Lessons

Lesson Info

Class Introduction

The name of the class is How to Secure Your Digital Life because we're all spending more and more time online, obviously, and most of us have no idea how to protect ourselves. That's what I hope to share with you today. In fact, specifically, I want to give you information that'll help you protect not just yourselves, but also your family and your money, because both are at risk in today's world. A little bit about the workshop. Why are we doing this? Right? Why are we doing this? Well, because there is a huge amount of cyber crime out there and I'm gonna be talking about that. Now for those of you who are easily frightened, you may wanna get out your tinfoil hats and put them on early just because some of these stats are gonna be a little scary, but I think it's really important to frame the issue and help you understand how really serious the matter is. So let's get into it. Uh, how many of you remember the Equifax hack just a couple of, you know, a few weeks ago? So that was crazy. ...

Over 140 million accounts were hacked, right? Nearly half of America had their social security numbers stolen, their personal information, credit data, their addresses, all the places they've lived, and now we just found out in the past few days that even their driver's license numbers and records leaked. And this is really significant because the data that Equifax collects answers all those secret questions that you use for all your other accounts like mother's maiden name and what street did you live on when you were 10, so this was a really significant attack and we're still feeling the effects of it today. Here's another one. How many of you have a Yahoo account? All right? Most people do or did at some point. Yahoo announced that they were hacked two years ago and they said oh, we have 500 million accounts that were hacked. And then they said, well, technically it's a billion accounts that were hacked, and just a couple of months ago, they said no, it was three billion. Right? Every single Yahoo account ever created was hacked and the information is out there and available. So, if you're one of those people who uses the same login and password for Yahoo for Bank of America or Wells Fargo or Fidelity, you may wanna change that password because bad guys can and do take those old credentials and try to log in to as many sites as they can. And in fact, the whole process is automated. They have specialized tools that do this. Um, there are over one million new computer viruses created daily, all right? The bad guys are churning these out, and again, the process is automated. It uses machine learning and AI and their goal is to break into as many of your devices as they can. So the threat is growing exponentially. Identity fraud is also on the rise and in the US alone there's a new victim of identity theft every two seconds in the United States. And if you happen to be one of those victims, not only can it cause you thousands of dollars, but it can take months and years out of your life trying to prove that you're you and getting your own data back. So we wanna help prevent that as much as we can and I think we've got some really good tools to do that. Um, how many of you use or have used antivirus programs? So when most people think of cyber security, they think antivirus. That's gonna be the thing that protects me. And unfortunately, while that used to be somewhat true, today the bad guys are completely outrunning the good guys when it comes to antivirus. There's a cyber security company called Imperva and they did a study a few years ago of 40 antivirus companies, and they discovered that they only detected 5% of new malware threats out there. So only 5% of the threats are being detected. And some of those 40 companies included these folks, right? So if you're relying upon antivirus tools from these companies, like that's not a really good idea. You're gonna need a backup plan. I like to say that if your own human immune system worked like computer antivirus worked, you'd be dead in 24 hours, right? So your own immune system is way more powerful than this sort of computer digital immune system. And many of the people who create these products have admitted it. Mikko Hypponen, who founded F-Secure, one of the biggest antivirus companies in the world has said, the antivirus era is over. The antivirus era is over and MIT review, Technology Review wrote about that. So having antivirus software alone is definitely not enough. And you'll notice in all the different things that I'm talking about, one of my recommendations isn't run out there and get antivirus because unfortunately, we've had people infect antivirus programs and actually use those tools to break into your computer. So it's not one of my top priorities at all. What I'm going to do is give you actual tools and tips that will work. Things that are proven to make a difference. And that's why I'm so excited to share it with you. Uh, how many of you have children? Okay, for those of you who do, here's something to keep in mind. Children are 51 times more likely to be a victim of identity theft than an adult. Why is that? Well nowadays when kids are born they get their social security number at the hospital, and it turns out, they're not, you know, getting MasterCards at age two most of the time. So criminals are stealing their identity and they're able to use it for 18 years until the kid shows up at college. If an adult's identity is stolen, you'll see a fake charge on your credit card bill, you'll get a letter from somebody in the mail telling you that there's a problem. Because kids don't have any of these accounts, the criminals get to use their identity for 18 years and the kids only find out about it when they go off to college and apply for financial aid, and find out that their FICO score is a three, right? And they're not getting any loans, so if you have children, turn off their credit. There's a way to lock people's credit reports so that nobody can get access to that. If you've got children, definitely do that, and it's not a bad idea to do it for yourself, as an adult, and we'll talk about that later. There's also a new and emerging threat that's really growing and that's something called ransomware. And I'll talk about what that is specifically later, but in short, it's a virus that gets on your computer, encrypts all of your files, and steals your own data from you, and you have to pay money to get back access to your files. Ransomware has grown 250% in the past year alone, and it's scheduled to cause consumers and business $12 billion dollars by 2019, so it's a huge threat. Uh, most of you have Facebook accounts? Yes, right? So it turns out that there are 600,000 Facebook accounts that are um, compromised every single day. 600,000 Facebook accounts compromised every single day and that data comes from Sophos, a security firm, but they based it upon an acknowledgment and research done by Facebook itself, right? So anything you put on Facebook is clearly public, and all of your accounts may leak eventually anyway, so be really thoughtful about what information you choose to share online. Now, after hearing all of that, all that good news. What a great way to start off the morning. Um, after hearing all of that, some of you may be thinking, well why would anybody attack me? I'm such a nice person, you know, I'm just a small fish. They're gonna go after the big fish. Here's the truth of the matter. They're not attacking you. They're attacking everybody, right? They have automated tools that try to break into as many accounts as they can. So if you've got a Gmail account, a Facebook account, an online bank account, right? All of these tools are out there, and because there are three billion hacked Yahoo accounts, and 150 million hacked Equifax accounts. All the data about you is already out there. So don't think you've got nothing to worry about because you're just, you know, a student or a housewife or a business man or woman, right? The fact of the matter is we all have something to be concerned about because the attacks have become automated. Um, Warren Buffet, the oracle of Omaha, is a pretty bright guy, and this is what he had to say about cyber attacks. He thought it was the number one problem facing mankind, worse than nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons really suck, so I don't know if it's worse than nuclear weapons and I'm kind of a cyber guy. I love to talk about some of these risks. But if Warren Buffet, who's pretty darn smart, who sees this as like that imminent of a danger, I think it's worth considering. Now here's the awesome news, and this is why I'm so happy to be able to share all of this information with you. I have a proven system based upon research that can help each and every one of you reduce your cyber risk by up to 85%, right? The things that we're gonna do in this class today actually make a difference and will work. And wouldn't that be great? To be 85% safer? Like, how many of us might wanna lose like 85% of our body fat or gain 85% more muscle, or be 85% richer or like have an 85% better husband or wife or better behaved kids, right? 85% is like a really significant number. So we should celebrate that and embrace that. And that's why I'm happy to have you here today because if you do the things that we're gonna talk about you can achieve these big differences in your own online personal safety. Now, who am I? And why am I here and why am I teaching this class? I'll tell you a little bit about my background. As Laura mentioned, I wrote this book called Future Crimes. It was a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today best seller, and it was named by Amazon as its best business book of 2015, which is kinda cool because what it proves is you know cyber is not just some subject for the geeks. This affects our business. This affects investing. This infects, affects, this affects our lives, right? So I'm appreciative of that Amazon recognition and the fact that they selected it hopefully is an indicator that this affects you and your life as well. Future Crimes has now been printed in 20 different languages around the world. We're in Dutch and French, Arabic, Ukrainian, Turkish, Romanian, Korean, Japanese, Polish, so many others. And so it's a message that's resonating around the world and I'm really pleased with that. Oh, why am I doing this, right? I'm trying to get the message out there. I've appeared on the media, on radio, television around the world because I want people to be protected. I even, as Laura mentioned, spoke a TED. That talk's been seen nearly a million and a half times and it's translated to 27 different languages. This information is important information and it's not secret information. It's the stuff that you should have been learning in school. It's the stuff that somebody should have taught you somewhere along the way, and probably nobody has, and that's why I'm here. As was mentioned, besides writing this book, my actual career was in law enforcement. I started out as a street cop, working with the Los Angeles Police Department and I've worked with many other police agencies around the world and I was, you know, worked undercover, I did vice and narcotics and a whole bunch of other different things, but in the LAPD, we have famous police cars and we have a famous phrase on the side of the car which is to protect and serve and I take that really seriously, right? You know, the world looks a little bit iffy right now for many of us. There's lots of stuff going on. And all it takes for the bad guys to succeed is for the good guys to give up. So I'm taking my mission of protecting people, the same thing I used to do on the mean streets and bringing it into the digital world, to give you the tools that you need to survive in this ever-increasing threatening environment that we have. Um, now, here's the bargain we're gonna make. I'm going to give you information, but information alone is not enough, right? This is not a cyber learning program. This is a cyber doing program. And when you leave, you're gonna have a specific checklist of all the things you need to do to actually achieve that 85% better cyber security rating.