as Barry does with sugar? Do I need sugar? We know is sugar going to provide us the nutrients that we need? The answer to that is no. When it comes to sugar, right. We found that out from Barry last week. But we need to work to minimize sensitive data and ask ourselves, do we need this sensitive data to conduct business right now? And will we need this sensitive data to conduct business in the future? If the answer's no, securely dispose of that data. It is the only way to comply with these regulations that are already in place here in the US and Europe as well. All right, when we get back, we're going to talk about how did we get here? How did we? How did ransomware grow to be a multi-billion dollar industry? What did we do to get here? What should we do to try and get beyond all of this? You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. And of course online at Craig Peterson. dot com, live on youtube, live on Facebook everywhere out there. Stick around. We'll be right back.

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN, and of course online at Craig Peterson dot com. In case you missed it. We've been busy today talking about the internet archives VHS vault. Again, that's archive.org. Check it out. It is kind of cool. We just talked about reducing risk using the cheapest mechanism possible. Data minimization will save you money and help you be compliant. Now I'm going to talk about ransomware. We've been warned recently about ransomware's rise. Many people thought it's kind of past. In some ways, it has. 2018 was kind of the banner year for the standard ransomware that out there, but it is back, and it is back with a vengeance. We talked about some of the statistics about a month ago and showed how it had gone up a bit almost doubled just between the third and fourth quarters last year, which is just absolutely dramatic. I had a course before, where we talked a little bit about backups. I've certainly talked about it here on the show before, and how backups help stop ransomware. Let's just spend a couple of minutes on that right now, although it's not 100% accurate anymore. It is essential to do for just a whole plethora of reasons. Backups are kind of the very first stage of what you need.

I read an article yesterday from a guy who is in some of the highest circles in the country. He had the phone numbers, the direct cell numbers of presidents and you name it, really just anybody who's anybody was on his phone. It was an Android phone. He had assumed that it was backed up into the cloud or something. His phone broke. He got a new phone and realized at that point that his phone had that never, ever, ever, been backed up. He lost the phone numbers from all of these people. Good luck getting them back, cell phone numbers, other contact information. Think of all the things that are on our phones nowadays. Losing your phone, having a hard disk crash on your laptop, or your desktop computer. Losing those can be devastating, no question about it. If you're a larger business and you think that you're doing backups, double-check them. I'd say three times quarters of the time, and I can't think of an exception to this, your backups will not work correctly for that business. I've never seen a case where all backups are working correctly, ever, ever going into a business. I know you, Craig, you're just crazy. It's silly. You're trying to build a business and scare people. No, I have never walked into a company and found their backups to be working correctly. We see things like, and I don't mean, they're not working in a way that is ideal or optimal for the business. Right? Certainly that on top of it. I mean, they weren't working.

We had one company that we went into, and they were dutifully doing backups, and the operations manager had five external hard disks. Every day he brought a hard drive in, he plugged it into the server and took it home at the end of the day. So we had Monday through Friday, hard disks that you brought back home with them. So they were off-site, which is, you know, great idea, by the way. The server itself had a RAID configuration on it and is called a raid five. It had three hard disks so that if a drive failed, they wouldn't lose all of their data. We went in because they wanted to do some upgrades. They hoped to move over to Apple infrastructure, where people could use iPads and iMacs on their desks to have a better working environment for everyone by moving away from windows. By the way, this is an excellent idea. They still had some Windows software that they had to run, so we helped them with that and got that all working running correctly. The backups you know, they were trying to do the right thing. But you know, you know what, there were a couple of problems one, their server had not written to any of those external disks for the last 18 months. They went a year and a half without ever having had a good backup. Think about that. What would happen to that business? What would happen to your company? After 18 months of no good backups and losing all your data?

Oh, and their server, an HP server, that cute little HP server had that RAID array, right a raid five where you can lose a disk and not lose data. Well, they had lost a drive. We were estimating based on the logs about a year before. There they were with no backups and no redundancy in their server disks on their server. That's an example right now, and I could go on and on. We had a company division of a Fortune 100 company that had paid for backups, and they had a dedicated data line. We put some next-generation firewalls in place that monitored the data and watched for data exfiltration to make sure that the plans and designs and social security numbers and bank accounts and everything were not being stolen or taken off off-site, right.

Guess what we found there? After six weeks of monitoring everything that's been going on because that's the first step right. Let's make sure we understand what the normal operations are. Didn't you tell us that you had an off-site backup of your mini computer going to another backup site? Oh, yeah, yeah, we do. It gets backed up in real-time. We're paying for the backups to go off-site. If something were to happen to our facility here, or to our computer, which is a big server, then they'd take over immediately we'd be off and running during those six weeks that we were in there we hadn't been involved with these operations.

Ultimately, we were in there for decades. Guess what we found? Yeah, exactly. None of the backups were occurring. They were paying for all of these things, right? They were paying for them. What we ended up doing is we came in, and we made sure that backups were happening. Unfortunately, they didn't have us do those backups. The company doing it for them was incompetent. And yet they decided to have them continue to do it. It doesn't make sense. We took over the rest of the backups. We had equipment on site, which we do at most of our clients. In case there's a problem, there are failovers that can occur. In this case, we'd have them back online in four hours, a requirement of publicly traded companies and their divisions. Again, they're just not doing anyways. Ramble. Ramble.

Wow, we've only got a couple of minutes left here in this segment. When it comes to backups, here's what you have to be careful of, and that is, make sure they are happening. Check the backups. Try and restore from your backups. Now, we're talking about ransomware. It is a seven and a half-billion-dollar industry. They are coming for you, and one of the best things you can do is have a backup. Still, there's another side to ransomware, nowadays, that backup won't help you with, and that is that they have your data, and they hold a ransom saying, if you don't pay us, we're going to release this onto the Internet. Then you're in real trouble. If you have personally identifiable information, or if you have your intellectual property out there, and it gets out to the Internet because you don't pay that ransom, you are in real trouble, plus if they encrypt your data, you'll need that backup. 

All right, stick around. We will be right back. And we're going to be talking about our next topic for the day, which is how do you answer a non-technical executive, who asks, how secure are we? Your listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey, have you ever been asked that question? Well, we'll tell you about how to answer it, coming right up.

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online, of course at Craig Peterson dot com. No surprise there.

Our next one is an interesting article and poses an interesting question. It is one that I'm sure you ask or have been asked, right? How secure are we? You are the Calvary, is the bottom line. You're the person who your family comes to, or the business owner comes to, the business asks whenever they have a tech question, right? You wouldn't be listening otherwise. It is how you get ahead. It is how you learn. You listen to me and others, read articles. You are the Calvary. How does the Calvary answer that question, when you're asked, How secure are we? You know, there's the obvious answer. Well, you know, we got this, and we got that. We have an Anti-virus, and we have a firewall. Those, frankly, are buzzwords that many of us use just to obfuscate the real answer to that question. I know that many times when we go into a business, and we secure it, we put together a proposal. Most of the time, our recommendations are not accepted. Most of the time, when we go into a business, and we say, here's what you need.

Here's what you need to do to stay secure, they say No, thank you, and prefer to run with blinders. Hopefully, they won't stumble in the middle of the night get or tossed by that horse, of just kind of ignoring it, right. Blinders or maybe you might want to call it ostrich-ing and to put their head in the sand or whatever, you want to call it, But most of the time, in reality, the businesses just don't do anything. Sometimes they do, right. That's how I stay in business. I stay in business because of the companies that want to remain secure. I stay in business because of the people that are the Calvary. They're like you who want to buy my courses to understand more to get step by step instructions know, not just the stories behind things, but the strategy in the exact tactics that they have to take. And that's you, I suspect, right? I think you're probably a lot like me in that way. That's how I like to learn, and that's how I teach as well. Well, this article is from our friends over Dark Reading. And the question is, uh, how secure are we? And how should we answer that? There's a great response by Kurtis Minder, the CEO, and Co-Founder of GroupSense. He says it depends. You've got to look at your executive team and qualify their level of understanding. Answering the question with the answer of well, we have antivirus, we have a firewall, and we have mail filters. You know, a lot of people nowadays say, "well, we're in the cloud," and there's nothing to worry about, which we already know, isn't true, right?

There's way more to worry about if you're in the cloud than if you have a local server. For those of you who are the kind of computer security people for your organization addressing this requires finding out where they are coming from who they are comparing. For instance, is it to what the Payment Card Industry PCI-DSS says we're supposed to do? Are we supposed to compare ourselves to the HIPAA-HiTech regulations? In other words, we have some medical data, which by the way, every company does, if you have any sort of a Health Insurance Program, right? Are we supposed to compare ourselves to the NIST 171 standard? There's, even more, there is the CMMC. There's, there's a lot of different criteria that are out there. You must understand the HOW before you answer this question. How secure we compared to similar companies in our industry? Or companies that are similar in size to us? No matter how you're going to answer that question, when the boss comes a-knockin or the kids or your wife comes a-knockin saying, How secure are we? No matter who it is you're talking to, I think the one thing you have to make sure of is that they understand that the whole security threat landscape is fluid. It's always changing, and your security programs need to be fluid as well. That's the reason I have consulting clients, right. That's the reason I have a membership program. The people who are the Calvary can follow and understand what it is they need to know. Now I want to hop over to this other guy here. His name is Matt Combs. And he is a global cybersecurity practice leader for an executive recruiter called Russell Reynolds Associates. It is absolutely a phenomenal interview on CIO.com. He's saying many companies were blissfully unaware t, especially those that don't have credit card information. How many times have I said that, right? It takes at least six months for the average company to figure out a breach occurred. Why did Matt say, especially those that don't have credit card information? It's because if they have credit card information, that information is likely to be sold on the open market very quickly. Once sold, the credit card companies are going to notice, right? Many companies have only learned that a breach occurred after the FBI came knocking on the door and told them they had a problem. Look at Home Depot. What happened? The FBI traced the dots. Home Depot, was compromised through their point of sale equipment. Can you believe that? people sitting in the parking lot of Home Depot hacked them? They didn't even know it until the FBI knocked on the door. That's a pretty big deal, on a pretty big company. I think they are the second-largest retailer in the country? When it comes to dollar-to-dollar value? Are you sold? Okay. If you don't have the credit card information, how would you even know that a breach happened? It goes ties back into the fluidity of security. It seems so obvious. Now when you look back at Home Depot and say, What were they thinking? I look at the target the TJX companies, and their hack they had security equipment, and that security equipment was quite good. It was alerting them, "whoa, wait a minute, guys, we've got a breach, okay." Did they take care of it? No, because they didn't know how to read the output, and they didn't have enough people to look at the logs, which is something else we keep telling you all. You have to watch the logs. You have to watch them closely. It's a full-time job. It's a highly skilled job, a highly trained job. It is not cheap, okay. I know a hotel company with 500 hotels in the United States, of course, you can look that up to find out who it is. They have a chief information security officer who is an information security group of one. Think about that 500 hotels, just the business itself, all of the data that they have, the liability that they have, and he doesn't have anyone working for him. Not even a support person. He has to beg, borrow, and steal help from it, and from the CIO, the Chief Information Officer. So when the executive asks you how secure are we, you have to say, Hey, listen, you know we can lock down the doors, we can lock down the windows, but the odds are if someone wants to breach us, they will be able to. However, make sure you are locking down the doors and locking down the windows. You got to close it all up. There was one other thing I think you should do when this non-tech executive asks you about how secure we are. That is, what's your nightmare, Mr. Executive? Which systems? Are you most concerned about being compromised? You should go back to the question I asked a little bit earlier, which is, what data do we have that maybe we shouldn't have? What data do we have that we are most concerned about losing? What are the Family Jewels in our organization? What is the data that if we were to lose it, we'd be in a lot of trouble, either because we could not conduct business anymore, or maybe we would get nailed by the regulators out there? Anyway, a lot of really, really good questions to ask because you're never 100% secure. All it takes is for one employee to click on the wrong link on an email. What I was just talking about will come up a little later on today. I talked about it this week on several radio stations. What happened with Barbara Cochran, an investor from Shark Tank. Stay tuned as we'll talk about it a little bit later on. All it takes and frankly, employee negligence such as accidental loss of data, accidental clicking on things. Employee negligence is still the main cause of data breaches. In a report from ShredIT now, of course, they're in the business of shredding documents of getting rid of these things. Shredding hard disk drives when you take them out of a computer. Remote workers and external vendors are also now a major cause of the increase in data breaches. That's one of the things we're going to be covering here in my course coming up in a couple of weeks, and that is the upstream-downstream risk. And the US military is totally into this now, because they had two or three major breaches last year that came through vendors. So hackers are no match for human error when it comes to sheer numbers. You also have the insider threats of people who are stealing from you. So they can get a better job, take it with them to another job. You have people who are upset with you and are just making an absolute mess of things on the way out the doors. So be very careful about that because it's huge data breaches cost an average of $3.6 million globally average that was in 2017. Some of those prices have gone up. The faster you respond to a breach, the more money that you'll save. They found that if you can respond to a breach within 30 days, on average, you'll save over a million dollars. Think of that. The odds are good that you will get breached. You will save, on average, a million dollars. Yet you're not funding the security people either by going to an external contractor, like me, to take care of it for you. Or you don't provide the resources to the internal people they need to do it. It is a huge, huge job. All right, top of the hour course, on the radio stations, we've got the news, traffic, weather, all that sort of stuff coming up. Then when we get back, we're going to talk about a new metric in security. The next-gen security metrics. Stick around, and you are listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online.  

Hey everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here, on WGAN and, of course, online at Craig Peterson dot com. We have already covered a bunch today. I would refer you over to my website. If you'd like to find out a little bit more, of course, I'm also on the streaming services. You can find it there. We've covered the internet archive. They've got this cool, new VHS vault. We discussed ways to reduce your risk of data loss. It's all about identifying your data. and then minimizing your data, how we enabled ransomware to become a multi-billion dollar industry. And I also gave some good advice on backups and the fact that 100% of the businesses I've ever walked into have had a failed backup strategy and failed in a bunch of different ways. It is big for all of us who are out there who are members of the Calvary, who are trying to help our friends, our family with their computer issues, and the businesses for whom we work. Then we got to how to answer questions that we get that have to do with our level of security? How secure are we? How secure is the business? That's what we have covered so far today. I love our next topic. It's phenomenal. It's from Thread Post.com. But they're talking about different types of security metrics. Now, metrics, of course, our measurements, or the ways we measure things. We always have to measure progress to be able to know have we gotten to where we need to be, right. Progress can be difficult to measure. There are a lot of different types of measurements when it comes to our security. Say for Microsoft Windows, one of the big things is, are you ready every Patch Tuesday. Then a little bit more, as Microsoft sometimes comes with out-of-cycle patches. They got nailed a few years ago, through criticisms about them releasing new patches, like constantly, because they needed to release them. And so instead of fixing their problem, which would be almost impossible to do, and that is rewriting windows and making it much more secure design, they decided they would just go ahead and release patches once a month. And that way, of course, you're not getting them every day. So who's getting noticed that in fact, there are a whole lot of vulnerabilities and Windows. So that was another measurement that we had. Did you get your Patch Tuesday stuff done? That's been around a very long time? Well, we've got a new metric here, and it's called hardening. Now, I don't know about you guys, but my wife thinks that most people don't know what the name hardening is. So I'll explain it a little bit. Hardening is where we close holes in our networks and our Windows computers. That's really what our emphasis is going to be coming up here next week when we start our whole hardening series. By the time you finish this series and the courses, you'll be able to lock down any Windows or Mac computer yourself. You are going to be able to lock down your small business network, and you're going to stop worrying about being the victim of the bad guys. We're also going to train you on how to test everything yourself. That you can make sure that they can't get in, right. If not tested, how will you know it works. It's like I was talking about with backups. How do you know they are working? How do you know it's effective? How effective is it? So we're going to teach all of that, and I think that's just going to be amazing for you guys, man. We're looking to do something you guys are going to love. Hardening in the case of our computers includes our computers, browsers, firewalls, and routers. In other words, there, we're using all of the options, all of the available software to make sure that bad guys are not easily going to get in is our Windows Firewall harden on our computers? Did you even know you had a firewall on a Windows computer? Well, it's almost useless. Because Windows has a firewall, it is turned on by default, but they have all kinds of services turned on and available to be used. All of these things are kind of crazy. When we get down to it, there are things we can do. That's what we're going to be covering starting in about a week with some of these tutorials. And with our great course that we have coming up. Now, let's talk about what's holding us back and what mean time to harden means. We're looking at vulnerabilities, when we're talking about a zero-day-attack, it is one that no one has seen before and where there is not a patch or workaround for it. It's really kind of a nasty thing. When it comes to hardening, you want to make sure that you have as few services as possible on your computer, firewall, and browser. That again makes your attack surface smaller. But when we're talking about those types of zero-day attacks, it typically takes an organization 15 times longer to close a vulnerability than it does for the attackers to weaponize that vulnerability and exploit it. So basically, we're talking about one week for the bad guys to take a vulnerability one of those zero-day things. It takes one week to weaponize it, and it takes us about 102 days to patch it. Let that sink in for just a minute here. Once vulnerabilities get disclosed, It's a time-race here to either secure this hole before the bad guys to exploit it. Now we saw that with the Equifax breach where here's a major, major breach against a major company out there, and only happened because they hadn't applied the patches that they needed to apply. It's just really that simple. Microsoft has a patch let's give an example right now, BlueKeep. BlueKeep is a way to break into Microsoft machines. Microsoft released patches for BlueKeep in the May 2019 Patch Tuesday security fixes. Microsoft released it in May, and as of December 2019, seven months later, there were still over 700,000 machines at risk. Let me see here now May to June July, August, September, October, November, December. That, to me, sounds like seven months. That's huge. Sophos has some security software. In their recent report about WannaCry, which is ransomware. The patch against the exploit WannaCry was using has not been installed on a countless number of machines. Still despite being released more than two years ago. It's crazy, isn't it? Do you guys agree with me? Am I just being kind an alarmist? Now the average time to weaponize this is seven days. Many weaponization comes in less than seven days. Like the infamous ApacheStruts vulnerability. You have effectively 72 hours to harden new systems. Now the numbers are even worse. When we're talking about incident response. There's a new rule out from a company called CrowdStrike. You might have heard of them before, they've been in the news for some political stuff as well. But they are a security company. They do a lot of investigations after the fact and try to figure out what happened and try and clean things up. CrowdStrike has a new rule. It's called the 1-10-60 rule. And it's based on what they call breakout time. So here's what that is.

Most nation-state actors, in other words, the more advanced hackers out there, move laterally from an initial attack within two hours on average. In other words, if there is a country that's coming after you say, for instance, China. Most say now it isn't like China is going to go after me. I'm not Military and not a military contractor. China comes after you to steal your intellectual property. Once they have gotten inside of your network, they will move around inside your system. What this means is it gives defenders of a network one minute to detect a breach, 10 minutes to understand what has happened and that it was a breach and one hour to contain that breach from the initial incursion. That is huge. Now, this is part of this meantime to hardening and goal response that we're trying to achieve. If you're a regular business, and it's six months before you even notice that a hack occurred, if you ever even notice, which is par for the course, and one that we see that quite frequently. We will come in and look for signs of hacking. Many times, companies don't want to know. They just want to know if there are any openings that they should be closing right now. Why? If you see a hack occurred, there are specific legal responsibilities that you have. Companies say, Listen, don't tell me, I don't want to know. Without monitoring and watching what our organizations are doing, if we're not at the very least, patching and hardening, we're in real trouble. Now, I know you guys know how to patch it's not that difficult to do. We're not going to spend a lot of time on that in the upcoming tutorials or courses, but we are going to spend a lot of time in the course on Hardening because it is one of your best defenses. It's kind of like having a package on the front porch that was just delivered by Amazon people, right? If there is no package on the porch, the porch pirates are not going to show up and to steal the box. It's the same type of thing here. If you do not have services available on your machines inside your network, there is no way for the bad guys to move laterally. There's no way for them to get in remotely. That is our goal in our hardening courses, how to harden your Windows machine. That's coming up in about a week, week and a half. So make sure you are on my email list. You get all of that free training. You can find out about the courses as well that we are putting together for this. All of that at Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. You're listening to me here on WGAN. You can always send questions to me -- me at Craig Peterson dot com.

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson online at Craig Peterson dot com and right here on WGAN. I am also putting these up on Facebook and making them available on YouTube. For those that are interested. 

I want to talk a little bit right now about Clearview AI. You know, again, I've said so many times that we've got to be careful with our data online. Clearview AI is this company that we talked about a few weeks ago, that has been scraping all of the information it could get online, mainly related to photographs. All of the pictures that you posted on Facebook or that you put up on any photo sharing sites, all of that stuff, Clearview scraped. Now, they have this app that allows you to take a picture, and then it will do facial recognition to find all of the places online that that picture appears. And it has been used by looks like more than 2200 different organizations, many of them police department to track people down. So if you have a picture, even if it's not a great picture, that picture can then be put into the clear view AI app. And it'll show you here you go, here's where we found this guy or gal online. And even if you didn't take the picture, and you are in a photograph, it is going to show up in clear view is going to find it. Now, Clearview AI grabbed all of these photographs online without asking permission of anyone. I don't think they asked your permission, did they? They didn't get my permission. They scraped them from Twitter, who they didn't ask permission. They scraped them from Facebook. They scraped them from all over the internet. They ended up with billions of photographs. They logged it all along with where they found them online. That way, if the police department is looking for this person, they have a photo of them. They can put it into the Clearview AI app and can authenticate where online it was found. And then the police department just goes there and says, Oh, well, that's a Mary Jane's homepage. Here's more about Mary Jane, where she lives and everything else and now off they go to get Mary Jane. Now remember, of course, first off, these things are not 100% accurate. They could be false. There are false positives, although in many cases, they have been very successful at identifying people, and they have helped to solve some crimes, which is I guess a good thing, right. I think that's what you might want to say, okay. In a notification that The Daily Beast reviewed, Clearview AI told them that there had been an intruder that gained unauthorized access to its list of customers, and they got access to many accounts they've set up and the searches they have run.

Now, this disclosure also claimed that there was no breach of Clearview AI servers and that there was no compromise of Clearview AI systems or networks. That puzzles me makes me wonder, well, maybe they were using a cloud service, and they had it stored up there, and that's how it got stolen. It's hard to say. Clearview AI went on to say that it patched the unspecified hole that let the intruder in and that whoever was didn't manage to get their hands on their customer's search histories. Now there's a release from a Clearview AI attorney, and his statement said that security is Clearview AI top priority, which is total crap, right? They did everything they could to breach ethics and security of the user agreements from all of these websites from which they scraped our information. Unfortunately, data breaches their attorney says are part of life in the 21st century. Our servers were never accessed. We patched the flaw and continue to work to strengthen our security. All of this is in a report on naked security dot com. Now, this, frankly, is very concerning to me from several different standpoints, right. First of all, Clearview AI had this massive database of facial images that they had sold to hundreds of law enforcement agencies.

In many cases, it wasn't like the overall agency. It was just a police officer themself that subscribed. It may be a detective, etc. The New York Times ran a front-page article in January, saying that Clearview AI may end privacy as we know it and man, is that ever true. They have been quietly selling access to these facial images and facial recognition software to over 600 law enforcement agencies. Now with this data breach, it looks like it's more than 2200. Although we have not seen the list posted online yet, we may end up seeing the posted online. It depends on who did this and if it was a nation-state, which is entirely possible. They are trying to find out a little bit more about us or whether it was somebody else. 

It reminds me of a lot about the founding of Facebook and why I've been against Facebook over the years, right? Facebook had a very unethical at its start. They stole all the photos of women going to Harvard University and then had people be able to go to their little website and rate the women, right? Rate them? Yeah, on their looks using all stolen photos. That's the allegation behind it all. It certainly seems to be true. Microsoft, that's another reason I just, I don't use the word hate very often believe me, but I do hate Microsoft and the way they started. They unethically sued people and play games with trying to buy them by lying about the rights that they had. Bill Gates outright lying to IBM and others, back in the early days. I have a good friend of mine who says Craig if you didn't have any ethics, you would be one of the wealthiest people in the country. Your ethics kept you from doing them, yet you bent over backward to help people. Companies, like these need to go out of business and need to go out of business fast, it's crazy. We've got the Biometric Information Privacy Act that Clearview AI has violated.

ClearView AI has also been told by Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube to stop scraping. Those companies have ordered it to stop that. It is against the policies. The Times noted that there's a strong use case for ClearView AI technology finding the victims of child abuse. News. It makes a lot of sense. One, retired Chief of Police said that running images of 21 victims of the same offender returned nine or 14 miners identifications, the youngest of whom was 13. So where do we draw the law watch line, I should say, what should we be doing here? It goes back to the whole fruit of the poisoned tree principle that exists in the law. That you've seen on TV and in movies many times, any evidence illegally obtained can't be used nor anything that comes of that evidence. It is why some Federal investigators play games with where did you get this evidence? Russia? Did it come from Christopher Steele? Should we have something similar In this case, and I think that we should if they stole information from these companies, which they did. It's, frankly, intellectual property theft at the very least. That means it is of no use in any sort of a police case that started an investigation and any legal matters that follow. That's my opinion. I don't know what yours is. I'd love to hear from you email Me at Craig Peterson dot com. Thank God they were able to find some of these victims of child abuse. But at the same time here, we should have some rights to privacy. It may already be too late. I guess we'll know. Soon enough. 

Hey, when we get back, we're going to talk about Barbara Cochran. She's the star of Shark Tank, and she just lost 400 grand in a scam will tell you all about it. You are listening to Craig Peterson and WGAN. And make sure you sign up online at Craig Peterson dot com.

Hi, everybody. Yeah, that means we're back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. 

We're going to talk right now about a TV show that I have enjoyed watching over the years. There are a few shows that I watch pretty regularly. Of course, there are some sci-fi shows we won't talk about those right now. But a couple of them are The Profit I enjoy that show. I like the guy who is the main character on that show, and his name is Marcus Lemonis. He owns a considerable interest in Camping World, as well as GoodSam Club, and he invests in small businesses. I disagree with him almost 100% on politics, but he does try and help people out which I think is fantastic and, and he goes into these businesses that are struggling, that are trying to figure out how do we move to the next step or how do we even survive? Then he helps him out, and he frequently invests in them. When he invests, he takes a good chunk, usually enough so that he has a controlling interest in other words 51% sort of a thing. Then he's often running, and he helps build them into real successful companies. Now, I guess it goes back to the question of, would you rather have a small slice of a massive pie as an owner, or would you rather have 100% of a tiny pie, that may end up collapsing in on itself at some point in time. That's kind of the decision these people have to face as they are talking with him and trying to figure it out. So I like that show. He had a good episode, recently that I found very, very fascinating. Check that one out, The Profit. Another one that I've enjoyed over the years is Shark Tank. Now Shark Tank is if you haven't seen it, it is a show, and there are a number of them. It's called Dragon's Den overseas. There's one in the UK. There's a shark tank in Canada, and there's a shark tank in Australia, all called slightly different things. The idea behind Shark Tank is you go in there you make a pitch to these investors, and the investors decide if they're going to throw some money at you. They will make a deal saying okay, I'll give you 20% for 20% of your company, I'll give you this much money, or you know, I'll bring in people to help out, but I want controlling interest or whatever it is. Well, one of the business moguls on there that part of this whole judging team on Shark Tank just last week lost nearly $400,000. It was disclosed that the 400 grande loss came through an email scammer. Now, if she had been listening to this show, she would have known about it. She would have known what's happening. She has enough money that she kind of brushed it off. Oh well, she thinks that she'll never get the money back. And you know what? She's probably right. We've seen that happen many times, even with the FBI getting involved most of the time that money never, ever comes back to you. According to media reports, a scammer who was posing as Barbara Cochran's executive assistant forwarded to her bookkeeper an invoice requesting that payment. I'm looking at the email right now. Barbara released it, which is great as that way people can see what happened. It's an email it's from, Jake somebody. Sent on Friday, February 21, and addressed to Emily carbon copy Michelle. The subject was forward Invoice 873, and it's got the name of a German company. It begins, Hello Emily. Please see the attached invoice below for payment. We are ready to proceed, and we are shipping next week. Please ensure the invoice is paid on time, shipping charges are additional. It appears like a little real invoice. It's got the due date on it, which was due on the 27th, and the amount was $388,700 and 11 cents. And it looks as I said kind of like a standard invoice. Dear customer. Please see the attached invoice. Wire transfers should be directed to FFH concept GMbH address in Berlin, Germany. Bank details include the bank name, the account name, bank address As the IBN number, the swift number, thank you for your business, we appreciate it very much. 

The truth was, this email did not originate from Barbara Cochran's executive assistant. Instead, what happened here is that the scammers and created an email address that looked the same as her executive assistant. It had one letter different in it. At first glance, it seems legitimate, yeah, this is from the Executive Assistant. You and I look at 400,000 and say, Whoa, wait a minute now. I don't even have that much. In this case, Barbara Cochran, this was pretty normal for her. There's not only this amount because she is involved in so many real estate deals. That's how she made her money was in real estate. She gets these invoices from these companies all over the world. It did not look that strange. All the bad guys, in this case, had to do was a little bit of research. They found out what the executive assistant's name, they found out what the email address was. The bookkeeper did not spot this little spelling error, if you will, in the email address. When she asked questions about the purpose of the payment, all communication went straight to the scammer's and not to the assistant. What did she do? She hit reply, and the response went straight to the scammers, and the scammers gave him what looked to be or gave her what appeared to be a reasonable answer, right. On Tuesday last week, seemingly satisfied by the answers she'd received by the scammers posing as Barbara Cochran's executive assistant. The bookkeeper transferred almost $400,000 into the bank account contract controlled by the scammers. It was only one the bookkeeper manually CC'd Cochran's assistant directly with confirmation that the invoice had was paid. It became clear what happened. So, again, that tells you don't respond to emails, right? Look it up, use a contact list, use your autocomplete to try and reach out to somebody to verify it. I always go one more step further, and that is to get on the phone and confirm the transaction. Now in speaking to people magazine, Barbara Corcoran again apparently was pretty okay about the theft. She says quote, I lost the 400,000 as a result of a fake email sent to my company. It was an invoice supposedly sent by my assistant to my bookkeeper, approving the payment for real estate renovation. There was no reason to be suspicious. I invest in quite a bit of real estate. I disagree with that there was reason to be suspicious.

Anyhow, I was upset at first, but then remember, it's only money good for her. Frankly, she posted on Twitter about it. Lesson learned. Be careful when you wire money. She retweeted something from TMZ about her getting hooked in this scam. I'm glad she has a positive attitude about it. It's very unlikely, as I said earlier, that she'll ever recover a dime from these fraudsters because of the way the money was wired. Ninety seconds later is all it takes for the cash to be gone and out of reach. And they probably went ahead and transferred it from German banks to other banks, and it continues to move the money around. It's kind of like what happened in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, with a billion dollars in aid that we sent that ended up bouncing around between multiple companies in multiple countries to hide whose pocket it ended up. It's just kind of crazy. It can happen to anyone, and it can happen to any of us. Every last one of us, business person or otherwise, needs to be on guard. Don't reply to emails. Always make sure you enter in the email address if it's anything that might be of concern. Remember that banks and other places are unlikely, including the IRS tax time, to be sending you emails about some of this stuff. Just double-check and phone them, look them up online, and phone that number. Ask a question from their help people over on their website. 

Well, we've got one last segment here, and we're going to be talking about new security features from Firefox that means insecurity to you. This is Craig Peterson on WGAN, and you know, I like Firefox, right?

Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson, here on WGAN and online Craig Peterson dot com. Well, that's Peterson with an -On dot com. 

Hey, thanks for joining us today we've had a great day, we've talked about where you find a little bit of nostalgia online over at the Internet Archive. We talked about reducing the risk through data minimization. I described how ransomware became a multi-billion dollar industry. We talked about the changes that have recently happened with ransomware that will require you to make a change in what you're doing to stop becoming a victim. Then we got into how should you answer a non-technology related executive who asks you, how secure are we? How do you answer that question to your family as well? Because we are all the Calvary, right? We're the people that our friends, family, our people from church, the business people, they all come to us. So I wanted to make sure we covered that the next generation here of security metrics, how long does it take to harden your systems, and we've got a course coming up on that here in a couple of weeks and a bunch of tutorials to help you out. The company that we talked about clear view AI, very, very bad guys, frankly, very unethical. They just lost their entire database of Facebook buying clients to hackers. And then they brushed it off like it's no big thing.

Hey, you know, everybody gets hacked nowadays. Man is talking about a company with no ethics at all. We talked about them, and then, of course, most recently, we just talked about business email compromise. We gave you a specific example here of Barbara Corcoran. She is one of the business moguls over on Shark Tank. How she lost almost $400,000 in a scam, and what you can do to help protect yourself. And we gave away some actual clues here precisely what the bad guys are doing to try and get that information or get us to to to do that, right? What kind of information are they gathering about us?

Well, I want to talk about Firefox here for a few minutes, all web browser thing. And this has to do with security. And this is an article over on we live security.com that made me think about what is going on with Firefox and Mozilla. Now, if you've been on any of my training courses, you know, the browser you absolutely should never use ever, ever, ever unless there is a gun to your head, and then it's okay. Is Internet Explorer is just one of the worst browsers ever? You know, it's just terrible. It's right up there with the original browser, the NCSA Mosaic, but at least it was changing the industry. Internet Explorer was just a huge security hole. I mean crazy. The things that allowed programmers to do, and it was such an avenue for hacking. You know that right, don't ever use Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Then they came out with the Edge browser, and they had problems with that, so now they've scrapped the Edge browser for the Edge browser. Yes, I said that. Microsoft, you know how it goes with them, right I used to get so upset, and I just let it go. You know, they call the database server SQL Server as though they invented sequel. IBM created that decades ago, but no, no, they took the copyright for it. Okay.

Man, now they've got their new power shell as though it's a new concept. Are you kidding me? We have been using shells in the computer business since forever, since the 60's certainly, in the Unix world. Anyhow, on and on and on and on. So they threw out their Edge browser. And they started to use Mike or not Microsoft, Microsoft started to use Google's Chrome browser, chromium as the base for the New Edge browser. And there are still some problems with it. We're having some issues with the Edge browser and a couple of our customer's sites, mainly dealing with updates and getting it to update correctly. I don't know if any of you guys are having that problem. It's interesting because the machines that have regular windows ten on them that were factory installed Windows 10 and then cleaned up afterward. Those are the ones that are having trouble updating the Edge browser. And the machines that are using an image that we built from scratch, which is what we usually like to do for our customers is working just fine. If you're having issues with the Edge browser, let me know, I'd love to know. 

Next, down near the bottom of the list is Google's Chrome. Now, Chrome is pretty secure, generally speaking. There are a few extensions that you want to use with any browser, including Chrome. We'll be covering them starting next week guaranteed, so keep an eye on your email box. These will be free tutorials. I'm not selling you, blah, blah, right? These extensions are ones you're going to want to use. The biggest problem I have with Chrome is Google collecting all of the information in the world and selling it to the highest bidder. Okay, that's the biggest problem I have with Chrome. And then I use either Firefox or opera. Those are my two go-to browsers for the most part. Firefox has been very, very good, and if you're a Facebook user, Firefox has some fantastic features. Firefox does fencing on Facebook so that Facebook cannot look at the other tabs that you have on your machine. It cannot look at the cookies your computer has that are set by other sites. It puts a fence up around Facebook's website, which is fantastic, right? Good for you and Firefox, probably the best browser out there when it comes to using this type of fencing technology for fire for our friends over at Facebook. Opera is known to be very fast, which is kind of their claim to fame. They also adopted Google's chromium base, but they've done a lot of good stuff on top of it. Those are the two I've been recommending and talked about them frequently, basically for a few years now. Those are the two you want to use. Well, Firefox is now turning on something called DNS over HTTPs. It's turning it on by default for US users. I want the Calvary to be aware of this. The Calvary is you guys. It's everybody that people come running to when there's a problem. Okay? So I want you guys to be aware of this. Why? It breaks security systems. Now, you might stop and say, Well, wait a minute. My wife said, What do you mean, Craig, this is contradictory. You're usually saying the opposite.

HTTPS is, you know, is the Secure Sockets version of web browsing online and is based on TLS. It's SSL, right? All of these things. It is security, and the thinking behind this short name is DoH, which is DNS over HTTPS. The reasoning behind this is when you are at home, and you are going to a website, you have to turn the name into an IP address because you can remember the IP address. You're going to ask your internet service provider, what's the IP address for this? Or maybe you're going to ask a third-party for the conversion of the name to an IP address. When you ask for it, it gets sent in the clear, and it is possible to deflect it.

Some ISPs do intercept now, but it isn't necessarily nefarious. Some manipulate it to insert a little crap into it. Some of them play those types of games, which I disagree with, but it's not necessarily nefarious. So the idea is if they use encryption to make that DNS request to a DNS server, then that problem goes away. No one in the middle can sit there and watch your DNS requests to know where you're going online. They can't muck with them either, right? That's the other side of this idea. So here's what you guys in the Calvary need to know. That is, if it is encrypting DNS by default, which Firefox is starting to do, it means that we can not any longer use third-party DNS services without making some configuration changes on our user's computers. Whether it's a family, whether it's a business, whatever it might be. So coming up here, in a couple of weeks, I'm going to be having a webinar on how to use particular DNS services to stop the spread of ransomware hackers and everything else, right, I'm going to walk you through what the strategy is, what are the tactics are behind it. What are you going to do? How are you going to do that? Why you should do it. This type of thing that Firefox is going to do is a double-edged sword. There is no privacy added by DNS over HTTPS. Okay, absolutely none. It's a lie that the marketers and proponents are trying to tell to cover up the real motives. The DNS over TLS offers the same privacy. They both rely on TLS here, right? But it can have amazingly negative implications for security. How do you now identify malware communicating because it can masquerade as regular HTTPS traffic on the networks? There are multiple ways to deal with the changes. I'll be adding this into my course coming up as this is going to be a bit of a big deal. When we're talking about these DNS services that you can use the free ones and the paid ones, and I'm going to show you how to use them to improve your security dramatically. The free ones are great for a small office, home office, or for families. I'll tell you how to do all of that. I'm a little concerned and more than a bit disappointed by our friends over at Mozilla for doing this. I have mixed feelings again, but because you're the Calvary. I thought you needed to know, and so I am telling you right now, so that's a wrap up for today's show. 

I want to encourage everyone if you do not get my Saturday morning newsletter, that you sign up for it right away. I have links to these articles and other articles that you need to handle. Also, some of the security patches as they come out, the most critical patches. I tell you about them and give you links to install them. It is free, and you can get that by just going to Craig Peterson dot com, slash subscribe. You'll also find out about the tutorials I have coming up and some of the training that we have, our implementation calls and guides. We have playbooks, we've got so much cool stuff to help you guys out. It is part of my give back. For many of you, it will be the turning point in your security, in business, and at home. Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe listening on WGAN and online.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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