Automatically transcribed, so names and technical terms may be misspelled. The audio is the record.

The Colorado Equals Security podcast is your local source for regional security news, local events, and interviews with key individuals in the region. Now here are your hosts, Robb Reck and Alex Wood. Welcome to Colorado Equals Security. This is the newscast for episode 99, 99, 99, uh, for January 7th, 2024. 19.

This is the first time I've got to say that. Oh, that sounds really weird, Robb. Yeah, 2019. Did you know that this is the year that Blade Runner was set in? So look for all the replicants out there to make sure that, you know, everyone is actually a real person.

I, you know, I did not remember that this was the year from Blade Runner. I did just watch Back to the Future 2 with my 9-year-old. Yeah, that's 2015. That's four years ago. Where's my flying car?

He's like, this didn't happen four years ago. Yeah, yeah, all right. Fair enough. So this is of course our first episode of the new year. Happy New Year!

And we are one episode away from something of a milestone. Yeah, I mean, you know, we make our own milestones, I suppose. But you know, moving from two digits to three digits—that's a big thing. We make our own milestones. I'm gonna write that down somewhere.

All right, maybe at a mile marker somewhere. Before we jump into the content for this week's show, we do have some some. Housekeeping to go through. Number one, we have a Slack channel with over 800 participants now. It's pretty incredible.

Uh, the Slack channel has been awesome. There's lots of great conversations that happen there. I'm so excited that the numbers keep growing. Also, we have a mailing list. So if you want to get notified about things that are going on with Colorado Equal Security, including the show notes, sign up for the mailing list on our website, colorado-security.com.

And if you are going in like manually downloading this episode every week, I have some really good news for you. Really good news. There is a, you could actually subscribe and from, from your favorite listener, it'll just download this into your queue. What? Every week.

And of course that's great for us cuz we'd love to have you consistently listening. And another thing we'd love is if you like the show, we'd love to have you do a, a review for us on the, on the podcast listener app. Uh, let people know that you enjoy it and, uh, you know, maybe you can get some other listeners to come listen to the show. If you really like the show and you wanna make sure that not only the show but everything else with Colorado Equal Security continues, you can join our Patreon campaign and help contribute to the financial success of Colorado Equal Security. Robb and I do this out of the goodness of our hearts and the bounty of our pocketbooks.

So we would love it for people to help support us through Patreon. I think we're to the point now where we're only at a small loss every year, but, you know, it still is a little bit out of our pocket. So if you want to come to Patreon, subscribe, depending on the level that you subscribe at Patreon, you'll get free stuff from us, including a t-shirt and a shout out on the podcast. But we'd love to have you on the Patreon campaign as well. Huge thanks to those current patrons for the show.

We have a really good group of folks who are helping support us. We really do appreciate what you do for us. Thanks for your continued support. We do not take you guys for granted. Thank you so much.

For those who, you know, maybe the Patreon campaign is not the right fit, we'd love it if you would just go tell some coworkers, some friends, some peers in the community about the show. So if you like what we do, help us share it. This is how we grow. And this is something we just really enjoy doing. Exactly.

So let's jump into the news. First, President Trump has established the US Space Command in Colorado Springs. How about that? So I honestly, if I was 18 years old again, and I could be in Colorado and be a space soldier, oh my God, I would have signed up for this, you know, 50 times immediately. I don't think this is quite as exciting as it sounds.

So US Space Command used to be a thing. And then at some point, Space Command got folded into the Northern Command. Both of those, I think, were out of Colorado Springs. Now that has been separated out again to a separate command. I'm not a big military person, but essentially, you know, different people in charge of these things.

This is not quite the Space Force that President Trump had promised us. But I think it's sort of the steps in that direction that it maybe someday it could happen. As long as I at some point can have an anti-gravity device and some lasers, I'll be, I'll be pretty happy. Speaking of my 18-year-old self, we also see a new instance, a new location for the 1UP Arcade. 1UP is the only arcade in Denver that, that I'm actually even aware of.

Yeah, Dave Buster's. But 1UP is actually creating a new arcade in the Denver Tech Center area, basically in my backyard. Exactly. So there are there were previously 2 locations for 1UP, uh, one in Lodo and one off of Colfax. Now they've opened a 3rd location basically at Arapahoe and I-25, uh, right, right across from the Target that's right there.

And is this— now this is close to Pulte. It is very close. Is this, is this a future Pulte Security team building event? I think it's gonna, it's gonna have to be. Um, so I don't know if you've, if people have ever been to 1UP or not, but it's, it's an old school throwback arcade.

They've got the, you know, the old arcade cabinets, all the old games. They've got pinball, all that kind of stuff. Food, alcohol, all the fun things. Yeah, good stuff. Next, the Colorado Economic Development Commission incentives, you know, we've talked about this a few times, have garnered more than 6,800 new jobs in 2018.

So the big win from last year was the VF Corp. That's the, you know, The North Face and all the different outdoorsy brands. But they had a lot of other wins as well. They had Maxar, which is the, the new name for DigitalGlobe. They're bringing in, what is it, you know, hundreds of jobs or 856 positions there. Asello is bringing in 750.

Slack is bringing in that 550 jobs. So these incentives seem to be making a difference in bringing in, you know, thousands of jobs. They do. You know, I think part of it is just Colorado in general. You can offer all the incentives you want, but if it's not an attractive place to go, people aren't going to go there.

They also mentioned in the article that there are a few companies, it was I think 3 or 4, that have been here for a little bit that have those incentives on the table too. But they have not announced yet because they, they don't actually have to apply for the incentives until they've been here for a year. So once they've been here for a year, they can apply for the tax breaks. And then that the, that stuff will become public. They don't talk about it until they actually earn the incentives, basically.

Right, exactly. Next bit of news here. Colorado ranks number 2 for contribution to the tech economy. This is interesting, you know, behind only— was it Massachusetts, right? Massachusetts.

Behind only Massachusetts. Not Austin. Contribution. Yeah, Texas, you know, not even on the list. Good luck.

Haha. A lot of interesting stuff there, including we were number 3 for the— for research and development capacity, number 2 for the success rate of converting research into commercially viable products. Number 4, for the presence of high-end technical talent. Number 5, for how effective policymakers and other stakeholders have been at growing the tech industry here. And of course, then the number 1 most important element is on developing our workforce.

You know, the most, most important thing is making sure we have a good workforce. We came in number 3 behind Maryland and Massachusetts. All pretty cool. You know, again, more reasons why it's great to be in Colorado. Next, there was an article about the 25 Denver tech companies that are hiring in 2019.

So not all 25 of them were exciting to us, but there were definitely a number on the list that were exciting. Remote Lock, we interviewed Nathan Mondrow, who's the CEO over there. They're hiring. Amazon, JumpCloud, Carbon Black, Overwatch ID, Chairwell, Sumo Logic, Automox, Facebook, Slack. CyberGRX, and Apple all hiring in 2019.

Pretty cool. You know, and I was surprised that I did not see Ping Identity on the list. I'm not sure what that means exactly other than we are hiring a lot of people. So there's hundreds of people who are gonna be hired at Ping. Probably they just didn't know who to reach out to for everything, but if you're looking for a tech job in Denver in the next year, there's a lot of good opportunities for where you can go.

Definitely. Next, we have a story here from Navigant. Around cybersecurity defining the leaders in intelligent building. So the intelligent building market, what does that mean? Yeah, this is an interesting article.

I think mostly because it was a— the press release was out of Boulder. So, uh, Navigant is not a Colorado company, um, but it seems like their, uh, research department, at least some of them, are here in Colorado. I actually reached out to them to see if we can get someone from their research department on the, the show to interview. But this is talking about IoT and smart buildings and the things that go along with that. Basically, the summary here is that in order to be a leader in that area, security is gonna have to be a big component of it, right?

Yeah, fair enough. I think that a smart building is something that, you know, I haven't spent very much time thinking about, but there's a lot of opportunities to have efficiencies, to be, you know, turning off lights in areas where you're not, to have, you know, heating and cooling and windows open and closed to really make building smarter and better and, you know, in the long run, more efficient that we can get. But man, you could think about all the potential bad stuff you can do as a result of that as well, right? Well, I mean, I think the biggest thing, you go back to Target, right? The, the, the contractor that was managing their air conditioning, um, you know, heating and cooling stuff, that, that was the vector in that they got for the compromise.

You know, you don't want those things to be the vector in to lose your sensitive data. Yeah. So it's gonna be a big part of the future. Exactly. Uh, next there was an announcement from ThreatX.

They named a new CFO and COO. Uh, David Roshak, uh, was named as CFO and Mike Reagan was named as COO. Uh, Roshak was most recently at Optiv and Reagan was most recently at LogRhythm. So, uh, congratulations to those guys. And remind me, what did those guys do there?

I think, uh, Roshak was the CFO at Optiv for 5 years. Mike Reagan was the chief marketing officer for LogRhythm for 9+ years. Wow. So a lot of, a lot of Colorado ties. Pretty cool stuff.

Exactly. Next, there's a press release from Ping Identity announcing that 12 of the 12 largest US banks are now customers of Ping.

Congratulations, Ping. I guess pretty awesome. That's cool. They talk about like the size of the, the, you know, assets that are held by those 12 companies. But all I could think is Does this mean that the number 13 bank is not a customer?

And who is the 13th biggest bank? I gotta figure this out, right? We're gonna have to look that up. So being the contrarian, and that I am not biased like you are, Robb, I do have to think like, what does work with mean, right? Is Ping Identity the primary identity management solution at those places?

I'm not sure, and I don't want you to necessarily answer that, but I'm glad that Ping Identity is all those places. But what does that really mean? Yeah, it's a fair question. And I will be comfortable saying work with means that they send money to Ping, right? That seems like a pretty fair, fair interpretation that I'm comfortable saying in terms of like the primary.

That's a little tougher to say, right? Because, because it's possible that, you know, those size banks might have, might have multiple IAM providers they use. So the next article is something that is going to come to a shock to everyone. We've been waiting for this for three months. Yes, exactly.

Webroot announced their 19th consecutive quarter of double-digit business growth. That's fantastic. I mean, this is. I mean, it's awesome for them. Like clockwork.

As you know, we have been doing this for several quarters now, and every quarter we announced that Webroot had double-digit growth. I think you know this is probably the eighth quarter where we've talked about this. So I think we were at eleven. I mean, we're growing with them. This is fantastic.

It is awesome. Maybe we should do a press release every quarter about the listenership for the show. To see if it grows by double digits every quarter. So I think if we had, you know, sponsors that cared about that kind of stuff, maybe we would. But that seems like a lot of work.

Some interesting things. Webroot now serves more than 13,300 managed service providers, which I don't know that I knew that there were that many managed service providers. It's a big number, but it's up from 10,200. So that's a pretty good amount of growth. That's like 30%.

That is like 30%. I didn't, I didn't even use a calculator for that. It just like spur of the moment just did that. Good job, Robb. Next, we have a story from HelpNet Security, the benefits and limitations of AI in cybersecurity.

This is actually, you know, their coverage of a ProtectWise report from last year talking about, you know, really what is AI going to do to security? Some interesting findings that they, that they pulled out. AI is already widely adopted. It's, it's, this is not a, you know, sometime in the future, but there's, you know, current utilization. I think I kind of wonder about AI versus ML and are we really talking about AI here?

Right. But for the sake of reading headlines, we'll just go ahead and say AI is widely adopted. Number 2, it's the executives, not the, you know, line-level folks who are really the biggest advocates for AI. Executives. Not a surprise.

Yeah. They're looking for ways to, you know, save on cost of talent, right? Yeah. AI is yielding some actual benefits. Yeah.

That's pretty good. It's nice to know that there is somewhere where it's actually doing something. AI-powered security products are weighed down by mixed results. Post-deployment. It's interesting to hear that it's not this panacea where you deploy it and it's working.

I think that's not a surprise to any of us. And finally, not a surprise, there's still some work to do. So I think we shouldn't be surprised that AI is not the perfect thing that it might be portrayed to be. So there is still work to do in AI and security to make it even better. Next, there's a blog from SecureSet called Yep, certs are worth it.

Uh, so, so there's a trope in security, and especially for the people who've been doing it for a while, to make fun of certs, especially the CISSP. It's the most popular one to make fun of, like, oh, I got my CISSP, now I know how to do everything. Um, so I think this question is, it's easy if you've been into security for 10, 20 years to say, you know, certs are overrated. Um, but this blog post is really meant to say, you know, for someone who's entering the field, is it worth it for you to get a cert? Right.

And they had a couple points that they talked about in here. First was career advancement. If you do have certs, it is more likely that you will move up in your career. I think that seems pretty reasonable. And I mean, it does show that you're willing to work to get something and that maybe you are worth getting farther ahead in a promotion in your career.

I think that the whole correlation versus causation is gonna cause us problems here for all of these different elements. Yeah. Having, having a cert, You're the person, the type of person who's willing to put in the effort to get the cert is probably the same type of person who does it, you know, who's willing to put in the effort at work. Right. Right.

Um, they similarly, you know, a second point is there's a bigger paycheck and there's, there's clear data showing people with certs get paid better. Maybe it's like, once again, not, not causation. Um, but there is, there is a correlation there. Also, uh, there is a universal skill validation, you know, showing that you've gotten a certification, you know, the things that are associated with that particular certification. Yeah, it's obvious, right?

If you're looking to hire for someone who's good at this technology, um, what's the best way to find out? Well, number one, it, you know, if, if they have that experience, but experience is hard to validate. Certifications are pretty easy to validate. And then finally, uh, that it is essential if you're trying to work in, in DOD or some sort of government, uh, installation, there are certain requirements. You have to have certifications to be qualified to get those kind of jobs.

So, duh, that's a no-brainer. Yep. It's a pretty good blog post. I think for those people who are looking to get into security, I do think certs are a no-brainer. It's a really good way to show that you've spent some time and learned some stuff.

Now, if you're a hiring manager, I would— that's a different question. I would say look at the person and what they know, not what certs that they have. I mean, certs are nice, but, you know, talk to them, understand what they actually know as opposed to what is on the resume. Yeah, certs mean, they don't mean nothing. And I think it's easy to go too far down the road of saying that they, you know, don't worry about certs.

I'm pretty far down the road of don't worry about certs when I hire. I'm looking for skills. I'm looking for people who have the right attitude and aptitude, but there is some value to certs. And, you know, if someone got their CISSP, well, they care about security, right? This isn't a fly-by-night, like all of a sudden I'm just making a spur-of-the-moment decision to go be a security guy.

Exactly. All right. Next we have a blog post from Coalfire, What You Should Know About the Changing nature— excuse me, changing nature of telephone-based payments. Yeah. This was actually a really interesting blog post.

I read the title and I thought, eh, this is gonna be boring, whatever. But if you dig into it, they're, they're talking about taking credit card payments over the phone and some new guidance that has come out around PCI and what is in scope when you do take those payments over the phone. So if I have my cell phone and someone says, hey, Robb, I wanna buy this thing from you and I write down their credit card from my cell phone, what's in scope? Yeah, good question. I can't remember if they talked about cell phones specifically or not, but definitely in the article they talked about, uh, voice over IP.

They talked about soft phones. They talked about a lot of different things, uh, regarding telephony and the telephony infrastructure. You know, it used to be, you know, when everything was, uh, you know, copper lines and actual, uh, POTS lines, it's like, all right, that's not in scope because that's not an actual IT system. But all these telephone systems are IT systems that are, are taking the credit card information over them, even though they're not necessarily specifically storing that stuff. So the new guidance is saying you really need to take a look at that, and most of that stuff is probably going to be in scope.

Yeah, it's a pretty big change, right? Yeah, for sure. Our last story this week is from Optiv. They have a blog post of SecOps versus DevOps in the Information Age. That's 2 really good buzzwords right now with one buzzword from the '90s.

Yeah, so, um, they're just talking here about, uh, sort of traditional security operations versus what the, the, you know, sort of new way in DevOps is around, you know, doing these kind of operations, what the differences are, things you need to think about. Big data conversations, talking about virtualization and containers, talking about agile computers, and they talk about millennials as well. Everybody loves millennials. You might be a millennial. If you're a millennial listening, you might want to go ahead and read this article to find out about yourself.

So that is it for the news. Um, you should go ahead and read all those articles, check out the show notes for links to all the articles. And we are now going to move over to the Slack Message of the Week. Thanks to Andre Gaeta. Andre is the sponsor of the Slack Message of the Week.

He's been a faithful sponsor of the show basically from the beginning, um, really helping us, uh, try and expand the reach and you know, give folks some fun stuff as a part of it. Thank you very much to what you do, Andre. We appreciate it. This week's winner is Grant Sturgis. Grant, this is a personal— so one of the nice things— personal shout out— one of the nice things about being the guy who puts together the show notes on a regular basis is I get to pick this last message of the week sometimes.

And Grant, when I needed the NIST 800-37 Rev 2, you came through for me. So, you know, we've been shut down. Our federal government's shut down. So most of your life has probably shut down for the last couple of weeks, right? I don't know what you're talking about, Robb.

But for those people who do work in the federal government, it's a pretty big impact, right? For sure. Federal government's been shut down for a couple of weeks. Um, and as they shut down the federal government, NIST, who is funded by the federal government, I think they basically raised a middle finger, uh, to say, hey, you can't access our standards that were funded by the federal government during the shutdown. Oops.

Um, so NIST 837 Rev 2 was released, I think like 2 days before the shutdown went into effect. Um, so all of like the Wayback Machine, you know, if you go to archive.org, yeah, that it shows the web page, but it doesn't show the attachment. It didn't get saved yet. So we had no way to get the new version of NIST. I put a, I put a call for help out on the, uh, the Slack channel, and, uh, Grant Sturgis came through.

So thanks, Grant. Yeah, thank you, Grant, for getting that. We have it now, and, and of course, it, you know, helped my company out. Uh, as a thank you, you know, you did win the Slack Message of the Week this week. You'll get to pick one of the swag items from the Colorado Equal Security store, and we appreciate your patronage.

Yes, and thanks again to Andre Gaeta for supporting the Slack message of the week. So let's move over to events. The first event this week, the ISSA Denver is having their January chapter meetings on the 8th and the 9th. They got a bunch of schmoes to come up and talk, including you and me. So they're doing a CISO panel talking about like 2018 look back and a 2019 look forward.

Forward. I'm going to be talking at the Boulder event on Tuesday the 8th, and I think you're at the Tech Center on the 9th, right? That is correct. There are 3 meetings, uh, Boulder, Denver, and the Tech Center. 3 different panels of CISOs.

So if you want to have 3 different opinions on what's going on in security, come listen. Free meals. You can get 3 free meals. Listen to these people talk about whatever and get some lunch on Tuesday, dinner on Tuesday, and lunch on Wednesday. Perfect.

Looking forward, on the 15th, the CSA, the Cloud Security Alliance, is doing their January chapter meeting. On the 16th, the National Cybersecurity Center down in Colorado Springs is doing a meet and greet. So if you want to figure out what those crazy people down there are doing, then, you know, go do that and let us know what you find. If you want to figure out where Colorado Springs is, go ahead and drive down there. I assume many of our listeners are in Colorado Springs right now.

Alex. Oh, sorry. SecureSet is doing a capture the flag event, their first capture the flag of 2019, on the 16th of January. I'm sure we'll see more of those. ISC² Denver is doing their January 2019 meeting on the 17th.

The CTA, the Colorado Technology Association, is doing a part of their Insights series, Keeping Up with Innovation: The 2019 Top Emerging Technologies to Watch. That's also happening on the 17th. And one more on the 17th, ISACA Denver is doing their January meeting. So go check that out. As a reminder, we do have a section on the colorado-security.com website that has all the events.

There's a calendar of events for security stuff coming up in 2019. We actually have stuff all the way out to December already. So go out there and you can see what's going on, not just through January, but in coming months as well. Exactly. Go see when the SnowFrock Uh, event is coming up and Rocky Mountain Information Security Conference.

So, so SnowFROC is what, is it March 14th? It sounds right. And RMISC is June 4th through 6th. So make sure to put those on your calendar too. Yep.

All right, so let's go ahead and jump over to jobs for the week. There's a couple of jobs at Ping Identity, the, the best place to work in Colorado. We are hiring a manager of security operations and engineering. This is someone who's going to help run our security operations and engineering function, obviously. That's strange.

Yeah, right? It's a well-named position. Good job. And we're also looking to hire someone who is a— for a GRC analyst role. This is going to be someone to help with our policies, our vendor risk management, business continuity, IR, kind of all the general GRC compliance type stuff.

So Specialized is looking for a head of security and architecture. I feel like we might have talked about this one before, but I think it's still out there, so you should go check it out. Specialized, the bicycle maker. They're out of Boulder, which I don't think either of us realized. Yeah.

And it's interesting, like when you read the job description, the first line of it says, first of all, we're riders. So if you like to ride bikes, this might be the place for you to work. S&P Global is hiring a director of information security focused on IAM product management. Comcast is looking for a senior manager of network security. Recurly is hiring a senior security engineer.

Xcel Energy is looking for an IAM specialist/engineer. Ball Aerospace is hiring an intern focused on information assurance and security. PwC is looking for a cybersecurity and privacy strategy and risk manager. That's a whole mouthful. The University of Colorado Boulder is hiring faculty positions in cybersecurity.

So there's more than one position there. Wow, that's pretty cool. And finally, the FBI is hiring special agents. So if you are young enough and willing enough to go into the FBI and are interested in cybersecurity, you should go ahead and look for that. And if you're, and you're thinking, man, I don't really know much about this, go back about a year ago on the show and go to, go to our archives.

And you could see we did an interview with one of the special agents here in Denver talking about what's the process look like to apply and go through it. And, you know, the physical challenges and all the testing. It's a part of the process. I'll also say, if you are interested in this job, once you get it, do not go out to a nightclub and dance and do flips with your weapon on yourself. So yeah, Alex is of course referring to a recent news story about an FBI agent who did exactly that and shot someone in the audience.

So don't do that. Don't do that. We like you too much for that. Well, Alex, that's the— that's it for the news here for episode 99. But we have kind of a special treat for our listeners, don't we?

I think you could call it a special treat. You know, we're coming close to episode 100, which, you know, is something of a milestone for us. And, you know, it's been— Colorado Equal Security has been a pretty significant part of our lives for the last 2 years-ish. So rather than, you know, finding someone kind of from the security community, this week we've decided to interview our boys. We did.

Both of us have 2 boys. Mine are slightly older than yours, but we thought, hey, do you guys really know what we do and what do you know about information security? So we talked to them about that. Um, I, I have 2 boys, 12 and 14, basically not quite, but basically 2 teen— teenagers. Yeah.

Um, so I, I think you'll be able to tell from the interviews that, um, if you haven't had teenagers, you'll know that once kids become teenagers, they're, they're not nearly as fun as when they're younger. So my kids were so excited to be interviewed for the podcast and, you know, they've been watching me do this for the last 2 years or so. Um, and, and David, who's, I I think he's the second one we're going to talk to here. Uh, he had a, uh, a unique way, a strategy for trying to stop hackers. So you have to look forward to hearing what that is.

Uh, and my kids, as I'm sure you will see, um, were not particularly interested in being talked to, um, like most teenagers are. So, uh, you should look at the interview, um, think about it for what it is and enjoy. All right. Well, we'll look forward to getting back together next week when we have episode 100. Which is a little special episode, right?

Definitely special. You and I are sitting down with Andre Gaeta to just kind of talk about, you know, ourselves and what's the process been like doing Colorado Equal Security. It should be a good interview. All right, well, look forward to talking to you guys again next week. Thanks, Robb.

Happy 2019. This is Michael Glenn. I'm Vice President of Security at CableLabs. This is Colorado Equal Security for Colorado security professionals. Professionals by Colorado Security Professionals.

This is Robb Reck sitting with a special guest today for the interview. Uh, could you please tell us your name, your age, and your grade, sir? I am Drew Reck. I am in 4th grade and I am 9 years old. And what does your dad do for a living?

My dad works at Ping Identity and he is a CISO. You got it. Yeah. CIA. Do you know what that stands for?

No, I forget. What's, what's one of the letters? I know you gotta know at least, at least the S, right? Um, security, and then the O is officer, I think. All right, what kind of technology do you use on a regular basis?

Well, my computer at school. And what kind of computer do you use at school? A Chromebook. Okay, what do you do on that computer? Um, I go to websites and look up information for either writing or social studies.

What kind of stuff do you normally look up, do you think? Give me an example of one you've done recently. Well, I had a writing essay and I looked up why writing— I mean, math was important. Oh, and did you— what did you use to look that up? You use your Chromebook, but what did you do on the Chromebook?

I went to a website called KidRex. Hmm, cool. So what other technology do you use? Um, I watch TV almost every day. Okay, that's not really what I'm— that's not really interacting with technology, right?

Do you, do you have anything that you're like— do you use a computer at home or a phone or an iPad or a smartwatch or anything like that? Yes, I have a watch called a Gizmo Gadget, I think, and It like helps me with timers and stopwatches. What do your mom and dad use it for? Tracking me. So we know where you are?

Yes. And what can you do with it to get in touch with people? I can call some people and I can text my parents. Yeah, pretty cool. Yep.

What about other technology you use outside of school?

Sometimes I use the iPad. Mm-hmm. And it's easy. iPad, what do you use that for mostly?

Uh, probably playing games. Playing games? Yes. Apps on the, on the iPad? Yes.

And maybe watching Netflix sometimes? Sometimes.

What— so do you know what do I do for my job? What do I do at work?

Uh, help people not get hacked. That's a good answer. Try and stop the hackers, right? Yeah. So what do I actually do while I'm there?

Do you know how I help them do that? No. Do you have any thoughts about ways that people can stop hackers other than the crazy pizza shooting concept?

You could maybe change their password somehow. How do you do that? So you're saying change the hacker's passwords? Is that what you mean? Or do you mean change, make it so your password's hard to be changed?

Both of them. Both of those. Um, any— do you know anything else that we can do to try and stop hackers?

Um, no, not really. Okay. Um, do you think that information security or cybersecurity is important? Yes. Why is it important?

Because I would assume There's lots of things that people want to keep to themselves that they use with passwords. And what kind of things do you think we might want to keep to ourselves? Maybe banking accounts. Mm-hmm. Things like that.

Yeah, and, and what would happen if the wrong person got into those? They can maybe take their money. Steal all of our money. Yeah, it's a pretty big deal, right? Yes.

What— at your school, do you guys have any rules about what you're allowed or not allowed to do on the computers? Yes, well, we can't do it because there's like— can't do what? We're blocked from like YouTube and things like that. Adult-rated adult stuff.

What about rules for cyberbullying? Do you guys ever talk about cyberbullying at school? I have no idea what that is. You don't know what I'm talking about? Cyberbullying is when people are mean to each other online.

Oh. Yeah, I can kind of see what you mean because people have been talking to each other on like little tabs that we have in Google Classroom. Yeah? Are they mean to each other on there? Are they mostly nice?

Mostly nice, but sometimes rude. Sometimes rude to each other? Yes. Yeah, that's, that's probably not, not the best way for people to act, huh? Yeah, and everyone can see it including our teacher and the rest of our class.

Oh really? Everyone can see it? Yes. Uh, Drew, how long have I been doing this podcast? Do you know?

A year? Almost 2 years. This is gonna be episode 99. Whoa. We do one every week, so almost 2 years.

What do you think about me doing this podcast? Do you like it? Yeah, it's pretty cool. You think it's fun? You think it's fun to, to get to listen to me and Alex talk on the, on the phone in the car when we're driving around sometimes?

Yeah, it's pretty cool. Do you have anything that you want to say to all of the people who are listening as we, as we finish up the interview here? Um, well, security is very important. Okay, one, and that you should take advantage of being able to keep your stuff to yourself. Awesome.

Well, thank you, Drew, for your time. We appreciate it. I'm gonna go ahead and sign off and we'll listen to Alex's kids next. Say goodbye to everybody. Bye.

This is Robb Reck, and today I'm sitting with a very special guest for the Colorado Equal Security Podcast. Sir, would you please tell us your name, your age, and what grade you're in? My name is David Rack, and I am, I am 11 years old, and I'm in 5th grade. And who is your dad, and what does your dad do for his job? My dad works at security.

And what do you mean it works as a— what, what company does he work for? He works for Ping. And what's his, uh, title there? What do you know he does? Chief Information Security Officer.

That's right. So David, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions about what you know about security and using computers. Okay? Okay. As a starting point, what kind of technology do you use on a regular basis?

Um, you use a— No, what do you use? I use my watch. You have a watch? Is it— what kind of watch is it? It's a Gizmo Gadget.

And it connects to the internet? What kind of things can you do with your watch? I could call people. What else? Uh, text people.

Yeah, it's pretty good. What other kind of technology do you use around our house? I use computers. What do you use the computer to do? To, to do homework.

Yeah, doing homework. Anything else? No. Sometimes you do fun stuff on them, right? Yeah.

Like what? Like Google Maps. Do you play some games occasionally? Yeah. Not a lot though, huh?

But you don't have your own computer yet, do you? I don't. I do have my own at school for this year. What kind of computer do you have at school? A Chromebook.

That's pretty neat. What do you get to do on that thing?

The same as in my school account. What do you mean? On my regular computer. What kind of stuff though? What do you do at school?

I do Google Docs, Google Slides, and stuff like that, and Google Classroom. Are you basically just doing, uh, just doing homework there at school? Just schoolwork there? Yeah. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about what, what is my job.

What do you think I do when I'm at work all day? Stop hackers from hacking into people's computers. Nice, you do that right off the bat. Do you know how we do that? No.

Do you know a couple of things we do, right? What are some important parts to help stop hackers from getting into systems? Um, make a password almost unbreakable. That's really good. Yeah.

What else do we do? Do you know anything else? We also work with people to help them make good choices. Cool. So like, so if someone asks you Um, to, to click a link and go log into something, maybe you should be suspicious and not do it, right?

That would be one part of how we can help make— stop hackers. Yeah. Um, so do you think that information security or cybersecurity is important? I think it's important. Why do you think it's important?

Because if you can't get back onto your Google Docs or somebody hacks into your computer and deletes stuff that you like, then, then you'll be angry.

That would be pretty disappointing, wouldn't it? Yeah. Does your school have any rules about what you're allowed to do on the computers there? Yes. What are the rules there?

You cannot use YouTube. Oh, you're not allowed to use YouTube at all at school? Not at school, but my teacher could use YouTube. Your teacher does because your teacher has good judgment knowing where to go. But, um, at home you can probably use YouTube.

Do you— does your school have any rules about cyberbullying? Have you learned about that yet? No. Is it— have you heard about people being mean to each other on the internet? No.

No, I guess that's good that no one at your school has had that problem yet, right? Right. David, do you have any social media accounts like Facebook or Snapchat? Do you have any of those yet? No.

No, not quite old enough yet, are you? Not quite. All right, so I know you had one idea that you wanted to tell me about how we can get better at stopping hackers. You want to tell the people listening? If somebody hacks into your computer, there should be— there should be a machine that shoots pizzas at their computers.

What? So we're gonna make a machine that shoots pizzas at hackers' computers? Yeah, so they couldn't hack. I can think of one negative about this idea, which is obviously a very good idea overall. What if hackers are really hungry and Or someone who's not even a hacker is really hungry and he just starts to hack just to get the free pizzas.

Yeah. Does that seem like a good thing or a bad thing? That's bad, but then, but they're gonna be rotten. Oh, it's rotten pizzas. Well, you solved the only problem I saw with this idea then.

So I think it's fair for us to put out a call to the tech community and, you know, see who can create the pizza shooting hacker defense system. Yeah. All right, David, do you have anything else you'd like to say to the listeners before we end the interview? No. Well, Happy New Year!

Are you excited for 2019? I am. What do you— what's gonna be the best thing that's gonna happen in 2019? Christmas. Christmas.

Oh, that's funny. It's a long ways off, so you have something to look forward to. Okay. All right, say goodbye to the Colorado Equal Security listeners. Bye, Colorado Equal Security listeners!

Because it's easy and it's free. There's this cool thing called Audacity. Yep. And it's free also. Yep, I know of Audacity.

Okay, these are the questions. Ready, Y? Uh-huh. What's your name, your age, and your grade? My name is Wyatt.

I'm 12, and I'm in 7th grade. What kind of technologies do you use regularly? Um, well, I use my phone a lot, and I use a lot of computers with school, and I regularly get on Xbox and other video games. What do you do with computers at school? Uh, we really just use it for like Google Classroom and just searching things.

Uh, do you help people with computers at school? Yeah. What do you do with that? I'm in the tech squad at our school. What does that mean?

It means I fix computers. Nice. What is your dad's job? Cybersecurity. What does it mean he does all day?

Uh, he protects He protects their computer services from viruses and other bugs.

How do you define cybersecurity, and what are the key parts of it?

I don't know what the key parts are, but I just know it's protecting computers from, well, any viruses or anything that's wrong with it. Do you think it's important? Yeah. Why do you think it's important? Because it keeps all your data secure.

What kind of data? Just data that you have about your company that other companies might want or that could get sold.

What are your school's rules about using phones? And cyberbullying?

I don't really know about cyberbullying. It's really just like if— it's just like normal bullying. If you're actually bullying them, you'll get in trouble.

But phones we're not allowed to have. Not at all? Not at all. What do you have to do with them? You have to put them in our lockers.

Yeah? Yeah. Keep them there all day? Yeah.

All right, anything else you want to talk about, Y? No. Do you like computers? Yeah.

All right, thanks, Y.

Okay, you ready? No. Why not?

Okay, I'm good. What is your name, age, and grade? My name is Daxton. I'm 14. I'm in 8th grade.

What kind of technologies do you regularly use? Um, I use my phone. Been playing a lot of Xbox lately. A lot of Galaga. Um, who has the high score on Galaga?

You know what, you be quiet, alright? Who has the high score on Galaga? That's not part of the questions here. What other technologies do you use? Um, I use a Chromebook for school.

I occasionally play the computer and the Nintendo Switch. Uh, what's your dad's job? What does that mean he does all day? Um, he's the Chief Information Security Officer at Pulte Mortgage, which means he sits behind a desk and stares at a computer screen for 8 hours a day. That's it?

That's all I do? Yeah, 8 hours a day, all day, every day. I just sit in front of a computer? Basically. All right.

That's how I think of it. What do I do when I sit in front of that computer?

Chief Information Security Officer things. How do you define cybersecurity and what are the key parts of it?

Cybersecurity to me is like protection online, like a passcode for your computer. Okay, what kind of stuff are you trying to protect? Like what's on your computer or what's like the computer like is doing or I don't know. Okay, anything else? You're bald.

That's true. Yeah. Why do you think cybersecurity is important? Um, so like you can protect like private information or like Private information. Okay.

Do you think cybersecurity is important for our country?

Probably.

Yeah. Okay. What are your school's rules about using phones and about cyberbullying? Um, we're not allowed to use our phones ever at any point in school. They're supposed to be in our locker turned off.

Um, and if they catch you like cyberbullying like outside of school, it could mean like a suspension or expulsion. Um, what does it mean to be— to do cyberbullying? Like bully someone over a phone. But like how? But like Calling you bald over Instagram.

That's not very nice. It's just the truth, man. Okay, anything else you want to tell our listeners, Daxton? Um, banana. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, man. Learn more about the Colorado security scene at colorado-security.com, where you can see information about local security groups, a calendar of upcoming security events, and learn more about Colorado Equals Security. Reach out to Alex and Robb by emailing info@colorado-security.com.

Until next time, remember, Colorado equals security.