My Connected Life

How do we know how to keep our money and our financial future safe and cyber secure? What can we do to protect ourselves and our nation against cyberattacks on financial technology? What are the latest technical innovations to keep our financial data protected, in the present and the years to come? What regulations and financial laws do we need to know about right NOW? Join us as we discuss everything Fintech with our special guest Brett King, international best-selling author of The Rise of...

Most of us have many smart devices in our homes--smart vacuums, personal assistant devices, smart TVs, smart light bulbs, smart alarms, smart mattresses, smart toys, smart cars, etc. These devices make our lives easier, but they can have major security flaws that can let hackers into your home. How can we safely use our devices while keeping malicious users away from our homes and out of our lives? Recently an exploit in a Bluetooth enabled kids toy was revealed that allows a malicious user...

We all hear stories about the Dark Web. We may even get reports from our credit monitoring services that our information has been found on the Dark Web. The Dark Web conjures up images of buying and selling illicit drugs, weapons, malware, ransomware, user credentials, bank accounts, credit cards, health records or really anything, all paid for with cryptocurrency. But what does this mean to us in our connected lives? We’ll take on the questions, explain the Dark Web in a different way, and...

Scams, Identity Theft, and Fraud destroy millions of people’s lives and the number is increasing. On this week’s episode we will speak with Scott Augenbaum, author of The Secrets to Cybersecurity and former Supervisory Special Agent for the FBI’s Cyber Crime Fraud Unit. During his 30 years of investigating cybercrime, Scott has interacted with 1000s of cybercrime victims. Through his stories from the field involving some of his toughest cases, we will learn what steps we can take to scam...

As we celebrate International Women's Day, we need to address the urgent and pressing job and skills gaps in the cyber and STEM corporate cultures that must be addressed swiftly in order to bring about true change and progress. Issues like diversity, inclusion, solving the cybersecurity skills gap of today by both getting kids interested and encouraged as soon as possible, but also addressing the urgency by upskilling and promoting career path shifts to cyber using the vast untapped talent...

2021 saw the highest average cost of a data breach in 17 years. With cyber attacks and their resulting cost increasing exponentially, cybersecurity insurance has become commonplace not only for businesses but for consumers as well. Good cybersecurity hygiene and preventative measures will always be the best defense against cybercrime, but just in case, cyber insurance is a protective safety net--right? Think again. That policy may not cover as much as you think it does. This week, join me,...

You may have heard of recent terms like metaverse and omniverse and wondered what the buzz was all about. Imagine a world where we each had a digital twin, a virtual identity that lives in a place called the multiverse. This technology and others like it are becoming mainstream, and fast. What is the metaverse, and how can the it and digital twins technology help transform critical verticals like healthcare, education and finance? What other high tech advancements are coming up that will...

According to the National Institutes of Health, as many as 25 million Americans – about 1 in 13 people - suffer from a rare or undiagnosed condition. People with these diseases often spend years being shuffled between doctors and specialists, feeling as if they are in an endless loop of siloed care that rarely gives answers to unexplained conditions. In 2018, I become one of these people. At the time, I had no idea that I would use my cybersecurity background to save my own life or that I...

Which is scarier, losing your smartphone or your wallet? Your entire life is on your phone, from your finances to your social media, location data, photos, business, email, Alexa, home alarm system, car communications systems, information about your kids--anything and everything about you and your life is there. Your smartphone is a treasure trove for hackers and anyone or any app that wants to profile you, your family and your business. Sound frightening? It is. How can we keep our data...

The US is in a dire supply chain crisis. According to the Federal Reserve, many parts of the country have been hurt by supply chain issues. Gas prices are hitting record highs. Goods are sitting in harbors, waiting for trucks to send them to their destinations. Consumers are seeing empty shelves all over the country. Perhaps most frightening of all, pharmacies are reportedly running out of prescription medications. The FDA has listed 100+ medications as being on backorder. According to one...

A recent study shows that the pandemic has been associated with a three-fold increase in elevated depression in U.S. adults. Nearly 30% of American adults reported feeling depressed in an October 2021 study, up from 8.5% before the pandemic. Social media can be a major contributing factor. Most of us have probably experienced FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) or feelings of inadequacy when we compare our lives to others on social media, and we've heard about terms like imposter syndrome, but what...

In 2021, 98% of successful cyber attacks were caused by social engineering. At the same time, social engineering threats also rose by an astounding 270% in 2021. This means that social engineering is one of the biggest threats to cybersecurity and one of the hardest to combat. But first off, what exactly is social engineering and why is it so successful? What are the most successful social engineering tactics and what can we expect to see in the near future? With social engineering being so...

2021 was a tumultuous year for cybersecurity. The ongoing pandemic, supply chain and widespread ransomware attacks against industries of all kinds including critical infrastructure have made the year feel like nothing short of cyber chaos. Hackers targeted and brought hospitals down. Cyber-attacks ran rampant against the Colonial Pipeline, JBS, Solarwinds, among a seemingly never-ending list of victims. And to top it all off, the Log4J vulnerability reared its face. All that being said, it...