[Music] welcome back eddie viewers and in this segment of our program we are going to talk about cyber security and how can we protect protect ourselves from the downside of technology and we are joined today by mr abdul mahdi he is a technology executive good morning good morning good morning good morning mr mcd happy i eat happy to have you with us and so let’s get to the point directly as much as technology is facilitating our lives there are many threats to individuals and organizations alike so we know that cyber security is a term used to refer to the domain of practice that has to do with the protection online first of all what are these top threats when it comes to individual use or organization use of of the internet yeah first good morning and thanks for having me and happy thank you and to our viewers okay and yeah i think like we all love technology i mean like all technology advanced the advancements all the social networks all the different tools and apps that we use we love that and that’s forever expanding but it comes a downside that we hear a lot about lots of issues that has to do with security and privacy so people getting in trouble losing losing their data and even like getting into some like almost close to like threats to their own safety so like cyber security is the term that has to do is like moving security into the virtual world but with everything that has to do with technology if we look at what had been going on in the past like decades and in the past year we’re going to see that there are different patterns of the the different types of threats one of the the top threats these days is what we call ransomware which i think we heard a lot about that in the past year and i think like if we look at it statistically recently in like this year there’s over 14 billion dollars of losses as a result of ransomware so this is a huge loss what is ransomware ransomware is like when hackers access your device and lock it by scrambling data so you have your pc or the company has its own server and there’s a lot of files that we’re working on so if hackers could access that system they’re going to scramble data so you cannot see these data and then they’re going to give you a screen telling you that your data is locked pay me like a thousand dollars in order for me to give you access to this data so this is this is ransomware that’s a huge number 14 billion dollars that’s a huge number yeah that’s a huge number it’s like uh like it’s the biggest threat for cyber security these days and uh and also the 14 billion is almost in the u.s alone so this is wow this is a massive threat so if you look at cyber security is taken very very seriously on a global scale and even the governmental or international levels so ransomware is a big threat and i think by then it’s it’s uh it validates the need for us to be like safe online and also to be cautious in terms of the different types of attacks besides ransomware there is lots of phishing attempts which is like much more like simpler in which that someone is sending us an email with a link and but the email is coming from someone else other than the person that we know so we think this is an email from a co-worker or a friend and then we open it and it’s actually coming from someone else who’s like using the same name and then there’s a link through which they can like access our system or hack us in different way so these are some of the samples some of the top threats also if we look right now like in businesses and even individuals lots of us really update our data or upload our data into the cloud so we use like cloud providers like big companies we put our data online because we might lose our phone or change our phone and like some of the standard features when we have a new device or a laptop is that we kind of upload our data on the cloud so all these data are in the cloud so if there is any threat that goes into some of these cloud providers these are like the biggest providers so they are the techno the biggest technology providers which has an upside in which the dr they have the most advanced protection but also any any issue that happens with them that’s gonna also affect us like other things like using different software that’s especially in companies if i use a third-party software that i give it access to my system if anything happened to this software it’s most likely to affect my system as well because hackers can use it as as backdoor so these are all different types of threats and i think it’s um so we can say that cyber security is getting more advanced than just having an antivirus like an antivirus is something that’s that’s important to have to lock our security but also there is a component of being aware of how to protect yourself things like phishing attempts there’s a there’s always what they call it hackers call it social engineering social engineering is it when you organize your thoughts in which that i know that i want to access your system and i say she’s your friend so i’m gonna use her system to access your system and i’m gonna organize an interaction of you like if i know what you’re gonna be preparing tomorrow i’m gonna send you an email relevant to what’s gonna happen tomorrow at the right time and then you’re gonna click the link because you’re in a rush and by then i’m gonna access your system through her so there’s a lot of tricky and very deceptive techniques that’s used by hackers and by then part of this is about understanding that also being cautious and verifying like that we are on the safe side beautifully explained so mr abdul as a technology user how can i protect myself from these attacks yeah i think like there is there are two components there is like the the hard part in which that i have to secure my software and hardware is that like um if i’m using if it’s my pc for example some of the most obvious things is that i have the right anti-virus software and the security updates so one big part is right now most operating system they have their own like security built in so there’s a big part of security that’s kind of built in within like a windows or mac or whatever system that we’re using and there is additional software to protect it from very specific like threats like viruses and malware etc so i have to make sure that my system is up to date in terms of um like doing full protection and also understanding that there is like a quick update to smile because like as companies discover there are threats they produce a new update and sometimes you have to download this update like quite quickly to protect yourself because if there is like a window three days if you did not install the latest update within this period of time it might be a window for hackers to use it because by then once it’s announced other hackers really know that it exists and they can use it and usually we’re quite lazy or we’re working on something so we usually say later later tomorrow remind me tomorrow so it’s uh it’s um it’s advised it’s like late at night as you’re done with your work leave the system like updates at night and make sure that you’re protecting yourself from that like hard part the soft part is also being cautious is in being able to identify this is a possible threat this is like a social engineering attack and understanding also that this is this has to do is training so there’s a lot of intense training especially at the corporate side i mean if you’re being on board i had an experience in washington dc for three months and the first task before i accessed their system was going through a two hours of cyber security training so the first thing in order for for us to give you access to our system you have to get training and when it comes to cyber security you have to understand all these terms and how to deal with it and also as you go along there is a lot of like drills there’s a lot of training exercises you might actually get an email from a colleague and it’s not from a colleague they want to see if you’re capable of protecting yourself this way so there is a component in which that taking care of my like software and also taking care of my focus while dealing with different like even like friend requests and lots of messaging and messengers and whatsapp so understanding who’s sending that and uh and how to deal with it if there is there is a threat as well well um listening to you engineer magdy a funny thought came to my mind um uh you know i i got the feeling that you um cyber security um professionals uh are like the police and the hackers are like the thieves i mean that’s just the and i got the impression by by the number of times you repeated the the word hackers that it is the fastest entrepreneurs the fastest growing job in the world now i mean you could maybe some kids you would ask some kids what do you want to do when you grow up this is crazy you know and they tell you they don’t tell you i want to be an engineer a cyber security engineer they tell you i want to be a hacker so so i mean you listen to kids and yeah we’re laughing now but but this is very very threatening so so talk to us about that yeah it is phenomenal yeah yeah it is and i think also it’s like part of us especially like when you’re younger is that we want to do like adventure stuff yeah so hacking is like a beautiful world of being able to do something you’re not supposed to do so i actually got into hacking as a teenager so i was online and i had a coach yeah and then he said that he’s gonna start like teach us a hacking and then he was teaching us hacking by recommending books that we read and then we have a discussion around it and um like the author of these books was kevin mitnick he’s like one of the biggest names when it comes to cyber security he was actually a hacker so what usually happens with these is that there’s always well the reason the last cyber security engineer i guess who must know a lot about hacking exactly a forward an ex-hacker would be the best exactly because these hackers like they get like when they are caught and they are offered either would you like to spend your life in jail or do you like to work for us so this is this is usually part of it is there is a lot of transitioning hackers who get into the like in supporting the uh the security efforts so definitely during these years if you’re like teenage years you get really interested in these things and by then there is there is an ethical burden in terms of understanding that you’re going to use that knowledge in kind of in doing right like good things not doing bad thing which is also like it’s part of the training so whenever you go into the cyber security training or like hacking training and most people like to use the word hacking training because it’s like it’s much more entertaining and much more active yeah so once you go into that some of the first things that even your coach tell you is that you have to promise first that you’re not going to be using this knowledge and doing anything illegal because also it’s his responsibility to to do that so yeah definitely it’s a very like flourishing space professionally and also it’s a very um important aspect because by then the police forces are moving online and also it has huge impact we talked about like one type of hacking is 14 billion dollars so this is huge money like and also it becomes really sophisticated with a lot of emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence so this space is pretty much emerging and um and i think you’re like you brought up like some people have it within them is that they want to be stopping the bad guys so but then these actually make the best type of what they call it white hat hackers yeah so mr hamdu how do you see the future of technology with all these uh cyber security challenges yeah i think like once some once like something is growing there has to be like that the safety and security and privacy has to be growing with it which we see that there’s a lot of effort in that space and also there’s a lot of promotion for cyber security with like the attacks so one thing is that there is an effort to respond to some of these attacks so we hear about all that data data linkage from facebook we hear about the uh like the influence on the us elections using different hacking techniques so i think there’s a lot of learning that goes into the industry as we see different types of implementations for these like hacking or manipulation techniques so there’s a lot of learning that goes on from the industry itself and i see as you cannot stop and you should not be stopping technology innovation but rather you have to understand how it works and also you grow with it so there’s a lot of research and a lot of efforts a lot of corporates that really work on the security front and also there is a lot of recruitments that happen on from the side of the bad guys and understanding how they work engineering their methodology and also having them also included in the discussion when it comes to cyber security i think if you look at different parts of the world there’s like big security conferences which is like hacker conferences so you go you go there to get hacked and i think like there are a lot of interesting reports on the media in which the journalist goes into this conference for and they are preparing a report and by then the objective is for a hacker to penetrate his phone and to do something with it and actually they demonstrate in camera how does this work so this actually adds a lot of visibility to the topic to the viewers and also it shows to the community of how these things work and how to stop it so definitely in terms of like visibility that’s going to be like spreading awareness and having people aware that this is how it works and this is how to stop it these are vital points to like make sure that we’re growing our safety and security while technology is growing right um and mr um mike the engineer magdy what kind of knowledge and training is needed to tighten the grip on cyber security within organizations now yeah i think like different organizations had like they have different systems of how they approach cyber security like everyone agrees on the importance of cyber security especially with more critical organizations like banks and institutions like that even like usual businesses so like the standard procedure right now is to have an onboarding training in which that once you’re like becoming an employee of this organization you have to make sure that your knowledge of cyber security is up to a specific standard sometimes also organizations use different tools so you have to be trained on a specific like um like exercises and behaviors working with these different tools of how to protect the cloud application et cetera there are usually different notifications that really pop up so paying attention to that understanding that this is not something to say i agree or i dismiss you have to really pay attention to what’s on the screen and um and by then you have ongoing drills like trainings that you know that while working in something there might be an attempt like as part of the hr department or as part of like the cyber security team within the company to discover uh threats i think hackers say that uh humans are the weakest link so when you like in the hacking community say that humans are weakest link because like systems could be protected but if there is specific users you can actually use and manipulate these users to access the systems so that’s why it’s very crucial for lots of training and focus training activities to take place of course for a larger organization that becomes like much more possible because if you’re a smaller organization like um employees probably do not stay that long and most likely rely on third-party applications so you don’t have big infrastructure to protect but it’s but also you can find like much much more faster and cheaper options to to get your employees and a staff if you’re a small enterprise or or like a growing business on like using uh not necessarily very advanced uh very complicated and very lengthy and costly systems of training uh but rather having things like on the spot that allow people to to do that like some of the interesting applications is something that called cyber security assistance so it’s like an artificial intelligence assistant that once something is happening with your system it tells you that this is a threat take this really seriously mr mcgee what is the best university degree to to take to to prepare uh for a career in in cyber security well i think from from what i see like universities take different approaches to that and depending on their computer science so i think like when it comes to computer science you’re going to find specialities it has to do with cyber security i’m not sure if this is an undergrad degree but definitely there are post-grad degrees there is very deep like specializations in that but i think even cyber security is usually part of the curriculum anyway for things that i i think even has to do with business not just like not not just engineering or or software engineering so i think also we’re going to be start to see that even like for example yeah i think actually some some schools might be teaching basics of cyber security because like once you become a user as a child it’s the best time for you to learn we can safely say that this is an area i guess uh that will expand in the in the upcoming decades can’t we definitely that’s actually becoming because like we used to live just in the physical world and now we’re partially also living in virtual world so like the safety and security that we had there there are another scope so we have to expand that so when it comes to safety and security uh this is gonna be covering a bigger uh part of our perception when it comes to security and definitely like in the physical world we can see and we can sense but by then in the virtual world it’s much more subtle and it could actually be very damaging so yes definitely they’re going to be a lot of expansion in the space in the future so finally in two minutes mr magdie can you tell us more about how can we protect ourselves from social engineering yeah from like social engineering from all like cyber threats it’s it’s about first and not to freak out because i actually this is like one of the things because lots of people when they actually hear about cyber security they kind of say that okay i’m not gonna use my phone i’m going to downgrade to my old nokia from 20 years ago so this is usually it’s not a good idea because lots of these manufacturers they have a lot of protection built in but i think the best you can do is to keep yourself updated with what kind of threats are are happening and i think like it’s the rule of the media as well as that we’re talking about cyber security we’re talking about there’s something called ransomware that people could look your phone and then ask you to pay a ransom so understanding these terms and having the user always reminded by tools and by the media and by different training in their organizations that this is cyber security and this is what you kind of need to be aware of this is this is the best approach so having consistent updates and a base of knowledge when it comes to cyber security how to protect myself without freaking out so i would be comfortable using technology while also i’m aware of when threats might arise and how to respond to them so finally i’d like to thank you mr rabdo and mcd technology executive thank you sir for being thank you for having me thank you thank you and happy here it’s been very informative thank you thank you thank you muhammad and by the viewers we come to the end of today’s edition of the breakfast show see you tomorrow the new crew [Music]
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