New Pearson poll on cyberattacks – take action now

Read the transcript of Matt Loria’s interview with Kevin Dietz regarding what you can do to defend against cyberattacks now:

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760

Have you in your family been talking more about cyber attacks? Well, most Americans across party lines have serious concerns about cyberattacks on US computer systems. And most of you, China and Russia as major threats according to this new poll. The poll by Pearson Institute shows that about 9 in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies, or certain utilities. 

About two-thirds say they are very or extremely concerned. Roughly three-quarters say the Chinese and Russian governments are major threats to the cybersecurity of the United States government. And at least half also see the Iranian government and non-government bodies as threatening, raising the question, will this lead President Joe Biden and lawmakers to force critical industries to boost their cyber defenses and impose reporting requirements for companies that get hacked? Joining us now is Matt Loria, CEO of Auxiom. Good morning, Matt. How are you?

Matt Loria @ Auxiom

Good morning, Kevin. Great. How are you doing today?

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760 

I’m doing well. I’m sure a lot of companies don’t want to let the world know that they’ve been hacked.

Matt Loria @ Auxiom

They sure don’t. I mean, it certainly can appear to be a black eye. And you know, people are don’t necessarily want to lose a contract or something like that. If they find out if someone finds out that they’ve been, they’ve been attacked, and until like some data has been compromised.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760

You know, you never know what surveys. But in this one, and pretty overwhelming nine and 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned in two-thirds are extremely are very concerned. Do they? Do they merit these concerns? Is the threat that real, that concerning?

Matt Loria @ Auxiom 

Oh, yeah, sure is, I mean, we’re seeing more successful attacks now than ever before. And I think that if you, you know, if you were to have a dinner conversation with four or five of your friends, I think that at least one or two of them would have either known someone who has been a victim of some sort of cyber attack or that their company was, or they themselves have been a victim where maybe two to three years ago, that wouldn’t have been the case, you could sit around the table, and maybe nobody had known anybody or had been attacked themselves.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760  

I think individuals have known for a long time that they’re, you know, that they have to guard their personal information and that people are trying to get it through all these phishing scams and all these things that are going on, but what seems really new is these attacks on corporations to either get your information from them or to hold them ransom, hold their own information from them for ransom. Let’s separate the two a little bit. Let’s talk about the individuals first and protecting their stuff.

Matt Loria @ Auxiom   

Sure, sure. Yeah, the individuals I mean, obviously, people have been trying to steal personal information for years, even before the internet, there was impersonations being done. And so you know, that is usually to take to get someone’s money, you know, to get access to it, it’s usually not ransom related. And there’s a lot of things that people can do to try to avoid that, you know, they can, they can join up for a system like a Lifelock. I mean everybody’s probably heard of that, and many banks and insurance companies also offer that to their, to their clients. They need to really be thinking about how they’re keeping their passwords because one of the ways that the attackers will get in is they’ll use an email vulnerability, and they’ll be able to see around your computer and if you have an Excel spreadsheet named “passwords”, usually they’ll go right to that and basically get the keys to the kingdom that way. So that’s, that’s another thing is you want to use an encrypted password keeper, maybe like a LastPass or, or something like that. 

Also, any system that you have access to that offers any two-factor other multi-factor authentication, meaning you know, those things where they’ll send you a text or they will send you the little notification on your phone, where you have to click it in addition to using your password, you got to be using those as the belt and suspenders. Those things alone will keep away the vast majority of successful attacks. 

And the last thing that individuals can do is keep an eye on their credit report. So Chases example has a product attached to every account, which is called “Credit Journey”. And so you can watch your credit for free and then updates at least every month. And you can see if there’s any odd activity going on so you don’t have to manage too many different systems in order to be vigilant on your own individual information.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760 

When you put your stuff up in the Cloud, can you be certain that that is safe or do these criminals have the ability to get access into the Cloud?

Matt Loria @ Auxiom 

So it’s definitely been a misnomer that, that a lot of people tend to think that, oh, I have my stuff in the cloud, everything’s fine that you know that company’s taking care of it, whether that company is Google or Microsoft or whomever. But you know, what you have to remind yourself is that these are just servers in the cloud. So they’re just data being held somewhere else, instead of maybe sitting on your computers sitting on your phone, locally or directly. So those systems have to be backed up. And over the last few years, become very popular to have cloud to cloud sort of backups, because a backup is a place that you can, if you do get hit with an attack, that’s the place that you first go to try to recover from your attack is to take your backup data, which is hopefully not been molested anyway, and use that to basically rebuild from. So yeah, certainly a misnomer that the cloud is safe on its own. It is a very safe, very effective, very efficient tool. But it does need to have security and have a backup done on that system as well.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760 

Let’s talk about companies are companies on high alert now? Are they aware that they could be victimized? Is it so widespread, that people are taking action immediately to improve their systems? Or is this something that they’re kind of being dragged into thinking, Oh, it’s just happening to someone else, we’ll be okay.

Matt Loria @ Auxiom   

Yeah, I think that unfortunately, what you hear is that a lot of this is still people are waiting until after they’ve been attacked to make the course correction. You know, they haven’t listened to the advice and kind of considered, still considered something that that happens to other people rather than to themselves. And so, you know, it’s still probably I would still say, 60% of the, of the folks that we see, are still having a little bit of that being dragged along, sort of piece, whereas the other 40% now have started to see, you know, what, I don’t want that to happen to me that happened to my neighbor, I don’t want that to happen to me.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760  

Do you think it’s getting to the point or we’ll get to the point that the government will have to step in and say, Look, certain industries, you’re going to have to boost your cyber defense to a certain limit? And in companies, you’re going to have to report when you get hacked so that the public is aware that this has taken place?

Matt Loria @ Auxiom   

Yeah, well, so, not to get roped into any discussion around any mandates, or, you know, how those work out in general. But but but we certainly have seen recommendations coming out the White House actually put out some recommendations just a few months ago, basically saying that a certain number of items, a lot of which we just discussed in terms of like multi-factor authentication, and things like that, that those are recommendations coming directly from the White House that all companies and people try to employ in their, in their cyber lives. So I can’t imagine why that wouldn’t start to get pushed down in other levels of mandates or, or more stern recommendations. 

The government already has certifications, qualifications, or compliances, if you will, that many companies, actually all companies that do business with the government have to abide by so they can’t be weak links. If you’re going to do business with the government, so certainly would seem very logical that that would get continued to get pushed into, you know, into more industry, maybe industry that’s not even directly related to the government. 

But you know, unfortunately, you know, it’s like seatbelt laws, right? I mean, sometimes it just has to be put into a law or a rule before people will take the, you know, take the appropriate action for safety.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760  

Alright, Matt Loria, CEO of Auxiom. Thanks for coming on this morning. We appreciate it.

Matt Loria @ Auxiom   

You’re welcome, Kevin. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

Kevin Dietz @ WJR NewsTalk 760  

All right. It’s definitely a good time for individuals and companies to take a look at what their security is in their cyber world and make sure that it’s up to date and as safe as possible. It is a pain when you get hacked, whether you’re a company or an individual.