Transcript 0:00 Talk to me. Information, views and entertainment on demand. WSRadio.com. 0:11 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:25 My next guest today has been one of the most prolific speakers on cybersecurity in recent years. 0:31 And from his appearances on multiple television shows, a host of radio programs, and even his own book on his own cybersecurity challenges, he is constantly preparing businesses on these new threats in the Internet of things, which include corporate espionage, espionage lia- uh, liabilities, even breaches in all these wireless technology that we see today. 0:54 So please welcome my dear friend, Scott Schober, President and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems. Scott, welcome back to the show. Yeah, great to be back. Thanks for having me on there, Peggy. 1:05 So Scott, you know, we were just talking to Bob about all the interesting things that have been happening in cyber. And, you know, we've talked about this so many times in I don't know how many programs. 1:16 Doesn't seem to be changing. And now we're having to worry about ransomware, and it seems like there's all kinds of new ways to hack people these days. 1:23 Uh, you know, what's your latest take on everything going on out there? Yeah, it, it is concerning 'cause we, we, we hear about the headlines again and again. And we think, "Is it ever gonna stop?" 1:34 And it doesn't seem to stop. It just keeps advancing. And that's, that's the, uh, the hackers out there. They're, they're really working hard to make it difficult for all of us. 1:43 Um, certainly what I'm seeing to your point, you mentioned ransomware, and some of the things that, that I've- I'm concerned with specifically is how hackers are advancing this ransomware. 1:54 We heard a lot recently about WannaCry and other variants where there are different worms and the ways that these, these, these ransoms are spreading quickly, uh, through, through these cyber thugs. 2:05 Now, they've got their sights set on some other things. And I'm thinking about medical implants where there are more targeted attacks. And, and imagine a, a high net worth individual, a celebrity or perhaps a politician. 2:20 Maybe they've got a, a, a pacemaker or something else that's inside that they're very concerned with if there's vulnerabilities there. 2:29 Somebody might actually perform a ty-- a specific type of targeted ransom attack against them. And that to me is very, very scary, and it's very real if they have their sights set on someone. Well, think about that. 2:42 You know, when you th- what we were just saying in segment one, that in small businesses they paid, half of them paid ten thousand or more when it was ransomware. Yeah. And twenty percent paid forty thousand. 2:53 Now, if you're talking about going into somebody's, you know, health environment, what are they gonna pay for that? You have no choice. I mean, the dollar volume in that can be astronomical. 3:03 I mean, you're talking about somebody's personal wellbeing. I mean, how much- Yeah... are you gonna pay for that, right? I mean- Yeah. You pay a premium... the sky's the limit. [laughs] Yeah. Ex- ex- exactly. 3:13 And they, and they may not necessarily target to kill, just like, uh, traditional ransomware where they're encrypting files. 3:22 It, it, it makes it hard for you to function and, you know, use your PC or use your mobile device at all till you either pay the ransom. And I think the same thing is true. 3:31 I- imagine if they start controlling the pacemaker and, you know, modifying the, the heart rhythms to make them abnormal or, or give you a couple extra jolts. 3:40 That, that would scare you to death, and you'd be racing down to the bank and, and, uh, forking over whatever the ransom is 'cause y- you don't wanna lose your life. And it's that same thing. 3:49 It's the, the fear of the unknown. How real is this? How far can they take it and push it? Those, those type of things are very, very scary and, and unfortunately they're becoming very real in the world we're living in. 4:01 I think the problem, though, with hacking is people in businesses think, "Well, I don't have to worry about those kind of things," in general because they think, "I don't have that to worry about. 4:14 I don't produce medical equipment. I don't have data that a hacker is going to get." And that's part of the biggest challenge that we see when trying to combat this looming security threat. 4:26 I think that's the biggest challenge in some ways, that some small, medium, even large companies think, "We've, we've got this hacker thing under control." 4:36 And I think what they don't understand is the bad guys are getting smarter, their attacks are getting better, they're getting more convincing, and they're convincing the smartest of executives that the email that was sent was really legit when it really wasn't. 4:51 And it, it seems very convincing, and even the smartest of CEOs are being fooled, right? Ye- ye- yes. I think, I think you make a brilliant point there. I, I always kinda call this or classify it as cyber complacency. 5:05 People have heard the headlines, and they've heard so many people that have had it. 5:09 After a while, they almost become numb and tune it out and say, "Well, if they didn't hit me yet, it's not gonna happen to me," and, "Well, we've got cybersecurity insurance, and we've done some basic education, so we're, we're okay. 5:23 We'll be okay." And they kinda fool themselves into that. And, and I think the, the thing that, that's concerning really to all of us is it's not just going after 5:32 our email for, for spam and phishing attacks and things like that or credit card compromises. As we mentioned there, if it goes into the medical community or, or, or even think about w- what's the future? 5:43 What are we all looking at? Artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles. You look at all the technology that, that's in cars today, they all are connected to the internet. 5:55 They all have the ability to do so many things wirelessly now. That's another easily a conduit that people can get in there, be it the, the Wi-Fi hotspot, the, the entertainment cent- centers. 6:08 They've got, uh, engine control units. So if you're buying a new vehicleYou too could be a target. You could be a victim if somebody wants to try to hack. 6:16 And it's, of course, been proven on research and development level, the two thousand fourteen, uh, Jeep Cherokee that they hacked. They're sending certain vehicles to it. 6:25 And, and there it was a, a more wired system where they can go through the OBD-II port. 6:31 But now they're proving that they can even do things with wireless connectivity remotely and control different functions of an actual car. 6:39 That's concerning to myself, and it should be concerning to all your listeners there and, uh, realizing it's not just a simple hack now. This is something that could affect your life or your family's life. 6:49 So do you think companies, we should be saying that some companies right now are being lulled into complacency by thinking nothing's happened for a while, we've been doing the right things, but that might just be how they're being fool-fooled by the hacker, you know, who's testing them? 7:07 Let's try this. Oh, they haven't noticed we did this, and we're gonna try a little bit more and see each little step that gets them in the door a little bit closer to hacking them. Yeah. 7:18 You, you, you make a nice point there. Think about even some of the major breaches. Go back some time, uh, December two thousand thirteen to Target and then, uh, Home Depot and Michaels and so on and so forth after that. 7:30 Some of those large compromises, most people said, "Well, you know what? I got a new card, or my card was never touched. I'm okay." And, and they're fooled. They kind of get complacent from that. But what do hackers do? 7:43 Oftentimes they'll collect stolen information, login credentials, credit card, identity theft, whatever it is, they repackage it, and they'll sell it to someone else. 7:53 And that period of time may take a year or two years or longer before a criminal acts upon it. So at that point, you're lulled into thinking, "Well, I'm okay. Nothing happened. I guess it's good." 8:05 And then suddenly, whamo, they nail us and fool us. And the same thing is true across the board with hacking. It's not always instantaneous. 8:13 Hackers like to take their time, and they like to cover their tracks so they don't get caught, and that's where we're fooled. And the, the idea is they're very patient, much more where we're not. Yeah, yeah. 8:24 They have a tedious effort that they go through, and, and, and it's kind of interesting because we don't realize that into what they're doing. 'Cause they're constantly got their little spider tentacles into everything. 8:36 Mm-hmm. And we all think, "Oh, we, we thought we, you know, we thwarted that." But we didn't, because that's their plan, and they just keep going after it. 8:44 And so we think, well, we changed a password, but they're constantly testing how well we're fending off their attacks. Yeah. So when we look at this, what do you think we have to do? 8:55 We think we're changing our passwords, and our passwords are never strong enough. And it is... You know, everyone says, "Okay, let's change our passwords." You know, is it the responsibility? 9:05 Sh- Is it part of the organization to do things? Is it part of the individual? Who's gotta stand up to do the right things to kinda fend off all these bad guys? Or is it both? Well, well, certainly... 9:18 Yeah, I, I think it's actually a combination of both, but certainly we wanna, uh, take the initiative. 9:24 A-as a consumer, as a business owner, as an employee, we wanna obviously create long and strong passwords that are hard to hack. We wanna use a good password manager, and there's a lot of good ones out there now. 9:39 I personally use, uh, Dashlane, but there, there's half a dozen good password managers that should be worth considering and trying out. 9:48 Because if you're still finding that you're making weak passwords and hard to remember and sticky notes, uh, a-and, and you're just reusing that same password across multiple sites, you need a password manager. 10:01 It's a lot safer using that than taking the chance creating [laughs] weak passwords. Um, there's always a fear that what if the, the password manager application is compromised? Very unlikely, but possible. 10:13 Again, data is encrypted, and you have to place some trust in it. But it'll force you to think long and strong passwords and to manage them, and that's what it's all about, managing your security. 10:24 Just like we manage our security in our home or our car or anything else, we've had to adjust the way we do things as the bad guys have adjusted when they're trying to steal or target us. 10:35 Same thing with our data, our personal data, our login credentials, our passwords. We have to adjust the security mindset so that we can make them difficult to hack. 10:46 And that's an interesting point because we've just had this. We have all these new connected d-devices. We've talked about the Mirai and the botnet and the DDoS attack. 10:55 But we're gonna take a quick commercial break, and you're gonna stick around with us, Scott. But when we come back- Great... 10:59 I'd like you to address what do you think the industry needs to do to make the Internet of things more secure to protect all of our users pri-privacy? 11:09 So I want you to address that when we come back right after this commercial break. And so for you listeners, you know we're talking to Scott Schroer. 11:16 He's the president and CEO of Berkeley, Berkeley Varitronics, so you can go up there. And Scott, we're gonna take this quick break, but stick around everyone. And in the meantime, check out, uh, connectedworld.com. 11:26 You can listen to any or see some of the articles Scott's put up there. He puts up articles every month with us, so you could check out some of his articles, as well as go up to thepeggySmedleyShow.com. 11:36 It's a lot of segments we've had with Scott. So stick around. We've got more to come right here on The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT, with... 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