Cybersecurity, Smart Homes, and the Hidden Risks You Don’t See Coming Guest host Pastor Bill Anderson fills in on https://Ready-Radio.com with co-host Dennis Brewster and guest Michael Nielsen of https://DataVoiceOptions.com to explore the real-world challenges of digital security. In today’s world of smart homes, connected cameras, mobile devices, and always-on Wi-Fi, are you protected—or quietly exposed? This episode explains how cybercriminals operate. They use AI phone scams, giftcard schemes, Wi-Fi hijacking, and hidden malware that can remain undetected for months. Thinking ‘I’m too small to be a target’ puts you at risk. Could your phone bring malware home? Is
SPEAKER 09 :
This is Ready Radio, preparing you to be ready for anything. Now, here’s your survival guide for Ready Radio, John Rush.
SPEAKER 11 :
Good afternoon, Denver. This is not John Rush. This is Bill Anderson covering for John Rush today. And today is January 23rd. If you want to call in live, we are live. It is 303-477-5655. You can also send in a text message to that, and then John will get it over to me. All right, well, today we’ve got a couple guests with us. First of all, let’s get Dennis in here. Dennis has been a part of this show before. He’s a longtime participant with Fix-It Radio and Drive Radio. Dennis, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’m doing good. I’m staying warm.
SPEAKER 11 :
Staying warm. Yeah, it’s 16 at my house. What’s it at your house?
SPEAKER 03 :
About that. About, yeah. Yeah. 16, but it says minus something.
SPEAKER 11 :
I don’t think we live too far from each other. Yeah, we’re not living too far. I think John is somewhere where it’s warm. So, you know, that’s kind of, I think he knew this cold front was coming, so he got out of town as quickly as he can. All right. Well, with us today, we have Michael. Michael Nielsen. Michael, you there? How are you doing today?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I’m doing great. Thanks. Staying warm as well. Looking pretty chilly outside. It was eight degrees this morning when I left my house.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, that’s kind of crazy. You know, we’ve got, since we are live and we’re, you know, in our current conditions right now, we’ve got, you know, the future world champion Denver Broncos getting ready to play here. And, you know, I was thinking, well, maybe the cold will help. And then I remembered we’re playing New England. So this might actually be a heat wave for them. Right. For sure. Yeah. All right. Well, let me introduce you guys to Michael. Michael is a cybersecurity security with computers, not only businesses, but also with homes. And I think it’s going to be a really important program today because, you know, this is a very vulnerable spot for all of us with cell phones and computers and even cameras and Wi-Fi and all this. And And we’re really excited to see what he can share with us today and how we can protect ourselves. Michael, would you share a little bit with us about who you are?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. So, yeah, Michael Nielsen. I’m the owner of Data Voice Options based in Colorado Springs in South Denver. We’re a cybersecurity network protection, telecommunications, IT consulting firm. And we service both S&P market, home-based businesses, and consumer residential services as well. Been in business for a little over 10 years, and we do a lot with IoT-based devices, so smart home-connected devices, alarm systems, and home-based security systems as well. Started very simple in telecommunications, just kind of grew into the IoT space, and I have a passion to help businesses, business owners, and residents understand how technology can help better their life, but also keep them protected and secure as well.
SPEAKER 11 :
Over 10 years in business, I bet you’ve seen times change. And, uh, I mean, to me, it just seems like you can’t keep up with, you know, the attacks and, and it’s relentless. I mean, every time you, you think you figure out a scam, you know, there’s three more on the horizon. And a lot of times, you know, the, the scams that are coming out now are, uh, are so subtle that it just takes one click and all of a sudden now you’re really in trouble and you didn’t even know what you did. What do you think about that, Michael?
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, entirely. I mean, coming back from a day where T1s were like the fastest speeds you can get, and then you had bonded T1s, and now fiber is becoming the most standard mode of connectivity within both consumer and residential markets. The speed of things is happening so much faster, even with AI is doing it now, in general with AI, how somebody can have a phone call, literally had a client had a a phone call, a robot call on their behalf to try to do a financial transaction for them. Luckily, they had some dual-factor authentication situations put in place for them, but it’s becoming more consistent and targeted. And some people think that, oh, I’m too small. I’m not really a target for anybody. I’m not that important. What people don’t understand is you’re a stepping stone into something bigger for them. And if they can get your trust, then that trust can be a domino effect or a snowball into who they’re really going after. But they’ll wreak havoc all the way through, including, you know, grandma and grandpa and their small home that they’ve been in for a long time. So I think with connected devices, family and friends coming over, having your home set up properly, having your business set up properly, with the type of security tools and resources that are in marketplace today to help protect you is really important and to be aware of as well.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and Dennis, you were a business owner for many years, and you probably didn’t have to deal with too much security in the time that you were running a business, but you had shared with me a couple of personal stories with elderly people that you had intervened with that were, uh, you know, being victims of scam. And, and we also have another, you know, pastor there at our church that, you know, he, he works a little bit at Safeway and he was telling me that people had come in buying gift cards and saying, Hey, I’ve got to, I’ve got to buy these gift cards because the guy online said he was going to, you know, hijack my family if I didn’t provide him with these gift cards and stuff. And so we hear these things, but you know, we think, gosh, are people really buying into that? What do you think on that, Dennis?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Um, Because I witnessed it right hand. My mother-in-law got on and her computer wouldn’t work. And it flashed up a thing saying that she had to call this number to get it released. And when she called that number, they said, oh, yeah, they’re robbing your bank account. But we need your bank account information so we can stop it. And she really was smart enough to not give them all that information. But she kind of freaked out and went and closed all her bank accounts. And that caused a lot of problems. I mean, that was a whole week straightened out things, you know. But, yeah, a lot of people don’t believe they need it, to be honest with you. They don’t think they need anything to protect them. I don’t go to those websites. I don’t go to bad websites. I just go to certain places that I’ve done for years. Why would I need anything to protect me?
SPEAKER 11 :
What do you say about that? Michael, you made an interesting point because – Maybe you’re not the fish they’re fishing for, but you’re the bait, if you will. Like, you know, sometimes when we go fishing, we go catch bait fish, you know, like the little minnows. We’re not really fishing, but we’re fishing for the bait that we’re going to use for fishing. And I really liked what you just said a second ago that, hey, you might not be the intended target. You’re the stepping stone. Can you expand upon that a little bit more?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I mean, you think about how many people in the world have some sort of impact in their sphere of influence of who they interact and who they are. And so these scammers or the ransomware or these phishing attacks, they’re looking for any vulnerability they can to crack into some bigger form of safe, so to speak. And the safe can be an individual or an organization. And if you’re the weakest link within that chain of connectivity, because we’re all connected, right? I have friends and family and business professionals, and I know a lot of people in my sphere of influence, and if I’m somehow connected and they find that way, they’re going to go for the easiest way to get in, and you won’t ever really know. Efficient attacks come in, and they download the viruses, and they can sit on your computer or on your email exchange server, and they’ll data mine the all the information from you as much as they can before they do something. That could be six, nine, 12 months later. And when that event happened, And you would never know. And so it’s having the right mindset and understanding how these things work. I mean, even with connected devices in our home, they use ZigBee, Bluetooth, Ethernet type of protocols, Wi-Fi communications. And those devices are constantly communicating to each other and back to the manufacturer just to give updates, firmware updates, information. And so it’s one of those things to be mindful of how to set up your home, your business, your person, I guess your identity within these products and services you like to use to ensure that you’re protected, your identity is protected. I mean, safe password keeping and safe network management is really something people should be focused on the most.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, yeah, let’s talk about that then. You know, especially on the radio, you know, we talk about, you know, a lot of security things and, you know, the advantages of cameras. And that was one of our recent topics of, you know, when we had Chris, the garage door guy on, he was talking about, you know, a lot of the attacks are on the garage door because there’s no cameras on that side. It’s kind of a blind spot in the security system. And one of the questions I was asking him was, hey, I’ve heard that people can, You know, they’ve got these devices that they can hack into the radio frequency. And I’m talking from a non, you know, intelligent stance here. But, you know, they can hack into that frequency and push a button and open your door. And, you know, that they can hack into your cameras and they can reverse watch you and things like that. Is that a thing? Can that really happen? Are we really vulnerable in that situation?
SPEAKER 10 :
I mean, to an extent, I tell this to my clients, if somebody really wanted to break in and do a brute force attack on your home and your camera, I mean, whatever you do, it’s going to be hard to always stop that. But there are ways for us to know that those things do happen. It had to be somebody really important, I think, in some situations. But it can if they really wanted to, but more likely it’s more through the network and through network security that those vulnerabilities become prevalent. When you look at, like, adding a camera, like a ring or Nest doorbell, or you get a Chamberlain system that has a camera built into it, it’s really important to understand that network management and security is key in order to protect and prevent those type of things from happening. It’s like a camera system. A camera is never going to prevent theft, but it will deter as much as it can and depending on the thief that’s wanting to steal something. And it will record the information of when that event happened so you can give it to authorities and hopefully track down the criminal that did the deed that they did. So when you look at network management security, VLANing, creating VLAN is really important. And you don’t get that from the carrier side of the provider, from like Comcast or Xfinity. You have to add that add-on layer to your home network because the devices you get from the carriers are really kind of defaulted passwords. And even though they say it will work, I mean, we’re talking about an hourly employee that may or may not love their life and may or may not follow the policies and procedures and just set you up so they can get onto the ticket. And it really is on the business owner and the homeowner to ensure that they have the right network protections put in place. We like to use Ubiquiti Wi-Fi network systems. They’re a fantastic hardware. It’s very cost-friendly for consumers. And they provide a lot of really good resources for a homeowner and our business owner to set up within their environment to ensure that they’re protected. Because if you separate out your you separate out the network for like your IOT devices and have it on VLAN, then you can have additional security software attached to that and, and monitor watch for like, we can use Huntress or Ninja RMR, some different type of software that can provide added layer of security for your home.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER 10 :
I know cameras.
SPEAKER 11 :
That was another thing I was going to ask was, uh, cameras, you know, they’re so commonplace anymore that are they really a deterrent? Are people just like, yeah, whatever. You know, Dennis can share a story with the church that we had, you know, two instances at the church where, you know, well, I’ll let you go ahead and share that, Dennis. Go ahead and share that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, we had a person that walked around the building and then threw a rock into the window to get in, climbed in, did some damage inside, set up a fire extinguisher and stuff, unplugged. They saw that we had cameras, so they unplugged our power going to all the cameras. And that helped because we didn’t have to back up very far to find all the times that they were walking around looking at the cameras and looking at them. And, you know, and then we were able to catch that guy very, very easy. And… And then the one that just happened at the church, the guy broke in on Christmas Day to a business that’s just outside of our parking lot, a gas station. And he pulled up into our parking lot at night, at 9 o’clock at night, on Christmas Day, and got out of his car, locks his car. He flashes, his lights flash and everything. You can see the whole shape of the car and almost what make it is. And then he goes walking over there to rob the place, comes running back, Can’t get in his car. He has to hit the fob again and open up all the lights, turn on. And it’s very easy to see him. And we’re able to record all that. But one question I was going to ask you is Wi-Fi has probably really made this a lot worse because everybody has Wi-Fi now. Sometimes they don’t even have where anybody can go in their house and connect right on up. And some people don’t even have passwords to do that. They just let you go on in. And I sat on a thing with the sheriff’s department one time, and they said that they had captured people that, like at my house, I got my house, I got my Wi-Fi, and you can get in free or even the Internet. And the guy next door is looking at things. Oh, wow. And they come in and knock on my door because he’s using mine. My, my, my information to get into these places. And then it’s hard to find that guy as someone I understand. Is that true?
SPEAKER 10 :
It is because it’s good.
SPEAKER 03 :
Go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. So let me, let me back up for a minute for the camera side. listen, if you’re going to buy a camera, you need to understand a couple of things before you purchase it. Number one is what do you want it to do for you? A lot of people just like, well, I want to see a blind spot in my house, my property, or, you know, cover a secure, a security risk area. Okay, great. So then what features do you want the camera to provide? So if you want it to cover and look, do you want to look for like suspicious behavior? Do you want to look for, you know, somebody’s not supposed to be there at a certain time, are we looking for, we want to be able to see facial recognition, we want to see, you know, the car come in with a license plate recognition, we call that LPR. Cameras can do so much to help deter, prevent, but, I’m sorry, let me figure it back, not prevent, but deter it. However, in some cameras, you pay for what you get. So, You have to be willing to spend the money if you really wanted to do certain things for you. Like I said before, you’re never going to stop something from happening because if somebody really wanted to, they’re going to. But you can get as much detailed information to get back what you lost as much as you can. You’re never going to be a hole for someone breaking in a window, but hopefully you can capture them and then you can prosecute them, right? We can talk about Wi-Fi. Here’s the thing. I think I’ve seen a lot of commonality with Wi-Fi. I see this within coffee shops and some bars and restaurants. and, you know, our friend’s house. Yeah, I realize they’ll share the Wi-Fi and the Internet and connectivity because people want to be connected, and that’s great. But being smart in how you do that. An open network is an open invitation for anybody. So my big recommendation for anybody who’s set up a home-based network or a business network is to lock it down even with, if you’re going to give them free access, Separate that free access away from everything else. So you can leverage things called TPSK. That’s also something like we can use Ubiquity to do that, or you can use TP-Link systems to do that. And that basically makes it your own private dedicated connection as you go to the Wi-Fi or you connect to the network. Use passwords and password management. People hate to write down passwords and try to remember it, or they try to use really simple ones, and that’s also a challenge because hackers can hack that. So, as much as you can, provide some sort of separation between the general public or your friends, your neighbors versus your home. And that’s that you’re on. And then if you’re on, if you’re giving out an open Wi-Fi network connectivity, you still want that lockdown protected and monitored as much as you can. That’s why there’s different systems and softwares out there that can help you as, again, a home-based business and or your homeowner. to make sure that whoever’s on it, you can kick them off. Like Eero is a really good system. I like that one too, because you can see who’s on your network by the Mac address. You can block it. You can kick people off. You can reset everything remotely through your mobile device and have really good security on it as well. But I think Wi-Fi is actually… a lot better than it was before. We’re in the new version, 6.5. Wi-Fi 7 is out now, too. And so it’s becoming more advanced as we even leverage through what AI systems can do to help improve connectivity and speeds and monitoring these type of systems. So I hear what you’re saying about, like, somebody hacking into your Wi-Fi to look at a camera to, you know, attack somebody else or look at something else. And my suggestion is always this. Put a password on it. Don’t make it as accessible as you would want it to be. Make it accessible as you would like it to be for your friends and family and people that you know and trust. Make it a little more challenging for those who aren’t supposed to be on there. And then, every so often, just do a power reset. Just kick everybody off, make everybody come back in, and make sure those who belong there can be and those who don’t need to go on there, they’re off of it.
SPEAKER 11 :
Awesome. Great. Well, we’re going to grab a break, and when we come back, I’m going to ask you, Michael, some specifics on that. And I’m sure there’s lots of different options there. We could probably spin the whole farm, buy the whole farm on this security system, or there are things we can do relatively cheaply and free. So when we come back, we’ll talk about that. If you’d like to comment or ask Michael a question, 303-477-5600. And this is Ready Radio. We’ll be back, 560 KLZ.
SPEAKER 04 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we are back. We are talking to Michael Nielsen about cybersecurity and all those things that are important with our phones, with our Wi-Fi, passwords, and all those. Michael, tell us a little bit about how people can connect with you and some of the products and services that you provide.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, the best way people can connect with us is they can go to our website, databoysoptions.com. There’s contact us page. They can fill out a form there and put some information in, hit send, and then we’ll get that email and have one of our technicians reach out to them or consultants. They also can reach out to us at 720-900-1111 or 719-900-1111. Again, the products and resources and services we offer is we are a IT managed service provider. So we do everything from desktop application management, data protection, cybersecurity. We also do vulnerability risk assessments and security assessments as well. And so I think some things to keep in mind too is when we look at home-based businesses or even residential, I guess, internet connectivity management, Having really good network connectivity from a hardware standpoint is really important. We like Ubiquiti a lot. We’re a big fan of it. It’s very cost-conducive. They have some really great security feature sets in it that can monitor the device itself through the cloud platform. And then it has really good add-on APIs for secondary software, like Sentinel-1, which does a lot of malware, EDR stuff. type of defending. And then we have Hunter’s MDR. We also use Ninja One for looking at, again, monitoring the network and see if anything suspicious is coming in. And that’s a little great product. It’s consumer and business-based type of services. So we like to leverage all of those for anybody who needs to have their environment protected.
SPEAKER 11 :
Gotcha. So from what I understand, you know, we’re all connected to, you know, the World Wide Web. And basically we all have these strings attached that make up the web. And what we need to protect is at the end of the line where it comes to our house, the information that comes in and goes out on this web. Is that kind of a way to think about that? Is that the gateway thing?
SPEAKER 10 :
um that i have to go through in order to get into my house let’s just say from you know from all these connection points yeah that’s actually the perfect way to look at it because your internet connector the internet service provider is going to give you a line think of it like you know if you had that you know when we were kids i had the can with my buddy and we used to draw a string and he’s got the other can we’re just connected that way we’re talking through the can thinking like we’re making a long distance phone call uh it’s the same thing with the world wide web So our home-based connection through our provider is going to give us that line to introduce us into the World Wide Web. And you said it just right, is that you need a gateway device, some sort of gateway management. And sometimes that’s offered through your provider through their all-in-one type of unit, which is a modem router. But a lot of them, again, they don’t manage the firmware. They don’t do a lot of updates. They have very basic security keys and features, unless you want to pay for some of their upgraded features. And even then, I think what you can get from a secondary device or from a manufacturer like TP-Link or Netgear or Ubiquiti will provide a better resource for you that you can manage yourself. I don’t know. I like to drive my own car, even though I have a smart car. I still like to drive my own car, and I want somebody to drive it for me. So I want to have some sort of level of control within my environment to ensure I have all the right security protocols. So that gateway device is really a key tool to start that first layer of protection within your home and within your business.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, and I think for the most part, everybody can at least start with where they are, whoever their provider may be, Comcast or Starlink or whoever it is. And that first point of connection, which is your modem slash router, is to make sure that you get a password on that. And we can take that same analogy, Michael, and we can apply it to our cell phone, too, because our cell phone is basically the router that’s in our house, but now it’s in our pocket. Is that correct?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, correct. So mobile devices can… You know, they’re constantly communicating something since our app is watching some sort of location from you from a geo locate to Looking for other connected devices. So when you have your mobile device. It’s just another Avenue to get into the World Wide Web. So when you connect it back to your home network because everybody wants to just use their Wi Fi at home. If that’s great. But when you connect your home network. You want to create a VLAN for that network. for those connected devices. So let’s say you work from home. For my house specifically, I have my own VLAN for my business, my businesses, and then I have a VLAN for my Wi-Fi network, and I have a VLAN for my IoT devices like my smart lock sensors and lights and such. And because That way I can separate everything out. I have it all contained and protected. And then if there is an issue, it doesn’t spread across my whole connected device ecosystem. It’s really isolated to that specific area. I can really lock it down and look what’s going on. Mobile devices are one of the most dirtiest devices in the world. And we’re not talking about like just people who take it to the bathroom. It’s They’re connecting everything, and an app is updating consistently, and we came back and tried to get a firmware update. And so there could be a hidden virus that we just don’t know of, and sometimes we would never be aware of it exactly. So those devices have to be separated out from the network as much as we can to protect what’s really important as much as we can.
SPEAKER 11 :
That’s a really interesting point that I never thought of. I don’t think maybe Dennis has ever thought about it, because he has set up the Wi-Fi at our church and stuff, but if I go out with my device… Kind of like if I go out physically and I catch a cold from being in public, if I bring that cold home, now I’m at risk of everybody at home catching the cold because I brought it in. So if my mobile device, whether it’s my tablet or my phone or whatever, picks up a virus from outside in the world and then I come in reattached to my Wi-Fi network, I could backdoor something and bypass that that gateway because I brought it in. Is that a fair statement?
SPEAKER 10 :
Oh, yeah, entirely. That’s crazy. Yeah, and it’s one of those things where, like, go ahead.
SPEAKER 03 :
But what happens if we already have a virus protection in the computer at the church? Wouldn’t that stop that? Well,
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, it should alert you as to, hey, there’s some sort of anomaly or weirdness going on in the network that they caught. Hopefully it creates an alert or some sort of flag that’s being monitored by staff and personnel or by the system itself. And then you can lock it down. But a lot of times it can be overlooked. It can be slightly detected and it can sit there. I mean, these The way AI is supportive of now cybersecurity and cyber criminals, I mean, they could do a great job mimicking things that we can trust. So having updated EDR, MDR protocols and having the right type of security set up within your software stack, your tech stack, it’s really important.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, that’s amazing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, like what you’re saying, though, is sometimes some things can stay asleep in there until you hit another program. And then once you hit that program or type something in, then it ignites it, right?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, it can. Yeah, it’ll sit dormant. Like, you know, Microsoft, I mean, people, Microsoft or Google, from an email standpoint, exchange server standpoint, have a real-life client situation where they – Somebody with a happy little clicker, we like to call them happy little clickers, and they clicked on a link and it just seemed like, oh, I got to receive a password. And then they clicked the link and nothing really happened. It just kind of sat like spinning or buffering, so to speak. But what was happening is that virus was getting downloaded into their Exchange server and it sat there in a data mine for about seven months. And then it made a request of a $10 million wire transfer to the bank. Thankfully, they had MFA through the banking process, so it was able to stop it. So that caused them to have us help them out because they didn’t have the right software assistance put in place to help prevent those type of things. And, you know, we use email hardening for Microsoft, which is a great resource and tool to ensure those things don’t happen, those changes can’t be made. Microsoft authenticators, when you log in and you’re traveling, especially those who travel a lot international, I was saying the kind of apps and dual-factor MFA is really important for those types of situations to ensure that that doesn’t happen. But again, it can, but what do you have in place for when it does? How quickly can we stop it and isolate it? And so these third-party product software like Sentinel and Ninja, RMM, or Huntress, they really help prevent the after effects too because it’s not just stopping from coming in, but once it does, how do we stop it from being more infectious?
SPEAKER 11 :
What’s your opinion, Michael, on AVG, you know, some of the common Norton’s, some of the common what we’d call, you know, malware or, you know, virus protection programs out there. A lot of times you can get them for free even. What’s your opinion on some of those?
SPEAKER 10 :
I think they all work for as best as they’re designed to, especially the free versions. They’re going to give you some sort of firewall protection within your device. Norton Antivirus is great. I mean, having something is better than nothing. There are some definitely, like BitDefender is a lot stronger. We like that a lot. You know, we like Sentinel-1. We like our Ninjas. It’s telling our story. I’m a business group there today that we use real life ninjas to help protect their business. Just don’t stand in the living room. They stand in the network. But it’s having something is better than nothing. But some of these free versions can work. Web Roots is another really good one. It does its job. Again, you pay for what you get. So you really want to lock down your systems. You’re going to pay a little extra for that benefit. But there’s a big benefit for me. But if you want to go as low cost as possible, there are definitely free versions that will do the job. This may not be as best. So then you have to look at what your risk vulnerabilities are or tolerances are. Like how how willing are you to have somebody pretend they’re you when it’s not the case and can wreak havoc on your credit, your ID, who you are or to friends and family are connected to you. Some people I know have some very powerful political people that they’re friends with, and their vulnerabilities can lead to their connective contacts’ vulnerability as well. So sometimes we have to think bigger than just ourselves and how, what do I do when my vulnerability risk now can affect somebody else?
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, that’s a valid point right there. And I think, again, it’s another thing that most people don’t think about. They think, oh, no one’s going to mess with me or I’m safe or whatever, but you could just be a stepping stone to the next person. So I found it interesting that you actually have three different devices for your Wi-Fi, for your cameras, for your doorbells. So you have your line coming in. It feeds your router or whatever, and then out from that you go to the three different devices, and then you either hardwire to those devices or you Wi-Fi to each of those devices and set up three gateways, three more additional gateways. Is that what I’m understanding correctly?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, it’s called virtual LAN, virtual local area network, so VLAN. So I have my hardwired devices for my PCs and my computers. And then from a Wi-Fi, from an SSID standpoint, I have just one Wi-Fi that I broadcast. And then I have a secondary one, and that’s one for myself, and that’s locked out. And password management is also really important. Like some people use some really very easy to hack type of passwords. I would highly recommend people go to Lisa minimum 16 characters with three or four different character types within that 16 character password link. Um, obviously higher is better. So, um, but so with my VLANs, I have, um, a sub network is, is his own. So it’s only seen what I give it permission to see within that virtual local area network. So it’s like its own little world, so to speak. So if somebody goes on my guest network, they can only see any other device on that guest network. They don’t see my printer. They don’t see my computers. They don’t see my connected devices that are on my primary connectivity or my other Wi-Fi network for my IoT devices. And you also have a hidden network, too. So I have a hidden network for my IoT devices, and so I have to put in the specific SSID and the password, and I connect it that way because I don’t want that broadcasted. Um, and so that way I basically create these little connectivity silos for all my devices and I keep them separate as much as I can through the VLAN as much as possible.
SPEAKER 11 :
So, and that’s virtual. So you don’t actually have three different devices. You have one device that breaks that out or do they misunderstand that?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. Ubiquiti allows me. Yeah. So it’s, it’s all virtual. It’s through my, my gateway device and my hardware, my network hardware in my home. So again, like you don’t really get a lot of that from out of default from like a carrier standpoint from their gateway modem device yet a secondary device will create that type of environment and scenario for again home based businesses and residential residential services so. And then, like a ubiquity udm pro is a really good one, you know tp link. I’m out as another good one that we like to use. And so these router firewalls. We can create virtual local area network. So you have a wide area network or when that’s our internet comes in from the carrier. Then you can create this you have your local area network, which is your main network coming off of that device and then create these sub networks called V Lance is virtual local area networks. And then all of those can be connected back through some sort of SSID with a password, and anything that connects through that VLAN from my LAN now connects to its own little world. And then it resides there, and anything that’s in that little world can see each other, but nothing outside of that can see it. So it keeps it protected.
SPEAKER 11 :
And that all seems very complicated. So when you buy your device, you come out and you set that all up for everybody, and is there an ongoing training, or is it a one and done, or what does that look like?
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, so, yeah, so when people buy our services, we come in and we’ll set up the network, the hardware, we’ll create all the configuration requirements for the network for the VLANs, and then we start helping connect those devices from VLANs. the consumer or the business side into those VLANs. And then we can monitor it. So we do charge a monitoring cost for looking at, you know, basically observing through our system what’s going on with that device so there’s never an issue if flags are knocked and then we can respond appropriately. And then if they ever need to make changes, they can call our support line and and then we can help make those changes for them. Any updates, like firmware or software updates, we can push that for them automatically, and we use that all through our CloudKey program.
SPEAKER 11 :
Gotcha. Okay. Now, you talked about passwords. I don’t know, Dennis, how are you doing with remembering your passwords?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that’s a difficult one because I know people that, and I did it too, I had so many when I owned the auto repair shop that I put them in an Excel sheet on the computer and which wasn’t the brightest thing to do. So now I do is I printed that off and then erased it. And we have it, we have a printed copy that we can look at and hide it so we can find it and stuff. But it’s hard to remember all those passwords, but I have another one for you, Michael. Um, if you know, like if you, when people in businesses start having cameras and everything else, they almost need your services because, I know I had cameras at the shop and stuff, but this was, you know, years ago, and they were hardwired in, but I didn’t have to worry about, because it was an isolated system, and nobody could look at it but me up in the office. So, you know, why would you give your passwords out to people to see at your home or anything like that? Because I would never do that.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, so, again, if you’re given a password to allow somebody to come in, if you allow somebody to come into your network to get on your Wi-Fi, you typically create a guest Wi-Fi or guest access, and that’s another VLAN connectivity where they go through their specific guest portal, right? It’s like if you go to a sporting event like the Demo Broncos, right? There are only so many people who can get into the club level or to the suites. So then you have the general, you know, the general masses go into the rest of the stadium. So it’s kind of like that. We give permission to those who have the right or the need to be in a specific part of my network, and everybody else has this general, but it’s separated out where they can’t gain access. So when we talk about cameras and you’re putting IoT-based devices into your home or into your business, you want to separate out those devices and those connectivities through your network through a VLAN because it keeps it protected. And when we go back to password protection, um management uh that was the hardest thing for me too when i was younger is like what was my password again and they just reset our password how many times now like i just did this last week it felt like you know even though maybe three months ago so uh we like a product called a password keeper also known as keeper it’s a really phenomenal product we help provide that to our customers as well What’s nice about Keeper from a password management is that it actually auto-generates a password for you. You can set the complexity of it, so how long, how many characters, how many special character requirements. It just picks it for you, and then it remembers it for you. So you can download this software, this product, onto your desktop, onto your mobile device, onto a laptop, onto a tablet. And, and as it uses facial recognition, you can use authenticator with Microsoft tools on it. And it’s a, so you can really lock it down, protect it. And then it goes anywhere you go. And what’s nice is like, if you get locked back in and says, oh, Hey, you have to update your password. It can recognize that you’re trying to reset the password and it’ll ask you on a prompt through a pop up screen. Hey, are you updating password you want to update for you and then hit yes it automatically does it for you save it. And then you can log in and look what your password is and make your own manual changes. It’s a really solid tool for our password management to ensure that a you’re picking some really complex passwords that are hard for anybody to try to crack or hack And then, B, if you had to make those changes, you’re not forgetting what that change was because nothing’s worse than, like, you’re trying to log in and you don’t remember your password and you have, like, three chances. Then it kicks you out and you have to go call somebody to get unlocked down from forgetting your password so many times. So I think the overall gist of this is when you set up your network, create VLANs, secure and lock down those devices with connectivity, and then use those strong password management software tools to support you to manage those passwords.
SPEAKER 11 :
Cool. All right. Yeah, I just looked up password keeper, and we can talk about that when we come back. Well, we’ve got to get one more break, and I think we can wrap this up with maybe, Michael, when we come back on this, you can give us, like, you know, the top three things to do that the average person can do at least to get started and, you know, and then maybe consider your services because I think, you know, they’re valid there. So, all right. After the break, we’ll talk about that. This is KLZ 560.
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SPEAKER 11 :
And we are back. Michael, one more time, give us your information on how people can get a hold of you.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, they can email me at michael at datavoiceoptions.com. You can go to our website at datavoiceoptions.com and do the contact us page. Or they can give us a call at 719-900-1111 or 720-900-1111.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, I’ve got a couple quick questions, and I want to get to those three things, what you would call maybe the three most important things that people can do here. But as far as the adding in the gateways, we’ll call them, the additional ones, does that slow down your Internet?
SPEAKER 10 :
No, it shouldn’t. Most of these gateway devices, they run on like a 1 gig or even 2 gig, 10 gig device. connectivity. So really, these devices are powerful enough to not slow you down. Configuration is really important, though, so ensuring that it’s configured properly to minimize any type of degradation on your connectivity is important. But, you know, that’s why we’re here to help with those type of situation scenarios that may come up. But really, the most part is just get them in the first place. And if you’re having a degradation, give us a call. I’m happy to help get you guys, no cost, to get your network up to speed.
SPEAKER 11 :
So with this, do you still need to use a VPN?
SPEAKER 10 :
VPNs, virtual private networks, are really used for those who need to remote in virtually from a long-distance connectivity. So if I’m working from home and I want to get back to my computer, my network, I create a VPN tunnel for my mobile device to get back to my home-based network so I can access files or systems. So VPNs are very specific to a working scenario, not really from like an operational home-based situation, unless you really needed it. Okay.
SPEAKER 11 :
What about with the mobile phone? Because I’ve heard that you put a VPN, and I put one on mine, and it actually really hinders a lot because, you know, if I’m trying to make a call over Wi-Fi or whatever, it’s just this really awful performance. But, hey, put your VPN on the phone. That way they can’t. track you or can’t find you back on that? What’s your opinion on the VPN for a phone?
SPEAKER 10 :
There are applications that help cloak you, so to speak, from from software systems to monitor or track your performance, what you’re doing, what you’re looking at. Um, they keep your information and who you are private, like DuckDuckGo has their own like private VPN, um, can it give you through their web browser? Um, that’s all well and good, but that’s within that ecosystem of, of like, I would say, um, the worldwide web from a searching browser. Um, you can create VPN from like, so like you’ll, So connecting from your device back to pinging back to, like, the VPN’s NOC or central location and coming back in. So, again, it keeps you in a cloak. And it can provide performance degradation. But, again, if you look at the use case scenario, exactly why would you want a VPN on your phone? What are you trying to hide or protect from, so to speak? And then, you know, again, we can advise us to, like, the best methodology behind that because it can slow you down. It depends on the provider’s. network and how their systems and their switchboards are working for you. There’s some different risk challenges there as well. So this depends on the situation.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. And then I had one question on the password keeper. What if, because, you know, like in my house, you know, sometimes my wife needs to log on to certain apps or things within the house, and she’s always asking me, well, what’s your password and all this? Is it something that she can log in? Like, is it just one account? Like, I have one login to password keeper, and she has one. And if that’s the case, how do they share that? the same login, how would that work in a multi-family scenario?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, I mean, you can definitely create a family account within Password Keeper. You can obviously share one password, one account if you wanted to. You can interconnect a group of users within an organization for that as well. The best way to do it is if you’re going to step one, I would just start with my wife. I can get her into access to my password keeper. She has my username and password. The only challenge I have is my MFA, so she’ll have to go through that same process for like my authenticator and stuff like that. But it’s best to have, like, your own separate accounts, and then you can connect those accounts. So that way if you need to share passwords, that way you can through Password Keeper. So definitely, like, our technicians can help get those type of situations set up. So if you want to create a family account, we can get that configured for you guys.
SPEAKER 11 :
Gotcha. Okay. And we’re getting close here to the end. Give us three, your top three most important things that the average person should be doing right now.
SPEAKER 10 :
Number one, I would say is segment your network physically and or logically. Get a device, a gateway device that can provide some sort of like a firewall router that supports VLANs and guest networks. We like Ubiquiti UDM Pro. It’s really solid hardware. And then create a guest network, create an IoT network, create a business network. If you’re unfamiliar in doing that, we’d love to help out and get you guys situated in that sense. And then deploy a really good endpoint protection. So look at like SensibleOne or Bitdefender or Gravity Zone, Sophos, Hunters. All these EDRs and MDRs are going to help monitor that network and watch the traffic and alert you as a homeowner and a business owner about as to what risk or issues may come up into your network. And then the next thing is, like, I would harden and monitor your physical access. You know, in the sense, like, BitLocker and Fireball, encryption workstations and computers, use really strong passwords. Don’t go the easiest route. Don’t use birthdays. Don’t use anniversaries. Don’t use your favorite pet names. Use and leverage, like, systems like Password Keeper to help manage your security of your access into your systems. Those are my top three. Gotcha.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, and I would probably, if at all possible, stay off of public Wi-Fi. Is that a fair statement?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, as much as you can, yeah. And understand the risk that comes behind it, but there’s mobile device software that helps monitor your mobile devices as well.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right. Well, sounds good. Well, Michael and Dennis, thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. It was great. Remember, go back into the show notes, get Michael’s information, give him a call, see what he can do. Check out our information, the church’s information at prep2protectco.com. And until next time, stay alert, stay alive.
SPEAKER 01 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
