The Loyal Opposition S03 E12
Good afternoon, Sumner County. Welcome to another episode of The Loyal
Opposition, a show based on the American ideal that nations like ours benefit
when government reflects a diversity of voices and makes space for dissent.
That is why we're here. To air the voice of descent to the super majority's
policies and ideas.
I am your host, Len Assante. We've got not one but two guests this afternoon
and. We're gonna get started with Ms. Bonnie in just a minute. I wanna make a
couple of announcements first because if I don't make them at the top of the
hour, I'll never ever make them and then I'll forget.
Sumner County Democratic Party has got a couple of things going on. Some of
y'all might. Be interested in knowing about. Tomorrow is their monthly pints
with progressives. That is Thursday, April 17th, six o'clock at Casa Roja in
Gallatin. That's right off the square in downtown Gallatin. They've got the
whole upstairs reserved [00:01:00] just for them.
So come on out, have a margarita, have some tacos, have some chips have some
fun. Right? That's pine with progressives on, the another Democrat thing they've
got, they've started a book club. How about that, Bonnie? That's nice. They've
got a book club now, they call it. Nevertheless, we read very good, very good.
And that will meet monthly at the party headquarters in Gallatin from six 30 to
eight. And the book this month is an interesting book called On Disinformation,
how to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy. The author's name is Lee
McIntyre. It's a short book. It's less than a hundred pages long.
So if you are interested in joining the club come on down and each month they
will pick a new book. And you'll have a month to read it. So that is. Tuesday,
April 22nd at six 30 at the headquarters on Main Street in Gallatin, Tennessee.
So is [00:02:00] the book available at Amazon and online? The book is
available on Amazon.
I checked out it's like $11. It's a small and inexpensive book. And you can,
purchase the paper copy, or if you're into reading it on the Kindle, they have the
Kindle version as well. Okay. So you can download it onto your device, which
some people like to do. I ask my students about, because, they grew up in this
digital world, and I asked them, I said, do you prefer to read books the old
fashioned way or do you prefer to read them on your device, on your Kindle or
your reader, or your tablet or your phone? And believe it or not. Most of them
say they still like books. Really? Mm-hmm. That's good to hear. Now they don't
actually read them.
Just when I was a librarian, the kids. Well, I didn't let anybody check out Harry
Potter unless they were third or above, but they wouldn't read 'em, they just
wanted to carry 'em around. They just wanted to carry 'em around. It was cool,
right, to have a Harry Potter book. Uh, so yeah, so the [00:03:00] whole idea of,
collecting books, you can't really do that when you have a.
A Kindle, right? You could have a one book on there or a thousand and it looks
exactly the same. So anyway, I, I'm, I'm a pro reading, I'm pro reading, so hey,
kudos for the Dems for starting a book club. So if you're interested, check that
out. Finally, one more democratic item I. The Sumner County Democratic Party
is having their headquarters grand reopening.
It just got a fresh paint job and some reorganization and some cleaning up, and
they are holding a grand opening out their next potluck, which is May 4th,
Sunday, May 4th at six o'clock at the headquarters, which is 3 33 West Main
Street in Gallatin. And check out the new digs. I helped paint the other day and I
think it kind of came out kind of nice.
I think it's kinda nice, so check it out. Okay. But before we do that, let's talk to
Ms. Bonnie Fusel. Bonnie, welcome to the show. Thank you. Unusual, having
you on this late in the day on the show. Right. [00:04:00] It's, it's a good time to
be on. Thanks for inviting me. Sure. And we're talking about Haven, right.
And Haven, as it turns out, is something near and dear to my heart, and I know
it's near and dear to your heart. So. Let's talk about it. What is Haven? Haven is
a support group for families that are facing dementia, and we give them, um, a
place just to, to talk, a place to be with others that maybe have similar problems.
Because if you're taking care of someone, a family member with dementia, it's
time consuming and it's hard to get a time away. And so what we have planned
to have. People that wanted to come to come to the meeting, but we also have
activities for someone that might be suffering with dementia. So you can, so it's
not just for the caregivers, it's also for No, it's for them.
Yes. Our patients as well. So we have, we bought some games and things, and
the library has some memory [00:05:00] kits that you can check out that we
What is a memory kit? Well, they take themes and for example, one that we
bought, I believe is the patriotic theme. Mm-hmm. And it has little flashcards in
it of patriotic places.
And it will have videos of, places in the United States that are important that
they might remember. And they're little games to play. Word searches and
things like that. There's, it's just a, it looks like a little book bag, backpack. And
you can check those out. We have two at the library.
We're trying to see how those two go. And I think the other one is wildlife. So is
Haven a program of the library or is it just something that happens at the
library? It happens at the library. They've been, we started off having it at
churches. We had it at the Baptist church and on, we had two meetings a month.
One was a Thursday at the Baptist Church across the street from here, and the
other one was on Sunday. At the seventh day and this church because [00:06:00]
they weren't having meetings particularly on Sunday. Makes sense. And we
thought it would give people that maybe their family members could watch if
they didn't wanna bring the person they were taking care of.
Some family member could come on Sunday and watch and let the caregiver
come to the meeting. Didn't work out that way. We're struggling getting people
to come, but the people that have come, we know we've helped. So that's been
good. This is so Haven offers a haven, doesn't it? It does. For two caregivers
and a person with dementia.
And this is, like I said, this is something near and dear to my heart. My dad
passed from dementia. Oh, coming up on five years now. It'll be five years next
month. And my mom was his soul. Caregiver and until the very, very end there
and it was very difficult for her. I mean, she, it was a, it was a nonstop 24 7 kind
of [00:07:00] thing.
Um, well, it really is a nonstop thing. That's why we thought that we would
offer something that would be helpful to people that have. Um, even their
caregivers. Yeah. I think even, you know, the ability to get away for an hour or
two Yeah. In of itself must be right. Must be rejuvenating, must be relaxing.
Right. And we have one person that comes in. Um, sometimes her husband
comes with her and we, one of our members, he just likes to talk to this person.
So they'll go out in the library and talk, sit down at a table and talk while we're
having the meeting. Hmm. So, you know, we, we offer, you know, a lot of help
to those that need to bring their person they're caring for.
So if someone is interested in, in. Getting involved in checking this out. What
do they have to do? Where do they have to go? Who do they have to call?
What's the, we have a Facebook page that's called Haven. Mm-hmm. And they
can go on that Facebook page or they can call any of our members, or they can
also check with the library and get information.
The library would tell 'em somebody to contact and are [00:08:00] there the
meetings regularly scheduled. We meet every. The third, every third Thursday,
the third of the month at two o'clock in, in the library. Third Thursday of the
month, two o'clock Portland Public library. Right. Okay. And we have, when we
organized, we had about 14 people.
We met once a week at my house for a while to get organized and everybody
came. It was just so nice that everybody, we try to get people from all. Sections
of, of Portland. So we have nurses and we have ministers, we have a doctor, Dr.
Ruckles on our group. And Ken, Jackie Wilber. Ken used to be mayor. Sure.
Mm-hmm. Um, Matt Taylor, who is preacher minister at the, uh, Nazarene
Church and we have, um, Ricky Morris, who's a minister in town. He's at
Living Free Church and. Everybody knows Punchy in Cook. We call her
Punchy. We call [00:09:00] her. I've always called her Madison because I had
her as a student. Punchy didn't quite seem appropriate for a teacher to call a
student a student, but I'm trying to get away from that and call her Punchy.
Some Madison is well known to those of us here at the Mighty Q. She's just fun.
She's just fun. So, so we have a lot of good members. Tracy Kaiser, who works
for the city, uh, Irish Chote, so that's pretty much Joanne Purdue helped me. She
ran into me at a restaurant and said, let's see if we can get this organized.
And so we got it organized, but we're just having trouble getting people to
come. Why do you think that is? Is it just a, a lack of knowledge of your
existence? Because certainly dementia is an issue, right? Yeah. We've tried to
advertise a lot. That library puts it on their board and everything.
But I don't know if people. Guess people who are caring with people for
dementia don't have a lot of free time. Look at the bulletin boards in the library.
I think they're uncomfortable bringing that person with them. Sure, sure. But we
try to make 'em comfortable. So, but I know we had, uh, we've had several
speakers [00:10:00] that have really brought information that has helped the
caregivers.
One of the best meetings we've had was with the emergency communication
Center, and they brought a form that you can fill out and. File with them, which
tells different things about your person that you're caring for. The color of their
eyes, the color of their hair, their weight. So if they should wander off Gotcha.
They all the information already, I can see that would be very valuable. You
know, they don't have to, you don't have to sit down and write it all out. Sure.
Gotcha. And they have a form for that. So, uh, we can get you that form if
anybody's interested, they can just call me and, we give out little helpful
brochures.
Like this one is a hundred activities to do with people who have Alzheimer's
disease, and it's just simple things that you might not have thought of to do with
them. Like give us an example. Okay. One is. Actual color pictures because
there's adult coloring books now. And Really, yeah. Sit down and bake cookies
with them.
Sing a favorite at hymn. [00:11:00] Um, I've heard that music is often very
powerful therapy with folks. Mm-hmm. It's one of the last things to go. Mm-
hmm. Especially the old hymns where they've, you know, that they learned
when they were little kids growing up in church. Sure, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
And like, name the presidents plant a tree.
Just do little activities. Make them pie. Um. One that I saw was, um, just get
Addiction, a phone book. And if you can find one, do they still make those?
Yeah, occasionally I get one. Uh, and, and just play with looking up names and
numbers in the phone book really. Okay. Just simple little things to do with
them.
But I think one of the most important things is to get on record at the emergency
center. Some information about your loved one 'cause Sure. You always hear
about people wandering off and if the authorities have that information. In fact,
one person came to a meeting and her father had, was lived in a little small town
nearby and was trying to get home.[00:12:00]
He lived nearby within 15 miles of us, and he was in Bristol trying to get home.
Bristol, Tennessee, Bristol, Tennessee. Oh my gosh. Mm-hmm. Wow. And
luckily though, they had that little map thing on their phone, right. And they
could try to find them, but it didn't go quickly. But they were able through that
phone app to be able to find them.
In fact, that's a good thing for everybody to have. That's a good thing. If you
make sure on your phone you have location services turned on, right. For your,
um, for your patients so that you know where they are, if they carry the phone
with them, you know, where they're all the time, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a
good idea.
I know one day I was. In town and my daughter texted me and she said, why are
you at City Hall? And I thought, how did you know I was at city hall? So she
was tracking me. Yeah, yeah. Now let's keep people's pri, give people a little
privacy when they need it. But I could see how that would be very valuable for
a person with dementia.
Absolutely. But we encourage people to come. To the meeting and we're gonna
meet tomorrow at the library. [00:13:00] So we encourage people that, uh, okay.
So our next meeting, so tomorrow is the third Thursday. Mm-hmm. All right. So
third, so tomorrow, two o'clock to Portland Library. At the library. Mm-hmm.
And, uh, people come in, just ask for Haven.
Do you meet in the meeting room there? We meet in the meeting room. When
you come in, right to the right, to the right hand side. Okay. There. Okay. And,
um, so yeah, folks, so if you are in that situation and feel like maybe you need a
little support, a little helping hand a little. Haven from your everyday, uh,
everyday troubles.
Check it out. I would like to also mention veranda Ministry. I don't know if
you're familiar with Veranda in Gallatin? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But it's it's a
place where you have to sign up and I think there's probably a waiting list, but
it's sort of, you can drop off your, a person you're caring for and they can stay
there a few hours and while you maybe go to the grocery or go to the doctor, or,
it's just a, it's a, a very fun place for people that are, um, suffering from
dementia.
That's great. That's great. [00:14:00] I love it when community comes together
to help, right? Mm-hmm. And that's, uh. That's a big part of, of why we are here
to spread the word about stuff like that. So thank you so much Ms. Bonnie for
joining us today. Very informative. And again, folks, that is tomorrow at two
o'clock at the Portland Library.
The next meeting of Haven, uh, spread the word and come on down and check
it out.
Ms. Bonnie stepped out. I. And our next guest, Jolie Grace Wareham, stepped
in.
Good afternoon. How you doing, Jolie? Good. Good afternoon, Len. How are
you doing? I am doing excellent. I'm doing excellent. Those of you who are
long-term ISTs might remember Jolie Grace from what, a year and a half ago
we were talking, right? Yeah, I think maybe September or something like that.
Geez. Yeah.
2020. Time flies. Time flies. Yeah. We will be on the air. Three years come
August. That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah. Never thought it would make it
to the end of the year. That's amazing. That's, that's really cool to look back, I'm
sure. Yeah, it is. And that's actually one of the reasons why we're having, the
party, the fundraiser coming.
Yes. I'm excited about that. It'll be fun. All the guests have been in, all the
former guests have been invited [00:15:00] and I'm interested to see who shows
up. And I think it's gonna be a good mix of people. Yes. I think people will have
a good time. Little reunion of sorts. Exactly. Anyway, if you're interested, check
it out.
The information is on our website, loyal opposition dot on online. But hey,
we're not here to talk about the loyal opposition. We are here to talk about
cybersecurity during troubling times. Dumb. Hopefully this won't be too
depressing of a convo here. Why don't we start out by talking a little bit about
you, Gil Grace, though, your experience, your background, and what led you to
start.
Or I guess co-star, I guess. Yeah. Protasec. Right? For sure. For sure. Well,
yeah, again, thank you so much for having me. These I know are really
important conversations. I think the title of this show, the Loyal Opposition, is
so fitting because I think a lot of times in cybersecurity we're kind of a, a united.
Opposition against threat actors. Right? And I don't know if that's too much of a
stretch here, but a little bit of it. We'll, we'll go with it. We'll go with it. I really, I
really see it. You know, I, I think a lot of what we do is we're opposing. It's
constantly, there's defense and [00:16:00] offense.
But anyway yeah, I'm Jo Grace or jg I, the infamous JG w the JG. But yeah, I, I
have the pleasure of serving as CEO of Protasec. Um, we are, we are a
Tennessee based cybersecurity firm. Um, but we serve clients. Uh, and
collaborate with folks around the world. And my background, actually, my, I,
we know each other from my political days.
Sure. The old days. Yeah. My degree's actually in political science, so I have the
pleasure of, connecting the dots between politics and geopolitics to
cybersecurity. And there is a connection, isn't there? There is a huge connection.
Oh my goodness. Yes. And well, that's why you're here.
Yeah. That's why we're here. But I got engaged with Protasec. We're, like I said,
we're a small cybersecurity firm. We do a lot with coaching and consulting with
small and midsize businesses and nonprofits, kind of folks that are. And what
we call like a cybersecurity coverage gap kind of priced out of really big firms
pricing scale, but also have really bespoke needs.
I think the smaller an, an entity is the, the more power individual personalities
have, as you can imagine. Sure. And they need more unique things and so we
do [00:17:00] things like. Assessing vulnerability, mitigating risk. We do a lot of
incident response planning, training just really doing what we can to prevent an
incident from happening.
But it's 2025. It's not if it's when, and let's make sure you're ready if something
doesn't right or when something happens. So, and, and I. I imagine, I mean, you
hear about the security breaches of big public companies all the time. Right?
Right, right. And I would imagine that for everyone that we hear about, there's
probably at least one that we're not hearing about.
Yes. 'cause it doesn't make the media for whatever reason, right? Yes, yes. I
know there was a a Tennessee article last June. It's been cited quite a bit that
almost 50%, almost half. So it's 46% of like Nashville area. Small businesses
have been a victim of a cyber incident. And those are what we know is reported.
We know a lot of incidents are not even recognized Sure. Or not reported. So.
Because they might not even know, the business owner might not even know
that it happened, right? No. No. And they don't, or they don't know where to
report it to. Sure. And then that, then that affects how much threat intelligence
we have, right?
So, so what led you to what led you down [00:18:00] this particular path to have
found Protasec? Did you, yeah. Again, you saw a need or yeah, certainly. So
you woke up in the middle of night one night and said, I wanna do
cybersecurity. What's no, no, actually. So, uh, my, my work obviously I'm here
in my, my company's capacity, so we're not in like a.
Official political capacity here, but as we know, my background is, is electoral
politics. And so in that world identified a big need for cyber security. There's a
lot of support and training and education that needs to be done within political
parties, campaigns, operatives, vendors. And so I had founded a a cyber
initiative within that work.
And it really all stemmed from. I opened up my Google Drive one day and I had
a bunch of stuff like from college, like we're talking like my cringey college
application essay or like. Banned college banned Irish songs, you know, and
stuff like charts. And it all said that it had been opened the day before.
And I was like, that's not true. And so, um, it led me down this path of being
concerned about, Hmm. Interesting. [00:19:00] My role. So you had it happen
to you? Yeah, it had it happen to me. Okay. And it, yeah, made me concerned
about my political role and then found an initiative within Electoral
Cybersecurity. That's how, through that work, I met my now business partner
and he had actually founded Prosec a little before we met and needed a partner
to.
Kinda. Um, bring it to, to life and, and what it is today. So, yeah, I, uh, I don't
know if you know about this or not, but I was looking, I was looking Protasec
up on the web Oh. Getting ready for the show and I mistype the name,
misspelled the name, and there's a company called Protaec. That's so funny. Yes,
that is, that does the same work.
Yeah, but it's out of some, I can't remember the country, but it's not an. It's not
an American based company. That's really funny. Oh my gosh. I mean it proto
that comes from like a Greek word for security, so, gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. Or
you can think protons and how we're all, we're all connected. We talk a lot about
community resilience.
Ah, the big universe. Yes, exactly. It's all, all connected. Okay, so let's say, um.
Let's say [00:20:00] you're a small business here in Tennessee. Sure. Perhaps
even within the range of our radio voice. Yes. Uh, what are some of the things
that, you know, let's say you sell socks. Mm-hmm. Okay. And you're thinking
this is probably not a high tech industry.
This is probably not. Something that I really need to be worried about, but, um,
I should be worried though, huh? Sure, sure. Of course. Okay. Tell course. Tell
me, tell us what could possibly happen. Yeah, certainly. So something that we
see a lot, and it's something that we all see a lot, right? Is one of the biggest
ways that a threat actor can get to you is through phishing schemes.
Mm-hmm. Um, I think a lot of us know what that is, but in case you don't, it's
that, um, it, it's a type of what we call a social engineering attack, which just is a
fancy way of, of saying, you know, we're using. Personalities and, uh, trying to
get to you through like personalities and pretending to be someone we're not.
And so there's phishing emails or texts and somebody pretending that they're
somebody that they are saying that they are, but they're not actually that person
trying to get you to click something. That might lead you to a [00:21:00] fake
website where you put in your credentials. Or it's just something that they are
trying to get you to do to then give you information and that website might
look.
Legit, it might look real, right? Yeah. You might get an email or a text that's
saying, Hey you need to update your Facebook, credentials. Then you click into
it. They've, cloned the Facebook page. Now you've typed in your credentials,
and unfortunately, as we know there's a lot of folks that.
Whatever their Facebook password is probably their password for their bank
account, for everything. Sure. Their email. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Maybe their
work stuff, their kids doctor things. And that's how a lot of threat actors can get
in and so that's something that can really affect businesses. I know we've seen
folks where it's their vendor.
That's something that happened to them and then it affected them. Because their
vendor was compromised and then a wire transfer went to the wrong trade.
Sure, sure. So even though SOX may not be a high tech industry, you might,
one of your vendors might be a service provider.
Exactly. Like your accountant or something like that. Exactly. They might get
hacked and. Yep. You have to think about [00:22:00] everything. No you might
be really focused on, selling socks and doing that well, but there's a lot of
people trying to make sure you can't do no one sell socks. Like, I sell socks,
jewelry.
I mean, hey, I, we gotta talk. But that's, so that's something to think about any of
your vendors, so you might use QuickBooks for your account. Sure. Exa I bet, I
bet millions of small business owners use QuickBooks. Right. Exactly. Which is
a great company. Mm-hmm. Um, but you have to think about, do I also have a
backup of my financial information just in case something happened?
Or I mean, we live in Tennessee. We all spent, I actually am one of the weird
ones in Nashville and has a basement, but I spent a good amount of time in my
basement a couple weeks ago during the I know, right. Uh, during the, the
tornado warnings. Sure. If, if a tornado ripped through, your town like
unfortunately devastatingly happen in Tennessee, if that ripped through your
your business, do you have backups of your information or did it rip through the
room where you have all of your.
IRS documents and now, and you never digitized them. So in it's not always a
bad person or like somebody doing something bad, it might be mother nature.
And so this all affects. And then there's all the stuff happening in the world
[00:23:00] that also can impact and increase your threats. Yeah. And I want, I
definitely want talk a little bit more about that.
Let's let's take a quick break at this point though. And when we come back,
we'll segue into that. Sure. And we'll segue into, then after that, I guess we'll
segue into a little bit about how we can defend ourselves. Right. That's always a
great conversation. All right. Alright folks, so we're gonna take our next break.
We'll be back in a couple of minutes. You're listening to The Loyal Opposition
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Tell Artemis CPA. You heard all about them on the loyal opposition.
Hey, welcome back everyone. We are here talking with Jolie Grace Worm, CEO
of Protasec, and we're talking cybersecurity in troubling times. I did wanna say,
before we get back into it, I did wanna mention folks, we had a few regular
listers, might remember Brendan West, who's on the show a few months ago.
He runs a group called Students for Education, which is a student led advocacy
group here in Tennessee, which, well fights for student rights and one of the
things he talked about on the show. Was that they were going to introduce a bill
in the General Assembly. They had found a sponsor and a co-sponsor of a piece
of legislation that would include students as non-voting members of school
boards.[00:25:00]
And as it turns out after clearing all the committees, Tennessee House Bill 1199,
sponsored by Senator Hensley. Is scheduled for a final vote on the Tennessee
floor today, April 16th. The bill would ensure that each school board in the state
creates a policy that authorizes a non-voting student member seat on every
school board, giving young people a formal voice and education policy across
Tennessee.
Okay, so it looks like, and last that I heard, at least it looks like that is going to
pass and go to the governor for signature. Now this, I think is is cool for a
couple reasons, not just for partisan politics reasons, but this is this shows the
power that individual citizens have and their government, right?
They, a bunch of citizens banded together, many of them who are not even old
enough to vote, right? And they got someone to sponsor legislation that is
gonna. Add a student to every school board in Tennessee, and that's pretty cool.
[00:26:00] That's pretty cool. That's awesome. I thought that was pretty neat.
Shows the power of citizenship.
And, activism. Right, right. And I thought that was neat. So, so kudos to
students for education. And remember, you heard it here first on the law, law
opposition. Anyway, we are talking, let's get back to the notorious Joey Grace
Wareham talking cybersecurity. We wanted to talk about, okay, so the threat is
out there, the threat is real.
We hear about it every day and we probably know that for everyone we hear
about. There are more that we don't hear about, of course. Um, so what can we
do? And, and your answer cannot include the phrase, hire my company. Of
course, of course, of course. No, no. There's a, there's a lot that we could do.
Okay. Um, you know, I think that the reason that I got into this work was
because I had something suspicious happened to me.
I worked myself into a paranoia and it was, I have to do something or else I'm
gonna, drive myself crazy. Right. So, um, it really, we. It, it's terrifying to really
think about a [00:27:00] lot of this, with everything happening in the world, the
the just infiltration of AI into every facet of our lives is making threat attacks
even more sophisticated and personalized and just a lot easier to, to truly
execute. We can't just be depressed all the time. We gotta try to make things
better, oh, but it's so easy and fun to be depressed all the time. I know, right? I
mean, you can, everything that's happening in the world is like, has a direct
impact to cybersecurity.
And so I think that that's one of the biggest things that you can do is you have to
stay aware. You have to stay vigilant. You have to stay prepared. And so that
awareness piece is you have to stay educated. You know, threats are changing
every single day. Um, the, you know, different kind of the.
If you will, financial turbulence, kind of of our economy right now is making
every dollar that you have more important to protect. You have to be, really
keeping yourself up to date with what's happening in the news and also what's
happening in cyber trends. So, um, understanding, different ways to use your
technology securely also [00:28:00] is important as well.
So really that education piece, staying aware. Stay. Yeah, keep your eyes open.
If you see something suspicious, chances are it might be suspicious. And so
don't click on those suspicious links, report them if you can. Things like that.
Think before you click Exactly. Think before you click your click.
There's also our software is really good out there. You keep your devices
updated, keep your software updated. I know there's certain people who change
your passwords. Exactly. Exactly. There's people who are like, I don't wanna
have to change my password. I don't wanna have to.
Update my phone. 'cause I don't wanna have to deal with, something new.
Those updates are not just to make your phone look different, it's actually,
patching security vulnerabilities that have been found. It's very important. Keep
your devices, keep your software up to date.
Change your passwords. There's something called the password manager, which
is awesome. It can, yeah. Let's talk about password managers for a second
because I must have a million different accounts out there. Various, right, of
course. Me too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so what a password manager is, there's
a lot of different vendors out there for them.
So, [00:29:00] um, I, we could spend a whole a whole conversation talking
about the different vendors, but really the consummate of a password manager
is, it's like a imagine a vault of all your passwords and it will actually create
very random, really long. We call it long and strong passwords, right? And it
will create a different one for each of your accounts.
And you don't have to remember those really long, strong passwords. Like you
don't have to remember a 90 something character password because your vault
remembers it all. You have to remember, or, figure out a strategic way to
remember is that password into that vault. And once you're into there, then you
can access all of those passwords.
You can copy and paste them into your accounts. There's ways where it can
integrate with your browser so that when you go on that website, it
automatically populates. It actually ends up speeding up your time once you get
it set up. And you can use those across devices. You can also use them across
teams.
A lot of times small businesses will. Just be texting each other passwords. Or
maybe have a shared Google drive or it's shared in your [00:30:00] email.
There's password managers you can use across teams. So you're actually sharing
passwords in a more secure way too that doesn't sound like best practice to be
texting passwords back and forth.
Yeah, definitely. I would not recommend that. No. Those can easily be a, yeah, I
definitely recommend a password manager. Those are really made with a user in
mind so they can actually really speed up your processes. I love using mine. I
log into an account and it automatically populates the 70 something character
password.
I don't even know what it is. Yeah. Expensive. No. So there are free versions out
there. Oh, free versions. There go. There's also really minimally priced ones if
you want them, like across your devices. I think mines might be like. 30
something dollars a year to use on all my devices. There's different ones, maybe
a little bit higher, but really not by much.
If you have a team account it's a really drop in the bucket compared to the cost
of a cyber attack on a business. I think the average cyber attack is now, this is
all businesses, not just small businesses, is like $3 million. And that's, it's a drop
in the bucket for some of the [00:31:00] softwares for that, yeah.
$3 million. I mean, those are for that, that also factors in really large companies,
right? Oh, sure. Of course, of course. Right. Um, but even a, you know, even a
small company. Sure. Fraction of that Exactly. Be the difference between profit
and loss, right? Yeah. A small law firm, the statistic is about a data breach cost
of a small, to a small law firm is about 36 k, and that's not even counting like
secondary and tertiary, like reputational losses, client losses.
Sure. Things like that. Yeah. Stuff you really hard to put a value on. Exactly.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wow, that's a lot. A lot of money. Yeah. So, uh, what are we
to do? I mean, let's, let me, let me ask you the, let me ask you the question this
way. Mm-hmm. Um, I imagine, uh, I'm guessing that some of your business
comes from firms, organizations, groups, whatever, that have had this happen to
them mm-hmm.
And don't want it to have it happen to them. Yes. Again, certainly. Certainly.
And I assume some of your business must come from people who I don't want
this to happen to me ever. Yeah. So we're gonna [00:32:00] is it cheaper to wait
or is it cheaper to. Not wait. I would say it's a lot cheaper to get in front of it.
Because if you are doing those things like educating yourself, staying aware
mitigating risk, using those kind of softwares, or you have good policies and
procedures in place that everyone's following, they're not just using password
managers or using multifactor authentication.
They're using all those different things. Your chance of a cyber attack is.
Significantly diminished. And the cost of, working with a consultant or in
putting in place some of those really low dollar softwares on your own, the cost
of that versus an incident happening. It's.
It's such a difference. And then if you do have an incident though, ransomware
can be thousands and thousands of dollars or millions of dollars if they get you
or the cost of having to bring in a team to do your whole incident response that
can have an effect. I think it's like the statistic about the number of businesses
that are still in business.
I think I actually wrote it down here of [00:33:00] was it like the number of
businesses that are still in business after six months of having a cyber attack?
It's about 60%. They're gonna go outta business in six months. Wow. Small
business. 60%. That's huge. So really, like if you think about the cost of your
business and what that means to you, is it worth the potential of losing your
whole business, your livelihood?
I'm a small business owner. My business means the world to me. I would hate to
see it go away. And so doing some of those things on the front end so much
cheaper than losing your business or having that huge ransom. It's like your
baby in a way, isn't it? It is. It is. Like Don. Yeah. So it's what I'm learning.
Yeah. You wanna give your kids, the best education. Mm-hmm. The best
clothes, the best food, you know, this is, this is one of those kind of equivalents
for a business for sure. Gotcha, gotcha. All right. I know you want to, don't
want to talk politics, but let's see if we can talk politics.
No, we can. No, we can. We can talk politics without talking politics, but no, it's
all good. Does government policy or lack of government policy or who's in
office at a [00:34:00] particular time make a difference in this space? Oh, for
sure. I mean, certainly, certainly. We need government to, and this is, my
opinion here, we need government to.
To be a leader. We need government to be setting good policies regulations like
regulatory requirements for businesses that are publicly traded. For. Cyber
reporting. But we also need the government to be leading by example. And
unfortunately we haven't seen that, all the time in the last few months.
We've seen defense leaders use, signal, which is a good strong tech. It's good
tech, but bad judgment was huge, but bad judgment. And, and what does that
say to. Us as Americans, us as Tennesseans, or us as business owners if we're
seeing the federal government, you know, not taking.
Right. And one of the things about Signal, one of the things that makes it
valuable to users is that there's no record. Yeah, yeah. Right. It can. Yeah. So,
uh, so there's no, and you know, and government should all about keeping
records, right, right. Open information, freedom of information. [00:35:00]
Right? Yes. So, yeah, I know that feature of the disappearing messages is
something that's the disappearing messages being looked into right now.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, uh, that can be, that can be powerful, but. Again, it
could be. You know, I like your, like what you said, good tech, but not good
judgment. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think I was, uh, talking to chat GPT actually
about how's a good way to phrase, you know, that concept of the whole signal
gate and they were like, good tech, bad judgment.
I'm like, okay. Oh, okay. So we have to, we have credit chat, GPT Chat, GPTI
was trying to come up with a title for a blog. I'm writing about this, so can't take
that credit. Yeah. I've noticed that you have a blog on, on your website.
Certainly. So folks, if you're interested in, in keeping up with Julie Grace's,
musings on cybersecurity. Exactly. Protasec.com. Yep. That's it com That's it.
Definitely. And you can check up on those. Yeah. So yeah. And so we also have
social security's been in the news a lot lately too. Right? Certainly. Certainly.
And and one of the arguments I've seen made is that.
If you cut to the bone in terms of human resources, fire, a lot of people, one of
the [00:36:00] one, one possibility of course is that people may not get their
money on when they're supposed to, right? Mm-hmm. Which is never happened
before. But an another possibility is that there'll be less resources that can be
devoted to stuff like protecting Exactly.
Your social security number. Exactly right? Yes, yes. Uh, and, and that's gotta.
Well, that should frighten everybody. Right? Right. No, I, I think what we're
seeing in different government agencies should be frightening to folks. I mean,
um, in the Social Security Administration, but also other federal agencies that.
Are actually tasked with cybersecurity. So for instance, CISA, the Cybersecurity
Infrastructure Security Agency, which sounds like a redundant agency name
when you say it out loud, so we'll just call it CISA. It's under DHS, the
Department of Homeland Security, and they're really tasked with doing a lot
with critical infrastructure.
So like water, electricity, like protecting that stuff. Doing a lot with small
businesses also elections. They've had a huge reduction or they're about to have
a huge reduction in staff. I think about a third of their staff is like probably
[00:37:00] gonna be gone soon. And that's really affects what they're able to do
and how they're able to serve.
They're ironic considering the discussions we've had over the. Past few years
about election integrity. Yes. Yes. I know, I know that that hits me a little, a little
close to home there. But you know, there's, there's a lot of, we're seeing this
across agencies. We have doge, right, the, uh, and, and look like I, I think we all
can agree like.
Saving money as a government is good, right? Saving money is a good thing.
Absolutely. But when it, what, what we've been seeing is there's been a lot of
cuts really quickly and these cuts without due consideration, right? Yeah. It's,
and so it definitely leads you to wonder. Are we keeping cybersecurity really
front and center?
We talk about the threats from our foreign adversaries and how we're trying to
mitigate those risks. And those risks really do affect small businesses, right?
Because the same sorts of technologies, the same sorts of threats that. Threaten
our economy or our military.
Exactly. Also threaten that mom and pop sock company [00:38:00] I've been
talking about. Right. Exactly. The stock company, or I always use like the coffee
shop as an example. The coffee shop. Of course, of course. You might think
you're pouring coffee, but if you're protecting your coffee shop, you're actually
defending America.
Right. And it's kind of a cool thing. It's it, we can all really take that ownership.
I know it sounds like you know, she, but it's true. But if all it takes a village, it
really get, it takes a village. I get it. And. And because the next war probably
isn't gonna be a conventional war, it's not gonna be fought with bombs and
missiles.
It's gonna be fought with viruses and phishing schemes and Sure, yes, yes.
Electromagnetic pulses and stuff like that. Right. I mean, we know that actually,
um, and again, not to be doomsday over here, but it's, it's been publicly said
that, um, China has, um, access to, um, 80% of all American adults, like all of
like.
All their personal data, and for the other 20% they have most of that personal
information and so. We also know that they're, they are in a lot of our small
businesses, infrastructure and critical infrastructure. Right. And, [00:39:00] and
that's just one, country that I'm talking about.
That's just one country. Sure. Exactly. And a, we also have, folks that are trying
to mess things up in, in the us, right? Mm-hmm. And and so you're right, like
the, the face of warfare is looking different too. And unfortunately, if you shut
down a whole businesses or a whole.
Cities or state's electric grid, what are the implications it has on, the hospitals to
keep, serving people or grocery stores and restaurants, to keep feeding people
schools, to keep educating people. People are gonna unfortunately die.
Infrastructure isn't sexy, but it's important.
It's, I know, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
We wanted to end on two notes. We wanted to talk about TikTok and we wanted
to talk about.
What to do if something happens to you. Sure. So why don't we start with that,
where to go when some, when you think something has happened to you. Yeah.
Who should you call? Certainly, certainly. Well, hopefully, if it, if you're a small
business or a midsize business, hopefully you have a, a managed service like IT
provider or something. If not there's a lot of great, IT folks, we can help you all
of that. [00:40:00] But one of the biggest things that I push is reporting
incidents when you have them. I. There's so much intelligence like we've been
talking about, there's so much intelligence out there, we just don't have, because
people don't know that they had an incident or they don't report it when they do
have an incident.
Of course I wouldn't be, speaking if I didn't give a nice shout out to the FBI,
which sounds silly, right? But they are doing some really great work. They are
doing a lot with a little, and they have a really great program. It's called IC
three. Literally, if you Google it, bookmark it.
I know I'm sounding super nerdy right now, but seriously bookmark it on your
phone. IC three. IC three, it's a, it's an acronym. If you type it in to Google,
you'll get it, and it's a page that I cannot, stress enough. It's really important to
report your incidents to. This really helps our federal government.
And all of our partners know that these incidents happen. A lot of times small
and mid-sized businesses are out of conversations 'cause we don't know that
they're having these incidents. So please report. You're not gonna get a nice
flower email back saying Thank you for reporting. But seriously, it does.
It does help. It does help. Okay. Yep. Okay. [00:41:00] And finally, the, I guess
the question on everybody's mind is obviously one of the, one of the biggest
examples we've seen in, of course, discussion of cybersecurity, it's gotta be
TikTok uhhuh. Yep. And so your opinion. Right? Yeah, yeah. You're an expert.
What are your thoughts?
Yes. So I know there's a lot of conversation. Is it a national security risk? Is it a
cyber risk? I, I say yes. Really, if you go up the chain with TikTok and who
owns it at the end of the day it, it's China. And whether, however you wanna
phrase it, and we know, like I talked about before, China has stolen a lot of our
information, our intellectual property, and, we need to be vigilant about that.
And so, um, when you are giving your data to TikTok you are giving that data,
away. And not, and of course like I, I love scrolling reels. I am, I definitely will
get, we will get doing that in Instagram or Facebook, but, don't do that on
TikTok, please.
I really encourage folks to, to get off that app. Obviously there's a lot of stuff in
the news. We'll see if. The ownership changes hands. As of today, I, we haven't
had a major news story, but unless I'm mistaken and I missed a news [00:42:00]
story today in my opinion I would still say, stay away from that okay.
Alright, well, Jolie Grace, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank
you for coming, for coming all the way up here from Nashville again in traffic.
Oh, it's all good. Praise day. Be Waze, right? Yes. Love Waze. God love ways.
This wraps up another show. Folks, but hey, don't worry, we'll be back next
week.
We are gonna, next week we're gonna be speaking with Tara Wiley, who is an
assistant district attorney here in Sumner County. And we're also be talking with
Tony Jackson, who is part of a group called Pantera Ensemble, and they are
doing some really cool charity work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. So
we're gonna hear about what they're up to.
So until then, folks remember our website, www, the loyal opposition online,
where you can catch old shows. Catch us on podcast. Until next week. Have a
great one. [00:43:00] Bye-bye.
