Latest / Brian Thomas / Tech Thursday w/ Dave Hatter - Sponsored by Intrust IT - 7/2/2026
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Six thirty one, think about KRSD talks station. He's very
- 0:04Speaker 1: happy Thursday slash fridaye looking forward to Independence Day. Going
- 0:07Speaker 1: to miss tomorrow, but you'll have a best of show
- 0:09Speaker 1: tomorrow and today because tomorrow and no one's going to
- 0:12Speaker 1: be here except the tape we get. Dave had Her
- 0:15Speaker 1: for an early version of Tech Friday. Dave Hadter from
- 0:17Speaker 1: interest It sponsors the segment interest it dot com where
- 0:20Speaker 1: you find his company for all your business computer needs.
- 0:22Speaker 1: According to Business Courier, they are the best. Dave, Welcome
- 0:25Speaker 1: back man. Perfect for the first story too, bricking of cars.
- 0:29Speaker 1: On the heels of that article I read about the
- 0:31Speaker 1: surveillance state that is your new car. Welcome back, Yeah,
- 0:35Speaker 1: thanks Brian.
- 0:36Speaker 2: Always good to be here. You may recall it's been
- 0:41Speaker 2: several years, and I'll bring it up every once in
- 0:43Speaker 2: a while. Mozilla, the people that make the Firefox web browser,
- 0:46Speaker 2: which I have one of my favorites. Frankly, better you know,
- 0:49Speaker 2: reather than Google's Chrome. They have a site called Privacy
- 0:53Speaker 2: Not Included because your car really now is just another
- 0:56Speaker 2: so called Internet of things device. Are using my finger
- 1:00Speaker 2: quotes for you over the radio smart device right. Mozilla
- 1:05Speaker 2: and their privacy not included. A website looks at the
- 1:09Speaker 2: privacy and security features of these things, and they pointed
- 1:13Speaker 2: out several years ago in a big expose specifically focused
- 1:17Speaker 2: on cars, not just smart coffee makers and doorbells, specifically
- 1:21Speaker 2: focused on cars, how almost all modern cars are really
- 1:27Speaker 2: rolling computers. They collect all kinds of data, all kinds
- 1:30Speaker 2: of data that really is not necessary for your car
- 1:33Speaker 2: to take you from point A to point B. So
- 1:37Speaker 2: they raised this concern, and other people have raised it
- 1:39Speaker 2: along the way. But the article that you're referring to,
- 1:41Speaker 2: I thought was very interesting because it speaks to something
- 1:46Speaker 2: I've been trying to raise awareness about for a long time,
- 1:49Speaker 2: which is art digital society. When I said digital society,
- 1:53Speaker 2: think about it for a second. What do you use
- 1:56Speaker 2: now in a daily basis that's related to let's say,
- 2:00Speaker 2: your finances, your work, your education, that is not a
- 2:05Speaker 2: computer of some sort or is not connected to the internet. Somehow,
- 2:08Speaker 2: I think people still have kind of a hard time
- 2:12Speaker 2: connecting that. Okay, if I have a smart doorbell, or
- 2:15Speaker 2: a thermostat, or coffee maker or fill in the blank,
- 2:19Speaker 2: it's really just a computer, right That device now has
- 2:22Speaker 2: software in it. It's a computer. It's doing something ideally
- 2:27Speaker 2: that supports the functionality that device. And you know, you
- 2:30Speaker 2: can make all kinds of rationale for why your car
- 2:33Speaker 2: should have all these sensors and collect all this data
- 2:35Speaker 2: and do all these things. There's all kinds of reasons
- 2:37Speaker 2: for it, many of which you know are beneficial to
- 2:40Speaker 2: you as the owner of the car, the driver of
- 2:41Speaker 2: the car, etc. But as we keep making things smart,
- 2:45Speaker 2: we keep increasing the risk that something will go wrong.
- 2:50Speaker 2: And this car story, again, I thought it was really interesting.
- 2:52Speaker 2: They mentioned there's a huge increase in the rise of
- 2:55Speaker 2: vulnerabilities in the software and cars. Did you have to
- 2:58Speaker 2: catch the story, Brian that Ford issued a recall for
- 3:01Speaker 2: four point four million vehicles due defaulty software. I did
- 3:04Speaker 2: see that, Okay, So that that plays into this right
- 3:08Speaker 2: again headline Automotive Cybersecurity News Q one, twenty twenty six
- 3:12Speaker 2: Vehicle vulnerabilities double year on year vulnerability meaning the software
- 3:17Speaker 2: in the vehicle has some kind of flaw. Right. And
- 3:22Speaker 2: then one of the things they point out in this
- 3:24Speaker 2: article is that apparently, and they didn't mention the manufacturing here,
- 3:28Speaker 2: a lot of vehicles were bricked. Brick is a computer nerd,
- 3:31Speaker 2: someone like Me's term for the device doesn't work anymore
- 3:34Speaker 2: because of bad software. Probably many people in your audience
- 3:38Speaker 2: have done an upgrade of something and it didn't work anymore.
- 3:41Speaker 2: They're basically saying that these vehicles, you couldn't unlock the doors,
- 3:45Speaker 2: you couldn't start the vehicles. So, and the point I
- 3:49Speaker 2: guess I'm trying to draw together is as we add
- 3:52Speaker 2: software into things, it creates vulnerabilities, it creates right to
- 3:55Speaker 2: repair issues, do you really own it? Intellectual property, all
- 3:58Speaker 2: that sort of stuff. But as this article points out,
- 4:02Speaker 2: what if those were police cars that were bricked. What
- 4:04Speaker 2: if those are fire trucks that are bricked. What if
- 4:06Speaker 2: they're bricked because of a bad software update? Remember a
- 4:09Speaker 2: few years ago, the CrowdStrike thang Brian, Yeah, CrowdStrike is
- 4:12Speaker 2: a company that makes anti virus software. They bricked ten
- 4:14Speaker 2: million Windows computers accidentally with a software update. Or what
- 4:19Speaker 2: if they're bricked because an adversarial nation like China flips
- 4:22Speaker 2: the switch and turns them off or turns them into weapons.
- 4:25Speaker 2: You're driving along in your autonomous vehicle and suddenly it
- 4:28Speaker 2: decides that here's the nearest chemical plant, I'm going to
- 4:31Speaker 2: drive Brian into it.
- 4:34Speaker 1: Or the parade celebrating America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday.
- 4:39Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. I know this sounds crazy
- 4:41Speaker 2: to Peter, it's not.
- 4:42Speaker 1: I always encourage folks, No, no, let me just let
- 4:45Speaker 1: me clim You always say that, Dave. You know, if
- 4:46Speaker 1: you think this sounds crazy, you are misinformed.
- 4:50Speaker 2: It's just it's I think it's hard for people to
- 4:53Speaker 2: connect the dots on this stuff and again to realize
- 4:55Speaker 2: that once something has software in it and then it's
- 4:58Speaker 2: connected to the Internet, whether it's back doors built into
- 5:02Speaker 2: the software explicitly to allow remote control. You know, sometimes
- 5:06Speaker 2: you want remote controller or something, but you don't want
- 5:08Speaker 2: an adversarial nation like China to have remote control over it. Yeah,
- 5:12Speaker 2: whether it's just flaws in the software that make it
- 5:15Speaker 2: work incorrectly or brick it, or it's again hackers, not
- 5:21Speaker 2: necessarily a nation state, but hackers who decide that they
- 5:24Speaker 2: want to take this thing, take control of it, take
- 5:27Speaker 2: it out, steal data, use it as an entry point
- 5:30Speaker 2: to your other devices. And you know, Brian, I'm know luddite,
- 5:33Speaker 2: but we've got to get serious about critical infrastructure. We've
- 5:37Speaker 2: got to slow down on all of this everything being
- 5:39Speaker 2: digital and think about the possible ramifications when all the
- 5:44Speaker 2: cars from a specific manufacturer don't work anymore.
- 5:48Speaker 1: What's going to be bad. It's going to be bad.
- 5:49Speaker 1: And continuing a theme, assume you've been hacked plus major
- 5:53Speaker 1: infrastructure hacking is inevitable. The next two topics with Dave.
- 5:56Speaker 1: But it's smile on your face. Don't go like USA
- 5:58Speaker 1: Installation's premium film you wish see the talk station six
- 6:04Speaker 1: if krc DE talk station Happy Friday Eve doing a
- 6:08Speaker 1: special edition it's tech Thursday with Dave had Er. All right,
- 6:12Speaker 1: so we just need to assume we've been hacked. I
- 6:14Speaker 1: think that sounds like a logical presumption to spring from Dave.
- 6:19Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I want to want to slide back into
- 6:22Speaker 2: this topic after a few more points on the last one,
- 6:25Speaker 2: because I think it's it's it's all related, Brian, It's
- 6:28Speaker 2: all related. When they say assume you'll be hacked in
- 6:31Speaker 2: this Atlantic article, it's not just your computer anymore. It's
- 6:36Speaker 2: not just your phone, it's not just your online accounts.
- 6:39Speaker 2: It's your again smart refrigerator, your smart doorbell.
- 6:42Speaker 1: Your car.
- 6:44Speaker 2: So well, yeah, if I can, if I can take
- 6:48Speaker 2: over your Wi Fi router or internet cable modem however
- 6:51Speaker 2: you want to think of it. Sometimes it's two devices,
- 6:53Speaker 2: sometimes it's one. I can potentially intercept all the traffic
- 6:57Speaker 2: going into and coming out of your house or your
- 6:59Speaker 2: business for that, hopefully you have a firewall in your business.
- 7:03Speaker 2: But again, don't want to get too technical. But let
- 7:06Speaker 2: me just read from this article and then I'll come
- 7:08Speaker 2: back to this other article. One of the most disruptive
- 7:10Speaker 2: incidents highlighted now this is the car hacking we just
- 7:13Speaker 2: talked about, involves a Telematox provider compromise that led to
- 7:17Speaker 2: a mass bricking event. So Telemannox provider Telemannix is just
- 7:21Speaker 2: the data coming off these cars. And it also illustrates
- 7:24Speaker 2: the idea of third party risk. Right, your device might
- 7:29Speaker 2: not get hacked, but it might depend on a service,
- 7:31Speaker 2: some cloud based service, and then it gets hacked. Right,
- 7:35Speaker 2: So the Telemannox provider as a third party service, says
- 7:39Speaker 2: attackers infiltrated the provider's network, disabling mobile app functions for
- 7:43Speaker 2: unlocking and starting vehicles across multiple brands. Owners were stranded
- 7:47Speaker 2: for nearly two weeks, revealing severe dependencies on cloud services
- 7:51Speaker 2: for basic vehicle operations. Additionally, the report sites a twelve
- 7:55Speaker 2: point four million record breach at a major online auto marketplace,
- 7:58Speaker 2: executed through AI assisted voice fishing targeting help desks. The
- 8:04Speaker 2: point I'm trying to make is when they say assume
- 8:07Speaker 2: you will be hacked, is every as I was saying
- 8:10Speaker 2: in the last segment. Everything has software in it. Everything
- 8:13Speaker 2: is connected to the Internet, and in many cases, things
- 8:16Speaker 2: are interconnected in ways that aren't even obvious to you
- 8:19Speaker 2: as the consumer slash user. There are all these dependencies
- 8:23Speaker 2: between things. You know, your car might be sending data
- 8:26Speaker 2: to some third party company that build the app that
- 8:29Speaker 2: makes your car work.
- 8:30Speaker 1: Yep.
- 8:30Speaker 2: Maybe, and I'm not trying to point the finger in
- 8:32Speaker 2: any specific car manufacturer, but maybe you have a Volvo,
- 8:36Speaker 2: let's say, and maybe the app that allows you to
- 8:39Speaker 2: control your Volvo or your Lexus or fill in the
- 8:42Speaker 2: blank wasn't even made by Alexis or fill in the blank,
- 8:46Speaker 2: and it's got some connectivity to some cloud based things somewhere.
- 8:50Speaker 2: If that gets hacked, it might shut down your car,
- 8:53Speaker 2: even though it's not the car manufacturer's problem. So getting
- 8:57Speaker 2: back to this Atlantic article, assuming will be hacked, I
- 9:00Speaker 2: encourage folks go read this thing. The subhead is AI
- 9:04Speaker 2: is enabling a deluge of cyber attacks, the likes of
- 9:06Speaker 2: which we've never seen before. And again it's now it's
- 9:10Speaker 2: not just okay, someone was able to get into through
- 9:14Speaker 2: my firewall, into my computer. They got them. I'm just
- 9:17Speaker 2: talking in business Room's got to my server, encrypted all
- 9:20Speaker 2: my data. Now I got to pay ransom. That's bad.
- 9:22Speaker 2: Happens all the time. But all of us are now
- 9:26Speaker 2: so dependent on this technology. Everything is being enabled with technology,
- 9:32Speaker 2: if you want to think of it that way. And
- 9:34Speaker 2: that's the point they're trying to make there, right, It's
- 9:38Speaker 2: I'm not against this stuff, Brian, this is what I
- 9:40Speaker 2: did my whole life, you know. I'm just trying to
- 9:42Speaker 2: point out that we are now so reliant on this
- 9:46Speaker 2: and so increasingly.
- 9:47Speaker 1: Reliant on it.
- 9:48Speaker 2: You have this idea again of third party risk. You're
- 9:51Speaker 2: using some device or some app or some software or
- 9:54Speaker 2: whatever that relies on some other thing that you don't
- 9:57Speaker 2: even know about, and when it goes down, it potentially
- 10:00Speaker 2: takes your thing down. And when I say down, I
- 10:03Speaker 2: don't even necessarily mean cyber attack. It could be bad software,
- 10:07Speaker 2: it could be natural disaster. Again, we as consumers, as
- 10:12Speaker 2: people who rely on this stuff, as a society that
- 10:15Speaker 2: is now highly technical. You know, most of the time,
- 10:18Speaker 2: the focus on this technology is not privacy, security, resilience.
- 10:24Speaker 2: It's speed to market, ease of use, market share, profit margin,
- 10:28Speaker 2: and collect as much data as possible because it allows
- 10:32Speaker 2: me to sell you more stuff and increase my profit market.
- 10:34Speaker 2: We are not focused on the right things from a
- 10:37Speaker 2: consumer perspective or frankly, from a societal perspective, and we
- 10:42Speaker 2: just keep coming up with more and more articles that
- 10:45Speaker 2: illustrate these kinds of problems.
- 10:47Speaker 1: Yours is a plea to the industry, and I get it.
- 10:51Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 10:51Speaker 1: I mean, if you were the industry Dave had it
- 10:54Speaker 1: was responsible for software development and all that, he'll be
- 10:56Speaker 1: thinking first and foremost about the things that you talk
- 10:58Speaker 1: about every week on this program. This segment putting security
- 11:01Speaker 1: and privacy and all that at the forefront, and then
- 11:05Speaker 1: building the product right behind all of the firewall, if
- 11:08Speaker 1: I can use that term loosely, that's been designed to
- 11:10Speaker 1: protect all of us from the nefarious things you bring
- 11:12Speaker 1: up every week. Please industry wake up to this because
- 11:15Speaker 1: the next segment is huge in terms of concern. Yeah,
- 11:21Speaker 1: major infrastructure, don't go away. More with Dave Hatter at
- 11:24Speaker 1: see the talk station sixth if you want to pick
- 11:27Speaker 1: abub KCD talk station Tech Thursday, intrust it dot com
- 11:30Speaker 1: found Dave and the crew are the best in the
- 11:32Speaker 1: business for business computer needs. You know, I was thinking
- 11:34Speaker 1: about this next story here, infrastructure hacking inevitable when you're
- 11:38Speaker 1: talking about in the last segment. You know, I try
- 11:39Speaker 1: to move the steer clear of all this these apps
- 11:42Speaker 1: in this modern technology. They because in my perception, you know,
- 11:44Speaker 1: it's like the smart cars. I've gone this far in
- 11:46Speaker 1: my life without any incident. I do fine without the technology.
- 11:49Speaker 1: I don't even need it. I don't want it. It
- 11:51Speaker 1: might make my life a little easier, but you know what,
- 11:53Speaker 1: my life's not difficult now, but it will fail. Are
- 11:56Speaker 1: you prepared, Like, do you have a fire plan to
- 11:59Speaker 1: escape your house the event you have a fire? What
- 12:01Speaker 1: happens if this stuff fails? And apparently our government's starting
- 12:06Speaker 1: to look at that reality.
- 12:08Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's long overdue. And I think that's
- 12:10Speaker 2: the way you describe it is the right way to
- 12:12Speaker 2: think about it. Brian. You know, in the old days,
- 12:15Speaker 2: you went out and we stick with the car for
- 12:17Speaker 2: a second. You went out and you bought a car,
- 12:18Speaker 2: and yeah, it had different systems in the car, but
- 12:20Speaker 2: it was still mostly just a mechanical device.
- 12:23Speaker 1: Right.
- 12:23Speaker 2: It had a carburetor gas when in the cylinder's explosions happened,
- 12:27Speaker 2: that sort of thing. You know, I think back to
- 12:30Speaker 2: when I was a kid, right, and in the in
- 12:32Speaker 2: the seventies, your average car was not very technologically advanced.
- 12:36Speaker 2: It had an electrical system. Again, it had different systems
- 12:40Speaker 2: that provide a different functionality, but it wasn't that advanced
- 12:43Speaker 2: that most anybody could work on it. Right. Yeah, Now
- 12:46Speaker 2: now your car is a rolling computer. Everything is digitaltically
- 12:52Speaker 2: sealed too.
- 12:53Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 12:54Speaker 2: Well, this whole right to repair thing, right, And you know,
- 12:56Speaker 2: Ford recently caused some controversy talking about that, and we've
- 12:59Speaker 2: talked about that before, the idea of well, this device
- 13:03Speaker 2: has our software in it. So even though you quote
- 13:05Speaker 2: bought it, even though you quote own it, you don't
- 13:08Speaker 2: really own it because you can't take it apart, you
- 13:10Speaker 2: can't work on it. It's our intellectual property, you know,
- 13:13Speaker 2: you don't really own it. Right to repair. Again, it's
- 13:15Speaker 2: a whole separate thing. But your analogy is right on
- 13:20Speaker 2: the money, you know. And what SISS is the Cybersecurity
- 13:23Speaker 2: Infrastructure and Security Agency it's a Department of Homeland Security
- 13:27Speaker 2: agency focused on primarily on cybersecurity around critical infrastructure. FBI
- 13:32Speaker 2: has defined sixteen critical infrastructure sectors, things like transportation, water, power,
- 13:38Speaker 2: that sort of things. Right, and so at a conference,
- 13:42Speaker 2: the interim director is talking about this and they say right.
- 13:47Speaker 2: In recent years, US government has reordered its cybersecurity strategy
- 13:51Speaker 2: away from prevention and towards resilience. I would argue that's
- 13:55Speaker 2: because a we increasingly are adding software things, making them smart,
- 14:02Speaker 2: opening up the possibility for attack. B As we've already
- 14:05Speaker 2: discussed now for some time, software just has inherent flaws
- 14:08Speaker 2: in it, and see things fail, whether it's a solar event,
- 14:15Speaker 2: whether it's an attack from an adversary o nation state actor,
- 14:18Speaker 2: whether it's a bad software update that bricks millions of devices,
- 14:22Speaker 2: a lah crowd strike a few years ago. Things fail.
- 14:26Speaker 2: And this is something we've been trying to convince customers
- 14:29Speaker 2: of for a long time. It's not just about protecting
- 14:33Speaker 2: that's still important. You still need to defend these things.
- 14:35Speaker 2: There are still bad actors out there trying to break
- 14:38Speaker 2: into your systems, shut down your business, steal your money,
- 14:40Speaker 2: steal your data, all that stuff. Around the clock and
- 14:44Speaker 2: the attacks are accelerating thanks to AI is that Atlantic
- 14:48Speaker 2: article pointed out. But all of that said, eventually, as
- 14:52Speaker 2: you mentioned, Brian, things break right, mechanical failure happens to
- 14:57Speaker 2: a server, the Internet goes down for some reason, solar flare,
- 15:00Speaker 2: electromagnetic pulse, whatever, and you know, the focus on we
- 15:05Speaker 2: need to think about resiliency because we are so dependent
- 15:08Speaker 2: on this stuff. Now. You know, thirty forty years ago,
- 15:11Speaker 2: I think we talked about the Carrington event before. In
- 15:14Speaker 2: the late eighteen hundreds, a solar flare hit the Earth
- 15:18Speaker 2: that was so strong it set telegraph wires on fire
- 15:20Speaker 2: and blew out telegraph stations. But we weren't that technologically
- 15:23Speaker 2: advanced then. You know, a steam engine didn't have electrical
- 15:27Speaker 2: systems that could be knocked out by a solar flare
- 15:29Speaker 2: and permanently destroyed. It'd have to be totally replaced right Well, now,
- 15:33Speaker 2: if you had something like that, it'd be a huge problem.
- 15:36Speaker 2: So again the idea of resilience right, and Nick Anderson
- 15:40Speaker 2: says in this article, for arount of time, each and
- 15:42Speaker 2: every one of us is operating right now in the
- 15:44Speaker 2: front lines of a war that is never going to
- 15:46Speaker 2: be cleared again. He's the acting director of SISA, and
- 15:51Speaker 2: this was at a conference. He said, we are going
- 15:53Speaker 2: to see an adversarial disruption of our critical infrastructure. It's
- 15:56Speaker 2: going to have significant, not just technical impact, and it's
- 15:59Speaker 2: going to have a significant psychological impact on the safety
- 16:03Speaker 2: of the American people. We need to start operating like
- 16:05Speaker 2: that's the reality of where we're at, that we're not
- 16:07Speaker 2: going to be able to keep everything persistently online and
- 16:09Speaker 2: available as much as we would like. And that's I
- 16:13Speaker 2: agree wholeheartedly with what he's saying. Again, look at CrowdStrike.
- 16:17Speaker 2: This is a company that's making software to defend your
- 16:19Speaker 2: devices and a software update and oversimplifying this, but a
- 16:24Speaker 2: software update they put out took out roughly ten million devices.
- 16:27Speaker 2: It was running on speed. You know, all the all
- 16:31Speaker 2: the reasons why things are done the way they are,
- 16:33Speaker 2: I understand them. But we have we've crossed the rubicon
- 16:37Speaker 2: now where we're so dependent on this stuff that we
- 16:39Speaker 2: have got to slow down, and we have got to
- 16:41Speaker 2: think about resilience and what happens when this stuff fails
- 16:45Speaker 2: and the larger impact on society. And I'm glad folks
- 16:48Speaker 2: like mister Anderson here are raising these points and that
- 16:52Speaker 2: we're talking about it here so they can so that
- 16:54Speaker 2: people can talk to their friends, talk to their elected
- 16:56Speaker 2: officials and say, hey, what about this and what are
- 16:59Speaker 2: we going to do when these systems go out for
- 17:02Speaker 2: whatever reason.
- 17:03Speaker 1: Important point, and I'm glad you brought it up. And
- 17:05Speaker 1: again you know the idea is you bring this up here.
- 17:08Speaker 1: I know this program, this, this show here is rather
- 17:10Speaker 1: successful according to the ratings that you provided me, so
- 17:12Speaker 1: a lot of people listening it beyond the greater Cincinnati area.
- 17:15Speaker 1: And I'm glad you auditioning out some great advice. Dave
- 17:18Speaker 1: Heed Dave's warning, let's go all get on the bandwagon.
- 17:21Speaker 1: Dave Hatter, thank you so much for what you do.
- 17:23Speaker 1: Thank you for your company interest it dot com and
- 17:25Speaker 1: all the work that you do for greater Cincinnati companies,
- 17:27Speaker 1: and for your willingness to come on the show every
- 17:29Speaker 1: week with this valuable information. Brother. I hope you have
- 17:31Speaker 1: a great Independence Day and I'll look forward to talking
- 17:33Speaker 1: with you next Friday.
- 17:34Speaker 2: Always my pleasure, Brian. A happy Independence Day to you
- 17:37Speaker 2: and Joe and all your listeners, and I'll look forward
- 17:39Speaker 2: to chatting with you next week.
- 17:41Speaker 1: Thanks my friend. Coming up next, Congressman Warren Davidson, don't
- 17:44Speaker 1: go away,