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Kaylee Williams: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Iowa Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Kaylee Williams, and today I am in the Jethro’s Barbecue Studio with two individuals who are here to talk to us about a hot topic, cybersecurity, and all the ways it’s impacting you, me, and the communities in which we live. So here I have Doug Jacobson, a professor at Iowa State University. He teaches computer and electrical engineering. And Corey Munson, the vice president of a company called PC Matic. Thanks for being here in the studio with me today, you two.

Corey Munson: Thanks, Kaylee

Doug Jacobson: Thanks

Kaylee Williams: So let’s start with you, Doug. Tell me a little bit about your background, um, your role in all of this, and then Corey, I’ll have you do the same, and then we’ll jump right into Cyber Safe Communities and the work that you’re doing together in collaboration and in support of Iowa.

Doug Jacobson: Yeah. Um, yeah, I’m a professor of computer engineering. I teach cybersecurity at Iowa State. Been doing that since first class was in 1995, so I’ve been teaching cybersecurity before it was a thing that we, that we talked about. Um, and I run our, our Center for Cybersecurity Innovation and Outreach. Um, and so I’ve been involved, uh, for the last probably 15 years, primarily in outreach, uh, to, uh, teach cybersecurity to everybody. I’ve had this goal for a long time to teach every Iowan, um, to be safe. I’m a little behind, but that’s the goal.

Kaylee Williams: Well, it’s a, it’s a noble mission for sure, and perhaps more urgent and important today than it’s ever been, and I don’t know if you would agree with that. It’s kind of a bold statement, but

Doug Jacobson: E- no, it is. You know, I, like I said, I’ve been in this forever and, you know, every few years we hear this technology is gonna solve cyber, and this technology’s gonna solve cyber, and now AI is gonna solve cyber. And you know what? Technology’s important, but it really comes down to the people, and they have to be involved. And so we need to find ways to make people, uh, safe, help them become safe on the internet. Uh, it really involves, you know, trusted partners to be able to make these– help these people navigate this ever-changing, uh, cyber landscape we have

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. Corey, what about you?

Corey Munson: Well, lifelong Iowa resident. Uh, for the last 20 years I’ve been with this company called PC Matic, and we develop cybersecurity tools for anywhere from home users, families, school districts, on up to the federal government. And we’re a virtual company. We’ve been around for about 25 years. But, um, one of the things that we really encourage our employees to do is look for ways to better serve their local communities where we actually live and tie it back into, to what we’re champions for, and that is better cybersecurity best practices. And, uh, you know, Doug and I got to know each other a couple of years ago, and I’m, I’m a big fan of what he’s attempting to do on behalf of the, the state and try to better educate the residents of the state and decided, “Hey, is, is there a way I can better support what he’s trying to do and help amplify that message?” So that brings us here today.

Kaylee Williams: How did the two of you meet?

Corey Munson: It might have been through… I, I may have just attended one of Doug’s, uh, sessions introducing cybersecurity ambassadors or, or something, uh, uh,

Doug Jacobson: Yeah. Yeah, I can’t remember. Yeah, it was one of the many- Yeah … many place, you know, many opportunities we

Corey Munson: we kind of overlap in a lot of different ways, I think

Kaylee Williams: So tell me about the work that you’re doing together

Doug Jacobson: Um, so, um, the, the project that we’re, uh, working on together is an idea called Cyber Safe Communities. Sort of along the lines of, you know, you have a tree community and, and, uh… So it’s not about the communities. Um, when you first say that, people go, “Oh, it’s does the, you know, does the city run a firewall?” And it’s, it’s really is there a culture of cybersecurity? Are there ways that the community is supporting its residents to help them better understand cybersecurity, the role of, role of them s- them in cybersecurity, the role of how the community can help? So cybersec- uh, security, like a lot of things, it’s all about those relationships, those trusted partnerships. And so what better, um, opportunity than that local community to really build that culture?

Corey Munson: Yeah. I, I think one of the things I, uh, that really resonated for me with what Doug was advocating for with these community type of conversations, there’s no shortage of guides about how to better secure yourself and your family, and you can download any number of, of how-to manuals for that. But I I think what appeals to me is this idea of actually having conversations with your neighbors, having conversations with local cybersecurity experts within your community, and collectively coming together to, to decide how we can better support one another, whether it’s just neighbor to neighbor or business to business or potentially even, even, supporting our schools and our local governments as well. And I, I think there’s, there’s something to be said for changing the, the conversation to, to make it more hyperlocal, and, and that kind of brings us together on it.

Kaylee Williams: So how does Cyber SAFE Communities facilitate these interactions or, or become sort of the glue between these different stakeholders, these different groups?

Doug Jacobson: Um, yeah, so we’re working on, um, sort of ideas, ways, things that we can have, show the communities how they can work together. I’ll let Corey talk a little bit about what he’s doing in, in, uh, starting in Huxley. But, you know, how do you involve the libraries? How do you involve banks and churches? You know, those places in the community that people turn to, places where they gather, and how do you bring those communities together? I spend a lot of time talking to these various groups, going all over the state, talking at churches and, and banks and others. And it’s always very interesting when you bring those people together in that safe environment. They all know each other, and so that builds this– starts to build this culture, and we’re trying to see how we can grow that across the state and provide a framework for communities to, to create that culture

Kaylee Williams: Sure. Iowans talking to other Iowans

Doug Jacobson: Yeah, we’re good at that. We just need to put cyber in that conversation

Kaylee Williams: Yeah

Corey Munson: Yeah, I think, uh, what, what really, um, inspired me was this idea that we could potentially start to pilot this at a local level where I happen to live in Huxley. And what if we were to take a, a rel- relatively small community in Iowa and start the conversation there, and start the conversation around a couple of events to kinda kick this off, knowing that we would hope that it would become a, kind of an, an evolution of, of this conversation over the course of time, but at least having some sort of kickoff type of event. And then knowing if we can show success here and show that there was an interest and engagement, what can we do to use that as a template to replicate this across the state potentially? And, and, you know, it, it feeds, uh, Doug’s larger mission with the Iowa Cyber Hub to, to really cover the entire state. But we’re excited about so far the reception, uh, of what we’re proposing here in early October in Huxley has been off the charts, and people are, are very excited by, by the ide- idea of being able to enca- engage with kinda fellow people within the community about the topic and be led by people within the community as well.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. I wonder if this is your perception as well, but I, I feel personally, um, and I’m, I’m a business owner, I’m a nonprofit organizer, it’s almost like I don’t wanna talk about cybersecurity ’cause I don’t feel like I understand it. Do you think that perhaps part of the reason this is being received so well is that you’re giving folks an opportunity to come together and just sort of raise their hands and say, “Yeah, how does this work? Like, how do we protect our… We don’t know, but we don’t wanna volunteer that we don’t know necessarily.”

Doug Jacobson: Yeah, I think you nailed it. It’s– And by, again, by bringing it in the community, they’re people you already trust and work with, so you’re much more comfortable asking those questions and, and showing that, “Hey, I don’t know this.” And cyber sc- you know, whenever you talk about it in general, it’s scary to people. Shouldn’t be, but it, but it is. And so this is trying to break down that scariness. And there’s also some amount of, um, you know, if they have a feeling that, um, A, it’s scary, but they feel sometimes ashamed if something’s happened to them, like it’s their fault, and it’s not. You know, these, these people who, who carry out these scams and so on, they’re really, really good. And so again, by having that conversation and o- breaking down those barriers, people can start to talk about things they’ve seen, things they’ve heard, what’s going on in our community. And so yeah, it’s re-really trying to create that discussion in, in a safe, um, safe way. And there’s, you know, communities like Huxley, which are these small… You know, Iowa’s made up of a lot of very nice, fun communities, and what better to have that conversation than in these types of communities?

Kaylee Williams: Right, where you, where you feel, and not to make a pun, but you feel safe. You feel like this is a safe, trusted group. And to have someone from industry who knows this world and who has deep technical expertise in the room, I mean, what a, what a boon. You can ask any question, and there you are. And you’re one of us. You grew up here. You’re an Iowa native

Corey Munson: Yeah, I think that’s part of the e-exciting thing about the way we’re proposing this particular event is it’s going to be a, a panel discussion format where the panelists will be the cybersecurity leaders from within the community. As an example, we’ll have a representative from the Ballard Community School District that is responsible for IT and security. We’ll have a representative from the FBI field office who’s going to come in. Doug’s going to participate. We’ve got other, uh, private sector folks who have cybersecurity responsibilities, and they might just be your neighbor, and this might lead to a, a, a deeper conversation, you know, just, just o- in the driveway over beers, you know, some night. But, um, to be able to, to kind of, uh, light the fire under the conversation, I think is, is really what we’re driving for here. And, you know, I, I kinda c– when I go, go out and speak to the community about this, I kinda remember back in the, it was probably late ’70s. Growing up in Sioux City, I remember my mom was one of the leaders for the Neighborhood Watch program, and it was relatively new at the com– A-and I remember there was a sign outside of our, our house, and it was on a, on a light pole. And I thought, you know, “Why was she really doing this?” It wasn’t because she wanted a badge and she wanted to be armed and be prepared to defend the neighborhood. It was she wanted to be able to engage with other folks on our street, on our block, on a matter of just simply better protecting ourselves against break-ins in the house. Well, this, th- I think this is very similar in a lot of ways, and it’s, it’s empowering these people to understand that there are things that can be done to better protect yourselves. It doesn’t necessarily involve real sophisticated technology or a, a big outlay of, of money to be able to, to better protect yourselves. And if these conversations can, can better, uh, drive that message home, I think ultimately that’s the win. That’s what we’re looking for.

Kaylee Williams: I wanna zoom out and talk about cybersecurity more broadly. And I wanna start with you, Doug. In the last 10 years, how has your curriculum evolved with students? And maybe touch on AI for me, ’cause I’m sure the last year or two years you’ve had to address it, you know, in some meaningful way, um, because I think AI can both be the solution, as you indicated earlier, but is part of the problem. So tell us a little bit about how that’s evolved, and then I have the same question for you, Corey, but I want it from more of the PC Matic standpoint

Doug Jacobson: Yeah. So our curriculum, um, you know, as I said, I’ve been in cyber quite a while. Uh, 25 years ago it was a, it was an advanced degree. It was a master’s degree in order to become cyber. Um, but a little over 10 years ago we started an undergrad degree. Um, so cyber has become much more pervasive. It’s now taught as courses in other degrees. So cyber’s something that, that is starting to become pervasive across engineering and across some other disciplines. Um, so we’ve seen that, you know, movement of, of cyber as a something else you need to know. Um, as far as, um, you know, some of the changes I’ve seen, um, you know, as I’ve said some, you know, many years ago it was looked at as a technology only problem and this, this new technology’s gonna solve it. It’s more, much more a combination of a technology and a people problem. Um, and we’re seeing that, um, change. You know, when I first gave talks in cybersecurity back in the late ’90s and 2000s, I’d spend most of the talk explaining why I’m up here giving a talk on cyber ’cause it didn’t affect people.

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. Why is this relevant?

Doug Jacobson: You know, why is this relevant? Um, today, you know, it’s be- it’s becoming quite obvious why it’s, why it’s relevant, but we’ve seen some, some changes and the, and the changes of a lot of them have come sort of outside the cyber world. We’ve seen the ability to, to move money anonymously, which has enabled the adversaries. You know, it used to be they couldn’t make money doing this unless they were paid to break into something. Now they, now somebody any- in a basement anywhere can make money doing this. Um, you can buy ransomware online, you can buy attack tools online and you, or you can just send out a really great email and convince somebody to give you money. Um, and so it’s the barrier of entry is, is quite low for adversaries and AI has really lowered that barrier of entry significantly. Um, you know, we’ve all won the Nigerian lottery multiple times over our careers and, uh, you know, the English was bad and you kind of… But people still fell for it. Now they’re creating very easily, they can gather all sorts of data on Corey, on, on me, on university, on his company and create a phishing email, uh, attack that is highly targeted, knows about your boss, knows about your organization and it takes no effort to do that

Kaylee Williams: It even comes from your boss, right?

Doug Jacobson: Yeah. Yes. And it looks like, yeah, so it used to be it took a lot of effort to do that. Now it takes no effort. And so we’ve really lowered that, that, uh, barrier of entry for, for the adversary to, especially to create some very realistic scams. So yeah, it’s– the world has changed, and that’s why, again, we need to help people understand that landscape so they can participate in their safety

Corey Munson: From a PC matter perspective, we kind of look at it two ways, um, both from the offensive and, and defensive side. One, it’s definitely a force multiplier, as, as Doug has said. It’s taking all of these phish-phishing scams and everything else and just simply, uh, automating it to, to a large degree and, and again, becoming that force multiplier. We’re also looking at ways that it can better improve our own internal processes of developing software and making it more effective against the latest and greatest threats. But I think, you know, in, in my travels, and I spend a lot of time talking to experts like, like Doug, and asking a lot of questions about AI-related threats, and what I consistently hear over and over again is this this should be a call to double down on best practices and fundamentals. This… We’re, we’re not at the point where we’ve just simply lost all hope, and we just need to sit back and wait for it to happen. We can still take basic practical steps towards protecting ourselves, whether it’s our company, whether it’s ourselves individually. We can, uh, we can talk about password hygiene. We can talk about multi-factor authentication. You know, at, at one point, there was a suggestion that 90% of most of these attacks could be prevented if we were to take these, these practical best practice steps. That, that hasn’t changed. It’s made that even more important now knowing that, um, these AI, you know, related attacks are going to accelerate if, if haven’t accelerated already. So I’m, I’m hopeful that, again, if we take a look at what we’re trying to do at a community-by-community level is to get that message out there, that there are things that can be done, and it, it’s not an, it’s not a, a big undertaking, and you don’t have to be overly technical to better protect yourself.

Doug Jacobson: I want to circle back a little bit on the, on, on the other side from AI is where how it’s embedded in the classroom. AI is now integral in pretty much every cyber course we teach. Matter of fact, the National Science Foundation has sort of reframed its cyber and AI. So they, they… Those two things, we don’t talk about cyber without talking about AI at a national

Kaylee Williams: we’re married now.

Doug Jacobson: They’re married. Yeah, AI, cyber and AI are married. I mean, AI is, it’s in a lot of other places, but, but we don’t discuss cyber without discussing AI, and it’s em-embedded in all of our classes, um, both from an offensive and a defensive standpoint, depending on the nature of the class. So, um, it has really changed how we, as professors, how we’ve had to, to view the world in, in our, in our classrooms ’cause we have to greatly em-embrace AI

Kaylee Williams: Mm-hmm. You mentioned it’s technology and it’s people, and part of the initiative here with Cyber SAFE Communities is to bring the people together. New York Times just reported that there are water treatment facilities all over the country that are being attacked, and they’ve identified it’s highly likely the source of those cyberattacks are folks in Iran. And so we’re seeing this geopolitical bleed into our cyber infrastructure. My question for you is who, w- who do you consider to be perhaps the most vulnerable? Because one of the, one of the things that came out of this story in The New York Times was that these water treatment plants probably had no idea, no thought that this would ever happen to them. I don’t think when you think cybersecurity, you probably think, like, large Fortune 500 companies, deep pockets, lots of money, and here are these little, you know, community-based water treatment facilities are the ones that are getting attacked. So when you think about broadly, and I, I bring this back to Huxley because you didn’t do your first… You know, you’re not beta testing this in Des Moines. You’re beta testing it in a small community where you know the players and, um, and you know, you can, you can kind of develop right outta the gate. You’ve got that high degree of trust. So is that intentional? And when you think about the most vulnerable populations, how do you, how do you kind of steer the resources that you have available to you so that you’re shining that flashlight in perhaps the areas where it’s the darkest?

Corey Munson: pivot to you on this, Doug. I’ve got thoughts on it, but I-

Doug Jacobson: okay. Um, a lot, lot, you laid out quite a few things.

Kaylee Williams: a bit of a long

Doug Jacobson: Yeah, multiple

Kaylee Williams: number one of

Doug Jacobson: questions. Multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple questions. Um, water, you know, has actually has been a concern of the federal government for the last couple years. It, it was, it’s one of the top priorities of government. Uh, matter of fact, Iowa ran a water treatment tabletop this summer. Um, but what we’re seeing in, in some of these, um, things played out, sounds like probably around, is some of these things are, are again, bad hygiene. Um, you know, water treatment plant is run by these devices that turn the valves on and off, for example, electronically. Well, in some cases, the password, you know, it’s admin, admin, and they never bothered to change it. And

Kaylee Williams: back to the fundamentals …

Doug Jacobson: to the fundamentals. One of the earlier water attacks in Florida that happened, I don’t know, five, six years ago during COVID, they needed to, um, allow remote workers to come in and run the water plant remotely. Well, one of the remote workers lost their username and password somehow, and the adversary got in and logged into the water plant and changed the way the water was, the composition of the water in this. But again, it w- had nothing… It was not a technical attack in that sense. It’s they logged in as this user and, and played with the water system. Um, so yeah, it’s back to, again, these, these fun- fundamental, um, pieces. Um-

Kaylee Williams: It gives me hope to hear you say that. It’s also devastating. I mean, these are basic… This is, I think you called it etiquette, cyber etiquette or hygiene.

Doug Jacobson: cyber hygiene, yes. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, one of the terms we use back a little bit on that is, is we use the term cyber literacy. So for years and years, we hear… I’ve heard this discussion about awareness. Well, when people are aware that there’s a problem, awareness doesn’t do anything other than make you aware. It doesn’t help you combat whatever you’re aware of. So literacy is making people understand the fundamentals. It, as Corey said, it’s not, not like we’re having them go out and take five cyber core. There’s, there is a small number of very simple things that people can do. It’s a small number of same simple things that companies can do that often lead them into the same situation as people. So it’s really getting, getting this idea across that it take a lot to be a lot more safer

Corey Munson: Yeah, and I think to your, to your ear-earlier question about who’s being targeted and, and who’s most susceptible, I think it’s– that’s part of the message we want to convey is everyone is potentially a target here. And knowing that a lot of this is AI-powered in some cases, and it- AI has become the force multiplier that makes, um, you know, being able to attack at a, at a large scale very, very practical. Um, I think that’s part of what we really want to convey is it could be a small business, it could be a mom-and-pop shop, it could be a school district. We see school districts getting hit all the time. Local governments, county governments, city governments. I mean, it– pick a day of the week, you’ll find a news story where one of those organizations has been impacted in one way or another with a cyber attack. So it’s not limited to large corporations. It’s not limited to the Colonial Pipeline. This, this could be, um, the school district that has to shut down or not even being able to start classes because they’re, they’ve been victimized by some sort of cyber attack. So, um, j-just to your earlier point about, um, who’s, who’s the target here, I, I think it’s important to understand that everyone is really the target Yeah.

Doug Jacobson: And to your point about, you know, why a town like Huxley, I think part of the other thing you see in cyber is, “Well, I’m too little. I’m, I’m too remote. I’m too isolated. They’d never pick on me.” Well, the adversary typically in a lot of cases is blind as to who their victim is. They’re just out there trying to find a victim. And so they don’t know that you’re in Huxley, Des Moines, New York, Dows, Iowa, wherever. Um, and so part of it is to try to break down that barrier, that it can happen everywhere. Um, and town, you know, town, in part ’cause it, Huxley’s between, you know, he lives there and it’s ne- near where we are. But it is a good model for showing that cyber is something that we all need to worry about. It’s on business owner or whether you’re, you know, a teenager,

Kaylee Williams: Mm-hmm

Doug Jacobson: it affects, you know. A lot of attacks go against the elderly. That’s probably the biggest, um… If you look at, you know, attacks against individuals, the elderly by far are the, um, dollar-wise biggest pile and, uh, the biggest bucket, in part because that’s where the money is, right? You go out and try to scam a 16-year-old and okay, yeah, they don’t have anything. But you, you grab the life savings of a 65-year-old, and that starts to become some real money

Kaylee Williams: Yeah. Yeah. I’m thinking of a startup, and this is the Iowa Tech podcast, so part of my job is just to know, you know, who’s building what around the state. There’s a startup in Dubuque, Iowa, that I wonder if either of you two are familiar with called SoundSafe.ai, and they’re developing essentially fingerprint technology for your voice. Um, because as you probably are very well aware, there are AI tools now that can duplicate your voice, and I remember reading about the first big instance of this being used in an aggressive way, um, was I think it in- on the East Coast, and Joe Biden called a bunch of people who were listed on the Democratic voter rolls and said, “Don’t vote. Don’t vote. Don’t do it. It’s all a sca-” And, like, it actually had some measurable impact because it sounded just like him. And so there’s this company in Dubuque called SoundSafe.ai if anyone wants to look it up. Um, they’re doing some really interesting work with the Department of Defense to try and create a way where you own your voice and it can’t be duplicated without your consent.

Corey Munson: I can’t say that I’ve heard of them.

Doug Jacobson: I haven’t either, but it sounds cool

Corey Munson: it sounds really

Kaylee Williams: I will connect the two of you. I, I just think you should know them, and it would be good for them to know you and the work that you’re doing, and maybe there’s an opportunity to bring them into a panel as you continue to scale the Cyber Safe Communities initiative. Tell me a little bit about that. So Huxley happens in October, and then what?

Corey Munson: Uh, October 5th, we’ve got it split up into two sessions. So the morning session will, uh, be more targeted at local businesses. Um, we’re, we’re not going to limit this by any means to Huxley. Uh, we’re looking at smaller communities around Huxley. Uh, undoubtedly we’ll have folks from Ames and maybe even Des Moines that’ll stop in. Uh, that’ll be the morning session that runs for roughly two hours. Then the evening session, which kicks off at around 4:30, will be open to the community at large, and we expect more families, we expect retirees. It, it’ll be a cross-section of, of folks for, for that. And, um, I’ll give the plug right now. The URL for anyone that’s interested is cybersafecommunities.org. Um, if you go to cybersafecommunities.org/events, you’ll actually get to the registration page. We do require registration. It’s free. There’s no cost to this at all, but we do wanna try to get a handle on how many, how many folks to expect. Um, but that, that’s the plan for October. Uh, we’ve got, uh, a similar, uh, event scheduled in Sioux City in early November in coordination with the Siouxland Chamber. Won’t necessarily be the same format, but, uh, we’re still, still unpacking exactly what that one’s going to look like.

Kaylee Williams: Okay. And what day is the event in Huxley in October?

Corey Munson: Oktober 5th

Kaylee Williams: October 5th. Okay. We will put the registration link in the show notes, so if you’re watching this on YouTube, just scroll down and, and expand the little description there. And then when we promote the SOM socials, we’ll include that registration link as well. And then for the Sioux City one, um, I’ll connect you to Startup Siouxland. They would be a, a great resource and a vector to bring early stage and mid-growth, mid-stage entrepreneurs into the room, which I think would be good. It’s probably never too early to think about cybersecurity, yeah?

Corey Munson: Never

Kaylee Williams: Okay. So as we start to wrap up here, I wanna ask both of you a question that, um, hopefully is beneficial to our listeners. What can someone do today to try and improve their own cybersecurity hygiene, whether they’re an individual or they own a business?

Doug Jacobson: Um, you’ve already mentioned a couple of them. I mean, pa- password hygiene is probably your, your number one

Kaylee Williams: But don’t make it admin.

Doug Jacobson: Oh, yeah. Right. Don’t never the name of your dog or your, you know, the… Yeah. And, and, you know, so you’re talking, we talk about passwords having a certain length so that they’re hard to guess. Certain complexity again, so they’re, they’re hard to guess. Um, and, um, with that people go, “Well, I can’t rem- you know, I can’t remember, you know, this 20-character password.” There are things called password managers. There’s several of them out in the market, depending which one you pick. Um, some are free, some you pay for. They’ll, they’ll actually pick complex passwords for you. They’ll save all your passwords. Um, and th- those things also, as a side note, they’re great for, um, continuity. You were… Something were to happen to you, um, you could, your family could get ahold of your passwords, so they, they’re all in one place, but they’re, but they’re super s- secure, super safe. Um, the one I use, and I’m not gonna mention what it is, but, you know, it has an unlock. They claim they can’t even unlock it. The unlock code is, like, 40 characters long, and that’s in my safe deposit box. So, if something were to ever happen to myself or family, then somebody could get, get access to all of those, you know. So that would be my

Kaylee Williams: Simple enough

Doug Jacobson: Simple enough

Corey Munson: I, I think generally speaking, I encourage folks to take more of, I, I’ve heard the term cyber secure mindset approach to, to daily life. Be a little bit more skeptical about things that you’re clicking on or text messages that you’re receiving or even phone calls you’re receiving. Um, there’s a, there’s a public service campaign called Take Nine. I don’t know if you’ve, you’ve seen this. Uh, the gentleman that started Craigslist is behind this, and he’s tied it into Sesame Street now, I think somehow. But he’s advocating for take nine seconds before you click or act on something, whether it be that text message or link you see somewhere. And I think, um, to a large degree, that would help. That would be one of those fundamental steps beyond the passwords and the multi-factor and authentication and things like that is, is kinda shift your, your mindset. Again, we all get caught up in the speed of the day, but if we were able to slow down a little bit and approach some of these things with a healthy dose, dose of skepticism, I think we’d be able to, to avoid a lot of these things that are g- getting us into trouble. So I’d suggest m- maybe just that nine seconds would help at this point.

Kaylee Williams: Take nine. I like that it’s nine too. Yeah

Corey Munson: Yes.

Doug Jacobson: yeah. Yeah. Our, our campaign, we have, um, uh, Peggy the Possum, and ours is “Pause Like a Possum.”

Corey Munson: you go

Doug Jacobson: And so the same concept of always, you know, more urg- more urgency something has behind it, the higher the likelihood that it’s, that it is some type of scam. And so you always wanna take some time and think about what you’re about to do

Kaylee Williams: And it can be, it, it can be shameful. It can– You can feel embarrassed if you ever get scammed, and I think you said earlier, it’s, “Don’t feel embarrassed.” It’s, it happens all the time. It happens every day. But I took a, um… Our company did, like, a phishing test, and I was really cocky about, like, “I don’t need this,” and then it got me. I clicked on a link, and it looked, and I felt so foolish about it, and then I had to go through the remedial training. And I learned all kinds of interesting things, like don’t pick up a USB stick and plug it into your computer. That seems really obvious, but a lot of people will plug it in ’cause they’ll think, “Oh, I’ll find out who this belongs to, and I’ll return it to them,” or they’re just curious. And it’s like human psychology, you know? We just gets in the way a little bit. Take nine. Give it a, give it a little thought

Corey Munson: Absolutely. And, and I think to your point to there is no shame in being victimized and being able to talk about it and and talk about what happened. Doug and I have a, a, a friend in eastern Iowa that runs a cybersecurity company that was just out in Las Vegas at Black Hat, the big cybersecurity conference, and I think he posted something about he was at a particular company that was, um… It was software designed to help identify deepfakes, and it allowed him to stand there and try to test himself to see how many deepfakes he could, he could actually identify in a certain amount of time. And I think his– And, and this is a guy that we would generally regard as a cybersecurity expert. I think he only identified 20% of those that were actually deepfakes accurately. So again, um, not, not taking any shame in, in the fact that maybe you, you don’t always know the right answer, so

Kaylee Williams: Yeah, and this technology will only get better. It’s the worst it will ever be today. Well, um, Doug Jacobson, Corey Munson, thank you for joining me today on the podcast. Would love to bring you back, um, after this very first event to, to learn a little bit about how it went and, um, how you’d like to continue to spread the good word about cybersecurity and helping to keep our communities here in Iowa and more broadly safe. Thank you.

Corey Munson: Thanks, Kaylee

Doug Jacobson: Yep. Thank you

Kaylee Williams: This has been another episode of the Iowa Tech Podcast. We’ll see you next week