Sign Maine Banking Work Order Secure

Industry sign banking maine work order secure

uh we're gonna get started i know i saw a couple notes in the chat we might be i'm hoping to be done before three so let's see what we can do here uh so i'd like to uh just briefly give a little introduction on myself i'm a spdc advisor from up in aroosto county i uh i was born in daytona beach florida i was raised in the uh on the border of canada up uh up up far north i'm a former i.t professional i worked in software development specifically arts and video game development i have an mba from huston university software development was nice but it was uh it was definitely not my passion as much as business i'll turn it over to jared hi everybody my name is jared tapley uh also from the county uh born right in holton maine and that's where i currently live i just got hired on a couple months ago as a spdc business advisor at nmdc it's been great so far working with a lot of great people and i have a minor background in it work i'm also a guardsman with the main air national guard in bangor and i work there as an i.t professional as well very cool okay so um just want to give a little bit of some basics on this this is this is going to be a crash course safety tips for remote work operating online basically the the basics if there's questions that are specific we can save those for afterwards we're trying to make sure that we can get the the basics through the the most information through and and the shortest time possible on this we're going to give a small overview of some similar attacks that have happened in maine let you know what that's looking like what the what the trends are and we kind of try to give you some free and cost effective options that'll keep you safe to make sure that you're able to stay cyber secure but also not break the bank at the same time and uh this course isn't meant to be as a you know a professional consulting course it's just very basic like brandon said just little tips uh advice um anything with any major concerns you may have for your business definitely reach out to a qualified uh cyber security consultant um for more information on cyber attacks okay so we're gonna get we're gonna start off with uh with ransom attacks um ransom attacks are becoming uh more prominent uh especially here in maine we'll get to that towards the end um but essentially they're they're caused by clicking something an unsafe link opening a malicious file um one thing that's interesting about ransom attacks is that there's two versions of them that i like to look at one is a website spoof and this is fake uh this is a total fake website um but this is a virus screen um you'll go to a website this will pop up it'll say that you know your files have been encrypted your computer is encrypted um they'll threaten usually something along the terms of we're going to delete your files um you have to get us x number of bitcoins or or something um this is again is fake but this is typically what you're going to be looking at on the other side um when these happen essentially all they are it's a website spoof uh it's fixed by simply resetting your computer you can get out of the website click out usually some browsers have protection already inside them you know chrome edge most of them will protect against these they'll say it's a malicious website are you sure you want to continue um and then there's other ones that are a little bit more concerning and these are the the embed um it's a ransom attack that kind of locks itself to your computer uh it's stuck on your computer it is demanding fi uh demanding bitcoins money gift cards and if you don't produce any of those it will threaten and sometimes it will wipe your hard drive um your computer files any of that clean um there's a couple of ways you can prevent these um there's email servers with active threat monitoring um these are sometimes like office 365 can provide these some email suites are able to provide them the idea of active threat monitoring is to catch something that has maybe a potentially threatening file threatening link to catch it to put in your junk mail to put in your spam mail um or or in extreme cases block it completely from from reaching your inbox um it's always good to update your browser it's always great to update your your operating system um there's only been a couple of times over the past few years where an update actually was was bad um it rolled back some protections most of the time when you update your your uh your browser your operating system you're you're bringing on new security patches that come along with it most of the time they're professionals that take care of all the cyber security work for you all you need to do is just update your browser update your operating system and you're able to get a lot of that security just by default and very simple utilize your antivirus software get your firewalls you know up to date everything all set there we've actually got another piece of software that people don't really think about as much that's going to be coming up but an antivirus and a firewall is always a great start and i will turn the next one over to jared um so when you're creating a password for you know any kind of user account whether it be your net your wireless network or an account you know paypal or something like that it's really important to make sure that your password is complex as it can be while also being able to remember that password um it's not really good i know a lot of people do it and it's not really good practice to write your passwords down or keep them stored on any files or anything on your computer because if someone can gain access into your network it's very possible that they would be able to look through such documents on your computer and see what passwords you have to different sites [Music] back to the complexity thing the more complex your password is the more difficult it could be for someone who's trying to hack one of your accounts to figure out what that password may be um just basically on the amount of time it takes you know the more complex the more time it's going to take them to try to crack that and it's also good practice to make sure that your password is somewhat random you know don't be using things like maiden names streets you grew up on your favorite pet's name just something that would be difficult to figure out and something that's unique that you would remember and when possible make sure you use two-factor authentication um that way that you can sort of verify that you are who you are trying to access your accounts yeah one of the one of the interesting parts of two-factor authentication it's become a little bit more prevalent in the past couple of years it's just this idea you know you'll take your phone you'll you'll end up downloading an application and on that phone there's going to be a second key and that key will allow you to log into a website essentially it's just another way of saying just because someone has your password they can't they can't log into your account without also having your phone there's there's ways to bypass this and it's very difficult and if someone wants to get into your account if you're very very popular they'll find a way in but this is a great deterrent to try and hold someone back okay uh one of the one of the new things that's that's hitting um spoofing it's it's gotten it's got a little bit more or technologically sound over the past couple of years it's essentially emails websites there appearing to be something that they're not we're seeing them a lot more now with remote work i actually share one that i received up here in the the top left our executive director our executive director sent me an email um there was a much longer email chain but essentially they ended up asking me to buy them gift cards and don't come down to my office because i'm very busy right now could you just buy the gift card scratch them off and send them to me so one of the ways you can find out that you're being spoofed uh there's a fake email the email is not gonna be the same person that you you speak with this is the dead giveaway this is usually the first line of defense but there's some ways to fake that um it'll be sent during strange hours you know my boss it's it he's not going to be up at 5 30 asking me to go buy him google play gift cards um usually there's going to be some poor grammar in there it's it's usually these scams are done by people who english is not their first language and sometimes there's enough salutation uh i can't get away with calling my boss robert his name is bob so there's little there's little tells in these emails usually if it's someone you trust you're going to catch it right away but if you can't uh usually the dead giveaway is the email but there are ways that they can spoof that so make sure whenever you get something suspicious like this call them give give whoever call ask them you know did you ask this it's a little abnormal and if they say yes well so it's a little harder to fake the phone call than it is the email um so again they're easy to fall for but they're simple to spot um it'll scam the user into buying gift cards bitcoins some kind of outside currency usually untraceable currency they're not going to ask you to send a check rarely are they ever going to ask for something to do with credit cards um they want something that they can take from you and you you have no recourse to get back and that's why they usually stick with the bitcoins or the gift cards um and again we're seeing people with microsoft the irs the you know your bank and again these are these are fake they'll say you owe us money you owe us this you need to pay this bill they're not going to email or call you and ask you for personal information they're definitely not going to ask you for your credit card over email whenever you're in doubt it's better to just give them a call call the official microsoft support lines the official irs support whenever you're in doubt do not answer the emails we're seeing these now with websites you know you can usually tell with a shady link if you were at the nmdc website it's going to be nmdc.org you know there's ways to look in the top to make sure that you're actually where you you think you are um sometimes too good to be true headlines that that helps too you know we're not i'm sorry guys i'm sorry to get everyone's hopes up we're not giving away free ponies today this was unfortunately a fake news article over to you jared all right so for your small business um any information that you may have about clients or about products you're selling or services you provide or just general information about your business it's very important to have offline backups of that information that's on your network in the event of a hacker or someone getting in to your network and being able to see this information or like brandon was showing in the ransom attack if they actually do encrypt this information and you're no longer able to access it you'll have these offline backups and sometimes you can even use the third-party uh cloud backups which is another secure way of keeping your information not um it's still on your network but you know it's kind of like a duplicate that way you can still use that information and have it in the event of something catastrophic happening with your data and it's important as a small business you should definitely have a data breach plan in place that you know the you know everyone in the company knows even to the lowest level employee that way you kind of know what to do in the event of an attack like that um and sometimes it's not even a person who is trying to get this information i mean some hardware can be faulty itself and it's always good best practice to have a backup for your data in the event of something happening as we're seeing more more businesses trying to operate online they're going through the idea of how am i going to accept payments online i try to simplify this rate down right down to bare bones utilize a third party online payment processor someone who is going to have experience in this they're hosting all the information on their servers these multi-million dollar companies they're very secure they're much more secure than anything that you're going to be able to pull out without putting a lot of money into it i name off a couple of options but again you go with whoever you feel is reputable i know vista offers their own um offerings you know ebay is going down their own roads we've got square etsy stripe paypal some of these will plug into your phone um most of them will encrypt which basically means it jumbles up the information that's that's being transmitted credit card number goes in it comes out as is little hashes basically um encrypted bytes of information that are very hard to decrypt um it's something that the average you know small business is gonna gonna kind of have a hard time with um i've seen this unfortunately and that's why i bring it up don't ask customers to manually send their credit card information their checking information don't use like an online contact me portal if you wanna bypass fees um the the fees are there unfortunately some of them can get a little bit steep but it protects you quite a bit and the event of data breaches it never goes back on you it's going to be on the payment processor because you're as hands-off as hands-off can get you know if you're going to end up taking credit cards checking information just do it through your storefront do it in person do it through your current payment processing portal that you already have in place but don't ask people to transmit that information online you kind of open yourself up to some liability in the event that breach happens and your information you explicitly ask someone to send that under your watch whenever you're purchasing from new vendors you use this unrecognized payment portal something feels shady something feels off i tell people use these virtual one-time credit cards we're seeing them discover offers um chase offers them we're seeing these these new options pop up so that you can just use a one-time credit card buy what you need that credit card's poof it's gone um it helps a lot it protects you and makes it so in the event that the business was fraudulent not only is the transaction refunded to you but you won't have additional charges on top of that this is especially good for businesses that run with debit cards you can get a one-time use virtual card that essentially acts as a as a gift card uh but still has the built-in fraud protections that you know any visa or mastercard would have um so another thing to consider when uh thinking about cyber security measures is also the physical physical security aspect of it um you want to keep devices and things that have sensitive information as protected as possible uh keeping them in locked filing cabinets as applicable uh usbs with sensitive information uh cd drives if you have you know if you're a large enough company to the point where you have a server room you definitely want to have some logs whether they're electronic or just paper logs written out of who is coming and going from the room you just want to try to maintain as much accountability for the devices that you do have and who it within the company is using them and just making sure that the person that is you know trying to you know needs it for a specific thing is actually does need it for in order to do their job you don't want to have unnecessary use of devices if it's not something that someone needs to do and it also if you can whenever applicable use passwords pins for room entry uh used to switch for instance or for even your router most routers actually in fact all routers come with a some sort of password configuration um tying back in with the passwords you know just make sure it's complex it's not written down somewhere that anyone could just find and use it's just given out to those employees who would need to use it at that specific time uh so the third piece of software that we uh that i suggest is is a vpn um they're becoming more popular it's a virtual private network i like to look at is this body double it's a body double for your internet connection the attack s going to target that vpn rather than your network it's basically going back to the spoof terminology it's spoofing is your network it allows it so your browsing is is basically protected it's a layer of protection so if someone attacks your network it's not going to hit you used to be connected to negative behavior they're trying to remove that negative connotation to what a vpn is kind of a must-have now to prevent browsing history data from being intercepted i mean whenever you're on a public network a vpn is is kind of becoming the norm it offers a layer of protection that usually coincides with a firewall you should use them hand-in-hand they're affordable that's what i like the most about a vpn is actually it can be a little bit more affordable than an antivirus or firewalls you can see them for ten dollars a month i'm on a plan right now that's actually two dollars a month because i locked in and paid it two years ahead um there's a lot of great options on the internet i ask people to do their own digging but usually once you find a good vpn a lot of them run on kind of similar architecture um what what happens is the the main worry with vpn is ensuring that it's constantly on and it's it's reliably fast um a vpn can slow down your your connection sometimes so it's important to pick a vpn that's fast and it's important to pick one that is going to be consistently online um they're simple they it makes it so it's you know in the case of anyone that i know it's it's dummy proof you know you one click to pick what country you want to be based out of for your vpn the other click is going to connect it that's it for the most part a vpn is a two-click solution it's on it's done and uh continuing with the vpns um if you're ever using uh i mean in this well before the whole cover thing people were traveling around a lot working mostly off their laptops or cell phones and a lot of times you're in coffee shops or just business areas in general using public wi-fi stuff that's not password protected you definitely want to be very wary of these situations as people can see the network activity that is being done over public unsecured networks and nine times out of ten they will be able to see any transactions you may be doing they may be able to key log your passwords so i definitely recommend if you can get a vpn uh use it anytime that you're trying to log in to like a coffee shop wi-fi or if you're traveling at a hotel um even though it may be a little bit more secure it's always good to have that extra line of protection just to be safe for your home networks or even for your small business networks i recommend anytime you get a new system set up your router especially it's going to come with a sticker on the back it's going to have a password and a admin login for your network it's always good to go in there and change the ssid name for your company that way it's not just like the regular out of the box uh my spectrum or um some kind of generic name and that way it's shows to anyone who can see the networks that you do have access to it you're able to change the default password and that the network is somewhat protected it's not just you know this is out of the box we can probably use general admin credentials to log into it um it's gonna you know probably be a little bit more difficult to access their information so it's a small deterrent it doesn't always deter more advanced people but it still is something [Music] and yeah just always use extreme caution your browsing on any unsecured networks be very cognizant of the links that you're clicking on especially in emails or anything like that you can highlight the hyperlinks if anyone sends them to you in email and just paste them in a browser to see exactly where this link is going to take you instead of just clicking a link that looks like one thing but really the code line is something different so just always be very cognizant of what you're seeing in emails links files and like brandon said verify where the information is coming from what address is being used so let's go a little bit in the software so again there's kind of two types that i look at um one is the antivirus anti-malware um lately i've been seeing a lot more doing it all in one package we're seeing it through norton we're seeing it through avast um they're they're kind of an all-in-one package where it's your antivirus your mal your anti-malware and sometimes even a firewall so i look at the difference between an anti-virus as the software to stop an active threat something that's that's currently happening so i look as a medication and the difference between that and a firewall is a firewall is this software that will prevent a threat from occurring so consider ppe in an environment like we're in right now something that prevents it from occurring in the first place when it comes to antivirus we've been hearing and again this is this is very interesting to me being a former rit professional but we're hearing that windows defender is actually it's getting better um windows defender is actually a pretty good antivirus in itself if you're doing anything larger scale we always say go with someone bigger there's there's so many options out there norton avast they all change sometimes one gets better than the other really changes on how often they update their virus definitions so what's good this year could be drastically different a few years down the road normally with windows defender we say it needs a companion for anti-malware it doesn't stop malware very well the difference between i guess viruses and malware malware is more of that that ransomware malicious kind of intense software and just because you browse safely don't assume you're going to not encounter any threats essentially it doesn't matter how safe you are it's going to happen to someone that at really any time um with the firewall windows firewall is usually okay firewalls can get a little expensive they can get a little cumbersome when you open up files your your firewall may block them it's it's important to pick a firewall if you're going to end up going third party beyond windows firewall to turn off your windows firewall so they don't counteract with each other um i usually tell people windows firewall wirel sorry firewall is okay when it's paired with a vpn uh that virtual private network but when it comes to your emails you should have a third-party firewall that's going to be through your email server maybe an email security suite most of the business you're going to do and a lot of the the malicious files you're going to get are going to be transmitted via email ensure that those emails are protected with some kind of firewall directly through the the email server that you work with whether that's office 365 the google suite people on older email servers i'm thinking those who are still on belt south net zero maybe even aol be cautious be cognizant of the lack of security features that are on those email servers and if you're going to continue using those email servers um just ensure that you're you're putting an additional level of scrutiny every time someone sends you a link or or a file and so here's a couple of uh attacks that have happened over the past couple of years we had a hundred thousand dollars that was demanded from the city of augusta in 2019 they thankfully never paid it northern light health the hospital chain they had a breach in 2020 very recently i believe it was august about 657 000 people were impacted by that we don't know what the legal consequences are going to be of that we don't know how much information that could be hipaa protected could be released because of that there were actually two attacks in holt maine both in 2019 and 2015. locally momentum aroustic lost an organization that i work with that works with um young professionals uh their account was hacked in 2020 um they started selling natural korean herbal cures um so there were a lot of spam ads on that facebook account and unfortunately um facebook support were not able to assist them in time uh that account is now lost they lost about 882 facebook followers um and it would it would be a shame if that happened to small businesses as well four main police departments collectively lost about 385 dollars they use the same server in 2015 so when you think that you know cyber security hackers can't can't get um too cocky for their own good they'll go after anyone ms-86 suffered a ransomware attack in 2019. i guess the point of this is that these are these are typically organizations with their own dedicated i.t teams maybe they have third party contractors it's it's basically no matter how protected you think you are you can fall victim if you don't know the bare bones basics of and sometimes it it hurts to hear it over and over don't click malicious links watch what websites you're on make sure the link on top matches where you think you are because again even some of the biggest agencies the highest municipal governments are being hit so it's important to use that additional level of scrutiny all right and here's just a list of some additional resources the sands institute is a great place for free cyber security resources training programs and webinars if you go to cnet they'll show you some unbiased ratings for antivirus systems any malware and vpns and then of course you have the fcc which is a government agency offering tips for alternative cyber security concerns and uh so for anyone who is looking to to visit any of these websites i don't know yet if we're going to be sending out the presentation after but if we are i believe we're going to be recording and uploading it so these resources will be available i will see to it that i can put them in the chat yeah i'll send them out um as part of this the follow-up very cool okay um so we are gonna we're gonna start wrapping up a little bit um since some of you might have questions that go beyond this we've been doing something a little different we've been partnering with the agencies in southern maine i know that we have people from york all the way up north in aroostook county so we're we've got a big spread of people um this basically means that when you request advising you likely won't be getting jared or i as an advisor but you'll be getting another awesome absolutely incredible sbdc advisor to help you um but if you ever need our expertise for anything we do great co-advising sessions with all of our partner advisors if you're interested in some free confidential business advising you can get connected with us today you visit mainspdc.org click that perfect orange button right there the request advising it's going to be the same either on on pc or on mobile um they're going to ask you a couple of questions but as long as you get those into us we'll connect you with with someone for uh for your region it's each advisor serves a different region and if you are if you're looking to contact us you can reach us at either of those emails either at b mcdonald nmdc.org or jay tapley at nmdc.org and we are closing up now we're going to be open to some questions that you'll have i see a couple in chat now please feel free to leave them in the chat feel free to shoot over emails if you'd rather shoot over an email we will answer as many as we can okay so let's get started um do you have a firewall recommendation for mac environment uh sheer honesty i i never worked a lot with mac computers um again i would visit cnet cnet does a lot of work with with antivirus software uh vpns um they're gonna probably recommend them they're pretty honest they'll say that they get a cut of anything that they link you to but they give the pros and cons they will tell you flat out that something isn't good for that environment um i i would definitely visit a couple of unbiased websites don't go to the first you know firewall comma mac you're going to get whatever google ads is going to recommend you first so make sure you do a little bit of research to make sure that it's going to fit your needs do you have a recommendation for vpn for traveling um i can i can tell you that my personal favorite vpn and the one that i've used is is nordvpn i tell people go with whatever works the best we're usually supposed to recommend things in threes that's really the only vpn i've ever known but again i tell everyone go go to an unbiased website something that's going to give you the best ratings something that specifically is going to be able to be used on your phone make sure it has a good mobile app um if it has a good mobile app you can be you know assure that's gonna work well on your phone it'll work great on a laptop um traveling really really a lot of vpns are going to offer the similar layer of protection at the end of the day it's about whatever one you feel most safe with um let me see here can you elaborate or give an example on how vpn is used yeah um so i try to i try to call it a body double but it can get a little little more complicated than that so essentially um you know traffic is routed on a website there's information that's going to be transferred between your computer and the website a vpn is this little little guy that sits in the middle and essentially what happens is is he's going to make sure that whenever traffic is sent through to your computer they see him they're not going to see you on the other side so they're going to see the connection is based in if i wanted to say it was based in europe all of a sudden you know myself brandon mcdonald is is based in europe they're not going to see that i'm based in caribou maine they're not going to see my ip address they're not going to see a lot of my sensitive information it's basically just making it look like i'm browsing from somewhere that i really am not and it'll hide some of my browsing information it'll make it so it's it's a little more difficult to to pull some of my data some of my browsing habits it just really acts as this intermediary to hide who i actually am and at one point in time that was that was pretty pretty rough it was something that nobody really wanted but in an era that we are right now um where it's actually better to be a little more anonymous on the internet to protect yourself so there's a little bit of talk about passwords and i i had a question about what do you guys think about password managers someone had said you know maybe don't no don't keep your you know your passwords on in a physical not a physical um electronic file because you could lose that um if you were to lose your hardware um and they'd recommend putting their passwords in a paper journal but i had always heard about password managers and i have not explored those thoughts they've been they've been around for a long time um so there was a point in time and i'm going back to like old limewire days when limewire came with like a download manager and a password manager and they were so shady um nowadays you're seeing password managers being made by kind of more reputable outlets if you can get something made by an outlet that already specializes in some kind of cyber security archetype whether that's you know anti-virus that you trust malware that anti-malware that you trust i don't i don't like it i don't use it i don't personally like the idea because at the end of the day in the event that that password manager is compromised while most of them will store it in hashes we've been seeing that hashes are frequently being broken into you know passwords that are stored as hashes and are captured people are able to decrypt them you can decrypt i mean almost anything with enough time and enough um i guess enough desire to do it um i i know people use password managers i leave it up to them on what they choose to do something i would never do but at the same time i guess if you're if you're prone to constantly losing your password and that's really the only option for you other than you know a physical journal maybe it's better than the physical journal but it really depends on what you have on your on your computer what you're storing okay um would you regard that any sensitive local files are safe if they are encrypted via winzip and for those on dropbox via third-party encryption like crypt mater this is above my that's all you guys yeah um jared i'm taking all these you want to you want to take one do you feel comfortable yeah i might have to read this one over just real quick hold on would you well i'd probably start off by saying nothing is really a hundred percent safe i mean although encryption is the most effective way to you know hide not necessarily hide but you know literally encrypt your information that way it can't be viewed by everyone as it's passing along you know the network um um i mean there they are effective ways dropbox and winzip but like i said nothing in this world is perfect and that it is extended into the cyber security world as well yeah there it essentially whenever you encrypt something there's a way to go backwards and decrypt it um it's it's difficult it's much it's much more difficult to decrypt something than encrypt it um but it's possible um it really depends what you're storing if you're storing something very sensitive trade secrets pat you know something that's very valuable um that's that's there's a different level of security that needs to be assessed with that sometimes you need to go with a third-party hosting platform all together get it off your own servers um keep it with someone who's a professional and understands this inside and out um if it's something very valuable to you encrypting usually usually just one step of many so it just sounds like we need to so i'm learning a lot too we need to take measures to make it more difficult that's the biggest goal right to make it more difficult for these people or machines to get to us in our data is that essentially the bottom line yeah yeah essentially um and i wish i wish i ended up grabbing it but there was a really interesting infographic that i wish i had but essentially for each character you put into your password i believe it's after like the fifth or sixth character you start exponentially increasing the amount of time it takes to to um for a computer to guess the password um and essentially what happens is you know hackers aren't automatically going and typing your password one password too there's there's programs and and software that are doing this for the hackers now um essentially each character you put in your password you can you know up to up to thousands of years it will take for a computer to guess your password um things like you know hashtags at symbols percentage signs if there is if there's something that really speaks to you you know a couple exclamation points in the hashtag i tell people put put your password in something really secure there used to be this i call it an urban legend i know we got some i.t professionals in here that may disagree with me on this one and that's fine um it used to be this this this idea that you had to change your password every month always change your password every single month um now we're seeing that even stronger than that is having a really good password something that is you know darn near impossible to guess with enough you know symbols and numbers and and different odd letters um something that isn't a word or a word that's followed by a lot of different symbols it just makes it nearly impossible for these these um software to grab is it necessary to worry about isolating personal data collection from business data collection from services or devices i use so they're talking about a personal device versus a business device and the data that comes with that jared you want to grab that one that's um is that question on the chat jen i believe it's michael yep isolated personally i mean it's it's always good practice to if you can if it's going to be a difficult task to do it's not the most important thing um if i if i'm reading the question correctly that is um there's also you need to i mean it depends on the industry you're in and the data you're collecting there's certain data that you need to protect for business purposes legally um and so be sure that you are following any standards of practice in your in your industry um because if you it doesn't matter if it's hacked on a personal computer that you still did that you're still responsible as a business owner for your clients data right yeah that was well said i mean like you said anything personal name birthday address uh social security number any of that stuff it's if you can keep it as separate as possible that's that's the best practice i would say yep there is a caution in the chat about free vpns and being careful about those i absolutely agree with that that's that's great i so bob says you know you forget your password your password manager that is 100 something i would do so i appreciate the feedback bob um so are so in terms of public wi-fi are some like libraries safer um so it really depends on on who the it professional in charge of that library is um again i think we talked a little bit about the data breaches the cyber security breaches that are hitting municipalities and and one of the issues that can come up is you could be working with an it firm that isn't really worried so much about the cyber security side but more of here's how i get your server up and running your printer your emails it's all set there and it's just totally forgotten about on on you know network security um there really is nothing different intrinsically than a coffee shop wi-fi and a library wi-fi um the only thing that would secure that is if the the library was through maybe it had its own firewall associated with it um it's it's a little bit difficult to to trust one wifi over another i don't want to say all wi-fi bad stay away um but essentially um always have have that you know error on the side of caution use a vpn on your phone that's that's if you're going to travel you're going to use some some public wi-fi a vpn again can be very cost effective i would absolutely suggest going that route before you um before you kind of use public wi-fi without a security right and what about so somebody's talking about a subscription to wi-fi like an internet an internet cafe i think you'd need the details of that internet connection before we could really make a decision on that just always look into it yeah similar to libraries again you won't you won't know anything and it's it's fine to ask ask them how secure is your your wi-fi you know what steps do you take it gets awkward it gets awkward to go into a business excuse me what what cyber security precautions are you taking to protect my information but you know so maybe it's a little necessary maybe it's necessary to say you know if you're going to conduct something i know people who do their entire business out of you know the tim hortons and caribou um it's true you're going to find people who conduct a lot of their business right through public wi-fi and maybe it's a good idea to say hey guys do you know if this connection is encrypted if the guy's like well maybe maybe get your own protection um there's a question about two-factor author okay i'm gonna say the two facts yeah it's a hard word to say it's a lie um it's a pretty complex question i'm not sure did you guys happen to read that i don't know if you guys want to take that here or take that offline i can touch on it very quickly um because i had a similar problem to alessandra so essentially what i did is i tried to work through and i don't think google does it anymore but there's additional two-factor authentication that goes through email that is not nearly as secure as going through this way but is it a little bit better yes um there are two factor ident uh authentication um options that are through microsoft google they can send a code to your email that you'll put in on the password screen if you can go through a route like that you're a little bit more protected you know at the end of the day we're seeing people can fake a sim card at this point pretend to be you log into your google authenticator and take your your authentication code um it's just it's crazy the link that someone will go to get your information is just is beyond my my understanding because i i don't even have enough time in the day to do what i'm supposed to do never mind guess a sim card and passwords and all of this uh but there's there's ways to do it so it's just whatever precautions you can take whether that's an email authentication cell phone authentication i mean we're seeing now biometrics you know the fingerprint scan i do that to get into my bank um you know we're seeing options like that is it ever 100 secure probably not not if somebody's dedicated enough yeah how do they choose how do they choose the people that i mean do they choose or that's just randomly stumbling upon so in the case of of spoofing um we actually there's there's some sources that were showing that if you fell victim to a spoof if you called a fake support number if you called anything like that you're now locked in you're going to be locked into this listing of victims essentially the victims have their information sold basically to the highest bidder of whoever wants to scam them next um so if you've ever fallen victim to that ensure that you're already on the you know the do not call registry that's not going to prevent everything but it will prevent a little bit but essentially if you've fallen victim in the past they're going to choose you again um basically because they're like well this person clicked they contacted us where they're gullible even though all you did was click a link i want to take this second to just kind of piggyback off that um especially with like scammer calls or emails it's just always good practice to never give out any sort of personal information if you can even if the person calling does seem to kind of be from like a credible like they might make up some fancy credentials and be like oh i'm this person or i've even had a call before where they said my social security number was used in some sort of tax um fraud or some sort of like that and they just try to they're essentially just fishing for information to try to get more of a profile about you so the less you can give them hopefully none at all is a best practice okay so i think we've reached the bottom of the question um lots of people know what they're talking i like that we're here among friends too because it seems like there's lots of people that have seen many of these things so you guys have the support of the audience um my last question before we close is what are what are two things that everyone should do when they leave here today so we all go to webinars but then we like go back to our normal lives so what can what are two fairly simple things that you guys would recommend they do out of all the things that we suggested today oh uh i know i get a vpn get a that's the that's the new hot hot cyber security thing um i i tell everyone get a vpn it's just it's something that's overlooked again you can get them so cheap two three bucks a month if you're willing to pay two years up front um you know almost every vpn has something like this be careful about lifetime subscriptions lifetime doesn't mean your lifetime but the lifetime of the software so i prefer to pick you know yearly rather than that um but get a vpn i'll leave the other one to jared um that was a good one yeah definitely get a vpn i i think something that's really important is just make sure all that any device or anything you use is updated um it's something that brandon touched on earlier is all the new software patches any kind of updated information because when things are created like web browsers or any kind of system they may not be perfect in their infancy but as time the programs that develop those code and things like that are forever trying to make them better and more secure so the mo the more up-to-date you are on the services that you use the more protected you'll be excellent um assuming there's no more questions i think we'll call it good um you guys can always reach out to brandon and jared and i'll send out their contact information just in case you do have that follow-up question you didn't feel like asking in front of oh and brandon just sent it um we really appreciate your time today i know that you're really busy and i think that it's really really amazing that you all took the time to go to this particular seminar because i think it is so important and it's often an overlooked very costly over overlooked topic so um with that i'll call it good and have a good day everybody thanks everybody thank you all thank you all for coming if you ever need anything please reach out to us at any time we're always here oh and it's free