Cybernomics Radio!

The Hidden Side of Protecting Your Children Online

• Bruyning Media

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Marcus Peet, Senior Director of Information Security at PT Solutions, shares his unique perspective as both a cybersecurity expert and father of three on navigating the complex world of digital parenting. His "growth with guardrails" philosophy demonstrates how parents can protect their children online while allowing them the freedom to develop necessary digital literacy skills.

• When children should get their first phone (Marcus recommends age 13, but with flexibility based on family circumstances)
• Smart alternatives like GPS watches for younger children who need location tracking
• Understanding the hidden costs of giving children smartphones, particularly the time investment
• Tools for monitoring children's devices including Bark, Family Link, and built-in parental controls
• Creating accounts properly within family ecosystems rather than standalone accounts
• The importance of establishing trust while still verifying children's activities
• Balancing protection with independence to avoid children seeking workarounds
• Navigating platforms like Roblox safely through supervision rather than prohibition
• Recognizing generational communication differences (like how a thumbs-up emoji can be perceived as passive-aggressive)
• Practical strategies for verifying online friends' real-world identities

Remember, the phone is a privilege, not a right. Be transparent about monitoring with your children while still giving them space to make small mistakes and learn from them.

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Speaker 1:

I'm going to start calling you the executive senior director of information security, dad in chief and because and I think that dad is the most important title in that string, so I really appreciate you coming and sharing your thoughts as a father, as a security professional, on cybernomics.

Speaker 2:

Well. Thank you, josh. I appreciate the opportunity to come on your show. I'm a fan and so being able to be on this side of the instead of just listening is phenomenal, and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity.

Speaker 2:

Yes, as you, as you mentioned, I'm the Senior Director of Information Security at BT Solutions and we are a nationwide physical therapy practice, so we have many different clinics. Generally, in some areas, we partner with the local hospital in that area to provide physical therapy to patients in that market, next to within a certain radius of that major hospital system, and in other areas we are an ambulatory clinic. What that means is we are not associated directly or attached to a hospital. We're kind of like a standalone. You'll find this next to Publix or next to Food for Less or something along those lines. We have our own storefront operation where you can come get physical therapy local to you. Currently we're in 25 states across the US. We are not international and my goal is to ensure that one.

Speaker 2:

I evangelize security. I love to promote security. It fascinates me, it excites me, it does. It's what got me into, kind of where we're headed to today with today's conversation, which started me down that path, and my goal is. I see myself as a facilitator, and growth with guardrails is kind of what my. If I had a catchphrase, that would be what the catchphrase is. I want to facilitate what we're talking about, but let's put it within certain parameters and let's move forward together.

Speaker 2:

Because I'm a father of three, what were the challenges that I had? Teaching them and growing up myself, maturity wise and maturing in my profession, maturing in my parenting, maturing as an individual and when I saw what things were happening and as I prepared my own children, and listening to other parents. There was something about how do I take my knowledge. I was blessed to be able to understand technology, build technology, work with technology as my career. In the Marine Corps I was a communications technician, so means short, long way to say. I followed five volts around a motherboard pretty well right and made sure that that was good.

Speaker 2:

And when you have that in-depth knowledge and you take it to someone who spent as equal amount of time just on whatever profession they are a doctor who spent years longer than I did learning their profession, or a tax accountant, or just somebody who's not necessarily technology focused from their onset how do I help them do the same thing that I did and not have their children. Because the one thing we have in common, the common denominator, is we were parents and we want to protect our children, we want to protect the environment that they're in, protect our family members, protect our parents, who are not necessarily as technologically savvy as we may be or we consider ourselves to be. So, as we think about all of those things, how does that help? And that's where my heart kind of went into and brought me into cybersecurity.

Speaker 1:

Before you became a dad, did you see this problem in terms of protecting our kids and sort of the personal side of security, or is this something that changed? The moment you held your first kid in your arms, did your priorities as a parent and as a professional shift.

Speaker 2:

So for me I'm going to say yeah, it became apparent when I became a father and for me, I became a father when I got married. My oldest son. I don't consider him my stepson, I've never referred to him as my stepson but technically, if I fill out a legal paperwork, he's my stepson, right? It wasn't until the responsibility of something, someone other than myself, and the realization that I am the one that has to do this, that the protective mode and the thoughts behind how do I do that? And then, because I'm in the technology field and electronics field, how do I do that electronically? They're going to feed off of me.

Speaker 2:

I was, I'm been a gamer since the very first Nintendo and I had an Atari. So I'm growing up with all of that in the house and doing things. The Commodore 64 was the very first computer I played. Karateka was the very first game I played. So the evolution of video games and things and bringing technology within the home and the advances that were making technology more accessible, coupled with this jumps in technology to keep up with it, I realized my children wanting these things, wanting these areas. We went through the VTech IO phase. You know we went through this Nintendo Wii phase and all of these things.

Speaker 2:

The fatherhood itself propelled the thoughts behind protection and it stemmed from how do I make sure my children are safe? How do I make sure I provide the best for them? How do I monitor what it is they're doing so I can make that decision? And I want to say I was not a helicopter parent at first, but I became a helicopter parent, at least in the logical space, Once we started seeing just how much of the world opened up. When I was growing up, it was AOL and you had to dial in and you had to make sure you had a set up for phone line. Was there were dangers and things like that then? But the prevalence and the speed of which technology and the ability to have it within your fingertips, and the amount of danger that can bring or present to an unknown or naive individual, how do we help them?

Speaker 1:

understand that. I think that's a really good point, and we can start there and see where it goes Protecting your kids. And it starts with the devices. The devices, yes, let's talk about the devices. Okay, the phone being the main device. How old do you think a kid should be before they have their first phone, and why?

Speaker 2:

From my perspective and within our household, we said that when you became a teen, the word teen was in your age. That is when you came about Legally speaking. That's also where COPPA comes into play, because that's where you have to be 13 to have a Facebook account or an Instagram account or be able to make decisions in the Apple iTunes store. So you have the federal law that says 13. But for us, being a teen, because in elementary school, we didn't feel that our children needed to even worry about that when you had an iPad, it was governed and the technology was there. But when our children for us when I talk about us, I mean myself and my wife our philosophy has always been the phone is a privilege, it is not a right. It is not a right. The phone itself is something that you use, not just to chat with your friends and play games, but it needs to be productive, because our goal was to teach them how to integrate it and become better with the technology, which is kind of helping with that going forward, and they became roughly around middle school age and they were starting to do things like stay after school for certain items. That's where we would come into play what we did for my daughter when she was younger. The funny story and what kind of sparked, you know, kicked us off a little into higher gear. We were walking through the mall, we were discussing this exact topic Do we get our children a cell phone? And we said no, we don't want to do it. She was five or six at a time. We were discussing going to Disney World for the first time as a family it was my thank you gift to my family for following me around the world being in the military and we're walking through the mall and we walked past. We were actually at the Verizon kiosk counter and we're talking with the representative and they're giving us options and we're discussing it. We looked down and my daughter's gone. She had walked away and we were looking around. Where in the world could she have gone? And we looked ahead and all of a sudden we see this little girl talking to this carousel rider, because there happened to be a carousel in the mall. It was like just horsies and riding up and down. She had wanted to go. We said, no, we'll get there in a minute. Well, while we were talking, she took the opportunity to go.

Speaker 2:

At that point it was okay, how in the world cause we didn't believe in like having a backpack with the leash or you know the tethering or any of that stuff, right? So how do I keep track of my child in this situation and knowing that we're getting ready to go to somewhere, that her attention is going to be grabbed in almost the exact same fashion and we have no idea, how do we try to help with that? So it was at that moment that the for younger children between uh, old enough to tell time and understand what's on their wrist to you know 13, when they get a phone, was the wristwatch. So we got her immediately, got her one of those watches that she could make uh calls on, but for us it had a GPS tracker, right. So there's that line that we had.

Speaker 2:

But it became very real for us that technology needed to be there to help us in this age and we didn't have that growing up. But now that we do, how do we leverage it? And that's the story of how cell phones came about in our family and when we switched providers, the story of how cell phones came about in our family and when we switched providers, the new provider didn't have the watch. So we did get her a phone it was before the age, but that was only because they didn't have the watch, because there were so many advantages to having the watch that we loved as a parent, and balancing protection versus independence and ability, or the thought of the child feeling empowered and feeling like they're not behind, or getting made fun of because now you'll get.

Speaker 2:

We got bullied for having XJ 900s from Walmart instead of having some Nikes when I was growing up and you didn't have a starter jacket because you had to have the Charlotte Hornets starter jacket or else you weren't cool, even if you weren't a Charlotte Hornets fan. But now they get bullied for anything and everything and the access to being bullied is everywhere. So how do you make sure? When you take that into account? It's like all these political dynamics that you would never even think or consider growing up.

Speaker 1:

What are the hidden costs of getting a cell phone?

Speaker 2:

The biggest one is going to be time, if I you know, when you think about it, because while you don't have to spend the time and I'm not saying you need to become, you know, the cybersecurity professional in order to do this it does take time to understand what's going on. With every generation, there's going to be a translation of languages. There was a movie I can't remember what the name of it was, but the father was father was in there and the iMessage was connected to the computer and they were trading pictures and it was about they saw the eggplant with the water symbol and all of those types of things. How do you understand what the child is communicating with? To them, it's second nature. To you it's a foreign language.

Speaker 1:

By the way, if you're listening to this and you don't know what the eggplant with the water emoji is, Google it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, don't, don't, don't and don't Google it at work.

Speaker 1:

Don't Google it at work Right? Don't Google it at work.

Speaker 2:

So you have from going and understanding how they're communicating to what they're communicating with, and so there's the app stores are so plentiful with all these different types of applications. So understanding what is the common denominator and how do you just monitor that and then thinking about what it is you want to do as a parent. The most important thing when I teach classes to parents is I tell you how I did it. You may not agree, and you and your spouse may not agree, with the methods that my me and my spouse did to raise our children and the things and rules that we set, but understanding what those are for your household because it takes a united front to be that proactive, because there are things that I didn't know or I couldn't see or that my children would talk to my wife about you have to. It becomes a parenting tool. So there again, all of those come to time and that's the one thing that when I talk to people is that they don't have enough of, which is why we've got AI, we've got microwaves and we've got TikToks that are only this long and tweets that can only be 140 characters. Everything is about the amount of time and consumption of information into a distinct small micro sessions that I can get and they're impactful. So, when you think about all of those things, couple that with the generation that's growing up. Time is going to be what you need to invest, more than actual dollars Now. Dollars are going to be very helpful. They will help support the time, but time is going to be very helpful. They will help support the time, but time is going to be your hidden cost.

Speaker 2:

And the biggest time is understanding your child, I would think, Because when you think about how your child thinks, processes, information, learns things curious about what is in their nature as the parent, that translates into their online activity. It translates into what you're seeing. It translates into where they're going. What sort of things are you going to find? Because when you invest the dollars into things like a centralized area, you're monitoring your gateway for websites and things that they're going to, whether it be on their phone, their TV, their smart device, their iPad, their game system, their computer, If they have a computer, a Chromebook, if they have a Chromebook for school. All of these things connect to the internet and all of them can be accessed and utilized in various different ways. When you invest in it and you're looking at the history or the activity, or you invest in some software that monitors their devices and you're looking at the activity. Do you know your child?

Speaker 1:

Because at that point comes into play. Hey, marcus, just real quick. What kind of software are parents putting on their phone? I wasn't even aware until you just said that that there's software that you can put on your kid's phone.

Speaker 2:

Oh man there is a whole world out there, and does it matter whether?

Speaker 1:

they have an iPhone versus an Android. I feel like Android would be much easier.

Speaker 2:

It does, it matters very much. Google, I think, does a very good job for the age range of, I would say, you know, zero to 13, right, and they have Family Link and, in my opinion, family Link I like that because it takes over the device that you put it on and because it's agnostic. I can get a Motorola, whatever Android device. You have to create a separate account that takes over the root administrative function of that device and they can't do anything unless you authorize it. Now Apple has something similar, but we've seen articles where the privacy settings and other things.

Speaker 2:

Apple is more towards empowering the individual. Depending on the age of the individual, so privacy is very important to them as a whole, and so, when it comes to parenting, that can get in the way of you trying to make sure your child is monitored, if you want to go that route, of course, but when they get after 13 and they start to get into social media, there are a lot of different tools out there, but software is one of them, the one I like the best of. What we use was Bark, and Bark essentially creates a VPN from the device so it monitors all traffic and things from there, but then it also, it's an always-on VPN, but then it connects to all of their social media accounts and it combs all of the activity that's done on these various different activities and then it distills it down to something that you read that's relevant. So you're talking about a whole conversation that's 15 pages long, but the only quote unquote part that she was concerning, they put into like five lines yeah, let's highlight every time the word boy was mentioned.

Speaker 2:

You know. So if that's, if that's a concern, right, you can get that information. And this is when the technology first came out and when it presented it to you, it said here's why it's concerning, but ultimately, here's how you have a conversation with your child about this. Concerning content Wow.

Speaker 1:

When I teach classes.

Speaker 2:

I give examples out of my account where my middle son helped avert a suicide attempt and it was only in text message and he knew exactly what to do and it told us hey, you know, this is what your son did, and we actually just let it play out through the bark messages and he went and told the principal, we got the child, the child that was having the issue, we got them some help and he did all of that and we just watched it play out. We didn't have to intervene. But when you start doing those things and understanding what those tools are and how they're able to present that information to you, there's embark is just the one that I so happen to use. Embark is advanced. They've got, I think, a router now and they've got their own Android phone now. So there's a bunch of different things that you can do as a parent. But I also install things like Bitdefender, which is my antivirus. The antivirus application has a parental control app, so now I have antivirus on my device If they're on my daughter's computers.

Speaker 2:

Microsoft has family safety. I use family safety to get activity tracking, log tracking. How long are they using that laptop? For? When you go into Google, you can have the family link device, when it connects to all their devices, gives you the same information. I can actually schedule time on and off. So that's what the software is for. To an adult it's the equivalent of like a key logger. It's from a cyber security perspective, it's a key logger. It's a tattletale software. Tattleware is what it's called the. You know, that's where people came up with inventions of putting the mouse, laser mouse, on the ticking watch so it records movement. So it's like there and the bubble never goes green or never goes red or yellow.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, so it's.

Speaker 2:

You know those types of things.

Speaker 1:

I discovered that way too late, after I had been working remote for like three years. A friend of mine was like yeah, you can just like put that on this thing and I'm just like you're never going to go red and I'm like where were you? I've known you for three years.

Speaker 2:

You should have led with that. It's funny. But yeah, there's just so much you can do. And it's also there's a lot that they can do. Yeah, like hiding apps how do you know where to go? So identification all the way around.

Speaker 2:

But yes, there are plenty of applications that you can put on devices, and there are Android versions as well as iPhone versions. You can put on devices and there are Android versions as well as iPhone versions. To your point, the Android version may have a little bit easier time because it's a more wide, open ecosystem and it's open source by nature, so there's a little bit more for it there. But within the Apple ecosystem, they do a great job of the parental controls within the Apple app software itself, the native Apple software, and then you can add apps on top of that. That work, integrate with what's already being done, so the same information can be gleaned from both, because both organizations at that level understand that they want to help protect and give you the tools as a parent to do something about.

Speaker 2:

I am an Android household, I'm not an iHousehold, but I'm not going to bash either one. I think if, depending on which ecosystem you're in, there are tools that are going to be there and applications and software you can get that give you the same or similar amounts of information to do what you're trying to do and protect and raise your child.

Speaker 1:

For parents who are about to embark on that journey very scary giving their child their first phone what are like one, two, three things that they can do to make sure, right out of the gate, that they're at least like 60% covered?

Speaker 2:

You want to make sure that in, like the Apple world, don't create a separate account at the base level. You want to create an account from within the family setting so that it's not because if you create a standalone one, it takes all the rights and privileges therein of the privacy settings and other things from a standalone I account. And you'd be surprised. You may think well, I just need to know the password and the authentication comes to my phone. Your child will figure out how to circumvent. I guarantee you you will never know it and it'll be four years, five years old and they will have already reset and bought 15 things with plenty of stories about that. Right. So make sure, because when you do it from inside, it creates inherent permissions and blocks at the software operating system level, if you will, of that device. That is not present when you do it from a standalone account. So on the Apple side you can do it from there. On the Google side it would be Family Link. That's what that does it for you there. But that would be the first thing is create those accounts so that you have and you protect yourself and the biggest thing is from charges.

Speaker 2:

There are some places where a child finds a game and they make it so easy to hit that button to start buying. I want to buy the tickets. I want to play Candy Crush. I need to get past this level. I'm going to keep buying. It's not charging me. That account is charged to your Apple Card or whatever it is you have as a parent. Now you've got a $7,000 bill and you're trying to figure out how did I rack up in Candy Crush and there's just plenty of spoilers about it.

Speaker 2:

It's so much easier than you think, oh my gosh. And they make it. So they hit that nerve center of the brain that says I need to do this, so your child? When you create the accounts that way, those blocks are inherent and, from a cybersecurity protection perspective, the not safe for work sites, the nefarious things when they click an ad that's a bad ad, that does pop-ins or tries to download software, malware, phishing those things are built into those areas when you do it from that standpoint.

Speaker 2:

So understanding how to get started is probably the first thing. The next thing I would say is think about, have a conversation and understand which technology you're going to go with. Are you an Apple household? What are my tools with Apple? Are you a Google household? What are my tools with Google? If Microsoft decides to get back into the device biz, what are my tools with Microsoft? Because they will have something. And how does it? You know, does it mesh with the way that I want to raise my child? And that's what you're balancing that with, because technology can be made to do what you need it to do and there are ways to do what you need to do in either platform. It goes back to how you want to implement it. So, understanding what that looks like, and then the last one I would say is don't be upset and don't go overboard. Lose sleep behind what you find, and that goes back to learning your child.

Speaker 2:

That's a good one, because your child is developing, they're growing. There are certain times, as a parent, you tell them not to touch the stove and they're still going to go touch the stove until they feel that it's hot. They realize that it's hot. They get a burn because it's hot and you just want to make sure the burn doesn't like take their arm off or they've got to amputate or whatever. You want to make sure it's not severe. But in some cases you need to let them burn themselves.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they get that picture you want, your as a parent. You're trying to make sure that it's not life threatening or that it's not going to change, alter the course of their life forever. So when you're giving the child the technology and they're going to start using it and learning and branching out and doing different things, understand and learn your child and learn how to balance that. Because if you try to go after everything they do and try to go after every piece of technology and every application they could possibly do it, possibly every avenue they could be attacked from, you're not going to get your job done, you're not going to live, you just won't. Yeah, you're just living, especially if you have more than one child.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know some people who've touched that stove when they were 13 years old and they can. They're 40 and 50 and they're still touching that stove, yeah. Sometimes, twice a day.

Speaker 2:

Some just never learn and so it's one of those things. But yeah, that that is where I think from a, from that state, if I had to rearrange them. That's probably the most important to me is that piece of it, because that plays a foundation into what you are doing with the technology.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that trust aspect is very important. I think fostering trust with your kids, that's probably the best thing that you can do to protect them, because it's a management of ecosystems. What you're trying to do is build an ecosystem where your kid can roam. Yeah, they might bump into a fence every now and then, but you know they're not gonna go too far off the farm, right. So I think that that's so important, especially when we're talking about building trust as a mitigation factor. So if we were to put this like in cyber security speak, if the threat is that others will influence them and others will take up that mind share and take up their time, then the mitigating control really is to foster an ecosystem of trust so that when something does happen they come to you.

Speaker 1:

And I think that a lot of parents they really go the route of of and I'm not trying to knock anybody or disparage anybody, but you know my parents were pretty strict and I feel like once you're too strict and you feel like you can't open up to your parents about certain things, then you just depend on your friends for education.

Speaker 1:

Your friends teach you how to circumvent the controls and you know you lose that trust and therefore you are no longer under the jurisdiction or the protection of your parents. So I think, ironically, a lot of parents when they're trying to protect their kids, they try to lock everything down as much as they possibly can, keep them in a very small closed box, and that is the very thing that loses those kids, and now they're going to break out of the box and then you can't protect them at all because now they're out in the wild where you cannot enable a family share plan or anything like that. So I'm glad that you touched on that, because I think a lot of parents they might think of the bits and the bytes and the technology, but not really think about the trust factor.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and in this day and age, with what your child is going to learn and the generational differences and how the generation we're raising became from the generation that's raising them, is stark Because the same. For example, I had a. We had a disagreement with my oldest because I used the thumbs up symbol. I was not aware that just hitting thumbs up in a chat was passive, aggressive. It is. It is. There's an actual article about it, right?

Speaker 1:

I do it all the time.

Speaker 2:

For me. I hit thumbs up. Hey, good to go that means you know I understand solid copy.

Speaker 2:

To you know, let's keep up. Hey, good to go. That means I understand solid copy too. Let's keep moving. But to the generation that I was raising it was I didn't pay attention to what you were saying, I didn't care enough to read into it and you just dismissed me by hitting thumbs up. You didn't even if you had said, ok, the letters, ok was better than doing a thumbs up.

Speaker 2:

But to my generation they're both the same thing. So when we talk about how that trust is built and building that relationship that you just mentioned built, and building that relationship that you just mentioned, understanding how these things work is important because you're going to see things that you're going to want to lock down immediately. My youngest she always talks about things like go play in traffic or go kill yourself or something along those lines. She's being euphemistic. However, it's not the same thing as to us, where that's like what do you mean? You want me to just go? You know, do you want to take my life? That's not that serious.

Speaker 2:

But to that generation it's a very common colloquialism that they use almost regular yeah, so it's. It's just different ways that you're looking at it and understanding that dynamic with the trust, because, again, you have to trust that you know when I was growing up, um, I would you know, don't touch anything in the store when I was raising my children. Don't touch anything in the store, break all your fingers. Was I going to break all of them? No, had somebody else heard me say that, I'd probably be locked up right now and as a child but it was just I, that's what I would say and and but my children knew that I didn't mean, I was actually going to break their fingers, right, yeah, they didn't know, I was serious that don't touch anything in the store, especially.

Speaker 2:

You know we're walking around, yeah, but those types of things as you learn and you go through the trust but verify comes back into play. And as a cybersecurity person, we do that all the time because if I tell you set this policy and you're supposed to abide by this policy, and we go through the policy and you sign that you understand the policy, users are going to be users and they're going to figure out how to break the policy. And the general answer is because I needed to do my job. I needed to do what it takes to get the job done. So now we have shadow IT, which is a cybersecurity person's worst nightmare, because now I've got people circumventing my controls to do what they need to do. So, when we think about it from a cybersecurity professional standpoint, how do I bridge the gap with the business to understand what is it they're trying to do? What am I preventing? Why do they feel the need to go around my controls? Let's work together to build a bridge.

Speaker 2:

Taking that personally, that same mentality comes in when you're talking with your child. If you don't build that trust. I have no idea how I'm going to bridge that gap. If they want this, or they download this software, or they have a Finsta account instead of an Insta account, which is just a fake Instagram it's the same thing, but they have the Finsta account. They have the fake discord account, they have a whole fake life that they've built and you're trying to understand. The life they show you is X, the life they live is Y, and you're saying how do I bridge the gap and get them to talk to me about both? So then that trust, but verify, comes in. I'm going to give you that latitude and that space.

Speaker 2:

But, as a parent, how do you build that trust behind the scenes? And that's where some of the applications come in, and we were very transparent with our children. We told them we're putting this on here because I'm protecting you from yourself, or there are things that you may not be aware of that I want to know about and we'll talk about it. How did they react to that? Well, they didn't like it at all. I can tell you how did they react to that.

Speaker 2:

Or passcode, or I don't know the passcode to get in and I can cause. The phone should be can be checked at any time, randomly. I could just walk in one day and say, hey, how you doing, had a great day at school Give me the phone. And if you did not, present the phone regardless, exactly because, again, it's a privilege, not a right. And so when we would talk transparently about these things, we showed our intention was to show, as we build trust, if you, you know that trust is there, cause there will be times that I would ask for the phone and they would give it to me and be like, okay, you can have it back. Well, you didn't look at it.

Speaker 2:

Well, that's because I did what I needed to do you. You weren't afraid to hand me the phone, so there was no reason to look into it. Yeah, um, yeah Right. So, as you think about those things, that's how you start to balance. But again, it's a give and a take. I'm learning what my child is doing. They're learning how I'm responding. They're also learning how to circumvent. So there's that dichotomy there. Your child is always going to try to figure out ways they can do what they need to do. They're learning, and in some cases it's not malicious or nefarious.

Speaker 1:

In some cases, they just want to do what they want to do or, to your point, they heard from their friends on how to do it yeah, all of these different things, so their their friends are kind of like uh, hackers, you know, like, oh yeah, I mean, they've got a whole and they're as organized as the real hackers.

Speaker 1:

They probably have a project, a project manager, they probably have an hr department, they have a ceo. You know if they have a uh, you know a base of knowledge that you can go to. They've got a wiki. I'm sure it all exists online and oh my gosh. And that's fine, because kids are going to do what kids are going to do and I like that you draw that. You drew the parallel, uh, between kids and employees. Employees do the same thing. They will circumvent security controls because they need to get their job done. Kids will circumvent the security controls because they need to continue with the job of being a kid.

Speaker 2:

Like that's what they do. Yes, and there were so many creative ways and it's like, for example, there would be times that I would unplug the route, the ethernet cable on the back of my PS3, but I wouldn't unplug it all the way and pull it out to where it looked disconnected, I would just unplug it slightly, but it looks so. If you took the time to look back there, you would think it was plugged in and you couldn't figure out why. And the wifi wasn't connected. So little things like that that you're trying cause you were grounded from the PlayStation. How do I ensure you stay grounded from the PlayStation? Yeah, you can't get online to do your game and they were all into the online gaming. You know, it's just those. Yeah, as you grow and learn, those things happen.

Speaker 1:

You did it, I did it, everybody listening here does it. You can't expect your children to be perfect little angels, and they're never going to do it either. So here's the big question that's on my mind, sure, and it's on the minds of many parents out there, especially if they're parents of six seven year olds Roblox yes or no.

Speaker 2:

I say yes. Here's why yes because in understanding the generational differences between our generation and their generation, the generation that's we're raising right now would much prefer and it sees on a regular basis to be in the electronic space and communicate, hang out and have friends. Psychologically, you don't want that. You want them to have real world interactions and deal with adversity and things like that. So there has to to be a balance. But what Roblox does is it creates that online area where to facilitate their growth. Through that, when my children were playing Roblox, they'd fostered their ability to do certain things and we'd made them go out and see the real world, touch the real, you know, let the real sun hit their face and all of the rest of those things. But if I had not let her do that, the child that she was growing into be my youngest daughter. So I'm talking to you about now she grew in. She loves dungeons and dragons, which is, by nature, is the where you go and you have to be with other people. You're doing things face-to-face contact. You go and you have to be with other people. You're doing things face-to-face contact. So she grew into some of those things. But when we talk about Roblox. The yes is because it helps foster their connections. They can build relationships with their peers. And I'm very careful to say that, because this is where the bad side comes in, this is where the hesitancy comes in.

Speaker 2:

Roblox, by nature, is an online collaborative community, but, just like with anything else, once something goes out there to make something great or something facilitated, there's always that negative aspect. And the funny thing is, when you look at what they're doing and how they're doing it, they're not necessarily doing something wrong. They just found a way to exploit the system. So Roblox has a chat feature, roblox has a call feature. Roblox has different things. You can look at everything. And if the child, if the person on the other end could coerce the child into giving them something that they need to meet up offline or get details and things like that, you have a larger problem. So when you think about giving the child roadblocks the yeses for that, but then you growth with guardrails, like we talked about. What sort of chats are they doing? What sort of parental controls can I put on there? What sort of things can I look at? Can I? You know, I'm going to walk by my child or sit over their shoulder for at least the first 20, 30 minutes. Or you can only play Roblox if we're all in the living room and I'm looking at your iPad and I'm looking at you play Roblox on the iPad.

Speaker 2:

If you're in an online chat, you're playing it on your speakers, not your headphones, because I'm listening to what the conversation is, and when I hear that errant voice of somebody that's not supposed to be there, we don't do that. The other thing that we did was we told our children, if you are going to in real, in real life, in IRL, right In IRL, we have to meet. If you're going over to someone's house, you can't go over there until we meet the parents. I don't, I don't need to go. We don't need to have an in-depth conversation, have a dinner party or anything else like that, but I need to shake your hand and see your home, and I will, because in my mind, I'm gathering information about who you are and what type of environment am I bringing my child or letting my child go into?

Speaker 2:

Same thing with online. If you can't. If you're in an online chat and every name in there, you can't point to their picture in your yearbook, or you can't point or tell me, that's Susie Brown or that's Jimmy Timmy, whatever the you know, you can't point that they're in your class and tell me now you know what period are they in what? How do you know? What classes do you have? What are you all studying? Hey Timmy, what were you? What do you? What did you learn about today in class? So now I'm trusting, but I'm verifying that this is actually someone you know, because that's what happens is, especially with young men and young women, the online, the allure of the NSFW stuff. How do I get that? I'm going to send them a picture that entices them in one way or another.

Speaker 2:

And then, because the child thinks that they're talking to this person on the other side, whatever you got their, whatever got their juices flowing that's how the lure starts and they start reeling them in.

Speaker 2:

So when you start asking questions, like, okay, and that person out there can't answer those questions, well, you don't know my child Immediately done, that's it Blocked and we move on right. And so when you start looking at those aspects and Roblox is just one of those you've got TikToks and YouTube anywhere that they can communicate or someone can communicate with your child the same danger is present. Roblox is you have younger children getting on there and the parents think, ok, I'm just going to give you the iPad, you're going to play Roblox, and there's six or seven. There is even things out there from a YouTube perspective. There was a where there's a video and it was like a Teletubby video or something along the lines, geared towards that age group, and it was set so that the algorithm of YouTube it was there. The dangerous part came in right after the algorithm would have kicked in and it taught kids what's called the suicide song oh yeah, I heard about that.

Speaker 1:

Did your kids ever encounter something like that? Did you ever hear that?

Speaker 2:

yes, yeah, yeah, definitely so that my daughter was on youtube kids and and you know we started hearing this we immediately went and looked at some of those things. I was ahead of it because I was always, you know, I started. You started getting really into cybersecurity at the time. So my younger two, or my younger one, my daughter, she did not get any of that. My older two, my older boys, had some of that as we were getting my feet wet there.

Speaker 2:

But if you have people out there that are looking to break what, they know how it works and then they did it to get past the security measures and I'm not going to say that's on YouTube or Google or whoever to figure all of this out, because all they're doing is the same thing we talk about users doing. That's shadow IT. I can't predict how someone is going to use it. I can try to do every which way, but I can tell you now there's 11 Saw movies. I could not have thought of how many different ways to make people die in those movies that these, these writers do, right.

Speaker 2:

So there's somebody out there thinking about how to do the things that they're doing. I'm not that person, so I don't think along those same lines, but I can think I'm going to do my best effort when I learn about we're going to prevent it. So that's how I think about the companies. They're, they're, they're doing more, they're trying to be proactive. But if I've got somebody whose purpose is to help kids figure out how to commit suicide the right way, and they, but I I'm not, I'm not seeing that. So how, how it was caught, was that the parent was watching over the child and they saw it over their shoulder or they heard it over their shoulder, and it's like, ok, now I need to investigate. So that's where you have the tools, the controls, and then you set boundaries as the parent to monitor, trust but verify. How are we looking at? How are we doing these things?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, well, we didn't get to the grandparents and the girlfriend and all the other people that we need to protect, but I think this was a really good conversation about how to protect our kids, and especially starting with the devices, namely the phone. So, marcus, I think this is the first of many conversations. This is an official invite back to Cybernomics.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, sir. I appreciate the time. I will definitely be back. I enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 1:

If people want to follow you or find you, how can they do that? Yes, I, sir, I appreciate the time I will definitely be back.

Speaker 2:

I enjoyed the conversation. If people want to follow you or find you, how can they do that? Yes, I am on LinkedIn. I have an Instagram account, but I have no idea I use that to watch videos, so I am not on there regularly, but on LinkedIn you can find me. Marcus Pete, all one word at the end of the URL. That's how you can find me. Or if you're here in the Atlanta area, I'm going to be around at many of the networking events, so feel free to look me up and we can hang out or have coffee.

Speaker 1:

And if you break your arm or dislocate your shoulder, check out PT Solutions.

Speaker 2:

Definitely, we are ready to assist and help you become unstoppable, awesome.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to this episode of Cybernomics. I'm Josh Bruning. If you want to find me, you can check me out on LinkedIn. Just search Josh Bruning B-R-U-Y-N-I-N-G. And if you want to learn more about Bruning Media and what we do, check out bruningcom B-R-U-Y-N-I-N-Gcom. Thanks again for listening to