December 2019

Holiday Tech Gift Ideas

Holiday Tech Gift Ideas For the Technology Geek

Holiday Tech Gadgets for Power Grid Outage Survival

Enigma Forensics CEO & President Lee Neubecker along with Associate Sammy Macrito discuss holiday gift ideas for the tehnology geek on your list. Recently, California has been experiencing massive power grid outages and most people were not prepared because they simply didn’t think about what happens when you loose power. Techno gadgets will help you survive during a power grid outage. No matter how long it is! Tune is as our technology geeks, Lee and Sammy have some fun and share their favorite techno gadgets. These are great gift ideas for the technology geek on your holiday list.

Holiday Gift Ideas for the Technology Geek

The transcript of Holiday Gift Ideas follows:

Lee Neubecker: Hi, so today we’re going to talk a little bit about some of those techno gadgets that you might want to consider buying your loved one who might be concerned about losing power and not having their techno gadgets. So today I’ve got Sammy Macrito on with me, and we’re going to talk about some of those items that you can pick up. Many of them are available for under a $100 or even less online. We’ll have a link on our page that shows items if you’re interested in buying them. So the first one we have here is this flashlight which is a combination, it’s flashlight that you can crank up, you can turn on the light, and it’s powered both by manual energy, so you can get it powered up. It’s got a solar cell, and then it also has a convenient USB charging port so you can, if you had to, you could hand crank and recharge your tablet or smart phone to give you power if you’re in the darkness for a long period of time. And one of the most important things about it is that it’s got a FM/AM band on it, so if there were an emergency or outage you’d be able to get news and find out where resources are.

Sammy Macrito: Right, and something I feel is so important about this one is having the functionality of being able to crank it, as well as the solar, because let’s say the power grid is out, you can leave this outside all day with a phone next to it and get a charged phone at the end of the night.

Lee Neubecker: Or you can crank it all night. Or you can crank it all night.

Lee Neubecker: So we’ve got, speaking of solar, there’s a real neat gadget that if you wanted to make sure that you could power your laptop, this battery power system by Voltaic produces 20 watts, which is enough to charge some of the newer laptops, and there’s a cell that they, a battery pack they sell with this that you can charge up, which can really charge a good number of devices. This can even be strapped, you can tie it to your back when you’re hiking, and pick up…

Sammy Macrito: Exactly, yeah. And it’s super important to have one of these, especially if you have more than just a phone that you’re trying to recover, because you can basically just go with this solo thing and be able to charge not only your laptop, but also your phones. It’s always better to have more wattage, yeah.

Lee Neubecker: Now, those are great devices for the short term, but if the power is out for a while you’re going to want some other things. One of the things that most people are going to want is, they’re going to want the ability to start a fire, to cook food, to sterilize water, and whatnot. This device here is a USB chargeable electric lighter. I thought I hit it the wrong way. It produces an arc flame which is just electricity. And so using the battery cell, the radio, you could recharge it and you basically have unlimited abilities to start fires, and you don’t need matches. It can be, it makes a great torture device too.

Sammy Macrito: Yeah, and it’s windproof.

Lee Neubecker: Yeah, so that’s one, nice device. This is another device that’s pretty handy. It’s a flashlight. It can also be used for signaling. So if you’re trying to get help, it might be useful to be able to do that. It’s got a solar cell here. It also has this handy metal tip that can be used to shatter a car windshield, so it’s not a bad thing to keep hanging around in your glove box.

Sammy Macrito: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that this is, can be commonly used for, you might ask, why would you want to break your car windshield? Let’s say you went off the road and are now in water, sinking with your car.

Lee Neubecker: Sinking, yup.

Sammy Macrito: You can pull this out of your glove box and be safe.

Lee Neubecker: It’s got some other things too, it’s got a magnetic tip so you can magnetize a paper clip if you needed to, to float it on water and get your direction to the North Pole. It’s also got a handy clip and it’s got a siren so if wildlife is approaching you, that might be enough to scare wildlife off, or an attacker. And this tip too, you could also use it to whack at something if it’s coming towards you.

Sammy Macrito: Absolutely.

Lee Neubecker: Pretty handy device. One of the most important things you probably need if you’re going to survive a long term power outage would be access to water and ability to have purified water. This device here is Portable Aqua Pure, it’s electrolytic water purifier. And how it works is you’re able to hook up hoses to pump water from one source into another source, so you need to have two water bottles with it ideally. But it has a solar cell on it and you add salt to it, and the salt gets converted into chlorine, so you can purify water and get rid of biohazards. So very handy. Pretty handy device.

Sammy Macrito: Awesome.

Lee Neubecker: And again, with your flashlight, or with your radio, you can recharge it and with very little salt you have virtually unlimited ability to purify water for quite a long time.

Sammy Macrito: And what do you do in the case that you don’t have power? How can you purify water without the ability to make fire, without the ability to use that device?

Lee Neubecker: That’s a good question, so if you have a clear bottle like this one, you can actually scoop water up out of a river or stream. Now you can’t do this with salt water. The sun has the ability to sterilize water biohazards, it’s not going to get rid of contaminants, chemical contaminants, but it could purify water. So having clear bottles, laying them out in the sun for a few hours, the sun will purify the water, so that’s another thing that could be useful. Well great, we hope these tech ideas are good last minute shopping gift items for your nerds at home. Talk to you soon.

Sammy Macrito: Thank you.

Holiday Tech Gift for Geeks: links associated with the gifts discussed.

FBI Warning: Smart TV’s may be spying on you.

Smart TV’s may be recording you or your children without your knowledge.

Enigma Forensics, CEO & President, Lee Neubecker talks about the FBI’s warning about Smart TV’s and other smart home devises that are not secure. Lee adds to that warning that a hacker can actually see through to your living space by using the built in camera on your Smart TV. They can also listen to you and record your conversations, or exploit your TV to show content that is not suitable for your children to watch. In fact, most of our smart devises don’t have any security at all. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to strengthen your security. Tune in to engimaforensics.com to learn more.

The transcript on FBI Warning on Smart TV’s follows:

Lee Neubecker:

Hi, so all of you should be aware that FBI has issued an advisory and warning to consumers purchasing Smart TV’s for your homes.

Specifically, you should be on the lookout for TV’s that have cameras. It could be recording you or your children without your knowledge. One popular measure they recommend is using black electrical tape to cover the top of the camera. If the camera’s physically covered you can’t record.

However, you have to be aware that many of these TV’s are also listening to you and maybe taking up voice commands, recording your conversations and possibly even retransmitting that information to other parties. It’s also possible that a hacker could get into a TV and exploit your TV display inappropriate content that your children might see.

So for more tips on how to secure your home, check out our website, we have a link that gives advice on this and as it relates to your TV, you want to make sure you know what you’re buying and it’s best to buy a TV that doesn’t have a known camera in it if you’re concerned about not being recorded.

Cyber Insurance Coverage

Cyber insurance and security protection

Engima Forensics CEO & President Lee Neubecker and Tressler, LLP, Cyber Insurance Coverage Attorney Todd Rowe sit down for a video discussion. These experts stress the importance of understanding the full scope of your data risk in case of a cyber attack. Both agree cyber attacks are getting more and more sophisticated and urge every company no matter the size to take the necessary steps to protect themselves before a date breach occurs. Prepare your company by working with computer forensics experts and legal counsel and create a game plan to lessen the potential threat posed by a cyber attack. Tune in to find out more about cyber insurance and maximizing your potential for coverage when a cyber attack strikes.

Evolution of Cyber Insurance and Security

The transcript on Cyber Insurance Coverage follows:

Lee Neubecker: Hello, today I have Todd Rowe on the show. Todd is a specialist in cyber insurance related litigation and data breach litigation Todd, thanks for being on the show.

Todd Rowe: No, thank you, this is great. I appreciate it.

Lee Neubecker: And so, Todd, can you tell us a little bit about how cyber has evolved over the last five years?

Todd Rowe: It’s wide open, I mean, we’ve seen everything. First, I think, when we look at the threats, and the evolution of a cyber threat or a privacy threat, we’ve seen things from the classic data breach, which would have been the target data breaches move into more of a social engineering component and tricking users that way, by emails and things like that. Getting around the technology safeguards a little bit and getting in there and tricking people is the biggest development I think we’ve seen in the evolution of threats.

Lee Neubecker: And, how has coverage evolved for cyber insurance over the last five years?

Todd Rowe: Yeah, I mean, we’ve seen huge leaps in insurance coverage and what the policies look like and what we would call cyber policies. We’ve seen the developments first in what would be considered first party insurance coverage, which would be actually responding to the damage that happens. And then, the third party liability piece, responding and giving a defense in the case of an incident. While we’ve seen a lot of developments, I think, with cyber insurance, we still don’t see the uniform policy language. So, there’s still a lot of uncertainty there, but we’ve seen some big developments recently.

Lee Neubecker: So, when a company suspects that they have a data breach incident, what’s your first role on the ground, talking with the client in terms of what you’re advising them?

Todd Rowe: Yeah, all things being equal, we would have loved to have been in there before there was an incident. Preparation is always the best scenario, and what preparation should look like is a corporation or a business working with forensics and legal and getting a game plan together, assessing what those threats might be, and what to do if there are those threats. But, afterward, hopefully you have the game plan. If you don’t, it’s pretty much all boots on ground, getting in there with forensics and legal, and understanding what the threat was, and making sure that the threat is extinguished, and moving on and notifying people that were involved in the threat.

Lee Neubecker: I know from experience that companies that take the time to proactively assemble their team before something happens, and bring in legal, forensics, and outside help, are often in a much better situation when something goes down. They face less downtime, their business can be back up and running. I think the biggest challenge I’ve seen is when companies have no idea what is legitimately their, what their devices are, because when you’re trying to assess are we still compromised, you need to know what good looks like. And if you haven’t mapped out your organization’s IT resources, that really creates a problem.

Todd Rowe: From our point, there’s always been, it’s been a tough sell to go in and try to get in before there’s an incident. A lot of corporations don’t want to think about something until it actually happens. But, the sort of, the wisdom in getting in there beforehand is getting that game plan together, figuring out what data you’re storing and what data you can get rid of. And so, the more data you can get rid of, the better you do on cutting down your liability in the end. Also, working on technology safeguards and having those in place. So, working with forensics, legal, and even PR a little bit really helps in the long run, no doubt about it.

Lee Neubecker: So, if you have cyber insurance, does that mean that you don’t have to worry about a cyber incident?

Todd Rowe: The thought right now, I think, and it has been for a number of years, is an incident’s going to happen, and it just, you need to go in and do things to prep. And while we were discussing earlier, the preparation that you need to do to get sort of an inventory, cyber insurance is another piece of that preparation that needs to be in place. Once again, working with professionals, insurance professionals, brokers, forensics, legal, on what that cyber product that best suits your needs, is the best situation to have that in place once something happens. It will happen, it’s just a matter of having all the right pieces in place when it does happen.

Lee Neubecker: So, if a company has, is storing biometric information, which could even include video cam footage of a certain resolution, what are some of the unique challenges that are raised by some of the laws here in Illinois and elsewhere?

Todd Rowe: Really, being in Illinois is, and I don’t want to use a cliche, but is on the cutting edge of biometric data. And we have BIPA, which is the Biometric Information Protection Act. And what that does is it protects a lot of things like face scans, and finger and thumbprint templates. And, I think one of the biggest issues we see is recently, now BIPA’s been around for 10 years or so, it’s been around for a long time. But we’re seeing a huge uptick in BIPA cases right now, because a number of businesses went in and put in timekeeping systems for their employees that work on thumb and finger scans rather than the old punch card systems. So, the law didn’t change, but the technology did, and so now, there was warnings that should have been put in place before you take that biometric data with those systems. So, they put the systems in, and they didn’t necessarily have the law in place. That’s a perfect scenario where we could’ve had forensics and legal all working together beforehand to avoid a lot of liability, so.

Lee Neubecker: So, what do you see happening in the future with the insurance coverage laws? Especially, you know, one of the concerns I have is, you know, there’s this act of war exclusion, and if you have cyber insurance and you’re hacked by someone outside of the country, what happens there, is that covered?

Todd Rowe: It depends, really, on the policy form. So, we’ve seen, once again, Illinois is on the cutting edge of that law as well. A lot of insurance policies, CGL, commercial liability policies, and even some cyber policies to some extent, have terrorism or war exclusions, excluding acts of war. And that was fine when we were looking at Pearl Harbor, perhaps, or something like a real act of war where a government might declare war on a country, and some damage that results of that would be an act of war. But, with privacy and hackers, and hackers sitting in nation states, but maybe not being an agent of that nation state. So, the case that we have right now that gives a good example of this is a Zurich case, insurance case with Mondelez, they’re a snack food maker. And, Zurich denied coverage, and it looks like the hacker may have come from perhaps China or North Korea. So, what do you do with that, as far as, if you’re going to exclude coverage for that, nobody’s declared war on any of those countries, so that’s going to be a struggle. And I think that demonstrates some of the strengths and weaknesses of cyber coverage right now, as it stands.

Lee Neubecker: And, what do you see happening, what’s the likelihood that the federal government stops in, steps up to the plate should a major data breach happen that could be considered an act of war?

Todd Rowe: Yeah, I mean, well first off, the government brings up another point, as far as right now as it stands, privacy and data laws, we just have a patchwork of things here in the U.S. Of course, there’s frameworks that have been adopted in, for example, the E.U. with GDPR, and we don’t really have that in the U.S. So, we first don’t really have a clear idea of who would do the response in the government. Would it be the Federal Trade Commission, or who would handle that type of situation? So, we have a lot of state laws, so we have a lot of problems like that. And, we have California, which is adopting some stronger guidelines as well. So, what would happen there as far, it’s going to be really left to ironing things out with the insurers and the insurance. Once again, what a great opportunity to sort of look at this issue before an incident happens. You really wouldn’t want to get into this complex of an issue when you’re trying to respond to an incident. So, another reason is, to go and prep a little bit, would be exactly what we’re discussing right now.

Lee Neubecker: Yeah, I know from experience that clients of ours that have had data breach incidents, if they’re working with someone that’s experienced litigation professional in the area of cyber and insurance, the likelihood that, you know, my firm’s fees get covered goes way up, and there are, there’s a potential for coverage of that forensic response. But ideally, you want to have your own team. You want to be picking your team. You don’t want the insurance companies assigning your people, if you can avoid it.

Todd Rowe: Yeah, a lot of insurers do have panels, and there are a lot of insurers that prefer that, because they don’t know where to go. So, that actually, if there’s an incident, that helps out. But, the best scenarios, and we’ve been involved in a lot of responses, and the best scenario is when we’ve had an opportunity to sit down, and maybe you and I talk, the forensic side of things and the legal side of things, and figuring out exactly how we can cooperate and what that response would look like. So, absolutely, if you can sit down and chat beforehand, you’re going to really save yourself a lot of stress and pressure.

Lee Neubecker: Well, thanks a bunch Todd, for being on the show. This has been great.

Todd Rowe: Absolutely, thank you so much, I appreciate it.

More articles that relate to data breach response and cyber insurance coverage follow:

Data Breach Response

https://enigmaforensics.com/blog/secure-home-from-cyber-attacks/

https://enigmaforensics.com/news/wgn-cyber-security-chicago-2018/

Data Breach Incident Response

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-s-covered-under-a-cyber-liability-policy-462459

Cyber Readiness: Power Grid Outages

Are you ready for a power outage? Check out this video for Cyber Readiness and Power Outages tips.

Enigma Forensics CEO & President, Lee Neubecker and Geary Sikich, President of Logical Management Systems, tackle the strategies you need to know to prepare for a cyber attack. Each describes in detail the importance of cyber readiness starting with power outages.

Be prepared for a cyber attack or power outage

The transcript of the video follows:

Lee Neubecker: Hi, I’m here today with Geary Sikich. Geary is the President of Logical Management Systems. Thank you, Geary, for being on the show.

Geary Sikich: Thank you, Lee.

Lee Neubecker: So we’re here to talk a little bit about cyber attacks on the power grid, and what impacts that could have on businesses and individuals alike. All right, Gary, is the future of war likely to be cyber, in your opinion?

Geary Sikich: Well Lee, I think there’s three aspects of that that we need to look at. There’s what I’ll call a strategic aspect, which in effect, we’re already in a cyber war in many respects. Nation states are using cyber in a lot of different ways. Not necessarily as disruptive as it could be, but it’s got the potential to expand. There’s then another level down from there which I’ll call operational, which is targeting specific locales and areas. And then, what I’ll call a tactical level where you’re targeting individual facilities to include even neighborhoods at this stage. And one of the things I think you’re going to see in the future is that there’s going to be more of a reliance on these disruptions because of the great impact they have on businesses as well as the general population.

Lee Neubecker: Yeah so, one of the things that I had lectured on before was some research that came out of Princeton University on a topic called MadIoT, which relates to manipulation of end user demand by attacking insecure Internet of Things, IoT, devices in homes and whatnot. And essentially, what the researchers found was that by taking over enough routers in homes, you could compromise Wi-Fi devices attached to high-wattage appliances like Internet-enabled microwaves, toasters, heaters, things like that that would draw a lot of current, air conditioning systems and that by attacking adjacent neighborhoods, you could manipulate power demand in one neighborhood such that the power’s going off or down low, and then the adjacent neighborhood causing all these appliances to come on, which by only creating a small disturbance in balance of power, Kirchhoff’s law that dictates the flow of electricity could cause faults in lines as electricity moved from one neighborhood to another in spikes, and that that type of attack could effectively knock out parts of the grid. There are a lot of factors, obviously, that could knock out the grid, but what have you been advising your clients to do in advance of such an outage, to help them mitigate the risk and protect themselves?

Geary Sikich: One of the things we look at with that issue, and it’s a very big issue, and it ties into the areas I previously mentioned, the strategic, operational, and tactical, is to begin to look at how you can be resilient as an organization. So, I’ll give you an example. A colleague who was at a firm in Southern Illinois, they were about to move to a larger building. And one of the things he was charged with was developing the plans and then getting the move set up. They didn’t have a generator, and I highly recommended to him that they get a generator. They decided to do it, and to their benefit, once installed and once they got it in the building, they had a localized power outage which, for them, was a non-event so to speak because the generator immediately kicked on. They didn’t lose any power. As a commodities trading firm, they’re very dependent on the ability to communicate electronically for trade. So when we got to analyzing things, I asked, “What did you think?” and he said, “Well, it cost “probably a quarter of a million.” And then I asked the second question, which I think was more relevant and important as he understood it, “What was the cost in lost trades, if you’d have not “had the generator?” He said, “About $2 billion.” So the immediate impact on these things is that organizations really need to think about how can they secure a power supply for themselves so that they can effectively operate independently of the grid in times of a crisis?

Lee Neubecker: So an adversary of a financial services company could actually cause massive harm by targeting and causing a power disruption, knocking out the trading facilities–

GSL Yes. LN:Costing them billions of dollars.

Geary Sikich: Yes. And the interesting part about that is, that when you begin to look at it, it’s not just that immediate impact, it’s the cascading impact that goes throughout the entire system. So you knock out the trading aspect, you suddenly knock out the logistics of movement of products and services, and it cascades throughout the entire system if you will.

Lee Neubecker: So what do you see are the other downstream potential impacts to a prolonged outage?

Geary Sikich: Oh, prolonged outages are one of the concerns that a lot of organizations have. What do I do to keep my business in business if we’re faced with a long-term outage? Natural disasters have shown us that it can take up to and beyond a couple of years to recover. A lot of organizations literally could go out of business as a result of not being able to have the financial resources to weather a storm like that.

Lee Neubecker: Well, this has been great stuff. I really appreciate you coming on the show, Geary. Thanks a bunch.

Geary Sikich: Thank you, Lee, I appreciate it.

Cell Phone Forensics

Personal Cell Phone Forensics inlcudes social media, business and personal messages, photos, emails and GPS.

Leading computer forensics Expert Lee Neubecker, discusses the complexities of cell phone forensics with Debbie Reynolds from Debbie Reynolds Consulting. We both agree the litigation involving cell phones becomes personal and proves difficult to gain possession. Personal and business text messages, social media posts, photos, GPS records, emails, are all weaved together and become part of the discovery equation. eDiscovery in today’s era is incomplete without including data from smart phone including text messages, Skype, WhatsApp, Slack, Signal and other messaging platforms. Learn more about eDiscovery as it relates to personal cell phone messaging systems by watching Reynolds and Neubecker discuss the topic in today’s blog video interview.

The video interview transcript follows:

Lee Neubecker: Hi, I’m here today again with Debbie Reynolds, and we’re going to talk about something interesting, which every piece of litigation now is getting into. We’re talking about cell phone forensics. What’s been your experience with litigation involving cell phones and discovery?

Debbie Reynolds: Well, whenever they’re cell phones involved eye-rolling begins because people take their cell phones very personally. As opposed to someone’s laptop, which maybe they don’t want to give up, they will fight tooth and nail not to give up their cell phones. And obviously people, they mix work with pleasure and they’re doing different things. They may not want you to see, even if it’s nothing criminal going on, people just feel very tied to their cell phone. The hardest thing is actually getting possession of it and letting them know that you’re not going to look through their juicy texts or their photographs, especially if it’s not an issue in the case.

Lee Neubecker: I know that whenever you need to get into text messages, it becomes a sensitive topic for people. But there are effective ways to get effective discovery without totally trampling over someone’s privacy in many issues involving contract disputes or other civil litigation, what’s important is to identify the relevant custodians. Let’s say we have your cell phone in the conversation with mine, we can then take that, we can create a single PDF document showing each conversation thread and then you could quickly go through it, if it’s your phone in which your attorney identify relevant, not relevant, and then only take the ones that are between the relevant parties and load that up into the review platform.

Debbie Reynolds: Right. And to one thing, one very effective thing that people are doing now, and that’s something that you do, Lee, is where someone, they don’t want the other side to see their whole cell phone so they’ll have a forensic company collect the phone and say, only give them X. That’s actually a very secure way. It gives people peace of mind knowing that they’re not giving everything over, that the forensic folks can actually do some of this pre-work before people actually start looking at things.

Lee Neubecker: Yeah. And like what I’ve done is, they’re not going to pay me to spend time looking at their photos, nor do I want to look at that stuff.

Debbie Reynolds: No. No one cares. I think that’s what people don’t understand. We’ve been working on cases for over 20 years and I really don’t care what’s on the phone or what you said or what videos on there. It really makes a little difference to us.

Lee Neubecker: What I try to do is I try to quickly create almost a summary index of okay, these are the conversation threads. Tell me which phone numbers are relevant, aren’t relevant, who are the relevant parties, and then we can just pull those specific threads out, put them up into the review platform.

Debbie Reynolds: Exactly.

Lee Neubecker: Now, sometimes there’s issues where photos are relevant specifically, if it’s important that you know the whereabouts or someone on a given date and time. Photos often can establish whether or not someone was really at home sick or out on vacation somewhere. There’s embedded GPS data that is recorded into most photos that are taken with smartphones.

Debbie Reynolds: Unless someone decides to strip it out. I think if you don’t do anything to it, it will collect that data. But there are ways to strip that information out. And also, people can turn off GPS tracking on their phone.

Lee Neubecker: Yeah. Well, thanks for being on the show again today.

Debbie Reynolds: Well, thank you for having me.

Month: December 2019