Mind blown. What did you think of that, Jen?
Oh, my gosh. Just as fantastic as in Atlanta. Some of the numbers and the stats she threw out there, I don't know. I don't know about you, but I might be in the wrong business if the average salary of a hacker is $90,000 a month.
$90,000. And everyone in the audience thought it was a year but, no, that was per month. I was just like, this is crazy. And then when she said, I think, 77% of all companies don't have a plan. I was just like, OK, that makes me-- that makes me actually want to say, OK, I like your social governance, your corporate governance.
I like your equity and inclusion plans. Show me your security plan before I do business with anyone. I mean, it was kind of like that was a lot. And then, I think, it was 200 days hackers are present before they're detected. So basically, people are just sitting in your system. It's like a virus. Well, I guess it's like--
Yeah. That's a long time. I mean, what's, I guess, the silver lining is we know that they're there eventually, right? I hope. I Hope at some point we figure that out. So having a number there shows that we know that. But going back to what you talked about 77% of companies don't have a plan, one of the things I've been seeing in the industry is insurance.
Insurance is now asking to see certain requirements, see a plan, see that you have certain tools in place, especially around, like, say a disaster recovery solution in order just for them to underwrite that insurance. So it's interesting as more organizations are leaning on insurance in security situations, will we see more than that number go down.
It almost makes you wonder if we'll have a rise in, basically, people who just help you get your insurance, kind of consultants for the insurance, just enough to get you covered. I mean, there's so many things today that are like that. House insurance, life. Everything wants proof that you're doing the right things. I mean, how long until you need a Fitbit for your security plans at the company? I mean, it's probably coming.
For sure. Well, and there's so many just standard things that could be done too. Criminals take advantage of an opportunity. You leave a window open, you leave your garage door open, they take advantage of that opportunity. And just making sure that you're employing multifactor authentication, conditional access, segmenting your network. I mean, these are just some basics that have to happen.
Yep. The one that really struck me, and it's going way back in my day, was the monitoring privileged accounts. You know, I have a lot of privileged accounts just in my life, monitoring stuff in my house. Not even for my company of me and my family, right? I never looked at those ones. I never really changed their passwords. I shouldn't say that.
A lot of those accounts don't have MFA. Like, all of my main ones do, but you know how it is. We have accounts for all sorts-- you know, to log into the grocery store. I never checked that one, so monitoring privileged accounts really kind of hit home, because I thought, OK, I'm not doing that.
That is huge. Yeah, who's watching those super admins? Who is watching the watchers, so to speak? Well, this segways into what you want to talk about, because you have certainly some thoughts here. And bringing home what she talked about, bringing it home to each and every one of us.
Literally bringing it home. Literally bringing it home. Yeah, you know, I got thinking about her talk while I was listening to it, and thought to myself, are we just possibly raising a generation of hackers? That's what I'm going to talk about. You want to see it?
I do, I do. Let's go.
Alright, let's go take a look at this. Well I don't think I could top Paula and her actual real life hacking skills, but I do want to talk a little bit about this idea of where are these hackers coming from and maybe the phone call is coming from within the house, because I believe your children are hackers, and we're raising hackers. But again, as we started off the event, if you go to Google right now and put in two words, most connected, my picture comes right up.
I've done a Ted Talk. There are five Ted Talks about me, magazine covers, TV shows, books, all the good stuff. So I know a little bit about technology and technology hacking, and we'll talk about that right now. If I think about my history, and how I was kind of raised a hacker, I like to think of this period of my life as ancient hacking. And this ancient hacking goes back to the very beginning of my life.
Even though I'm a young 54 today, I actually got started with my computer early in the 80s, basically the late 70s. You can see here, in 1981, that's my bedroom. Yes, I had a lot of parakeets and birds. I wasn't allowed a dog, so I made up for dogs what I have birds. But down there in that bottom shelf, you can see my IBM down there. I loved that thing.
My parents would let me keep it plugged in because, like the refrigerator, they thought it was using too much electricity. But I would get on that and I would create, hack everything I could. Now we weren't connected to the internet back then, but I did some pretty crazy hacking with spreadsheets and documents and things like that. Fast forward to the 90s, I'm now up in my 30s. I've got my pager, my cell phone, my 911s, my 411s. I've got my DVDs and my CDs.
I'm getting into anything pre kind of the whole kind of hacking of the internet. I was just doing other kind of basic corporate stuff. I was running an email server at home before my boss even knew we had email at work. All the way up into the 2000, where I'm now in my 40s, I've got multiple servers at home. See all those MCSE books up there on the shelf?
So yeah, I've been around a little bit, and I might have known a little thing about hacking, but I kind of grew up into it. No one really trained me or we weren't really in a culture to do that. But I thought to myself, by the time I got to 2008, I had had some health problems, why don't I know as much about me as all of these systems know about me? And I got to thinking, maybe I could possibly hack myself.
So I built this elaborate system that any time I touched anything digital, it would go ahead and grab that data and do something with it. Kind of like a hack my own life story, kind of something very tangible. But what do you do with all this tangible stuff, and where do you put it? So I built a system that grabbed every single piece of life data, dollars I spent at the store, music I streamed, this has gone back now to 2008, and moved it to my Google Calendar.
And this Google Calendar had tens of thousands of data points. I was able to search my life, look for good patterns, bad patterns. Basically, I was hacking me in real time by looking at what the computers thought I was doing. This led me to be able to see these amazing coincidences and synchronicities being when I did things online or I binge watched streaming television or I mean on Yelp and customer services. How those things affected me, I could see the long digital shadow of who I was becoming online.
This hacking allowed me to fundamentally change everything about my life. See, hacking technology fundamentally made me more human, made me a better person. So I don't think all hacking is bad, but we kind of have to look in, well, what does hacking really mean today, in today's society, especially with so many of us having children that are under 10, under 15? Are these kids hacking? Do we know anything about what they're doing?
This summer, I actually got to experience this firsthand with what I call raising a hacker. And again, I did not set out to do this on purpose. But if I go back and think about my first pre-teen summer in 1983, my only point of view for hackers would probably be the movie WarGames. Two teenagers, who somehow got in a little bit of trouble, accidentally hacked into the United States government and started a nuclear war. Now, present times aside, it was a terrifying movie.
Fast forward now to my late 20s, early 30s, two teens then hack into the government again, movie Hackers. I thought I understood teens and hacking 100% until this, summer because this summer I experienced Hacking Destiny. So this is Destiny. She's literally my 11-year-old sister-in-law, been in my life since she couldn't even walk, and she came to stay with me and my spouse for two months this summer. And I learned very quickly, hackers just aren't in Hollywood anymore. They're literally living around us.
See, when Destiny came to see us, she first did a road trip. She never been away from home. She got in the RV with us and drove across country with all of our pets. We went to all these different states. And the whole way I kept thinking, what is she doing? She had her iPad, she had her phone, she had her laptop. She's 11, right? She can't be doing much. Every now and then, I'd try to peek. Really couldn't tell. But she was making videos and TikToks and sending stuff to her friends.
She had all these different apps. Some of these things I've never even heard of. And it got me wondering, like what type of life does Destiny really lead online. Well, halfway through our trip, Destiny got kicked off of TikTok. Now, I still don't know why she got kicked off of TikTok, and that really doesn't matter, but the first thing I said to her was, well, here, Destiny, we'll get you back on we'll set you up a new TikTok account using a fake email address. And I thought I was going to show her something that she hadn't seen before.
Well, Destiny already had a fake email address. In fact, Destiny had multiple TikTok accounts. So I was like, this is kind of mind blowing. So we get to New York. She's with us for a month. So I build this chore routine. It was a lot of form she would get on our phone every day. She would go in, and she'd put in the date. She'd put in what chores she accomplished and something about her day.
Well, sure enough, about two weeks in, she's like not doing her chores regularly enough. I go in check, and I have a talk with her and she goes, you know, it's just a little bit much. Some days I don't want to do things. I'm like, I get it. I get it. Well, within a day, every single day from that point, she was doing chores. So I started looking around like, yeah, she seems like she doing them, but sometimes they said they were done but they weren't.
You know, she had written a little script to update this form to automatically tell me she was doing her chores when she wasn't. My mind was blown. What is an 11-year-old doing hacking a database telling me her chores are done when they're not? I mean, I was pretty sure she was basically at this point programming the Roomba while I was at work. Then I got asking her, Destiny, you're about to start middle school, what is middle school like today for kids?
And she goes, well, you know, we have to have clear backpacks. This is all about safety. She goes, but most of the kids I know actually have multiple email accounts like me. My best friend has a burner phone number system that she gets $10 a month for her allowance, and she hands out burner phone numbers that her friends give her. So she basically sells these things for $1 apiece and makes money that pays for the service.
And she says some her friends even have burner phones. And my mind was just blown. I'm like, how did this happen? How are we raising kids that are so tech savvy? And it got me really realizing, again, another fundamental truth. We don't hack tech, we hack obstacles. So what does this really mean? Well, think about today in parent-- parenting-- parenting-- parental-- ah, being parents to our kids. There's a lot.
Think about even kids today, before you're even born, you've got all these devices where you can hack your fertility, hack what your contractions, monitor your baby's heartbeat. You can hack your child's video monitor. They have special diapers where you can monitor everything, including when they get fed. There are so many ways today that we hack our children and our infants. We've got applications by Microsoft, Google, and Apple, all that allow us to watch what our families are doing, hack their times, cut off the wife if we don't need to.
Even Netflix has a way to hack conversations, where if you have a child account, and you set it up as a child account, Netflix will send you themed conversations to talk to your kid about. I remember when it was just awkward and my parents tried to talk to me. So what does this mean now that we're hacking all these humans? Fundamentally, means we've all become cybernetic. But what is the cyborg? You are a cyborg.
My best friend, Amber Case, back in 2010, has this amazing Ted Talk called, We are all cyborgs now. And it really got me thinking how if this is true, that means we are all hackers now. So what does it mean to be a cyborg? Well, you'd have to go all the way back to Douglas Engelbart, who was the father of modern computing. He had this great, great demo, you can go back and watch it, in 1968. It's called the mother of all demos.
We had a voice interface. He had a GUI on his computer long before any of these things were normal. And he talked about how we could use computers in the future by hacking to make them different. Or you've got Steven Mann, a modern day cyborg, from 1981 at MIT. He had this whole rig of technology he would wear that would hack visually the signs around him and give him reminders from his wife.
He didn't want, like, a virtual reality, he wanted an alternate reality. And from there, you've got this guy who actually lost his eye in a hunting accident in 2010, and actually put a camera in his eye so he could start to hack his life and record his life. Like I was doing digitally with my calendar, he actually has done. And you've got modern day cyborgs. This is from 2015. In Sweden, most of the trains allow you to pay for the train fare with your hand.
Some people have even gotten to the point where they'll hack their chip to have unlimited rides. It kind of reminds you back in the day when you'd have those hackers that would use telephone booths and make unlimited the telephone calls by playing a sound, except now, these people are doing it with their hand. And then, of course, modern day. How many of us see young people with earbuds in their ears or smartwatches on? As a matter of fact, Apple is selling more wearable and insertable wearable being watches, insertable being Airpods, technology today than they sold phones for the first five years of the phones.
See, we are totally becoming technology, which gets me to my third big point. We can't escape technology, because we've become technology. Which makes you really wonder, out of all these hackers that are becoming, what has become of identity? Again, like you and me, if you're like me, and you're a little bit not a spring chicken anymore, you remember identity being things that involve the keyboard, logging in to the domain. And then it evolved up to the 90s and all these services, and even social services.
And then, from there, we had social login and then Bitmoji. So many people interact now as this avatar version of themselves. And filters, and now our faces are fully scanned. When I think about just the evolution of how I presented myself in technology, it makes me really wonder how will I hack my appearance in my life in the future? Just looking at the different types of services I've had, and how I've hacked them, everything from getting-- when you would send in that you'd get multiple cassette tapes for a penny, but you'd send it in like three or four different addresses so you'd have 30.
It's like today, you can have multiple Amazon accounts to get certain prizes and certain all these other things. I literally had multiple Twitter accounts for the longest time so I could tweet as different people. I was even the Queen. Whole story about Buckingham Palace coming after me from the handle. But there was a lot. So hacking out identity has become fundamental through the last 10 years. Kids today use something called Finstagram, which is Instagram, they just have three or four different versions of themselves.
On Reddit, popular website where people go and ask for advice, constantly millions of throwaway accounts are made daily, so much so that the idea of identity is even joked about on Reddit with two of my favorite, LinkedIn Lunatics. These people who've all got great advice for everyone but never seem to do any work. And then Instagram Reality, the people always have the perfect filters, until you see them in person, and they've aged.
Yeah, so there's a lot, and it gets you wondering, what is identity? Is it kind of this creation that someone else makes or is it the anointment that the systems give us? And the future? What does it mean once we are in VR or AR? See, I truly believe that because we are cyborgs and are all learning to hack, we're heading toward what I would call an identity singularity.
You see, we become the people we log in as. So what are the three things you need to do to make sure you are hacking your cyborg resilience? Well, the first thing is, remember that all technology is just an extension of who you are. It makes you be able to see better, hear better, sound better, talk better, everything. It makes you cybernetic. So watch those connections.
Number two, apps are like friends. There's not an app you use that isn't affecting how you think, how you behave, or how you connect with others. So be diligent, not just with what those apps do, but the data in them. Are they public? Are they private? Are they personal? are they temporary? Are they intimate? There are so many ways. I like to use this chart for myself when I think about these apps.
And then, last but not least, connections change the way we feel. For me, so many people want to connect to me, and I connect to so many people, but understanding how I connect and the order is really important. You just don't start off dating someone. You should get to know them, and then go out to dinner, and then you might start dating, and then you might get engaged and get married. So that's an order to life.
Well, that's the same thing for applications, but so many of us just will connect to everybody in every single app. My big tip is, do not try to connect to me on 23andMe, the service about DNA, until you at least know what type of music I listen to. And with that, I think you need to remember, "Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.", according to Deming, "But without an opinion, you're just another machine with data." And with that, I'm going to head back and talk to Jen for the rest of the conference.
Oh, my gosh. Chris, that was fantastic. I loved hearing that again. What you said about, we are who we log in as, I'm still been thinking about that since Atlanta, rethinking about that now. Thank you so much for sharing this, and making this more personal, and talking about the connections that we're making online, really influencing who we're becoming as people out here in reality. Well, I want to make sure that we get on with the conference today for our virtual event.
We have three tracks coming up. We've got our Microsoft Infrastructure Security, we have Microsoft 365, and then we have on premises and hybrid migration and management track. Very exciting. We've got 45 minute tracks, 30 minute tracks. We've got people like Tony Redmond coming up today. Greg Taylor talking about basic off turning off. Sean Metcalfe is talking about the identity nexus. Just some really amazing content today that I hope that you will take some benefit from.
Yeah, and if any of those people kind of make you just want to scream and ask questions, don't forget we have live Q&A. So right here on the platform, you'll see our chat. You can go ahead and chat with us. I talked about these connections, these connections are safe, unless you're talking to Paula. And I'm not saying that she's going to try to hack you, but I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised.
And then, most importantly, if you're on the socials, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, don't friend Destiny. Trust me, it might not be her. If you're on any of those, you can use our hashtag and reach out to our speakers. I'm sure they will love it. There's a lot of interaction to go. Tech is really just getting started.
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