Dr. Eric Cole has spent decades learning, understanding and teaching people how to protect themselves and their loved ones from cyber threats. Today we talk about the apps that are more dangerous than others, how best to keep your children safe from online predators, why passwords are dead, and why social media will never fully protect our children.
00:00:00.000Considering how often we utilize technology, guys, we just don't spend nearly as much time as we should protecting ourselves and our loved ones against the inherent vulnerabilities and bad actors who would exploit the very tools designed to improve our lives.
00:00:14.720The fact of the matter is cyber security has become a huge issue and only to become more relevant as technology advances.
00:00:23.720My guest today, Dr. Eric Cole, has spent decades learning, understanding and teaching people how to protect themselves and their loved ones from cyber threats.
00:00:33.080Today, we talk about the apps that are more dangerous than others, how best to keep your children safe from online predators, what he calls cyber hygiene, why passwords are dead and what to do about it, and why social media will never fully protect our children.
00:00:48.560You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:00:54.680When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
00:00:58.740You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.
00:01:04.200This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:01:08.400At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:01:15.980Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. I am Ryan Michler.
00:02:42.960We talk a little bit about that in the conversation.
00:02:45.360He's a best-selling author, and he's got over three decades of experience in the field.
00:02:50.200He's advised Fortune 500 companies, different government agencies, the U.S. military on how to protect infrastructure and all of the digital assets these organizations have.
00:03:00.900He's also the founder of Secure Anchor Consulting, but he is on a mission to help organizations and individuals stay ahead of these cyber threats in an increasingly connected world.
00:03:13.280His insight and his energy and his real-world experience make him a leading voice, and you're going to hear that in the conversation today.
00:03:20.180He's also the author of Cyber Crisis, Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World.
00:03:38.060I don't know that I've ever had this conversation about specifically cybersecurity, but our motto, specifically as it relates to men, is to protect, provide, and preside.
00:03:47.440And I think a huge part of that is protecting ourselves and our families from the threats that come in the digital realm, which I believe will probably become more prevalent as we move forward than it's ever been in the history of mankind.
00:04:05.120It's crazy because what we do to protect our kids in the physical world, we are doing the complete opposite in cyberspace.
00:04:12.520I mean, I'll give you a quick example.
00:04:14.200If you're walking down the street with your kids, and some person is taking pictures of your kids or following you or, like, getting real close, you would, like, get in their face and be like, that's not cool.
00:04:28.860We take pictures of our kids, and we share them online with everyone.
00:04:33.740I mean, it's a horrific world on the internet that we live in.
00:04:38.500But these child predators, they're on Facebook, they're on Instagram, they're watching when you're on vacation, and you're posting pictures of your family and your kids, and they're using that to target and figure out what kids to go after and what kids to abduct.
00:04:52.420And the crazy thing is we would never, ever tolerate this in the real world.
00:04:56.780But for some reason in cyberspace, we're allowing ourselves and our family and our kids to be vulnerable.
00:05:02.840As men, it's time we've got to step up and protect our families online just like we do in the physical world.
00:05:08.500Well, it's interesting that we've placed so much trust in the internet, random people, random institutions that are quite literally, I think, preying upon our own personal information.
00:05:19.980In this case, digital assets like pictures of our family members.
00:05:23.380And even with social media, I've stopped posting pictures of my children for the past, it's been about almost three years now.
00:05:34.080And it's pretty scary how many people will put pictures of their young children, their young sons, their young daughters, just to be completely exposed.
00:05:42.460Is that information in those pictures, are those being exploited?
00:05:56.860The unfortunate reality is the people that don't think they're a target actually are.
00:06:03.140Because these attackers are smart and they're organized.
00:06:05.900The reality is why, if you're an attacker and you want to either abduct, exploit, or cause harm to either your kids or your spouse or your wife or significant other, whoever it is, why would they go after the rich and famous that actually have protection and security measures in place?
00:06:25.380They're going to go after the most vulnerable.
00:06:26.760They're going to go after the weakest folks, which unfortunately, and I hate to say this to a lot of men that are listening, but if we're not taking cybersecurity seriously and we're not actually monitoring and tracking what our kids are doing, limiting and controlling the photos, we are unfortunately are weak online.
00:06:42.760We may be strong men in the real world, but online we're very, very weak because we're letting our kids do these crazy things.
00:06:49.600And just another thing is you would not let some random stranger raise your kids, but go to a restaurant.
00:06:57.520Most parents, most dads are giving their two or three-year-old an iPad that basically all these games for kids, and it's horrific, and I'm working to try to get more laws in place to protect this, but these have ads.
00:07:12.100Every 30 to 40 seconds, there's ads playing.
00:07:18.900When I grew up, my kids, I would spend 30, 40, 50 minutes a day at the dinner table talking to them, engaging with them, raising them, and now what do we do at the dinner table?
00:07:28.900We give them an iPad and let some crazy random company raise our kids while we have adult conversations.
00:07:35.260How do you – obviously, I think that's a little bit more – it's not that it's not dangerous.
00:07:45.760I think there obviously is a danger in that, and I think most men are probably aware that they want to be engaged, but it seems like there's two different conversations happening.
00:07:55.600So there's the immediate danger of somebody either sexually exploiting our children or abducting our children, and then there's the long-term danger of grooming our children to believe, behave, and engage in behavior that is ultimately mentally and emotionally destructive to them for their long-term benefit.
00:08:42.560Well, I've even read statistics of child sex trafficking and how much more prevalent it is currently today than it's ever been in the history of humankind.
00:08:52.740I don't even know how that's possible.
00:08:54.040It's because, unfortunately, with the internet and how we operate and social media, where we make all of our accounts public, we're putting our kids and our information out there, and we're raising our kids that you can trust anybody online, that, unfortunately, it's so easy and simple to commit.
00:09:12.560And here's the unfortunate reality, and this breaks my heart to say it, but after it happens, the probability of you getting your child back is almost zero.
00:09:24.560But the good news is prevention is very easy.
00:09:28.960You have to basically focus on two things.
00:09:31.300One, stop making your social media public.
00:09:34.880The world should not see your personal life.
00:09:41.240If you want to share your pictures with 30 friends, go for it.
00:09:44.060But why are you letting the entire world – why are you letting your family be searchable by all these evil criminals that are out there that are targeting your family?
00:09:52.760And then the second thing is you have to pay much more attention to who your kids are following online.
00:09:58.680When I'm growing up, my parents met all my friends.
00:10:02.920If I was going to go in the car with somebody, they had to come in the house.
00:10:07.020My parents had to meet them and approve them.
00:10:12.420My question to you, to people that are listening, do you know everybody who your kids are focusing on and following on social media, on Snapchat, on all these different apps?
00:10:23.720I sat down – my kids are older, but I sat down with my daughter, and I just asked her, I'm like, how many people do you communicate with on a weekly basis on Snapchat?
00:10:47.920With AI and all these things out there, you don't know who your kids are following.
00:10:52.380They think it's another 19-year-old that has similar interests, but it could be some creep that's 40 or 50 years old that are targeting, monitoring, and tracking them.
00:11:02.640And they are very suspicious and sneaky on how they do this.
00:11:09.800They'll spend about three, four months to build up this rapport, and then the thing you have to watch out for as a man is if they're trying to meet up with them.
00:11:19.940So if your kids ever say, oh, I'm meeting somebody I met online, or I'm going to go have coffee, or, oh, they said they're going to be at the game, I want to say hi to them, every red flag should go up.
00:11:30.420You should start seeing red, and you need to stop and cut that down because the reality is if it's a real kid on there, they're never going to really want to meet up with it.
00:11:40.380It's these child predators that want to meet up, exploit, and examine.
00:11:44.400So you need to really track and monitor.
00:11:46.380If your kids are ever building a close relationship and giving out addresses or these people want to meet up with them, you've got to be super engaged and shut that down.
00:11:54.580Yeah, I saw a video several months ago of a grown man who showed up at a woman's house, and she had her daughter, and I think the daughter was playing on the trampoline or something, if I remember correctly, and he just showed up at the house as if everything was just okay and comfortable.
00:12:11.260Fortunately, the mom saw him pull up and questioned him, and he drove off.
00:12:36.800I could have a conversation about some random thought about going to Disneyland in the summer, and all of a sudden, I get a bunch of ads for Disneyland.
00:12:46.700So it's hard to believe that it's not listening.
00:12:49.000But it's so sophisticated, and it can create a very customized feed for you.
00:12:58.900But why can't social media apps seem to tamp some of this down and stomp a lot of this stuff out with fake accounts and predators and these sorts of things?
00:13:21.680And if they shut down those features, it would impact their finances.
00:13:25.780And because the public is ill-informed and we're not putting pressure on them or our lawmakers, we're allowing them to do that.
00:13:35.240So they could do it, but they're not because of the money and the billions and billions of dollars they're getting from sales.
00:13:42.980So this is where we need to sort of start stepping up, take matters into our own hands, and sort of start shutting it down.
00:13:49.260The good news is you can go in to most of these social media apps and turn on high levels of security.
00:13:56.360The good news is the security measures are there.
00:13:58.660You can go in to your kid's Snapchat or your kid's Instagram and turn on security where unless it's verified individuals, unless it's somebody who's had an account for more than two years, your kids won't be able to interact or follow them.
00:14:12.460So it will restrict who they can interact with.
00:14:15.080So those features are out there, but we have to turn them on by default.
00:14:21.220And that's one of the things I'm pushing is that there should be laws that any social media platform that allows kids to operate, which is every one of them, needs to have security turned on and need to have alerts and mechanisms to protect parents.
00:14:35.140I mean, it wouldn't be hard to do, but how good would it be if in social media, if you're under 18 and all of a sudden somebody is following your kids that is a suspicious person,
00:14:48.500you get an alert as a parent on your account and you get notified so you can then go in and take action to help them.
00:14:55.380I mean, that's not hard stuff to do, but the problem is because the internet came on so quick in social media, we forgot about security, we forgot about protection,
00:15:04.600and it's just setting us up for real danger over the next three to five years if we don't start correcting it.
00:15:10.540What would make – let's say that feature was available for parents, the suspicious person feature.
00:15:16.380What would social media be looking for that would make that individual – or that account, I should say, a suspicious account?
00:18:57.680And the reality is you don't, and our kids don't.
00:19:00.920And if you don't believe me, and I give this challenge to everyone listening, go in and take your child, however old they are, take their smartphone.
00:19:11.140If they have a smartphone, take it away from them for three days.
00:19:16.300And it was like you committed the worst crime on the century.
00:20:20.040Daily basis where kids are either bullied, abducted, kicked out of college.
00:20:27.440I mean, just anything that could ruin their life because we have not taken proactive action of limiting and controlling who they interact with.
00:20:36.040I would agree with everything you said.
00:21:38.580I mean, I remember running around the neighborhood on my bike looking for where all my buddy's bikes were on the front yard and that's where they were hanging out.
00:21:45.780I'd knock on the door and Mrs. Smith would answer the door and invite me in to play with Timmy and Tommy and Billy.
00:21:54.400I just don't want to get locked into the nostalgia over confronting and facing the reality that this is a new way of operating because of the technologies that are introduced.
00:22:05.480So I guess my question is, are there certain apps and programs or functions that are more dangerous than others that we ought to really pay attention to?
00:22:19.340Men, I'm going to step away from the conversation briefly.
00:22:21.880As many of you know, years ago, I went through a divorce.
00:22:25.580And as I talked about the struggles I had and the issues that existed in my marriage, I've talked with more and more men who are going through similar and even worse experiences.
00:22:33.840Some of these men are struggling so much that they found themselves overly anxious, obviously, but depressed and unfortunately, some of them even suicidal.
00:22:44.500And that's why I'm launching a program called Divorce, Not Death.
00:22:47.700Now, divorce is hard, but it doesn't have to be the end.
00:22:50.840So in this program, we're going to teach men how to handle their finances, how to deal with co-parenting, how to learn to emotionally regulate themselves.
00:22:58.960And even when the time comes, how to get back into the dating space when they're ready.
00:23:04.240Now, this program is not just launched yet, but it will be soon.
00:23:07.600So if you go to divorcenotdeath.com, you're going to be able to drop your email and get notified the second that we open this course up.
00:23:16.140You do not have to handle all of the challenge and the struggle and the BS of divorce alone.
00:23:21.440It's important for you to have the tools and resources you need.
00:23:24.780It's also very important for your children to have all the tools and resources that they need in order to navigate through this very difficult and challenging time.
00:23:34.180And also, banding with men who are in your shoes and those who are on the other side of it all is always a huge help as well.
00:25:47.840The other thing, though, is be careful of a lot of these random free apps because most people don't realize free is not free.
00:25:56.460When you're downloading a free app, most of them, in order to be free, you have to allow location tracking, access to your cameras, access to your microphones.
00:26:06.300And when was the last time, and this is an exercise I urge everyone to do, when was the last time you went into your smartphone or your kid's smartphone, went under security settings, and looked at location tracking, and look at all the apps that are tracking your location?
00:26:20.780My bet is you're not only going to be shocked and horrified, but I would say probably at least half the apps that are tracking your location, you don't need.
00:30:32.180But it seems like not only are you opening and subjecting yourself to dangers in the digital realm, but now we're talking about subjecting yourself in the physical realm.
00:30:40.720Because if I'm on vacation in Hawaii, for example, and I've got all of my family there and I'm posting in real time on my phone, then every bad actor knows Ryan's not at home.
00:30:51.680We'll just go ahead and go to his place, take whatever we want, break into his place, do what we need to do and, you know, be on with it without having to worry about him being around.
00:31:00.700What a lot of people don't realize, and you could check this, is most of us, like you said, before you go on vacation, have posted a picture at your house, right?
00:31:10.060It might have been of your dog or the kids playing out back or something.
00:31:13.760Well, all those photos that you take with your smartphones, by default, they have your location in there.
00:31:21.220So if you go to the metadata, you can find the address.
00:31:23.740So these attackers, you're right, are going in and they're looking for anybody that's saying, hey, just arrived at Dulles Airport, you know, and heading to Hawaii for two weeks.
00:31:35.400I'm going to find a picture that you took a month, two or three months earlier, and I'm going to look up what your home address is, and I'm now going to target you.
00:31:44.440There used to be a site, and it was taken down just because of so much public negativity, but there was technically nothing wrong with it.
00:31:53.620It was actually called pleaserobme.com, and what they would actually do is they scour social media.
00:31:59.960They find houses of people on vacation, and if you put in a zip code, it would give you a map of that area and show you not only every house that they're on vacation,
00:32:10.440but they would pull up the tax records because that's public information, and they would tell you the value of the house.
00:32:16.880So they would give you like $1 sign if it was $200, $2 signs if it was $500, and so basically anyone could go in and see the value of the house,
00:32:26.560basically the income of that individual, and whether they're in town or on vacation.
00:32:31.000And the scary, scary part is the current laws in the United States were one of the few countries that don't have unified federal laws on data privacy and cybersecurity,
00:32:46.160For me to go in, identify people that are on vacation and how much their houses are worth, believe it or not, in this country, it's not illegal.
00:32:54.060In Europe, in Australia, it's illegal, but the United States, because our laws are behind, there's nothing that's illegal about doing that.
00:33:05.320I don't know that our laws are behind.
00:33:07.120I mean, you can take something like the Patriot Act, for example, and the government's welcome to have whatever information they want from you,
00:33:13.420but that's not an issue, and everybody else then can have issued or access to it as well.
00:33:19.780That's one of the frustrating things to me.
00:33:22.580It seems like, though, when you would take a photo, let's say I took a photo of, I just mowed the lawn in front of my house, and I take a photo of it,
00:33:30.680that when I transferred over to Instagram or Facebook, for example, or Twitter or X, that in that transfer, some of that metadata would get lost.
00:33:42.180But you're saying it doesn't, is what I'm hearing you say.
00:33:45.500Right, depending on the settings on your phone and how you take it, in a lot of cases, it's not.
00:33:50.280It could be, and the good news is you can put a setting.
00:34:00.460But once again, these features are there, but they're turned off by default.
00:34:06.660Why are these social media vendors turning this on automatically?
00:34:09.620So the good news is you can take 20 seconds and go into your kids and your phone and turn off auto-location metadata on all photos, and then you're covered.
00:36:13.960Almost every one of these attacks where we're seeing cryptocurrency being wiped out.
00:36:17.940And I just had this this morning where somebody, a colleague of mine, recommended a friend in Dubai who had $4 million in their crypto wallet protected by a password wiped out overnight.
00:38:03.820So if you get a text or you get an email saying it's from the IRS and you need to go in, it's a scam 100%.
00:38:10.680So just awareness of how they work and how they operate.
00:38:13.940One of the other scams we just saw, it started early June, so it's been going for about a month now, is you actually get a phone call.
00:38:23.560And they spoofed the number of FBI headquarters, so you think you're getting a call from the FBI, and they basically say, listen, you're being criminally investigated for these different crimes, but we need to go in and verify and validate your information.
00:38:45.800And then we can clear your name right now if you can clear your name right now if you can do a five-minute interview with us.
00:38:51.760We just need to verify who you are, so can you give me your date of birth and your last four digits of your social security number?
00:38:58.100Where people panic, people freak out, you think you're being arrested by the FBI, and they don't use common sense and they give the info away.
00:39:05.500And then here's the crazy part, most of the people that fall for that, when they hang up the phone, within five minutes they go, oh, crap, I shouldn't have done that.
00:39:16.620And then they call me or somebody else and go, what do I do?
00:39:18.900And the problem is it's too little too late.
00:39:20.560So just recognize, the FBI is not going to call you.
00:39:24.120If they're going to arrest you, they're going to come to your house.
00:39:26.280So just be aware the government and these entities are not going to operate with texting, email, and phone calls.
00:39:36.300And like I said, never, ever, ever click on a link.
00:39:38.760If you do multi-factor, never click on a link and never accept phone calls from locations.
00:39:44.080That takes away most of the vectors so quick and so fast.
00:39:48.580What about some of these companies that offer online protection, insurances against your financial assets, the ability to protect and look up credit scores?
00:40:02.000I think one is called LifeLock is one of them I've heard.
00:40:24.240People die in automobiles with airbags all the time.
00:40:28.220Airbags are only going to keep you safe if you're a safe driver.
00:40:30.800So you could have the safest car on the planet.
00:40:34.440And if you drive 100 miles an hour into a brick wall, you're still going to get injured and hurt.
00:40:39.300So these services are good as an augmentation, but they can't replace bad behavior.
00:40:46.260So the thing I always get concerned with with some of these services out there is people like, oh, if I go in and I use a service that monitors and protects me, I don't have to worry about security.
00:41:02.000If you don't click on links, you remove apps, you're careful of what you do, then these can provide an additional layer of protection like an airbag, but they can't replace good user behavior.
00:41:30.400Like even with companies, like sometimes a bank will call and they'll say, hey, what's your – like they'll call me and ask for my information.
00:41:38.340And my response is, well, you called me.
00:41:49.240But I think, yeah, people for whatever reason – I guess it's not for whatever reason.
00:41:54.200We've just developed over the past quarter century now this unreasonable amount of trust in these little devices because we use them every day.
00:42:04.960So we think they're safe, but they're actually – they're not.
00:42:07.260They're the antithesis of it, I think.
00:42:11.080And it's one of those things where I joke, but like if we go back 15 years ago or 20 years ago and I told you, hey, Ryan, in the year 2025, we're going to have implanted devices in you that track your location.
00:42:27.460And we're going to have sort of a camera in your eye that records everything you do and monitors and tracks and listens in on your family and listens in on everything you say.
00:44:08.780My question is there's no coincidence.
00:44:10.880The only possible way that's happening if it's listening.
00:44:14.600So, yes, I can tell you firsthand that these devices are listening.
00:44:18.800I could also tell you because I do expert witness work in these high-profile cases.
00:44:23.900If you give me access to your phone, like during an investigation, I can go in and pull out all those recordings, all that information.
00:44:32.360I was actually in a trial last year where, craziest thing, but we convinced a judge to let Alexa testify.
00:44:39.400I was actually able to pull the records from their phone of Alexa that had all the recordings and all the tracking of what happened and basically showed what occurred and what crime committed.
00:44:50.540And the judge actually allowed us to play that in court and use that as evidence.
00:44:54.620So, it's a crazy world where your phone could be your greatest ally, your greatest enemy, and it's recording and tracking everything you're doing.
00:45:02.840So, if you want to have private conversations, technology should not be around you is what you're saying.
00:45:07.480I will tell you right now, when you go to government facilities and you're going in and having classified discussions, your cell phones stay on the outside.
00:45:20.000I will also tell you I work with big companies on acquisitions and mergers, and they essentially have rules that when you're going into the corporate conference room,
00:45:30.040the cell phones go outside in what we call a Faraday box, which basically stops and accesses any electronic communication.
00:45:37.480So, executives and the government understand this, and they don't allow phones in those locations, but we, for some reason, do that.
00:45:45.760So, if you want to have sensitive conversations or anything that's concerning, don't have your cell phone nearby.
00:45:51.720Yeah, I mean, I had the opportunity and privilege to be able to go to Andrew's Air Force Base years ago and actually go tour and see Air Force One.
00:46:02.500And that was, it was exactly what you're saying.
00:46:05.360The, they took, they, not only did they say, hand us your phone, so we handed our phones, they checked to make sure that our phones and our devices were not near us.
00:46:14.620And part of that was obviously taking pictures, but I imagine there's a lot of conversations that are taking place that should not be privy to anybody else or any other tech company that could otherwise have access to that information.
00:46:33.220Yeah, I, it's, it's pretty crazy to think about that.
00:46:36.060I think we've all kind of inherently maybe understood or thought that was the case, but to actually know that's the case.
00:46:42.000What, you, you were doing some work for the CIA, and I don't know if you still do work for the CIA, but it seems like, based on what I read and understood,
00:46:49.120part of your role was to act as one of these bad actors and basically hack your way into some of these databases and really try to break things digitally, if, if maybe there's a better way to say that, but that's what it seems like to me.
00:47:50.060The vulnerabilities and exposures we're seeing back in the 90s are the same things today.
00:47:55.880So, so, so once again, sort of instead of sort of doom and gloom, the one thing I can tell you is, if it's a system with functionality, I can get in.
00:48:05.180Because any system that has functionality is not secure.
00:48:08.960So there's always vulnerabilities and issues.
00:48:10.640The question is, what do you get access to?
00:48:13.200So, so a couple simple things is any of your electronic devices, whether it's laptops, cell phones, or iPhones, you got to update.
00:48:21.040Because when vulnerabilities are found on these devices, the vendors are really good at releasing patches and updates.
00:48:28.360But if you don't apply it, the attackers are going to break in.
00:48:31.620Most attackers break into your device by using a known exploit, which means if you just updated your software and updated your system, that would go a long way to protect and secure it.
00:48:43.020The next thing is, go in, and I know it's a little bit of an inconvenience, but at least once a year, you should rebuild your system.
00:48:53.720Like back your data up to the cloud, rebuild your system, because the probability that your device has malware on it over the course of 12 months is pretty high.
00:49:02.700And most of the time when we see information stolen or a tax compromise, they've been compromised for one to two years and didn't realize it.
00:49:10.600So if we just rebuild our devices periodically, that'll also go a long way.
00:49:15.600And then back to what you said, not only monitoring services, but these endpoint security products, whether it's, I mean, there's so many out there, whether it's Symantec, whether it's Sophos, whether it's CrowdStrike, but these endpoint security products, they're going to run you about $79 for all your devices.
00:49:33.240You need to install them on every device.
00:49:34.800So these endpoint security products are not perfect, but they will catch and stop a lot of the malware and a lot of the attacks out there.
00:49:41.940So any device, whether it's iPad, smartphone, laptop, go in and spend a small amount of money.
00:49:47.540It's the price of a couple cups of coffee or a couple of beers.
00:49:58.200Is that something that you recommend as well?
00:50:00.160Because the way I understand it is that these internet service providers essentially are collecting your data, your search history, just like we were talking about with these smartphones and tech recording conversations.
00:50:12.780But VPNs seem to encrypt that data or not even store it, if I understand correctly.
00:51:54.600So a lot of these companies, I'm doing beta testing.
00:51:57.340So for some of the new smartphones and new iPads, I actually get them before they're publicly released and do security checking, pen testing, and help these companies protect and secure it.
00:52:07.280But I will never use it in my personal life until it's been out for 12 months.
00:52:11.260And the reason is tech is rolling out so quick.
00:52:15.660The way these companies are doing it is they used to do testing in-house.
00:52:19.620And then what they released to the public was very well tested.
00:52:23.120Now they do partial testing and they use the public to test it.
00:52:27.360So most of the vulnerabilities and most of the exposures in this new tech are found within the first 12 months.
00:52:34.160So if you're using brand new tech, the probability of having exposure points and compromise is super high.
00:52:40.520I typically wait about a year, year and a half, and then I upgrade.
00:52:44.860I recommend don't go in more than two years because the problem is tech that's older than two or three years is a low priority to the vendor.
00:55:07.260It can't have this conversation where we're sort of connecting at, I mean, a human level because it's not human.
00:55:13.020So if we go in and allow ourselves to talk to AI and replace of a human, it could actually take over our lives and make us irrelevant.
00:55:22.920But if we don't accept that and say, hey, I'm going to use AI as a tool but not as a replacement, then we're actually going to be okay with that.
00:55:29.060And you're right, the stuff that AI can do, I mean, it shocked me because I sort of knew about it, but I don't play that much in that space as these self-driving cars.
00:55:57.560So it's one of those where that's an example where me and my son could have meaningful conversation because he was watching the road, but it took care of most of the normal safety features.
00:56:08.160So to me, that's a tool that helps us.
00:56:09.960But now if I go in and I use that self-driving car to drive me and without my son because I don't need him anymore to drive me, then that all of a sudden replaces humans and puts us in a dangerous spot.
00:56:21.680So we just need to recognize it's a tool.
00:56:23.780We can't allow it to replace human interaction.
00:56:52.080I've heard things like we're the most connected that we've ever been across the globe, but we can't connect with somebody across the dinner table.
00:57:00.900And that's a real worry that I have with new technology, even though I use it every day and it's wonderful.
00:57:06.100And it's part of the reason that you and I can have a conversation like this that we would not have been able to have 25, 30 years ago.
00:57:15.400Well, Eric, this has been fascinating.
00:57:16.900I know there's a lot more to delve into and you've got a lot of information.
00:57:19.980You've been in the game for decades at this point.
00:57:21.740Where do the guys go to connect with you, to learn more about what you're doing?
00:57:25.540My biggest concern is that there's so much information and so much to be aware of that people tend to, when confronted with too much information, tend to not do anything.
00:57:36.960And that's one of my biggest concerns for myself and for other people, too.
00:57:39.960And that's my whole philosophy is, I mean, I'm a tech guy and it's one of those, I mean, I could sit there and give thousands of things, but it's all about small bite-sized things.
00:57:52.100Like, focus on for the next two weeks, switching all your accounts from passwords to MFA.
00:57:57.200Okay, then, just as a daily practice, delete one app.
00:58:01.040Then go in and don't click on any links.
00:58:05.460And what I tell everyone is, you'll spend three hours a night, and I have nothing against it, watching Netflix and been watching, but you won't spend 10 minutes a night focusing on protecting you and your kids.
00:58:15.960So, I'm not saying you need to go in and get a master's degree or spend 20 hours, but what if you just spent 15 minutes a day?
00:58:22.620Watch one less episode on Netflix and spend 15, 20 minutes on just checking with your kids, checking their phones, checking your devices?
00:58:30.200It's small little steps that make the big difference.
00:58:33.380And I know a lot of folks, when they come on different podcasts, they love selling or pushing things.
00:58:38.780The thing I ask is, I'm on a mission to secure cyberspace.
00:58:42.140I just want you to follow me and share the message with other people.
00:58:44.760So, D-R-E-R-I-C-C-O-L-E, Dr. Eric Cole.