By Cybersecurity Safe: Lock Your Digital Door | Leon Geter | TEDxCharleston

foreign it's a Bittersweet moment when your child starts growing up you're so proud of their various accomplishments and all of a sudden you realize that you failed them I failed my oldest daughter Kelly I told her almost every day to be cautious when she's using the internet and what to look out for while she's online I regret to tell you that she did not listen to me last year I got a call from Kelly who informed me that the FBI had her laptop can you imagine that I'm a cyber security expert and my own daughter

did not practice cyber safety Kelly was in her apartment reading a free online novel something that she enjoyed when suddenly her laptop screen froze it appeared to Kelly that the FBI breached her laptop she stopped like a deer in the headlights while trying to gather herself she was frightened out of her wits and I could hear a River of Tears flowing down her face the on-screen image showed the FBI seal a picture of Kelly as she sat reading the online novel and they demand that she immediately paid three hundred dollars to regain access how scary

is that the message looked official think about it you get a message like that from the FBI and what occurred with that point was Kelly paid the ransom with a prepaid card as she was as she was required to do then all of a sudden she gave me a call and we talked about it about what she should do and how she should prepare herself when she's online and at that particular point I gave Kelly three pieces of advice one always be cautious when you're on the internet you have to look for fake emails look

at the grammar look at the language there's always someone trying to trick you you can do several things you can take the mouse and scroll it over their URL is it a legitimate site or not a legitimate site that's what being cautious is really all about every single time whether you're on your phone your tablet your computer your eye your Apple I watch anytime you touch the internet you must be cautious every single time third I told her well second I told her to look out at your browser the https with the little clock tells

you that it is secure and what insecurity means is that it's encrypted which means that someone hacks it they can't read the content whereas HTTP no s it is on it's not encrypted it's plain text and any hacker can read it at any particular tile and so therefore it's really important for you to be cyber safe for example in 2021 over 50 million Health Care records were breached and I guess you may ask what do hackers want hackers want every single thing they want your confidential information your metadata your date of birth your internet traffic

your gaming information they want everything identity theft is a major cyber crime for example if I get your credit card your email address with a weak password and guess what I buy a boat thank you very much the famous bank robber Willie's son he was asked why do you rob banks and he said that's where the money is hackers hack Because the Internet is where the money is data is stolen information data is stolen and sold on the internet dark web all the time and so that's where your information is going to end up so

I would say this any of us can be hacked at any given time at any given time so therefore you must be cautious I have a friend Richard who spends a lot of his time at his local library researching his favorite his wine making habit so one particular day he left his belongings on a study table uh didn't think anything of it and when he came back a stranger was looking at his cell phone and you know he didn't think anything of that either but later on he left the library tried to make a purchase

and it was declined he checked his bank account and realized that it was accessed I mean he had a strange painful look on his face and he said I made a huge mistake in most situations human error is the weakest link in the cyber security chain more than that Richard's cell phone was accessed and his Savings of two hundred thousand dollars were gone ironically though his bank account password was his favorite wine merlot an easy guess based on his Hobby and what occurs with your password is this at least 60 percent of people use their

name or date of birth as their password and that's something that you definitely should not do for example your password should never be reused and it should never be shared that's like opening your digital door to a problem and more importantly today software is designed to guess your password so you're pretty much playing against a computer and this is what's very important and so Richard I advise him to do several things every single time one use your auto lock feature that's on every cell phone and don't leave your cell phone unintended basically anytime more important

to that use a username a unique username every single time you have an account regardless of what that account is your banking your auto your home loan a different username with every account then use an encrypted passphrase a strong encrypted passphrase with your devices all the time and more importantly use two-factor authentication now two-factor authentication is a two-step process that pretty much gives you more security uh with any of your devices which means that you can't get access without a second device and so once again that limits the idea of having hackers take your stuff

and that's very important because cyber security is really the process of protecting your sensitive data and that's something you have to do as a gatekeeper of your information whether it's your personal information the school information the Hospital's information your insurance information your data exists in a database somewhere and you have to ask yourself how secure is my information because once again hackers are looking for it all the time and so therefore it's very important I would say this that Kelly and Richard are like many of you you don't need to be a cyber security expert

to be cyber safe but you knew but you do need to be cyber aware and being cyber aware is that you're going to take the time to be cautious you're going to take the time not to be so click quick to click and that's very important so I'll leave you with these several things that you need to think about almost every single time you touch technology anywhere it may exist you must make sure that your software and applications are updated regularly you must make sure you have a strong passphrase and a passphrase is simply less

predictable if it's usually four or five random words uh 18 16 characters or something like that it's very important that you have a unique passphrase to use and then you want to make sure you use two-factor authentication once again you don't want to make it so easy for anyone to gain access to your devices then I would encourage you to scrutinize all email and text messages that's really critical and also finally with that make sure you're using a anti-virus software there are plenty of them out there that you should be using as well so more

important than anything else as I said it's important for you to be the gatekeeper of your technology when it comes to your personal information your data your family status because as I said cyber security and cyber crime is a global phenomenon you're you're battling against bad guys who simply job it is to get what you have and so you have to be risk aware and cyberware every single day now and pretty much forever more so once again I would tell you that cyber security is like locking the door to your house or your car it

may not stop the bad guy but if you make the uh make it more difficult and more secure he may go on to a easier Target so therefore you must be you must be secure you must stop think before you click lock your digital door [Applause]