**Breaking Cybersecurity News Raw & Unfiltered** Teaching Your Kids How NOT to Get Hacked

***In order to get the breaking cyber news to you guys FAST we are posting these right after the live broadcast! If you prefer your news more filtered, keep an eye out for the edited posting tomorrow!***

With everything going on on the internet, navigating the digital waters of the internet with your children can be a real challenge. You want to may sure they are safe and that they don't get hacked, but how?

In this episode, we give you practical tips and tricks to help keep your kids (and their devices) safe from hackers!

Hosts: Craig, Erin and Blake

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Transcript

Erin: 0:38

Welcome everybody to another episode of the PTG podcast today. It is myself and Craig and of course Blake,

Craig: 0:52

the one and only

Erin: 0:53

the one and only Blake.

Blake: 0:54

That's right.

Erin: 0:56

Yup. I've never met another Blake. yeah. So today we're going to talk about. Your kids, but not really your kids, like in a creepy way. What more, more we're going to talk about your kids and how you can teach them about cybersecurity and make it fun.

Blake: 1:12

I think this is going to be a good one. I don't think anyone's ever talked about this.

Erin: 1:17

I think we've discussed it.

Craig: 1:18

Yeah. I think we broached the topic a couple of times. Really it depends on the type of school that your kids go to as well. I think that private schools are ahead of public schools in regards to technology. Obviously busy households that have a lot of technology and a lot of devices, a lot of end points maybe Amazon Alexa or Google or whatever devices on the network. Depending on the age of the kids or children in your house will depend on a lot of different angles and factors. But I would start off with proper training I think a lot of kids like to tinker and experiment maybe it's the drive to play a new video game or boredom to try to find something to do I think there's a couple of different angles around this topic, but I would start with security awareness training. We have various curriculum that we've built for all types of scenarios and situations on our compliance, armour.com website. It's very inexpensive, but proven audited and effective training, not only for kids and children and families, but also for consumers and for businesses alike. Obviously at the household level there's probably not any really regulations or anything like that, but good hygiene, best practices with passwords never write your passwords down on sticky notes and keep them around the computer. But you know, I would start with, or start from the end point level. A lot of families have technology. That's a various age and quality. And obviously with cybersecurity, the older, the end point, the older device is really, as it. ages, it becomes less secure. And the reason for that is the manufacturer. After a period of time called end of life, the manufacturer is no longer going to patch and update and provide security updates, which is why it's a very bad idea to have old devices on your network because that's how people get hacked. Moving on from there there's a kind of a, I guess, a myth around people thinking that apple devices are more secure than windows devices. There are viruses and malware that exists for Mac as well as PC. Of course, I think that it's really just a matter of. The hackers are targeting by market share. They are going to write viruses and malware and various threats for Microsoft first and then adapt to other platforms like Linux and Mac. So I would start off with if you have an old computer, now's the time better to, than ever to upgrade that device. If it can be upgraded which means the software, you can load new software on it, that's an option, but if it's really over five years old, it's not usually worth fixing or doing anything to you're better off getting a new device. The recommendations are really personal preference around that whether you are a Mac or an apple fan or a Microsoft fan, or maybe a Linux fan just really depends, but getting modern devices that are supported and making sure that they're patched and up to date, because even if you get a brand new computer, if you go down the road, you pick one up if you have an insecure network and you plug that thing to your internet and it's unpatched, it can right out of the styrofoam get infected. So you have to follow a process for making sure that all updates are applied and just really be careful with that period of time as it's brand new until it's fully patched up. And then obviously enable security software in the Microsoft world. There's windows defender. You can choose other products that are out there like Malwarebytes, for example. Those are some options as well.

Blake: 5:20

So guess probably most parents, what they do is they hand down their devices to their children. I'm assuming that's probably them smartest ideas, maybe.

Craig: 5:33

Again, I think it depends on the age window. so if if a parent wants a new computer and the device that they're, the parent is using it's within the warranty or support period, then that's okay to do that. But if the device is five years old already, and then they hand it down to their kids.

Erin: 5:52

just asking for trouble.

Blake: 5:54

Right.

Craig: 5:54

Yeah. Because, here's the thing like you as a parent are probably not going to the same website, says kid might go to and sadly, the reality is that a lot of hackers. Prey on kids and they inject malware and video games and social media sites and different things that kids would search for, or navigate to may differ from what you may have navigate to. So my point is that if it's not supported and it's not in warranty, You're asking for trouble. by handing it down at if, and only if, and I'll say this with a caveat maybe the kid is of older age and is quite technically savvy and can format. And re-install a modern operating system on it, like windows 11 or Linux, or if your kid can do something like that and modernize the software, then that's okay to repurpose. But most people and most kids. That's a lot of trouble and that's a technical path that opens a whole new can of worms. So my point is that if you've got windows XP, just take hard, drive out beat it up with a hammer and throw the rest of it away,

Blake: 7:08

Yeah,

Craig: 7:08

or use it for target practice

Blake: 7:11

take it to Goodwill the local recycling bin. so, what age do you think is the prime target to start conditioning your children? And the best cybersecurity practices

Craig: 7:25

So I think if your kids are actively needing to use Google, like the free Google services and G suites, or if Google is the choice of the school and that starts with Second grade then that's the tie. Like I would say the timing is really dependent on when they go online. If they're going online before school and they're going online because the parents are busy and they need to work or they need to get stuff done. And it's kind of a here played this game kind of thing. While there should be some parameters set around what device they should be given and what access they should be allowed and what they should be able to do. And it should be supervised if it can't be supervised, then there needs to be some due diligence on The parent's side to make sure that the device is properly secured, patched up and supported before just handing it over to the kid because otherwise what'll happen is there could be nasty malware or infection that could happen. that just takes seconds. So going back to our eat, your vegetables, eat more onions. It's all about the layers hardware layers, software layers, human layers

Blake: 8:36

I heard a rumor and I don't know if this is true, your man, probably you could vouch for this, but a lot of schools are starting getting kids involved in technology and they're putting them into the Chrome oh, S ecosystem. I don't know if that's true. That's what I heard her that a long time ago.

Craig: 8:53

for schools, you said?

Blake: 8:54

Yeah. But like public schools like little Johnny has got to do this or that or something. We need a laptop as a part of the checklist.

Craig: 9:04

So I, think that's true. I think that some schools have adopted the Google Chromebook model, but I also heard. And maybe some schools do it better than others, but I heard that they caused a lot of trouble too. And what I mean by that is Chromebooks are kind of like thin clients they're really stripped down

Blake: 9:25

Right.

Craig: 9:26

And optimized for Google and Google's ecosystem. They're just really basic devices typically with low CPU. They're just really just stripped down to use Google G suite and Google, like Gmail and other types of services, I think once you and it's fine for that. I think once you get out of that ecosystem though, and maybe want to play a game or want to do something, that's more multimedia driven. think that's where those devices struggle. Like for example, like running zoom on a Chromebook by. Really have best amount of resources to properly do video and audio as well as maybe a a full-fledged laptop, for example

Blake: 10:15

I remember I was at best buy and this is unrelated, but still I was going through and they have like a section for Chromebooks. And I literally look over in Google somehow some way you probably know exactly where I'm going with this. Somehow some way they thought it was a good idea to make a thousand dollar Chromebook. And I'm like, What like this is crazy. It's like, trying to like, take like apple market. I don't know. It looks like a little apple laptop. a thousand dollars, but the reason why I'm just kinda like balking here is promo S is like super, is a super light operating system. Like you said, it's like a thin client. it takes nothing to run. Like most of the Chromebooks, they have four gigs of Ram or gigs of state or EMC

Craig: 11:04

it's, optimized for an always online connected experience. So if you use it within the brackets or parameters of what it was designed to do, then it works great. But once you try to go outside of that, where you're stuck in an airport, or you're stuck in a remote location and you don't have stable internet, then that device is no longer a great tool. You don't have the ability or the it's not very easy. I mean, there are some features that allow you to work offline. But my point is that it's optimized for an always connected, always online internet. Experience and like within clients, then clients are great devices for businesses. They have usually nowadays the solid state hard drive, they have minimal CPU and Ram they're really built for the long haul. They don't have a lot of moving parts. Some of them don't have any moving parts. So they're solid state. The whole thing is solid state. Oftentimes they're fan lists, so really not much to fail or die on it. So when you connect a thin client properly to a private cloud or a public cloud, example, a terminal server, remote desktop services or virtual desktop infrastructure powered by VMware or Citrix if you connect to those cloud properties, you're getting all of the compute power from the cloud. Again, it's reliant upon an always on line connected experience. By itself, it's pretty bare bones and minimal. I can't really do much, but when you connect it to the cloud, it opens the door and makes it a great tool for certain situations. So I think that's what was trying to be done with the Chromebook experience with Google Google was like, okay, we'll give our online tools and our online experience, Gmail G suites collaboration around editing documents at the same time all the great stuff that Google has produced in that fashion. But once you, again, you step out of that box and now you want to load some other kind of software or you want to do more audio visual work. Now that device, or that tool may not be the best tool for the job. It depends on a deep study and assessment on what are you using the tool for? And what's the best tool for the job?

Blake: 13:37

Yeah, I think probably the coolest part. I mean, again, this isn't a plug, but this is a good segue point. Like it does have the built-in parental controls, which is probably advantageous to, most parents. And I think that's probably easier to set up. But it probably has its advantages internally versus let's just say you have a child and they're running windows 10, 11 Mac like I think out of the box, correct? I mean, so what would be an alternative there for people for parents who want to monitor their kids' online activity,

Craig: 14:16

yeah, and I that's a good point with the parental controls and the built-in functionality I think that functionality is good. Oftentimes I feel like depending on the ecosystem, whether it's Google or Amazon Alexa or whatever it is I think that they give parents a decent set of tools, but of them are perfect in my opinion. I mean, nothing's perfect nowadays, but I mean, I guess none of them are very granular. And what I mean by that, like for my own experience with Amazon devices and Kindles, for example apple seems to, in my opinion, do a better job of the parental control side of things. But it kind of goes back to the right tool for the job. think it also puts a lot of pressure on parents too, because now the parents have to have crash course on how do they configure this thing properly so that their kid could do what they need to do if they authorize it, but then not be troublesome. And I know for me, at least for personal experience that I'm technical the Amazon Kindle man, that thing is it was a bit of a learning curve even for me. And I guess my point is that if you have access to parental controls, definitely as a parent, studied them and see what you can and cannot do with them. Sometimes there's no control that is available to do what the child needs to do. So you have to use your profile. And then you have to be available to revoke it. Like I know, like with my family, I've had to change my pin numbers and have different things in place to prevent accidental purchases, or maybe they said it was an accident, but there wasn't, but that's a whole nother story, the by a different video game or whatever it is, or an add on to a video game. My point is that as parents, we have to research and explore the tools that are available to the, to us like pare parental control, for example. But also make sure that the device is the best suited for what she wants your child to have access to as well. Like I know for example, I don't know if you guys know this, but a long time ago. There was an issue with YouTube, Google, and YouTube where YouTube wasn't properly segmenting certain content for kids. And kids were getting access to content. That was really bad. Do you guys remember any of this?

Blake: 16:44

I heard about it.

Craig: 16:46

Like the tick-tock challenge or something? It was almost like that only it was on YouTube And it was like suicidal kind of stuff. And it was just Really awful stuff that was, and it got passed for them. So they were the hackers or the bad actors in this case were exploiting flaws in the tagging or segmentation of what a child can and cannot see.

Erin: 17:08

that's disgusting.

Blake: 17:09

They were using like hashtags and sand tacks. because essentially, like it goes outside the algorithm apparently of YouTube. I mean, I could be entirely wrong, but and yeah, so, so whoever was uploading, the videos could mark them as kid-friendly and yeah, I mean, it would be like creepy pasta stuff or like, yeah, like really dark. dark. Dark dark scary, scary stuff.

Erin: 17:36

messed up the kid.

Craig: 17:37

Yeah. it's it's as a parent, when you give technology or a device to your child, there's some responsibility that the parent has to have. And sadly you can't trust the make model or manufacturer of the endpoint or device to do That job for you. It's really a responsibility at the parent level to still police and monitor. One of the recommendations that I have is. have the device in an area where you are as a parent so you can kind of glance over and see what's happening. Cause kids are curious, they're going to want to click on stuff that pops up. And sometimes those popups are not necessarily good popups. So my point is that the parent can catch things at the human level that maybe shouldn't have happened at the techno technological level because of a parental control, but maybe there was a flaw in it. So my point is you can't overly trust a parental control to do a human's job.

Erin: 18:35

That makes sense.

Blake: 18:37

Right. Something, Something, to that, I guess this is my experience, right? Cause I grew up on technology. Like, I mean, I grew up in the age of computer. And something that like, my parents never monitored my internet. Like I could do whatever. But something that that never really like dawned on me until now. And I think maybe because obviously, like I grew up in the computing, like, boom, but at the time there wasn't a lot of research about like how damaging computers are or technology, cell phones, tablets, they're everywhere. You know how damaging they are to your eyes you know, laptops and posture. I grew up living with these things and living on these things. And now at 32, I feel like death

Craig: 19:24

well, that's pretty bad,

Erin: 19:26

That's a

Craig: 19:27

Blake. Stop what you're doing right now. Call 9 1 1, go straight to the hospital.

Blake: 19:32

Yeah no. I mean, think about it though. So like posture, right? I mean, it's really important physical, mental wellbeing and blood flow, blood circulation, yada, yada.

Erin: 19:41

Yeah. That's a really good point, too.

Blake: 19:43

you know, within The past three to four years they started figuring out about the blue light that affects sleep rhythm. So are things that like, nobody talks about, unless like Hey look, little Tammy, like don't use your phone an hour before bed,

Craig: 19:57

That's because what Facebook, for example, in the social experiments, everybody's a Guinea pig.

Erin: 20:01

Yeah.

Blake: 20:02

right.

Craig: 20:03

claim they didn't anticipate or know that when they released their platform, that it would have negative impacts of depression and all sorts of stuff on kids and miners. And you're absolutely right. I mean back when I started my parents didn't really police it for TV back when I was growing up, I mean,. I remember watching all sorts of stuff.

Erin: 20:26

Well, and Craig, We're a similar ages. and I know I did not experience the internet for the first time until I was 15. And I was like, is crazy. I can talk to people all over the world, what is going on? And so, yeah, I mean, my parents didn't even know to monitor the internet

Craig: 20:44

well, they probably didn't know the capabilities of it.

Erin: 20:47

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I think that, yeah, that probably makes a difference.

Blake: 20:51

think nobody knew. Yeah. I mean, it's like the capabilities, like people just realized like how powerful this is like how you can connect people. And then, I mean essentially you're inviting intruders into your home now.

Erin: 21:08

Yeah.

Blake: 21:09

I mean, if you think about it from this perspective, like everybody who's got a computer now has like a gateway into their personal private and their home. Hackers can get in without having to have a key computers, people had to like physically break in. But now, mean, you have an access point for people with bad intentions.

Erin: 21:31

Yeah.

Blake: 21:32

But yeah, I mean, I just don't think anybody could have predicted and how can be so integrated with everything now. And especially like, I think about like IOT. I mean now everything is wifi connected, everything by cars, right? Cars have wifi hotspots. there's a bunch of other stupid things that wiper hotspots, but

Craig: 21:53

yeah, I think that's a good point. Like when I was growing up, when I first was tinkering with at that time bulletin board systems or BBSs it was all modem driven, right? So it was a one-on-one handshake connection now where in seconds connected to the worldwide web and in the reality is in seconds, you can connect to anything in the world that's connected to the same internet you are. And I don't think a lot of people stop and think about that for a minute of how easy it is for somebody hidden in the world that wants to do bad things that can be anonymous and unidentified connect to your system.

Blake: 22:40

think about everything, everything that you own, everything of importance is on your computer. what do you think is worse? getting your wallet stolen or getting your computer stolen? I think computer, not because of the cost, but because of the sensitivity and the information. It's like if you get your credit card, driver's license, whatever stolen, like you just cancel it you can go get another driver's license. But, if your computer gets stolen, like, and you've got thousands of files or terabytes or gigs or whatever whatever you got on there, your work stuff, your personal stuff. I mean, the scans maybe you've got scans for jobs or scans of your birth certificate or, I mean, it's all there.

Craig: 23:23

That's right.

Blake: 23:24

Everything's digital. So yeah, just my 2 cents, but it is scary to think about,

Erin: 23:30

It

Craig: 23:31

Absolutely.

Blake: 23:32

tell us about your growing up in computing. Aaron.

Erin: 23:35

Oh me. I mean, kind of, like I said I remember the first time I ever used the internet. I was I mean, I've used a computer, right? Like I actually in middle school, I'm such a nerd. I used to love wearing the world is Carmen San Diego. I lived out in the country.

Blake: 23:53

I played that all. Yeah, it's awesome.

Erin: 23:55

Like I couldn't like necessarily just go out and play. So I would play the computer. But I never, like, I wasn't like Craig and I would love to hear Craig talk about that a little bit more, but I wasn't like Craig, like I didn't take anything apart. I was really into books. I did enjoy some games. I mean, obviously I also played the original Oregon trail, so that was fun. We took computer classes I remember I took a typing class in high school, which I'm so thankful because my boyfriend love him to death. He's a pecker, pecks. And I just can't imagine working like that. You can't really efficiently

Blake: 24:37

No, this is so funny. Cause remember, so I remember like my growing up and computing experience obviously I grew up in, Pretty connected family. My mom had like a little VHS camcorder that we used to do like home movies on like Christmas and Thanksgiving, them yada, yada. I was skateboarding. So I used that camera to film skateboard videos. And then something got damaged or something got stuck in there. So I took it apart and put it back to you know, my mom like opened the door and saw the camera and like,

Erin: 25:11

A little Blake.

Blake: 25:12

yeah, like hundreds of parts or however many parts just scattered. I literally would put them in little segments and lay them out into kind of like a little mini diagram,

Erin: 25:20

Huh?

Blake: 25:21

Across my floor. So there's like no place that you could walk on the floor without stepping on camera parts. I think it was my mom. I was kind of using everybody else's computer Mike like I had friends who had like, w you started off with like a family computer. Like nobody had personal computers. It was like a family computer. And me and my brother would argue about like, whose time it was to like, get on the computer.

Erin: 25:47

Yes.

Blake: 25:48

and my mom had a computer in, my mom would S would sell stuff on eBay and like, she was huge on eBay. So she literally had this computer for just eBay, like just e-banking stuff. My mom was an epic eBayer. And yeah. Then of course at the same time would everything kind of went digital. And I started editing my skate videos on her computer and then eventually, I took a part-time job, so it wasn't much money as I could. I got my first computer and it was a, I think it was a I book an apple, I book G three,

Erin: 26:26

Okay.

Blake: 26:27

which at the time was. Maybe like five or$600, like six. I mean, I was like, like I'm saying amount of money to me.

Erin: 26:34

Yeah, that's a big purchase.

Blake: 26:36

yeah, no, I mean, I worked like three summers to get it. and then, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've been rocking it ever since.

Erin: 26:43

Nice. Yeah. So Craig used to take part computers, right? Because when you're talking about when you're lit or when you're talking about what to do with old computers, I just got a flashback or like a flash in my head of like little tiny Craig with the his mom's old computer, just like sitting around the living room in the eighties, like taking apart,

Craig: 27:06

yeah, so actually it's a funny story. So my sister was going to college and she gets this brand new Dell computer. And I think at the time it was like$3,800 or$4,000, like, so she like financed it. So it was super expensive.

Erin: 27:24

Wow.

Blake: 27:25

My God.

Craig: 27:27

and I get ahold of it and I take the damn thing apart.

Blake: 27:30

Oh God,

Craig: 27:32

So I have it all apart, all over the floor. And my sister's like, I am going to kill you.

Blake: 27:40

I'm surprised. She said, she's going to tell you.

Erin: 27:42

I know. And then just do it.

Craig: 27:44

I said the only killing back together and it doesn't work. I put it all back together and it of course worked fine, but I wanted to about it and figure out how it worked and everything. And after my parents saw that I was able to disassemble the whole damn thing and put it all back together,

Erin: 28:03

Maybe we should encourage this.

Craig: 28:05

yeah. They ended up buying a computer for the quote unquote family. And they kind of got ripped off. I mean, at the time there were a lot of companies that were building computers and like. Most people, I would think that don't know a lot about something it's easy for that to happen. I was grateful to have anything so I took that thing apart and

Erin: 28:30

This is how I show my gratitude.

Craig: 28:32

right. Yeah. And learned about how the video card and all the components worked and everything, and started upgrading the components to make it more powerful and do what I wanted it to do. And my drive at the time was really just to I liked video games at the time. So I actually started on a Commodore 64 that my brother had, that my family bought. and you literally had to type in like load quote and like commands to make the thing work. And it was a floppy disk type set up. I don't know if you remember floppy disks.

Erin: 29:03

Oh, yeah. not that much younger than

Blake: 29:05

I do too.

Craig: 29:07

So there were five and a quarter inch floppy disks. And yeah, if you didn't type the command the right way, it didn't load. And at that time there was just so many things that could go wrong. It was really rare actually for something not to go wrong and for things to just work. So this was like right around the time when Nintendo and Atari popular and honestly the edges of those console systems were really, it just works. You get the cartridge, you plug it in and it, you turn it on. And it works at least most of the time or more often than the computer, but the computer games at the time were different and they were more robust and they were more in depth than the cartridge systems, which is why I liked them better. that was my experience taking things apart and things back together then shortly after. My parents got that computer for me. And I started upgrading components. That's when I was like, okay, I know how to play pretty much, most video games, but you know how do I take this to the next level? And that's when I started learning about how to connect my computer to through a modem. And it was literally reliving the movie war games. I don't know if you ever saw war games, the movie, but it's great movie. So I learned how to use modem and I learned how to install the modem to my computer and connect the modem to my dad's fax line at the time. And literally took over his fax line and he, I remember many times he would be like, what the hell? Why is this thing busy all the time? I can't even send a damn fax!

Erin: 30:46

like, I don't I don't know Dad!,

Craig: 30:46

sorry, I'm just waiting for something to finish. He can't do it yet. And I was waiting at the time everything was all about what's called parody or little pieces to, to build up one thing. So what I mean by that is the modems were slow. Even the fastest ones at that time, were slow. So you had to break up games that were large into small pieces, and sometimes those pieces might be 2020 files to build up that one game. you would send the files in at the time, the size of a floppy disc was 720 kilobytes, and then high densities, 1.4, four megabytes. So sometimes the video game might be 15 or 20 megabytes, so you'd have to break it up accordingly. So anyway, it would take a really long time to, to transmit over a modem connection. Like. that's why the line was busy all the time. So would literally run this. I started at BBS and I started, I learned how to customize it and get it online and gave it a name and gave it started marketing it and people to trade games. And, yeah, it was just a whole like hidden underground that like, nobody, like your average person had no clue that it even existed. It was like the cool factor for that time period. Yeah. Cause you're talking about the eighties, right? Late eighties, early nineties.

Erin: 32:18

That was just saying, I remember the first time I was 15. The first time that I ever saw the internet. And yeah, like I was just, I was absolutely flabbergasted, but here's Craig over here. He's like this old news.

Craig: 32:33

So, what was cool was after I built the we're going off on a big tangent, but after I built the computer and started the BBS and things like that I started getting testers would send me like in beta format and I started to evaluate and games before they even hit the shelf. So I would have, I would literally have games three to six months before the public had them. And I would go to the, the time it was like electronics boutique, and I would go through electronics boutique and games were expensive still. It was like 60 bucks still for game on computer 50,$60. And I would literally go down the wall and I would have most of the games that were there. I would have had them for months.

Blake: 33:16

It's pretty awesome.

Craig: 33:18

Anyway, go it back in. My parents had no idea about any of this stuff. So it goes back to watching your kids or whatever, and not necessarily that it was a bad thing. I mean, it was a priceless experience to, to go through I encourage it for children now it just needs to be supervised.

Erin: 33:38

Yeah.

Craig: 33:39

because now

Erin: 33:41

changed.

Craig: 33:41

yeah. There's just a lot of different risks that didn't exist back then. So it's just a different period of time. So my point is that they have even cool stuff now, though, that you could do like if you're a technical parent, you can get a raspberry PI device and you can do experiments and you can get a book and do labs and different kinds of exercises with your truck, with your child or children. If they like that tinkering kind of stuff, So there's all different stuff that didn't exist that help kind of create that safe environment to do so. But my point is, now, if you unpolice a device and you just leave it, it's just just a lot of risks now you really need to have, training just really a prop or process that's best for your family on how to make sure that you're being safe online. I mean, like one of the things that, a lot of people don't know about, which would probably benefit a lot of our listeners is when you go to the internet, you're oftentimes leveraging a service called DNS or domain name system. Most people not going to remember the IP address to Google. You're going to type in Google and you're going to get there because your computer is going to use DNS to translate it into the IP address. And that's how humans surf the internet or. If you just change your routers DNS settings to quad nine, is really nine dot nine. And I know that's technical and it sounds super complicated, but it's really not that bad. If you go into your router settings and you change your, DNS address to four nines, nine dot nine dot 9, 9, 9, you immediately protect yourself and your kids all of your traffic is now routed through quad nines network and quad nine. If you just Google search quad, none. I think it's just quad type it out like Q U a D space nine. If you go there, you'll see that do a lot of filtering the DNS level and it's all for free. So quad nine.net is actually the, a website. So it's a public and free DNS service and it has security baked in it. It immediately protects you for malware and a lot of threats and things. So like right now I'm on their website it says a hundred a hundred million with an M our average daily blocks. So they're blocking a hundred million plus malware threats, 20 plus threat intelligence providers, 150 resolver clusters in 90 different countries. So if you just listen and you did this one thing, this one layer as we call it your onions, this is a huge layer to protect you and your family. But this is why it's so important do training, to stay on top of this stuff.

Erin: 36:32

Well,

Craig: 36:32

you can get your training at compliance, armor.com. It's inexpensive, but it's priceless because you learn about little things that can be done oftentimes for free. And it's just a couple settings changes and you're off to the races and you're, you have a much more secure experience.

Erin: 36:51

That's really good advice

Blake: 36:53

Yeah.

Craig: 36:54

Yup.

Erin: 36:55

and a great way to help protect your family.

Blake: 36:58

That's something too. Like I was just thinking about and we kind of obviously kind of showed our growing up in computers, so it felt like a tangent, but it really wasn't. In my opinion, and this is let me reel it back in here. But when we grew up in computers, it was exciting. It was an exciting place to be. It was an exciting space. It was exciting technology. It was emerging. And now it's just scary.

Erin: 37:25

Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good point. Like

Craig: 37:28

I think it's only scary to the people that,

Blake: 37:31

don't

Craig: 37:32

Are aware. I don't think, like if you ask your average kid, I don't do you think the internet scary? They'd probably say no

Erin: 37:39

right, just don't. They don't understand.

Craig: 37:41

That's right.

Blake: 37:42

they don't know, what can happen on the internet.

Erin: 37:45

Yeah. But you're right. I mean, it's a lot more and there's a lot more insidiousness

Blake: 37:49

I bet you, if you ask that one kid or maybe several kids that stumbled across a YouTube video.

Erin: 37:56

Oh yeah.

Blake: 37:57

That was supposed to be YouTube kids and saw something like slender man or something like he's, going to say yes,

Erin: 38:04

Not to make it dark or whatever, but did you hear there's like these middle school girls, they're like 12 or something

Blake: 38:11

I watched, I watched the film on that. Yeah. The documentary. Yeah.

Erin: 38:14

so terrible. that girl, she ended up dying.

Blake: 38:17

No, she didn't die.

Erin: 38:19

yeah, they like lured her for slender man or something like,

Blake: 38:23

Yeah. I mean, there we go. These two girls read about a story on the internet, in a dark place. And then they lured this girl out into the woods to try and kill her because the internet said, so,

Craig: 38:35

My gosh,

Erin: 38:37

yeah, this is a few years ago too.

Blake: 38:39

like six or seven years ago,

Erin: 38:41

It's just sad.

Craig: 38:42

like that stuff is just, sickening,

Erin: 38:45

It is.

Craig: 38:46

But it's also, a parent really difficult to track that, you literally would have to be doing active surveillance to know that and to be able to intercept like in LA, like your kid is probably not going to talk to you about all the stuff that they do on the internet. So now it's a question of, do you, and it's not an, I'm not saying that you shouldn't trust your kids. I'm just saying it's not really about that. Yeah. It's that you can't trust everyone else on the internet. So it's not my point though, is that there are technologies and there are solutions that we have experience with, to do the surveillance in a way where you would know about something like that. We're reliant upon the FBI and a lot of law enforcement to intercept these types of things. But I think we, as parents need to do more too, because if we are able to intercept something like that and then hand It to the authorities and say, look, we created a honeypot and they almost Lord my kid into this situation, go arrest him. That would, I think for society be a good thing.

Erin: 40:07

Yeah.

Blake: 40:08

Yeah.

Craig: 40:09

But I think most people wouldn't even know where to start with something like that.

Erin: 40:12

I wouldn't.

Blake: 40:13

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't either.

Craig: 40:15

I mean, there are, my point is that there are things like key loggers that we talk about. Keyloggers a lot obviously a lot of hackers, like key loggers, but key loggers can be a a you know, good to use because now you can track your child's text messages and things like that. You could consider getting a hardened device instead of giving your kid an iPhone. You can get them like they have new devices now where they're locked down, where they're not allowed to call anybody unless the parent puts the phone number in there and authorizes it. So there's like all these different things that you can do. As a parent to with this situation.

Erin: 40:53

think about it sometimes just how grateful I am that social media. Like I think my space came out when I was in my mid twenties. So in, in cell phones with with cameras, didn't come out until around that time to rose living in the Virgin islands at the time, like this is so cool. But imagining the pressure that kids must feel with social media and everything being able to be recorded. And, man, I'm just so glad. I'm so glad I missed that. And I don't have kids, but I do have nieces and nephews and just thinking about ways to keep them safe. It's a lot, it's a lot for parents. I imagine that's a real challenge and on a regular basis,

Craig: 41:37

Oh, absolutely.

Erin: 41:39

So are you, do you, what do you teach your kids about the internet Craig?

Craig: 41:43

Stay away from social media.

Blake: 41:46

I'm curious you've talked about some of our previous podcasts about like there your, how you limit your children to the devices that they can use and the frequency at what they can use that. So maybe you could

Craig: 41:59

Yeah, I think, I think, every situation is different. I think every parent and there's no necessarily right or wrong way to do it. It's really personal and individualized, but for me and my wife, I mean, we, we allow them screen time. we don't even allow it every day. Like, like on the weekends, we'll let them watch like a show on TV or something on their Kindle or on their iPad or whatever device. And it's usually no more than an hour. And that's it because I don't know if it I've heard other parents tell me similar things, but it when a kid plays a video game or watches a show, it actually changes their behavior. Depending on. what it is, it sometimes the brain releases dopamine and that affects their behavior. So like, for example, like if my, if I give my son 30 minutes or an hour to play a video game after he's done, first of all, he doesn't want to stop. So if I ask them, okay, your time's up? Nope. Just two more minutes. Just two more minutes. He doesn't want to stop, but it's almost like an addiction and then it's withdrawal because he's doesn't want to stop. And then he becomes angry. And he, his behavior is not. Good. Sometimes it's, he's angry because he has to get off. So my point is that we limit the amount of time now, like if we're doing like a road trip or something, we'll give them their Kindles or whatever, and they can use them in the car. And that'll be like the maximum screen time or altogether in the car kind of thing. But Yeah. we don't like every day, like they don't come home and play video games. We encourage them to go outside. We encourage them to play with their friends. We encourage them to go in the pool or whatever I mean, there's different things that they could be doing aside from sticking their phrase in front of a game. It's not that we're anti technology obviously or anti video games. But it really does. change their behavior They have friends that literally will just stay inside and play video games and we would just prefer them to be playing with friends outside like when I was growing up in and I took stuff apart and things like that, would still go outside. Like I wouldn't be locked in a cave, I mean I would like to go outside and play with my friends and play basketball or baseball, whatever it is. my point is I think the best advice I could say is try to make it as balanced as possible. And I know that with some parents that are working or working from home, or maybe single parents they kind of use the technology a bit like babysitter. And I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong. It's just that if you can balance it and, I think the end result would be better than with an unbalance..

Erin: 45:04

Yeah, that makes sense.

Blake: 45:05

Yeah, no, that's clear. And then one thing too, is teach your children about safety, obviously physical safety, I feel like the hunchback of Notre dam now,

Erin: 45:17

Oh yeah.

Blake: 45:19

something, take it from me, teach your kid about my parents said, Hey, like, don't sit too close to the TV. They used to say that, but I still did it anyways. They never stopped me from doing it. And now I wear glasses. Or, I've been working from my computer, a laptop and I I was like, oh it's a laptop is meant to be in my lap or it wasn't meant to be on a little table. And I'd be been bending over, like working from a laptop. And now like probably within five years, I'll probably have carpal tunnel or maybe I have to at least have surgery for it. Yeah. I think if I could leave our listeners with something, teach your children about posture the negative effects that these devices have. I mean, we don't even know yet. We don't even know. really don't know.

Erin: 46:00

The long-term effects that it could have.

Blake: 46:02

I mean, you're putting radio waves. I mean, like, if you're talking on a cell phone, like you're putting radio wastes your brain,

Craig: 46:07

it's all about balancing too, right?

Blake: 46:09

For sure.

Craig: 46:10

it's hard to say if that really caused you to have to get glasses, but obviously that it might not be in anyone's best interest to stare at a computer for eight hours straight you know, it might be a good idea to look away. What does that thing that you said before.

Blake: 46:27

20, 20,

Craig: 46:28

Yeah.

Blake: 46:29

every 20 minutes look, 20, feet for 20 seconds. I doctor taught me that.

Craig: 46:34

Yeah. Like I don't think I even do that consistently, but it's all about creating good habits

Blake: 46:40

Yeah. Or, obviously not using your computer and dark that's another one. And now I'm on the, I'm on the tip too. Cause I went to the doctor today, neurologist and he, it was like, dude, like, like what, like how old are you? you've got all the symptoms nine to five or on the computer and yeah, I mean, that's how I make a living. And that's how I provide for my family and provide for my dogs and whatever but anyways yeah, so I went based on a suggestion and you should never be using a laptop in your lap like that's the reason why they make the stance, so you're supposed to elevate your screen to your face level, to eye level not be looking down at it.

Erin: 47:20

Oh man.

Blake: 47:21

So yeah, I mean, I went on like an epic adventure here in Tbilisi trying to find a laptop holder and now I got on. and now I'm starting to get into the phase where like out order, like I'm like 144 degree, like ex like ergonomical keyboards, that kinda like they're tilted in 144 degrees. So that way, like it doesn't strain cause the street keyboards, like what you know, is not good. And then they've got the ergonomical, like mouses where you can your hand is sideways. So it's like, you're holding a cop or something or like a class. Instead of like the flat mouses, like whoever designed these, like didn't know, they didn't consider those things. The prolonged use right over the computer. And of course I've got a blue block of blue light blocker screen protector. All my computer. I got one on my phone now, like, so starting to get there.

Craig: 48:17

Back when I was growing up, it was CRT cathode, Ray tubes, right? Big TV, big kind of boxy monitors. And it was radiation it was like the, they literally would give off radiation. You had a try to pick a model that didn't give off too much radiation, but again all about how much time you spend in front of it. And I don't think anybody does it perfectly. It, my point is that, like you pointed out Blake you don't want to have a laptop in your lap for a long period of time. If you can. Is it, does it mean it, you can never use it on your lap? No, it's just not ideal for a health situation. It's you're, you have a warm to sometimes hot laptop device on that's really close to your skin and your body. You can get burned if something happens with the battery, which is most likely lithium ion, it could catch fire. And there's all sorts of Google stories online that you can with malfunctions of people getting burned and things like that. So same thing with your cell phone. You Don't want to keep your cell phone in your pocket for long periods of time, if it overheats or whatever the cell phone could explode and cause you physical harm so there's all these different things that can happen. I think as far as our podcast for today, I think that sure to track. know, take the parents take the training. Have your kids take the training. It's not a lot of time. I mean, we're talking about two hours of your time to get really good training compliance, armor.com and go through the testing. And then you get micro trainings every week and every month to keep you up to date and you and your children should go through it. That's like essential nowadays. Aside from that patches, update your systems, sure you're not wasting time and old outdated systems.

Erin: 50:07

Don't give your kids old computers unless they want to take it apart.

Craig: 50:11

yeah. And here's another thing too. Don't give your kids or don't give anyone your old computers or devices proper sanitization. And what I mean by that? You don't want to give your computer that you were maybe doing banking or financials on, and if you don't know how to properly sanitize it and format it and do all the work to prep it that's how people steal identity as well. They'll garage sale it or whatever. And so you need to make sure you remove the hard drive or you physically destroy it, or you pay for a certificate of destruction from a company that's well known and reputable that can give you the attestation that it has been properly destroyed. Personally, for me, I just ripped the hard drive out keep it

Blake: 50:54

Something I was just thinking about you and Aaron. Like if we wind back the clock and this is probably going to be counter intuitive to what how Craig got into cyber security, but if you see your child taking apart electronic device stop immediately. The reason why I say that is because there is, power supplies in there.. I was looking at one of the, I fix it tutorials for a Mac book and some of the Mac books have or some of the Mac computers, like the IMAX and stuff. Like they have like a 280 or something watt power supply or for 400 watt power supply inside of that computer. So

Erin: 51:28

Oh, wow.

Blake: 51:28

if if a child touches the wrong area, I mean, Hey, you're going to go to light city.

Erin: 51:34

yeah.

Blake: 51:35

obviously got lucky we're here. But I mean, just a disclaimer. So if you see your child taking it apart and an electronic device, not a good idea.

Craig: 51:45

not necessarily a bad idea. It just needs to be supervised.

Erin: 51:48

Make sure it's turned up.

Blake: 51:50

Let them take apart and let him, let them get a can of kit. Let him get a can a kit that doesn't have a power supply. And let them build a little, a raspberry PI there's safe ways to do it, but yeah. Yeah, you're right. So and then yeah, get monitoring software so you can see what's going on time usage and where they're visiting and where they're spending their time.

Craig: 52:10

I remember back I think it was like 20 years ago now when I got certified from Websense at Websense was technology was like brand new stuff back then. And it was surveillance technology for businesses to monitor their employees and make sure they weren't going to social media or whatever do online shopping. I think what it was 20 years ago, social media wasn't really a thing yet. So anyway we would install this stuff at, and oftentimes a lot of businesses, they would just install it just to kind of monitor and kind of see do we have a problem at our company or not? And it gives them that depth and visibility. And it's just so interesting that you can, the stuff like the people that you would think wouldn't really do that, that do it. And it's it's just an eyeopening experience. So that might be kind of a way to start with children. Like I said, it's not that you don't trust them. It's just that you want to protect them and keep them safe because the deck is pretty stacked for things that are bad to happen and how easy it is for something bad to happen.

Erin: 53:23

Yeah.

Craig: 53:24

So in my opinion, I don't think it's a bad idea to. Have technology like that to tell you what's happening, where people were going or where your kids are growing or whatever. But Yeah. I mean, it's different for everyone. It's a personal preference. It's it's balance it's there's a lot to it. It's but there are solutions like quad nine like I recommended earlier that are good solutions. Now you don't get any kind of granular control with quad nine, like quad nine is free. So if you want like granular control over, Hey, I don't want my kid to go to weapon websites, or I don't want my kids to go to the websites or whatever. You can get that granular control with different kinds of filtering technologies. but the free stuff is, it is what it is. You don't have any control for it, but it's better than nothing.

Blake: 54:13

Yeah we had a video too, or a podcast, sorry, where we mentioned encrypted DNS. And if you get encrypted DNS from us it was like the five cheapest things you can do to secure yourself today or something is around$120 an end point per year.

Erin: 54:31

Yeah,

Craig: 54:32

Yeah, it's very inexpensive.

Blake: 54:35

go to compliance, armor.com and choose how many end points you got. I mean,

Erin: 54:41

Boom.

Blake: 54:43

boom, 120 bucks a year. than your coffee.

Erin: 54:46

Yeah. That's true. Cheaper than your T

Blake: 54:52

That's right

Erin: 54:53

Turkish tea.

Blake: 54:54

guys. We've done our hour here, paid our dues for the day.

Erin: 54:59

Yeah that was good. And I think I think really informative and I think that could be really helpful for people and help to secure the younger generation. It's always a good thing.

Craig: 55:10

Yeah. And we just touched on the onion layers, but there's many more layers that could be done that these are just kind of easy tips. Some of them free that you could implement right away, but yeah, be sure to reach out to us and we can give you a more customized approach.

Erin: 55:24

If you have any questions hit us up, you can also email us. We do have a podcast@petronellatech.com email now, too. So feel free to use that you have any questions or give us a call and we'll we help be happy to help you out.

Blake: 55:41

We're here.

Erin: 55:42

We're all here because we're not all there. All right, Have a good one guys.

Craig: 55:49

Alright. Take care.