Ep. 53 Cybersecurity Awareness

We are looking at the latest threats, hacks and risks during Cybersecurity Awareness month. As technology is constantly changing so does our need to adapt in areas of cybersecurity. We are joined on this episode of TN Court Talk by the AOC’s Chief Technology Officer Brandon Bowers and Chris Gill, Security Administrator with the AOC.

Transcript

00;00;00;09 - 00;00;27;16
Host
Hello and welcome to Tennessee Court Talk. I'm Samantha Fisher, Communications Director and your host. Today we're breaking down the latest threats, hacks and risks in the world of cybersecurity. It happens to be Cybersecurity Awareness Month as we record this episode. But protecting yourself, your agency, your business, online, that is a constant all year round. We are diving in with our expert tech team here at the Administrative Office of the Courts.

00;00;27;18 - 00;00;34;04
Host
Brandon Bowers, our Chief Technology Officer, and Chris Gill, our Security Administrator. Thank you both for joining us.

00;00;34;09 - 00;00;35;20
Chris Gill
Thank you. Thank you for having us.

00;00;35;28 - 00;00;59;09
Host
I know, because I get that email prompt every year to go through the cyber security training that this is an ongoing, changing sort of target that we have to constantly adjust to in order to keep from being victims of spam and phishing and and threats like that. Can you just start off by talking about what the current landscape is and cybersecurity.

00;00;59;12 - 00;01;30;12
Chris Gill
AI is really changing the game. It's really causing people who didn't have a lot of tools to really up their game with how, these attacks look, how phishing looks. The deception is, is at really a, and increasingly it's changing everything quickly, like month to month. And it's, it's a constant, adjustment to identify and target what, they're going after.

00;01;30;14 - 00;01;37;24
Host
Chris, I feel like I'm seeing this in my personal email inbox. Can you give us some examples of how you're seeing AI change the landscape?

00;01;37;25 - 00;01;57;23
Chris Gill
Absolutely. I mean, I could I can get way down in the weeds with this, so please don't stop me if you need to, but, we see things like a compromised account, from a known person emailing someone, which seems to be an off the cuff remark. The other day, I saw it look like a an Athletic Director at a high school.

00;01;57;23 - 00;02;21;29
Chris Gill
His email had been compromised, and he was emailing everyone a fake invitation. Which really wasn't an invitation, but it's a trusted guy. Obviously the the person that the email account I was dealing with, knew this person. They had their email as a contact. They send this what appears to be just an invitation, an e vite. But the if you clicked on the e vite, it was not an e vite.

00;02;21;29 - 00;02;36;09
Chris Gill
It was something malicious and, nefarious behind that link, which was blocked, by our security tools. But nevertheless, it's not just even trusting the people, you know, at face value to send you communications.

00;02;36;09 - 00;02;39;00
Host
Yeah, it's shockingly clever and personalized.

00;02;39;00 - 00;02;39;17
Chris Gill
It is.

00;02;39;17 - 00;02;50;18
Host
Yeah. It really seems like they know what you've been talking about. They know what you've been researching. And, it's really easy to fall for these. I guess you call them phishing attacks, right?

00;02;50;20 - 00;02;51;05
Chris Gill
Yes.

00;02;51;06 - 00;02;51;15
Host
Okay.

00;02;51;15 - 00;03;13;29
Brandon Bowers
Yes. The level of sophistication has definitely increased, over the last few months. And it's it's interesting how much information is publicly available to help with that process in terms of, how the sophistication of those attacks or attempts are, are manifesting.

00;03;14;04 - 00;03;32;01
Host
So, Brianna, tell me more about this. I know that, you know, when we're talking about cybersecurity, there's so much out there, but it seems like we try to break it down into a few different pillars. And one of them is multifactor authentication. And this is one of those things, I think, and I will admit, you know, I feel the same way sometimes.

00;03;32;01 - 00;03;40;02
Host
It can be kind of annoying to have to absolutely go through more than one door, essentially to do what you need to do at work.

00;03;40;04 - 00;04;04;21
Brandon Bowers
It definitely can be, annoying. But, one of the keys, I think, to remember is that it's really about, levels of protection. If you think about your home, you have more typically more than one lock. You have more than one mechanism that you use to try to, feel safe and protect, your valuables, your loved ones.

00;04;04;29 - 00;04;41;20
Brandon Bowers
Multifactor authentication is another layer of protection, that helps us have multiple ways to authenticate and validate, who you are, who you say that you are. And so while it can be annoying, especially in environments where, you've not had to use them, but when you think about it, it's become more and more commonplace. You think about your banking apps, you think about your, streaming apps, most applications now, you have to do at least two forms of authentication and sometimes more.

00;04;41;23 - 00;04;52;04
Host
Do I dare go into passwords? Because I know this is like a sensitive subject for folks and putting together a strong password, it's hard to remember them. Characters, numbers, special characters.

00;04;52;04 - 00;05;13;01
Chris Gill
The industry is kind of changing a little in that it's leaning more into the MFA and more into the refresh of the MFA, and less on the password because passwords are more easily stolen, whereas it's much harder to emulate your, multifactor app on your phone or receiving a text message or having a YubiKey or some kind of physical device.

00;05;13;06 - 00;05;37;02
Chris Gill
The guidance is at this point to have a very long password. That's like phrases, random words put together, potentially, not necessarily complexity, but the longer the better. We adhere to more of a traditional internally, which is tried and true as well. So, it's more important that you have a long password, okay, than a super complex password at this point.

00;05;37;04 - 00;05;46;13
Host
Okay. If you have both. Chris, do you have any tips or tricks for creating that long phrased password?

00;05;46;15 - 00;06;09;18
Chris Gill
There are some websites. There are. There's a lot of tools out there. There's password apps. Apple has one that's built in, depending on what iOS you're using. And I think at iOS 18 they moved into an actual password app instead of the, you know, embedded inside. And a lot of people say that's a good solution. I'm not advocating for people to keep work passwords in their personal devices.

00;06;09;25 - 00;06;13;29
Chris Gill
However, it's much better than a sticky note under your keyboard that contains it.

00;06;13;29 - 00;06;27;23
Brandon Bowers
So absolutely, I can't tell you over the years how many times, in a support role, you know, we see information in places that you would prefer it not be around someone's workstation.

00;06;27;25 - 00;06;49;24
Host
Make sure you go up to, you know, help remedy, or troubleshoot a problem on, on somebody's computer. And there's the password sitting right there on the screen. Right. You've been to my office lately. You know, I was kidding, Brandon. I didn't do that. I promise I've been following the rules. All right, so multi-factor authentication, strong passwords. And then this is really tough anymore.

00;06;49;24 - 00;06;57;25
Host
And we just touched on it earlier, in our conversation. But recognizing and reporting fishing phishing with a pH.

00;06;57;28 - 00;07;26;13
Brandon Bowers
I'll, I'll let Chris talk about some of the things that we've done. But here we run phishing campaigns, for the, judicial users across the state and the, the information or the results there, they're always interesting. When when we had a different email system, in the past, it was a little more, complicated to, to get results and to understand, the true impact.

00;07;26;13 - 00;07;47;25
Brandon Bowers
But now that we've moved to the the products we used today, it's, it's easier to, to, to see when there's an issue with phishing. Those campaigns help us really identify what groups of users, that we need to target and help us, build trainings around how to combat that.

00;07;47;28 - 00;08;09;29
Host
I got a question about phishing, because sometimes I'll see in my inbox either my personal inbox or my work, a subject line that looks like it could be something I need to pay attention to, and so I will read it. At what point are you in trouble? Like is is even reading it bad or is it something that you click on within the the phishing email itself?

00;08;10;01 - 00;08;49;09
Chris Gill
Likely there's there's some debate about this, but likely if you have opened something that dangerous and you don't have something to stop whatever it's doing, you're sort of already in trouble. I think at this point, it's hard not to review a lot of the emails in better detail is an open them, unless they're obvious. If whatever email system you're using has flagged the email as, dangerous or suspicious, it's worth really trying to understand why it thinks that it in a lot of email systems, like Microsoft, that can be based on reputation across the entire solution.

00;08;49;09 - 00;09;08;20
Chris Gill
So it goes back to that thing where I was saying, even though you trust the person, if you weren't expecting an email from them, then you need to be suspicious about the email, and it doesn't mean you're being suspicious about the person. Just where does this and where did this come from and why are they sending it, particularly if it's got an embedded link asking you to go someplace else?

00;09;08;27 - 00;09;42;12
Chris Gill
Yeah. And if the email has for us, if the email has a password, like I saw one the other day that said, something like, you haven't reviewed this document yet. I need to give feedback on this soon. The passwords fall 2025. Please review it. And when you click the attached PDF there was a password, which was that one seemed really casual, but the purpose of it was they had password protected the document to stop our tools from digging into what was going on there.

00;09;42;14 - 00;10;05;28
Chris Gill
So and I think behind it, it was a QR code. So, you know, just being really cognizant of alarming language that's telling you you have to do something quickly. And reacting, taking a deep breath and reacting and also like if you get an email from Amazon that says they can't deliver a package, go to Amazon. Don't use the link in the email right.

00;10;06;00 - 00;10;29;17
Chris Gill
Go to Amazon, log in, see what your package status is, what your payment status is. It's all going to be there. Yeah. Don't depend on the links if it looks suspicious or likewise if you get a phone call, you know, that's called vhishing is the form is the term for that. And it's the courthouse saying, oh, you didn't show up for jury duty.

00;10;29;20 - 00;10;46;12
Chris Gill
I need a $500 now, or I'm sending the sheriff to arrest you. It's like, call the courthouse back and ask, like, turn it around. Don't just take that direction in that moment as it is, because it's designed to scare you right into not weighing your options.

00;10;46;14 - 00;11;05;25
Brandon Bowers
And and I'll add to to that what Chris is stating. I think the element of convenience is what gets us a lot of times to where Chris is saying is go to the source, where if you go to the originating source of what that communication or whatever it is saying that they're trying to get you to do, you go to that source.

00;11;05;25 - 00;11;12;07
Brandon Bowers
You take away that element of, convenience, that helps out your, IT folks quite a bit.

00;11;12;09 - 00;11;30;07
Host
Let's talk a little bit about updating software. A lot of us are hybrid working. You know, we go back and forth from the the office to the home office. Sometimes you just forget to turn your computer off and on and do that process of of letting the software update.

00;11;30;10 - 00;11;55;21
Brandon Bowers
Yeah, that that's one of the keys in, in any scenario that is always going to be helpful. The updates are there to help us help ourselves. So yes, it it can be inconvenient. It comes at different times. If you're like me, you have multiple windows open. So if you have to restart your workstation, that's not fun to get back to that working point, where are you stopping?

00;11;55;23 - 00;12;05;06
Brandon Bowers
But the key there is just to remember that updating our workstation is against the the most current threats that are known. That just helps us.

00;12;05;08 - 00;12;18;28
Host
Brandon and Chris, thank you so much for joining us for this, episode on cybersecurity. Any parting thoughts? And also, do you, is there a good place for folks to educate themselves to find resources on on cybersecurity?

00;12;19;00 - 00;12;40;12
Chris Gill
There's a lot of like Cisa is a great site to go to. There's a lot of nice standards. There's a lot of good information out there. You just want a reliable source. Microsoft is a good resource. Just I would kind of stay away from a lot of the information on potentially social media. A lot of that seems like it's it's own version of clickbait to scare you.

00;12;40;12 - 00;12;59;26
Chris Gill
So I would I would vet whatever you're using, but there's so much information out there. And also you need to look at when it's published, because the information from 2020 is a very different world from what 2026 will be. So I always add a year end is, searching for information to see.

00;12;59;28 - 00;13;26;20
Brandon Bowers
And I think my parting thought would be, just a reminder that, it's not just your I.T. And system administrators and those types of folks role to help keep them environment safe. I think it's all of we all have a part to play. And so, to the point about the pillars that we've spoken on, we all have a role there, and we're only going to be as strong as our weakest link.

00;13;26;25 - 00;13;32;19
Brandon Bowers
And we always we don't want anyone, you know, to be that weak link.

00;13;32;21 - 00;13;36;29
Host
Understood, yeah. Cybersecurity. Everyone's responsibility, as they say in the training. Right?

00;13;36;29 - 00;13;38;11
Brandon Bowers
Yes, absolutely.

00;13;38;14 - 00;13;40;08
Host
Thank you both for your time and expertise.

00;13;40;08 - 00;13;41;05
Brandon Bowers
Thank you. Thank you.