 Think Tech Away. Civil engagement lives here. Can we back we're live at, well I guess I would say this is somewhere between two and three on a given Friday afternoon on Admissions Day. And until it's the rest joins us, S-A-S, S-O-S. S-O-S, S-A-S is the airline. S-O-S Tech Solutions. In Manoa Innovation Center, that's great. And he writes a blog or a newsletter. What's the name of your blog or newsletter? We have a blog. It's on our website. We have a print newsletter. We have all these things that we do online. So we do a lot with Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. So we're always communicating the things that we're doing out there. Just because we have to get the word out. I mean, we're out there to protect businesses. We're out there to protect individuals. That's what we're all about. And we have to meet them where they are. And that's usually not on the street or at McDonald's or at Starbucks. It's online. So that's where we are. You've been doing that for several years now. And I remember for a time you were a host here. One of our original hosts back when in the ancient days here at Think Tech. Well, you've come a long way. There you go. Thank you, so have you. So, Attila, you know, why should I worry? I mean, everything is fine, isn't it? Somebody will protect me. I don't have to worry about these things. There's a long pause here intentionally. Just in case you're wondering. Note the long pause. Now, if you have that kind of mentality, then that's what most people have, which is everything is going to be fine. The police will protect me. No one's going to break into my house. And then someone breaks into their house and then what happens? Oh my God, they're all freaked out, right? So what do you do? You get a home security system. Maybe, you know, you get some additional locks on your doors. Good for you, right? That's how most people approach cybersecurity. And everyone's been, you know, kind of beating that drum about all my business is vulnerable. There's ransomware. There's all this stuff out there. But the real scary stuff is the infrastructure and the infrastructure related infections and hijacking and ransomware that's coming that we're starting to see more and more. Not my computer, but the community computers. Let's talk about the shift that brought your computer to this island. So Costco, which is one of the largest shipping companies that they're China, right? So one of the largest ones on the planet had their entire North American operations shut down earlier this month and their South American operations shut down. In fact, the only way that you could reach the business was through Facebook or a personal Yahoo email account that they were starting to give out. Their websites were down. Phones were down. Everything was down. And that's just one example. We see that through utilities. We see that through automobiles. We see that through every major thing that's connected with either a Wi-Fi access point or, you know, even on airplanes now that there's ways to tie into their systems. Why do people do this that's so destructive and silly, you know? I mean, is it prank? Is it for money? Is it for nasty? Or are they state actors? Nah, well, there's some of that too. I mean, you know, off the air we talked a little bit about Israel. I mean, it is well known that they are monitoring all of Palestine right now. Every single person there is being under high surveillance. And in fact, there's some things going on within the Israeli inside of their cybersecurity operations forces where some of their own members are now pushing back and saying that this is a little bit too far. But that's a little bit off the point. There's a lot of monitoring that goes off there. There's financial incentives. I mean, imagine if they could go in there and change the chemical composition of drugs as they're being manufactured. Oh, wow. These kind of industrial control systems that are out there have been out there for 20, 30 years. Sure. It's all there. It's all exposed. Well, and think about it this way. If they go out and they even do harvest information from you, big deal, right? They're not going to go contact you directly. They're going to go on to the dark web and sell it. And they sell it and they make money off of it that way. It's an entire industry. And this industry has been so systematized now that anyone can jump into it. Really? I mean, how can I get a handle on how big it is and how many people? I mean, suppose I go to computer science class in college and I say, I want to be a hacker. I want to be part of that industry that it tells us we're talking about. There are so many things wrong. Where do I apply somewhere? Where do I go? What do I call? There's so many things wrong with what you just said. You don't go to computer science school for any of this stuff. You don't go announcing that you're going to be a hacker. But a lot of these kind of security, I mean, let's talk the legitimate side. And I'll go back to Israel just because I like Israel. Israel has high school programs where they start indoctrinating this kind of skill sets into their high school students. And then they get recruited, right? Because obviously once you're done with high school, you have to go and serve in the military. And the military has a very good sense of what's needed to give them the best possible tools. And then they come out into the private sector. And then they either start companies such as Wix is one of them. There's lots of little small startups that they start up with multi-billions of dollars, right? They get acquired by Google and other big dot-com companies. And they then go out and they do what they can to support the industry or to protect people or to provide new and innovative services that we then get to see on our mobile phones. But there's kind of like that flow on the legitimate side. But in the same vein, they can also go the opposite direction, right? And that can be from any number of thought actors all around the world. So I make more money on one side or the other? Right. There's money to be made on both. And this is an industry that isn't going anywhere. You mean it's going to get bigger and bigger and more... Yeah. It's like climate change. I mean, it's 94 degrees outside. I mean, come on guys, this is not normal. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's scary because, you know, the picture you painted and you painted it before is, you know, sort of a dreadful risk out there. Risks to everyone and risks to the community. And yet it hasn't happened. Not really. What do you mean? What do you mean hasn't happened? Oh, no. I mean, hacking at a level where the community is busted, where everything stops. That hasn't happened. Well, power companies have been... I mean, you gotta remember, they have to kind of set things up in such a way that, you know, we're going to have a problem at a certain time. We see these smaller things coming on and we see this inside of the newsfeed. Most people are too busy, you know, trying to go get to McDonald's to get their latest, you know, value added meal or whatever. They're not looking at what's going on. I mean, there's biological outbreaks that happen in this country. Every day, no one notices, right? There's attacks on the critical infrastructure that happen all day, every minute. As we're sitting here talking, there are attacks going on on critical infrastructure. We don't see that. Maybe it kind of causes a glitch and then a glitch or is it an attack? I mean, how do you know that it's not a glitch? Oh, it's usually a glitch. It's usually an attack, sorry. I mean, everything from the DMV that we saw here a few months ago, was that really a hardware failure or was that a deliberate attack where all of our personal information was stolen? No one's to tell. So there's a lot of hush-hush that goes on in this also. And the private sector, what are they going to do? You know, put up a press release and scare everyone and we see some of that. They want to panic the public. What for? But we'll see things like, you know, Equifax, that was a big deal. We see more and more of these every single month. I mean, just a few days ago there was something on the tube. What did I see? It might have been 60 minutes about hacking into actual hacking into voting machines and voting registration records in a number of states in this country. Well, no. We were led to believe that, oh, yeah, there was some manipulation going on, some meddling by Russia, you know, with Trump's collaboration what's the word, collusion. I'll take that, you know, only that far as probably went further. And so we were led to believe that it was not actually manipulating the voting records. But now it appears that in various places they were capable of doing that and maybe they even did it. And if they did it then and they're still doing it now, I think it's clear that they're still doing it now as we speak as we sit here. They will do it in November. They will do it in November. And the crisis then becomes, can you have confidence? Its public confidence is the pillar, you know, of justice, the pillar of the Republic. And if you don't have public confidence in the system, like the voting system, you know, then the whole thing is at risk, you know. Whether we can depend on the voting system or not is a whole different kind of conversation. I would have confidence, you know, even with the meddling and the social media, you know, say okay, people want to make their minds up on stupid social media, they can do that. But to vote this way and have it come out that way that really troubles me. But it's been like that for a long time. I don't think this is the first time that we've seen this. It's certainly going to get more and more sophisticated throughout history. There's always been voting tampering on whether it's electronic or not. I don't really think that this is anything new. It's just a little bit more sophisticated. And now we have actual threat actors and there's a paper trail. Now we can actually see a digital trail that leads back to Russia. And that's well documented, well understood. Anyone can go out and Google that. So just look for yourself. See if there's any conclusive evidence that shows that Russia was involved in the voting machine tampering. And you'll see that there is clear and conclusive evidence that does that. You don't have to take my word for it. Go ahead and look for yourself. Why doesn't it happen more? I guess I'm changing my question. You say it happens every day, but why doesn't it happen more? Why don't we have the whole city come down? Because people are busy and there is some element of humanity and all this. No one wants to go out there and completely crash an infrastructure. They'd rather hold it ransom or rather hold it hostage. Make a few bucks off of it. And so that's what they're doing all the time. We see this happening in hospitals all the time. We see this happening in banks. We see this happening all across the world. The utility companies that they're really kind of messing with seem to be in third world countries. Like what was it? Estonia or Ukraine a few months ago? Russia did that for sure. Turned off the lights in Ukraine. Well, we hope it's them. Because at least there's some alliances there. But it's very difficult to get in with some of these Asian countries. It's very difficult to track someone down in those places. I mean, it's all kind of a crapshoot. We have an entire global network of well-organized, well-documented. Do they talk to each other? Well-funded. Yeah, of course. Can I intercept them? Can I stop them? Well, it's like the flowing of water. You put up one blockage and it's going to flow all around it. The internet is made in such a way so that it's not dependent on one place. In fact, you know how the word cloud, everyone talks cloud. You know where that came from, right? So cloud originally was a way to diagram out all the different nodes of the internet of our private network. And when they started drawing lines between all the different nodes it kind of looked like this big amorphous cloud. And so they said, oh, well, this is the cloud now. We're going to put all our data in the cloud. We're going to put our computing in the cloud. We're going to put our faith in the cloud. And we're going to have to try to secure that cloud infrastructure. So in the same way, the internet is essentially one big cloud. You can't really just stop communications from 1.8 to point B because there's a thousand different ways to get to the next point. So that's what makes it beautiful and that's what makes it very difficult to police at the same time. Well, I mean, suppose I gave you a blank check. I want to. I want to give you a blank check. And you can do whatever you want. You can spend whatever you want to spend. And the mission I am assigning you is stop this stuff. Stop the hacking. Stop all these really objectionable, destructive things. What would you do? It's not that simple. Make it as complex as you want. No, there's huge advantages to doing this stuff. I mean, going back to the case of Israel, I mean, it's prevented physical war and physical attacks from happening on real people and people dying. I mean, having that kind of cyber infrastructure and that expertise and that ability to defend the country that way is huge. That's very valuable. So those same tools that are in use can be used to protect as well. In fact, we use many of the same type of what we call hacking tools to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. We have ways to access computers remotely so that we can protect them from the other people who could be doing the same thing. So you got to fight fire with fire sometimes. So it's a battle. It's a ying and a yang. So which side, well, one side is going to win on a given day. One side is going to lose on a given day. And maybe over the long term, one side wins, one side loses. What are the factors that go into that? What do I need to have to be a winner? What do I need to lack to be a loser? Well, you talk very interestingly. So, you know, going back, I was listening to a Simon Sinek talk recently, it was very interesting. And he talks about why we lost in the Vietnam War. And it had to do with the way that we saw winning and losing versus the Vietnamese saw winning and losing, right? So for them, you know, obviously they were underfunded. There were far less soldiers. But in the end, they were there fighting for their lives, right? There was no, like, winning or losing. This wasn't a football match. This wasn't a basketball game with people holding points. And, you know, this is the winner and that's the loser. And we're done with the game now. That's how America was coming into it. And we would come out and we'd blitz them and we were way better at everything. We had higher technology. But in the end, we weren't there, right? Because there was no, like, end game, right? So in a lot of ways, health is like this, right? You know, there's no time and place when you can say, like, I am done with taking care of my body. And I am done with, you know, ThinkTec. You know, ThinkTec is going to go on forever, right? So that's kind of the whole point. It's all the time. It's all the time and it's a constant flow in its life. What sort of resources, what sort of attitude do I have to have to be on the top? You know, because over time, one side will prevail more than the other. For a bit. One less. For a bit. Okay. For a while. For a while. So there's going to be what do I need? What skills? I mean, for example, the Israelis, or for that matter, the American, you know, establishment, the computer hacking establishment in the Pentagon. I forget what they call it. But, you know, how much money do you need? Do you need a lot of money? Will money satisfy the problem? Do you need really smart people? How do you get them? Do you need some kind of support from the government? What kind of support do you need? How do you determine which side is likely to prevail? Well, there's a lot of factors that go into, when you talk about end user protection versus infrastructure protection versus actual government agendas to protect the people as a whole, right? So when you talk about blank check, there's going to be a blank check in each of these three categories. And for individual end user protection, you know, there's a lot of employee education that goes into this. So there's going to be a major push in terms of education, understanding what these things are and how to get back into them. There's going to be a major technology push in the products and services, artificial intelligence is going into this. In fact, a little bit of background, IBM, right, used to make laptops and they used to make servers and they used to do all this stuff, right? This was just a few years ago. Now, where did it all go? Now it's all cybersecurity, it's all Watson, right, which is artificial intelligence. That's the kind of stuff that's going to protect us, yeah. That will protect us. That was a smart move. Yeah, of course. They saw the writing on the wall, you know, everyone's making all this equipment. Why are they in this equipment business? They are in the knowledge business and protection business and they can protect the assets of any company over the horizon, especially now. And we're going to take a one minute horizon. Sure. We're going to look over that horizon and in one minute we'll be back with a total stress of SOS tech solutions. You got it. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. The Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaiiana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Hey, Stan the Energyman here on Think Tech Hawaii and they won't let me do political commentary, so I'm stuck doing energy stuff, but I really like energy stuff, so I'm going to keep on doing it. So join me every Friday on Stan the Energyman at lunchtime, at noon, on my lunch hour. We're going to talk about everything energy, especially if it begins with the word hydrogen. We're going to definitely be talking about it. We'll talk about how we can make Hawaii cleaner, how we can make the world a better place, just basically save the planet. Even Miss America can't even talk about stuff like that anymore. We've got it nailed down here, so we'll see you on Friday at noon with Stan the Energyman. Aloha. We're back, Attila. Tell us a rest. SOS, Tech Solutions. Sure. So, okay, governments are going to do what they're going to do. These days it seems we have less control over what government does than ever before, at least in recent times. And that goes through other countries as well. But what about the individual person? Let's just talk about protecting ourselves. Let's just talking about the audience that you are messing. What are you telling them they should do? Look, as an individual you can't protect yourself because you're not the target. Let's just start there. The target is the database or the website, whatever platform you put your information into, and then that data has been harvested, taken out, and sold. So I should be careful in selecting the platform. Right. Where do you put your stuff? So a minute during the break we were talking about iPhone versus Android. So maybe that choice is a choice that also involves protection against hacking. Is it true? Is one going to be more protection than the other? This is the age-old question, right? Is Apple or Android going to be the better platform for you to choose? Which one's more secure? Unfortunately it's hard to tell because whenever there is a vulnerability found in the Apple Store they can't disclose that right away. But there have been lots of instances where apps have ended up on the Apple Store, they've been infections, and they've harvested data off the phone and transmitted them off to who knows where. One of the more disturbing things that we're starting to see now is that recently cellular phone networks opened up their data networks to be analyzed by third parties. What that means is that they could go in there and see what is going on. And consistently across the board, T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, up to 70% of all data that's going through seems to be coming from autonomous sources or their malicious intent. On my phone. On your phone right now. So our phones right now, in our pockets, can be transmitting or trying to do third-party attacks on remote sites. We don't know what's going on. So the network thing. So a mesh network where the whole world is involved in this huge network. Sort of like those things that come on your computer and communicate secretly with other computers. That is the whole point. And network rendering, that's exactly how Pixar got started. That's how all these other great tech startups got started. Is because they offloaded the responsibility onto all these devices that are out there. I mean, you think about these phones that we have in our pockets. I mean, they're fabulously powerful. I mean, these things are incredible. And Galaxy. Yeah, Samsung. Probably the same thing as you. I got a 9 plus. No, I got the 8 plus. Oh, Tilla. I have to help you out. It's okay. My wife will get this one next. It's all right. But what can you do? You can get it on the phone. Can you fix the phone? Can I get a patch that doesn't let this, you know, this scurrilous data come across my phone? Well, to a degree. But a lot of that stuff is really useful. I mean, everyone loves the ability to check the traffic report in real time, right? You can see like, oh, well, I'm going down limits. Oh, it's red or oh, it's green. No problem, right? Where do you think that data comes from? Magic? Cameras? No, they're watching to see how fast your phone is moving. The thing on Apple a few years ago, remember, they found a file on the Apple phone and it kept the record, many, many thousands of records on where you have been using the GPS. So it was like a living record of your travels in this universe. And the best part about that is that any third party could then query that and say like, oh, you didn't know that they didn't tell you. And when they were challenged about it, they just went mum, which is what they do. And they erased it? Yeah. Oh, with the new update, we erased this file. And you're going to see a lot more of that kind of popping up. So we all become victims in so many ways. So with nothing much we can do personally, more than, I guess, buying an antivirus machine for our computer. How valuable is that? That doesn't mean anything. Not really. Doesn't mean anything? But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So I go on my machine, there's no antivirus and I start getting pop-up windows and strange messages. Well, what are you doing that you need pop-up windows? You shouldn't be going to those websites in the first base, Jay. Come on. Look, what you have to do is, first of all, use your head when you go online. If you're going to use a computer for work, use a computer for work. Don't go fooling around on some sort of third party applications. Now, where those antivirus programs become useful to a degree, they'll filter your website traffic and say like, oh, okay, we've discovered it's unusual on this particular site. Now, one of the things that we're starting to see a lot of also is the advertiser networks themselves are being infected. So you go to Wall Street Journal or whatever. It's bad enough to get an ad and now you get an ad for the virus. Of course, yeah. Facebook ads, Yahoo ads, this has all been infected over and over again. But I care about cleaning my system. I care about getting that off or protecting myself from that. Are you saying I shouldn't? Well, I'm just saying use common sense and then it's not going to become such a big issue anyway. In fact, one of the great things about Windows 10 is that Microsoft has invested heavily in its Defender software. Now, for years Defender was a big joke, right? Like, oh, this is a piece of crap software. It was optional in Windows 7, Windows 8, and then Windows 10. Now it's integrated. And Microsoft is actively harvesting data from all of those Windows 10 computers. Telling us? Well, they're making their antivirus protection better. So essentially they're crowdsourcing all of that information that is going through and it's built in natively into the operating system. They're getting a lot more data and they're harvesting and harvesting and they're becoming, I believe, they're going to become the next big antivirus authority. All these Norton's and McAfee's and all these nonsense, you said, but Defender, they're all going to kind of go away. Once Microsoft reaches that critical mass and says, look, we're going to protect all these computers best possible network that we can. So we might as well go along with just no point in protesting any of that. Well, all this is going to stay in place until the terminator comes back in the future and destroys Microsoft. Because I don't think that's going to happen, but in the same way, they are the ones that are... So lay back and enjoy it, is that what you're saying? Well, lay back and enjoy all this great stuff, this technology that we have out there. And I hope there's no virus with your name on it. Well, yeah. And share what you can, share what your life is about, express yourself online. Really? You're not saying no to that? No, no, you have to. In fact, I mean, this is a completely different conversation, but if you want to survive as a professional in this day and age... You have to communicate. Yeah, you have to communicate. Who are you, and what are you about as your career changes through the years, your brand identity has to remain intact. If you're a sales rep for one company and you move it to be a sales rep for the next company, then that following will go with you if you've built that together. But you've got to use common sense with that too. These kids that tell all their secret stories and show all their secret pictures on Facebook and the like, they're asking for trouble. Well, I've talked to these kids at high school and they know about it. They know that everything is essentially a digital tattoo. Anything you put on Facebook is archive forever. Anything you put on Instagram is archive forever. Snapchat as well. We're not going to talk about Snapchat because that's done with, right? So Instagram and Facebook is already going to talk about it on Twitter. So those three platforms, as long as you put something out on there, it's going to be continuously kept there. Now, here's some good news. There are ways to actually flood your account and completely make anything you've done maybe seem anonymous or ridiculous. So there are some ways to wipe up your tracks, but that kind of activity is really difficult to do. Well, I guess it's not too difficult for someone like you, of course. But the idea is, you know, you want to have that kind of digital footprint and that digital footprint can either be good or can be bad. Well, you know, in large part of things can be bad. For example, we have government by Twitter now. Who would have thunk a few years ago that we would have government by Twitter? It's not just Trump either. It's a lot of other leaders in the world are expressing themselves through Twitter. And, you know, this has got to be changing the way government nation states work, the way, you know, global governance works that one person who has a great, apparent authority gets up and talks to millions, hundreds of millions, even billions on Twitter in his pajamas at four in the morning, whatever comes to mind. This is really not a good thing, isn't it? I mean, doesn't that worry you about the future of the human race? Well, I don't see how, what other direction are we going to go? There's too much power. Too much power in the hands of good people. It's transparency. It's transparency too, though. And I look and talk about Microsoft, talk about Google, talk about Amazon and all that. It's only a handful. Apple. It's only a handful. A handful of what? Of huge tech companies that are having enormous effect in our lives, controlling our phones, our communication. You know, my goodness, you do so much with Google these days. Suppose they decided to be evil all of a sudden. You know, they could wreck havoc, because there's so few of them. And they do talk to each other. Yeah, I've heard that, you know, argument like, you know, what if Google turned evil overnight? And, you know, that would kind of change the stock price. And also, everyone at Google stands for the betterment of humanity. I mean, let's just start there. I mean, they have the right people, I hope, in positions that do the right thing. I mean, at the end of the day, do people do the right thing when push comes to shove? Most of the time they do. You know, you don't have people, you know, if they're running late to work, just go and plow over someone and kill them in the street. I am not taking any steps against those hackers. Those hackers are having a way with me. Which hackers? The hackers. The ones who are attacking the utilities and the banks and the government. You know, you talk to a lot of people in every background. They think that they are doing the right thing. They feel that they are doing the best thing for the humanity, for themselves, for the religion. Right? And religion is like a big one, especially if they're out there doing religion, you can't talk to them about anything else. And, you know, the hackers that are in North Korea, what do they think they're doing? They're doing the right thing to fund their nuclear weapons program. That's what they're releasing ransomware for and they're collecting money and they're laughing all the way to the bank. You listen to somebody, and they're on YouTube, you can go and see them. All these scammers that are out there and they're being recorded, they're coming from Middle East and India and Pakistan, all these little, you know, kind of, that kind of general part of the world, you know, that general part of the world has got a lot of animosity towards America. They feel that they're doing the right thing for their family, for their culture, and they're living in the dirt and disease and poverty and, you know, they can't feed their families and if they can get a few bucks out of an old lady in Arkansas, well, you know, so be it. She can keep on living. She's going to be better off than they are. So you got to have some empathy in those people. It's a new kind of democratization. It's a kind of democratization where the good guys are good and the bad guys, the good guys could be bad and the bad guys could be good and it goes to the whole thing about fake news. You know, who do you side with? Who has the right, you know, moral approach? Well, everything but this is fake news, so let's just start there. This is real. Yeah, we're not being told what to say. You may say that until, but I'll tell you, every time we have this conversation, I get a little bit depressed. I'm paranoid. He's more paranoid than I am now. Anyway, this is so interesting and I want to allow you, offer you one minute to try to tell people what message you want to leave with them after this hemophrenic discussion we've had. There's the camera. It's number one. There it is. Oh, number one. Number one. Okay. So many cameras here. Okay, well, look, cybersecurity is one of those things that's not going away. It's something that you need to become educated on. It's just like driving a car. Sometimes you need a license and that's okay. So go ahead and get educated on all the things that are coming up. There's new information every single day. It's fun to talk about. Lots of people are interested in it and lots of people are willing to share. Professionals like myself and others that are out there are really interested in involving the community and what we can do to better ourselves better our nation, better our world and this new social platform that we've embraced over the past decade or so has really helped to bring humanity to the next level. We look forward to seeing when new changes come up in third world countries, how we can help these third world countries in becoming better and educating themselves and getting out of real big problems. We hope that some of these cybersecurity concerns that are affecting critical infrastructure don't really cause any sort of real human damage and we hope that there's a lot of people out there that think that maybe they're doing the right thing but maybe they're going to come to terms with who they are. We hope that places like this continue where we can talk about cybersecurity issues and how you can educate yourself and become better. We'll do it again. I tell us a rest with the SOS tech solution. I understand you're going to change your name too. It's going to be okay. Tech solutions. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.