Can We Make Cybersecurity Fun Again? Turning Fear Into Action | Gary Berman

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back to another episode of the Security By Default podcast.

I’m the host of the show, Joe Carson.

It’s a pleasure to have you all here and what we really hear this episode and podcast is all about bringing clarity to the world of chaos that we live in in the cybersecurity world.

And it’s always muddy.

It’s always kind of like a very kind of scary place.

But we really need to kind of rethink it.

We really need to look at how can we make this world much more fun, much more enjoyable.

So I’m welcome to the episode today as a special guest.

Gary, welcome to the podcast.

So this is your first time on the podcast, so if you want to give the audience a bit of a background about you, how you got into this industry, did you choose it?

Did it choose you?

Let’s get, you know, and think about what’s some of the things that we can do to make the world a fun, fun place.

Well, I’ll turn it over to you with one quick guidance.

So I’ll say on a scale of 1 to 10, the scary part is, let’s say 1, and then the fun part is 10.

Where.

Where.

Where do you think best for your audience?

I. I want.

I mean, for me, for the audience, I want it to be 10.

I. I want the audience to laugh.

I got it.

I. I like it to be like good comedy.

I like some of the old school stuff as well.

So for me, unfortunately, the cybersecurity world we live in on a daily basis is.

Isn’t a one.

So right now, because it’s always fear.

What’s.

How did you get into the industry?

What.

What’s your background?

Like?

What was.

What did you start off with?

Is your career?

Well, I’m.

I’m gonna go with.

Let’s settle on a. A7 just to be reasonable.

So you know the arc.

To answer your question, I’ll use something you see from my background.

One of the many things that.

That I do is the Cyber Hero adventure show and comics.

And.

And we do exactly what your intention is for your audience, which is to try to pivot from fud, which everyone knows is fear, uncertainty, and doubt, which is.

Which is on the one end of the spectrum.

Excuse me, the 10 end of the spectrum to fun.

So from FUD to fun.

Like, how do you go about doing that way?

In my case, do I do it?

So you familiar with Forrest Gump the movie?

Yes, I am indeed.

So my credibility, if any, is.

I have none, because I am the Forrest Gump of cybersecurity.

I just bump into the most bizarre, strange, exciting, brilliant, genius people and I’m going like what?

And I just show up.

And so to be more specific about that, I had a very successful marketing research and data analytics company for a long time.

My wife and I started for nothing.

We were very grateful for that and sold half of it to a very large company.

And I knew nothing about cybersecurity really at all.

And at that time, it wasn’t a thing.

Like, you know, there’s no straight line to cybersecurity careers, you know, and paths that you and your audience know, you know all too well.

It’s always serpentine, like, you know, different things, you know, different motivations and different skills and things like that.

So to make a very long and complicated story short, things were going great until one day a one hit and we were attacked by retrospective.

We came to understand some nation state stuff.

And you know, I won’t, I won’t delve into that too much because you want to keep it fun.

But it was, you know, we ended up losing everything, like over time, several million dollars and had to close the company.

And I was grumpy, you know, as anybody would be.

You would be.

Yeah.

You know, I don’t know if you have like a beep thing or not, but if you, if you let it run for a minute, I can fill it with that swimming, but I’ll just say grumpy.

Anyways.

So I guess I learned two things about that.

One is being a victim is not unique.

You know, there’s so many injustices in the world and so many victims of so many different things.

But the more foundational thing for my second half of my life was it’s just exhausting.

So after years of being really grumpy, I decided to pivot to become an advocate.

But what is that?

And that’s where the Forrest Gump stuff started to happen.

So I bought a book called Cybersecurity for Dummies.

You see those yellow books, like with the black stripes on it?

I figured, okay, perfect.

I’m very self aware, you know, but page 10 of that book, Joe, I was lost.

And so rather than quitting, I found the company that put it out, Palo Alto Networks.

And it took me 19 phone calls over a six month period.

I finally got the author, who was the CISO at the time, great guy.

And, and so my name’s Gary, of course.

And he picks up the phone, he goes, hey, Mike, how’s it going?

I go, no, it’s Gary.

Burn.

I hear him go, oh shit, you know, he picked up the wrong line.

And then he goes, what can I do for you?

Which is not like that, like a warm welcome.

But I understood that, you know, I mean, the guy’s busy, he didn’t know me from anything.

And anyways, turns out he’s a great guy.

I told him this story and he bust out laughing and I said, you know, his name is Rick Howard.

And I said, Mr. Howard, may I ask why you’re laughing so hard?

And he kind of catches his breath.

He goes, well, it’s not really for beginners.

And why do you call it Cybersecurity for Dummies?

And that was my foray into this notion of trying to pivot from FUD to fun.

And so I had to overcome a couple quick things.

I’ll make it short to say I didn’t know any.

Anyone in the top in the community or anything about the topic or, or even superhero comics for that matter.

And but other than that, I was like perfect in my deluded Forrest Gump brain.

And so I went on LinkedIn and one at a time, over about a 10 month period I think it was, I invited CISOs and CSOs and other C level people to connect with me, to send me real life stories of cybercrime.

Answering the questions like, what happened?

You know, what were the consequences?

What were the lessons learned for possible inclusion into, you know, the Cyber Hero adventure?

And I went to 54 cybersecurity conferences.

You and I had talked about that prior.

And I wear a costume when I go to some of these events.

And my, you know what, my wife thinks I’m batshit.

But that’s another whole problem.

You know, what could possibly go wrong?

You know, I’m 68.

Hello.

But I would wear these, you know, these badges around my neck, you know, as part of my costume.

And because that was the source of my superpower, I listen to learn from the smartest people in the world about this stuff.

Then Covid hit, so no conferences.

So I started like a show and I use air quotes.

And I’ve had the privilege of interviewing well over 300 of the smartest people in the world about this stuff, like you.

And so that’s my origin story.

Fantastic.

I think it’s really interesting.

I mean, that’s one.

One thing is we do want to surround ourselves, you know, with a lot of smart people.

And going to those conferences is a great way to do that.

It’s, you know, where you really kind of.

Some people say, if you’re, you’re the smartest person in the room.

You’re the, you’re in the wrong room.

So.

Which rings true is that you want to find those who you can learn from and that you can talk to and be educated.

And I think, I think a part of that.

Forgive the interruption, but I, to build on that point, I think, you know, just embracing your own ignorance.

Like, it’s cool to be dumb, you know, in my brain, you know, because that way you’re open, you’re actually absorbing, you’re listening, you’re showing, you know, people respect.

We’ve spent their whole careers on this stuff.

These are, you know, people like you.

They’re unsung heroes.

I, I adopted that my mission was to shine the light on the unsung cyber heroes who toil in anonymity to keep us safe at work, at home, at school.

Because, I mean, there’s a superhero thing.

Absolutely.

I mean, because a lot of this success and wins happens in the background.

And I think that’s the shame, that’s the sad part.

Yeah, exactly.

All of the things that we do so well never gets the public visibility.

You know, people don’t like to talk about the wins and successes because it sometimes put you as, as a, as a next target.

It means that people want to, you know, the attackers want to be challenged.

So we don’t talk about it enough.

We don’t share them, at least, you know, in the public knowledge.

So all the news tends to be just the bad news.

There’s no channel for the, for the good stuff.

And, you know, I get it.

You know, but sometimes you, you might want to make some of the wins and successes.

Anonymous some.

So it doesn’t put this harder.

Good.

But we do need to find a proper forum to sharing some of that.

You know, that, because I, I think, you know, I’ve been in this industry for a long time, over 30 years, and I remember I had so much memories from my early time in my career.

There’s times where I, you know, when you’re laughing so hard that your stomach and everything hurts.

Yeah, I do miss those times.

I do miss those times in the career.

And I, I, I remember some of the really early times when I was doing a hospital digital transformation.

When we’re talking about digital transformation, we’re talking about true digital transformation.

It was taking typewriters out of, you know, the data analyst desks and replacing them with computers.

Wow.

And back then, they’d done their training before, so.

They did their training in Windows 3.1.

But by the time we actually got to deploy it, it was already Windows 95.

So the thing, it had changed quite a bit and the technology was all as we always see it, it’s advancing so fast and the calls I got, I was so I, I, I remember somebody saying that the, the drinks, the drinks holder wouldn’t stay out.

And I’m going, what drinks holder are you talking about?

Like what’s going on?

So, and of course you go and show me, you know, show me.

And those times it was easy to find the users and talk with them.

And so I went, show me what the problem is.

And they opened up the CD tray because then it was for CDs, not even DVDs at that point.

And they were putting the drink in the CD tray and sometimes, you know, it wasn’t popping out for long enough and they wouldn’t be able to put their drink in there.

Like hysterical.

And also, you know, other people’s like, you know, the, the mouse not the most, it was the foot pedals not working.

I’m going, what food pedal?

And for those who used to have the typewriters and dictation machines before there was a foot pedal for school, starting with dictation.

And look, they had the mouse on the floor and they were stumping it with their foot.

Those, oh my God.

And that mean I, I laugh so hard.

I mean even one like, you know, I worked in support teams over the years, I had people on my team that sometimes it just takes somebody with a certain personality that can take something that is, can be very serious but also turn it around and just make, make you laugh.

There are situations, you know, I think we really need that again in the industry.

I think we need to find a way to bring back laughter.

And I do see it, I mean there’s little bits of it we see there in here.

We see, you know, we, we use a lot of mems.

The mems still are, you know, our way of sometimes venting.

Yeah, exactly.

And I’ve, I’ve seen some funny mems recently.

You know, a lot of, some of the outages about how fragile our infrastructure and everything is, but they’re very light hearted.

So for me I think I would love to find a way and also make it actionable as well is to really take some of the things that we do on a day to day, you know, a day to day basis and just let’s turn it around to make it, let’s say much more.

The information received can make us Laugh again.

And I mean, I remember I had a guest on the podcast not so long ago, and he said, it’s one of the things, you know, the industry we’re in, we are the bringers of bad news.

We, we, we do deliver bad news and we don’t talk about our successes enough because we’re afraid that that will actually make us, you know, be a target.

So we have to find a way.

How do we, how do we rebrand ourselves of the industry of fun?

In fact, I think when I started it was the industry of fun, and now it’s become the industry of fud.

What’s some of the things you would suggest to really kind of like, you know, and, and we want to turn it, turn it into something as well.

How do we attract new talent as well?

Because if we’re struggling, if, if we are the industry of the scary, it’s definitely where new talent are going to be looking at this industry and going.

There’s other industries which are much more fun.

Going to the AI side, you know, and starting to look at that field or data analytics and other robotics, drones.

There’s, there’s other industries which has much more fun and entertainment than the cybersecurity world.

What’s your ideas?

I mean, you, you, you come, you know, from, from the comic world and, and the fun world and, and marketing side.

What was your suggestions or some of the things that we can do?

What, what’s some of the things we can start with in order to make it fun?

Yeah, I mean, well, right now, this conversation, you know, establishing a predicate or a rationale or, you know, a problem, you know, statement, so to speak, is a good place to start, you know, and I think it’s all about, in my case, space.

And it can be the digital universe as a concept space, but I think it’s also space between people, you know, so this conversation.

So if you just think about, if you were to play back what we, what, what we’ve recorded thus far, you know, I love listening.

That’s fun for me.

And so I’ve learned so much from you just now by creating this space which I can refer to as, in a different way, psychological air to breathe.

It’s like, you know, a collective like that.

And, and so, so how do you do that?

You know, so in, in, in my, in my instance, you know, I spend a lot of time just listening to people and that for them is like fun having, you know, kind of a safe, you know, relaxed place.

Exactly what your intention is for your show is, is A great way to start.

So I would tell you just like right off the bat we should collaborate and do this, you know, and from fun to fun.

I mean, you know, can be an art or something like that.

So that’s I think sort of the philosophy or the strategy, you know, about how to go about this, you know, in terms of actually engaging the, the joyous part of our brains and the stomach, you know, like laughing so hard that you know your stomach hurts.

Like in my case when this very important man said well it’s not really for beginners, I just, I was crying from laughing, you know.

So I’m not advocating saying obvious stuff, you know, per se in various forms of communication.

What I’m advocating is having, is reigniting here, here’s a good one.

The inner child of adults.

And so that, that’s a very foundational principle to accomplish what it is that we’re talking about from my perspective because you know, not to get like too introspective because I not I’m incredibly shallow just so you know to put it out there.

But I’ll give it a go.

You know, when we’re children, little children, everything is cool, you know, everything is fun, everything is, is new, you know, everything is exciting, you know.

And I, I, I just had my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter 2 days ago, bumped her head on a table and had to get five stitches.

And she, she thought like that was cool, you know, I mean, you know, I wouldn’t and I didn’t.

I think that’s great way is how we perceive things sometimes.

And I’ve seen, I’ve seen some of those situations where we’re you know, turning something that can be very scary but making it actually interesting and fun.

Exactly.

Like, you know, I’ve seen people, you know, where they, where they bump their head and they have stump stitches but then basically they put something like a Harry Potter sticker on it.

Exactly.

You know, they talk about, you know, then you know, becoming the fantasy world and you know that they’re becoming like a wizard.

I think those something off like what is scary and, and turn it into something that can be actually quite light hearted and fun.

And you know we, we can then see things in a very different light.

I remember just even with, with my kids, my daughter had a couple of spots and now what they’re doing is rather than trying to hide them, they’re actually getting stickers and patches which actually show like stars and colors and like, and it how we like kind of like display things, you know, rather than Trying to hide things.

We, we may put it on and showing that actually it can be fun.

That’s the space.

That’s, that’s what I was referring to.

You’re creating the psychological air for her to breathe or him to breed, you know, and, and to turn to pivot from FUD to fun.

You know, I, I, I go back to that again because it’s really, really for me was a North Star, you know, to get through the.

Do you swear?

What is the policy of swearing on your sword?

You can swear.

I’ll have to beat them later.

Maybe at some point.

Certain platforms might require an aids, but I can bleed them out because I have to do the post editing anyway, so.

But, well, what I do is I, I change them into maybe other words, which is fun.

So because what, so because me being from.

So for, for the audience, they know that I’m, I’m originally from Ireland.

And one of the things is that, and originally actually from north.

Like so my, your vocabulary, it can be quite vulgar at some points, depending on the audience or nationality.

And when I went to, I went to university in the US in Louisville, Kentucky and everyone just like looking at me when I was talking, it’s like,.

How could this person be saying yes, a potty mouse.

I literally like.

And I had to change my words and my family laugh.

My family laugh at me now because certain words that I say because I’ve re kind of programmed my head to say certain things and all of a sudden a different word comes out.

So the F word for me is now frigate.

Well, okay, you just happened to shine the light on a great answer.

Wait a minute.

You’re really just answering the question you posed to me quite well by just reframing it with different words.

You know, words matter.

Absolutely.

Words and context.

Words and context is everything.

Right?

So, well, so in cybersecurity, for example, or AI or whatever the topic is, but in this context, you know, we’re talking about cybersecurity, you know, maybe there’s a way to have the community sort of writ large to submit alternative words to describe the same things that are more along the lighthearted or fun side.

I actually, I was just thinking about it right now that came to mind, which is we did that about hacks.

We created 16 characters.

So Vernon the virus, you know, Boris the bug, Ivan the identity thief, and you know, Wilbur Wannacry for ransomware.

And this industry does do that.

You know, they, you know, the community comes up with fun sort of quirky names, you know, to label very serious Things.

So I wonder is that.

That would help, like just, you know, creating a community dictionary.

That’s just funny.

Absolutely.

We do need.

That still conveys real information.

The other thing I would say in context of.

Of our conversation is I think we.

We want to make this stuff cool, you know, to attract new people, you know, to the industry.

And, you know, there are many ways of making this stuff cool without revealing the trade secrets, so to speak, or, you know, like what you were saying a little bit earlier.

But, you know, making this stuff cool and making it fun, you know, is a great mission.

I’d love to help or, you know, your audience, I’m sure, would have some great ideas.

Absolutely.

I think it always reminds me and to your point, the.

The comic book story is.

I remember years ago when I was working a major risk assessment firm, a large transportation company, and it was kind of the very mundane governance risk assessment.

You know, it’s right.

Not fun.

And we were doing it for months.

We find that how we were delivering the cybersecurity awareness training was just.

It was just awareness training at the time.

And what we end up doing, we find that it was causing friction.

Employees didn’t like it.

We were not communicating effectively.

We were talking about very techy terms.

And it was.

It was.

It was a disaster.

Just continually.

Our train was off the rails and we weren’t really finding our way.

And it was a funny time where I remember we were sitting in this really nice conference room, and all of a sudden, one of.

One of the, you know, we heard this noise down the corridor, and we’re like, damn it, somebody go and tell.

Tell that other room, you know, to be quiet.

We’re.

We’re trying to think really hard here and come up with solutions that are solving big problems.

Person goes to the.

And comes back and starts laughing.

He says, that’s actually a room full of kids.

And we’re going, what?

Like, what the.

Like, what’s kids doing?

So we end up finding that it was actually in.

In the company, they had to bring your kids to the office day in order, like, to show them.

This is where the parents go and this is what they do.

And this is how they, you know, they, like, you know, provide for the family.

And it was kind of interesting when I was just like, oh, bring your kids to the office day.

And somebody turned around and said in the room, it’s like, well, you know, it’s like kids, they’re kind of like the executives.

They have about the same attention span.

But why don’t we go why don’t we go and ask them the questions we’re looking for answers for?

And it was, it just brought, it was that moment.

It’s like, oh, this is interesting.

Just brought a bit of fun to the, to the real serious problem we were trying to solve.

So we went and we got permission.

We said, can we go ask the kids a bunch of questions?

And for them it was actually, oh, this is interesting.

Because then, you know, we actually, we’re getting to work because we told them, it’s like, you know, this is a work task.

We’re like, you know, you’re not helping your parents and stuff with solving these big problems.

So we get in the room, we present, and the kids were just like looking at us like, come on, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

So as we were presenting, we’re talking about, like delivering awareness training, measuring it, like how to make it effective.

And then one kid puts their hands up and said, hey, why don’t you put it into a comic book?

And we’re just like.

And the light switch just came on.

It was just like, oh, my goodness, that solves so many of the problems that we were challenged with about translations, about simplifying it, about making it entertainment, about making it understandable.

So we end up finding that turning it into like a four, just a picture storyboard page that basically was relaying simple awareness messages, like, you know, not plugging USB sticks into the computer without checking it first and not clicking on links that you don’t know or not expecting from emails.

Just very simple things that simply putting it into a comic story that meant that it was very much to your point is that, you know, it’s not the dummies, you know, baseline, which in a lot of people, you have this certain level of tech understanding.

This is a dummy’s true is that no one has any idea and they haven’t started on it.

I think you’re going down to the very basic level.

If you can get kids to understand it or your grandparents to understand it, then you’re, you’re really communicating effectively because you’re getting that full spectrum.

And then the second thing was another kid put their hand up in the room and we’re just like, first of all, we’re just enlightened.

Oh my goodness.

We’re solving problems with a bunch of kids here that we actually have been struggling with for weeks.

And then all of a sudden, you know, the kid puts hands up and they’re like, oh, you’ll have something to say as well.

I Said, why do you put them on the back of bathroom doors?

Because everyone needs to go to the bathroom at least once or twice a day.

And my goodness, another light bulb came on, and we’re just like, oh, my.

For us, it was just one of those moments of, like, you know, perfect situations that we just happened to be conference rooms.

It happened to be that day, bring your kids to the office day.

And we just had the right kids.

We could actually ask challenging questions.

And they simplified it for us.

Well, I mean, but the bathroom.

I just want to expand on that.

The bathroom is perfect because of use cases.

Like, everyone has them many times a day, and at my age, too many times a day.

But that’s a different story.

But, you know.

But I go back again just because you keep shining the light, I think, in a very important way on the inner child of adults, you know.

So, for example, can I show you something that we recently did?

Absolutely.

You have to explain it as well for the audience, because some of the.

Well, I’ll just show you.

So this is a recent comic that we did.

And the thing about this comic is it’s for adults, but the inner child.

Because the mission, what this particular client wanted, was to anthropomorphize four of their products and to distill the complex of the technology underneath them into something people could get their heads around.

And so we just created these characters that represented the products, and it was.

It was a resounding hit because also for that one, we put a QR code so that if someone wanted to learn more about the actual products or get a demo, would take them to, you know, the website and stuff like that.

So this notion of inner child of adults is, I think, very powerful, and I think it’s especially true now.

You know, before we hit the record button, we were talking about the prefrontal cortex of the brain has only been around for a relatively short period compared to the reptilian brain.

And the pace of change is too fast for us to absorb.

And it’s.

It causes cognitive dissonance and stress, to put it mildly.

And so now is a great time to take a breath, try to distill this into something that appeals to the inner child, which, by the way, is where joy resides in people, you know, and.

And everyone wants to laugh.

That’s a universal thing around the world.

I mean, I’m sure there’s studies about this, but I’m making that assumption that people like laughing.

And it’s probably accurate to say, or at least generally accurate to say that the same things make people laugh around the world, you know, more or less.

And so this is an innate survival technique or something that releases, you know, serotonin, you know, things like that to make you happy.

So I don’t know, I. I’m really glad that you’re doing this, that’s for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

For me it’s, it’s like through my career, I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time.

I see that, you know, we, we need to bring back the topics, you know, and to your point is that, you know, bringing back the inner child and the things that does entertain us and make our really tough day job entertaining and fun and some of the ways, you know, the ways that as it mentions, you know, you know, the comic book style and I think really what I’ve.

I’ve seen is one of the great things areas that I’ve seen the last couple of years is around the gamification of how we learn.

Yeah.

I think really the evolution that we, you know, I wish that that was something that when I was growing up and studying that that was a capability then because it is so much fun.

And there’s the challenge aspect is really true gamification.

Another thing I think as I mentioned earlier is about we also need a way to celebrate the wins, even if it’s internally in the organizations.

We do need to make sure that security is showing to the rest of the business and showing that, you know, they are doing something even.

Even when the rest of the employees are not seeing anything and it’s all quiet and just, you know, and somebody says that cybersecurity is almost like basically the plumbing, you know, or it’s like the waste disposal team is that it just happens in the background.

You don’t see it when it doesn’t work.

It’s real bad situation.

And that’s literally what we are is we do make the rest of the, you know, we do make the entire systems work.

And I think also the humor mems, which is again something we see coming from the comic style as well.

We take something of an image and just becomes a life on its own sometimes.

I think one thing that we should do much better on is the storytelling aspects.

I don’t think organization are really good.

Some focus too much in the tech, the tech talk.

And I see that a lot of times when I go to the conference conferences and trade shows and I’m looking around, I’m seeing buzzwords, I’m seeing big marketing fud words, big scur tactics over promises because you know, they do so much, and when I think about it is that, you know, we really need to get, you know, the simplistic message of how to get back to very basic storytelling and storytelling that, you know, is in a positive way.

And I think that’s something if we take all of those ingredients and making it also human centric as well.

Because a lot of the technology, we focus a lot on the automation and, you know, the resiliency and, you know, how it’s helping the business.

But at the end of the day, really fundamentally, one thing going back to the story I was telling earlier about the transportation company, one thing that during that entire scenario that we realized is that cybersecurity started at home.

It starts at the home.

It starts basically not at the employee’s laptop, not at the company systems and servers, but it starts there’s the employee and then there’s the employee social sphere, the people they interact with.

And it was interesting because one we did that and it came from, again, those kids in the conference room is that one who realized is actually cybersecurity starts with a family.

And that was ultimately kind of where we were taking it away from that kind of realization.

And this organization decided that actually we’re not just going to protect the employees company devices, but we’re going to protect the employees personal devices.

And we’re also licensed the rest of the family to their immediate family, the parents, the kids, the partners, whoever it might be.

And that was kind of like you’re thinking, my goodness, that was really democratizing.

We talk about cybersecurities, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s not something that everyone can get.

But in that case for those employees, it was actually extending it to the community even further.

And I think that’s the things, those are the moments that we should share, that we should emphasize and we should look to achieve is how do we make cybersecurity not just, you know, really democratize it and make it something that everybody can have, but also make it fun at the same time, make it something that actually is rewarding, make it entertaining at the same time.

Well, that’s brilliant.

And I ran into that some years ago with some circumstances that basically revealed what you were saying, which is, you know, people do what they care about at the office.

So you talk about awareness training, or they’ll do what they care about or what they’re compensated for, what they’re measured, what they’re measured about and what they care about is exactly what you said.

That’s their children or their family at home.

And to build a bridge between those two also has the unintended benefit or perhaps intended benefit of letting, letting them know what their parents do.

And that is cool, you know, because they like to take the kids to work day.

So it sort of checks off on several different boxes.

And I loved that idea.

Yeah.

And we should do more of, more of those types of activities as well.

I think that’s the things that.

I know it’s a little bit more challenging today in the hybrid workforce and a lot of employees working remotely.

But I think we should, Companies and the talent team should really kind of look to go beyond the traditional methods, you know, of, of, of, you know, basically training and engagement and really make it something that it goes beyond the company.

We, we see it sometimes.

Some companies do these like a community events, you know, they have the cleaning up the community feeding, stuff like that or just, you know, doing some type of, let’s say green activities and stuff like that or sports activities.

I think doing more of those will actually re.

Reconnect the employees more well and reconnect.

People with one another.

And you know, in the United States there’s a really excellent initiative that Girl Scout, it started with Girl Scouts some years ago, can earn merit badges for different things in cybersecurity and now with AI as well.

And the Boy Scouts here in the United States also have that.

So you get acknowledgement, you know, patches that you can wear with, with pride because you’ve come to understand some aspect or whatever the curriculum is, you know, leads to it, you know, and, and I, and I think, I think being proud of who you are here, here’s, here’s.

This is a very foundational thing about me, and I’ll say it to you now, to you, Joe, which is thanks for who you are, for what you do and why you do it.

People thrive on that.

They, we need acknowledgement just as people are part of a larger society and things and we are not very quick, especially under stressful conditions to, to offer those things.

So I’m like one of the few guys that probably, you know, gives a dollar tip to a local sub shop person, you know, and like, like they’re look up at me like what, you know, thank you so much or whatever you say.

I liked your shoes, you know, assuming you’re not being a sycophant or anything like that, you know, or, or just this morning I, you know, went to the gym and I was, I was leaving and there was a mother with a young boy who had like sort of this swim outfit on.

I said, I bet you’re a great mother.

And she like, was shocked.

He says, well, you know, I like to think so.

You know.

So here’s another sort of concept that could be incorporated into this thought process, which is something small that’ unexpected is oftentimes more appreciated than something large.

That is.

Yes.

You know, it’s the small.

The small things that accumulate unexpected.

Small, unexpected gifts, you know, can be a simple word or phrase.

You know, again, I said earlier, I’m quite shallow and I want to stay in that lane for a moment, you know, but, but I think that stuff works.

And so maybe like in cybersecurity or artificial intelligence or life, you know, maybe there’s a way to leverage technology.

Like you were telling me earlier that, you know, you created a cool agent to help with note taking or reminders.

Maybe there’s a way to do that, you know, just send out cybersecurity thank yous or things like that that are easy peasy to effectuate.

Absolutely.

Ironically, I suck at tech, so I’ll have to leave that up to you.

But I want to be a partner.

Right?

I mean, I’m saying this in the recording, so.

And absolutely, I’m Forrest Gump, so we could do whatever you want.

I’ll just say, okay, we can change the world.

It can be done.

Or at least my wife, you know,.

I mean, what’s.

The things that you do?

And I mean, I know for me what I do is to keep myself entertained and sometimes even for me is just spending time with my parents because my parents are just absolutely hilarious.

I’m sure it’s nonstop, like joke after.

It’s just like, it’s just joke after joke after joke and it’s so much fun.

Recently I, I had a great time spending spending a week with them and just, it was so I.

That was when I laughed really hard.

It was the moments with my parents.

Yeah, I love it.

Other things I also as I like comedy clubs and comedy shows and you know, surround myself, you know, with, with, with fun entertainment.

You know, I don’t like the sarcasm, sarcastic type of comedian or comedy, but I like the ones that, you know, just make lighthearted of, of everyday things.

So what do you, what’s do you do to keep yourself entertained?

What’s, what’s, what’s, what’s your method of, of staying, staying happy and fun?

Well, you want to see.

I can show you visual if you want to see it.

You want to see it?

I mean, I’ll have to explain.

I’ll have to describe it for the audience, but absolutely.

Oh well.

Oh yeah, I’ll show you.

So look at my shorts.

We’re getting a full display of.

Was it orange shorts you got on today?

It’s an orange bathing suit for God’s sake.

Orange bathing suit.

But you’re probably going ready for a swim after this.

No, I just like wearing orange.

It’s a happy color.

It is happy.

But, but you mentioned about your, your, your, your parents and I can just tell you what happened about an hour ago.

So my 97 year young mom, I take her shopping once a week and she has two things that she loves doing.

One is she goes to something called the Dollar Store here in the States, which is not a dollar by the way anymore.

Which is not.

You’ll be lucky.

You’d be lucky to find anything that’s a dollar in the store.

What was that f word you say?

Friggin.

What was frigate?

Frigate.

And then sugar.

Sugar is the other one.

Sugar is both of those.

But, but here’s the funny part.

She’s hysterical.

Really.

And, and so this morning, you know, she asked if I, I could come over.

It’s a, it’s a bit of a schlep to drive to get there and stuff and I’m working during the day.

We’re going to see her on Thanksgiving and take her to see Wicked.

The, the, the movie that of course I’m sure you’re familiar with just opened up here in the States, so, so that’s fun taking a 97 year old woman to see Wicked.

But this morning she said, oh, you know, can, can you come over?

I said, oh, what did you need?

You know, from the, from the store says, well, last week, you know, you, you bought coconut water that was not on sale.

And tell your honors I just hit myself in the head and, and I go, what do you mean?

He said, well, it was $6 a bottle, a bottle or container and it’s supposed to have been two for one.

So I took a deep breath, I said mom, so you want me to drive all the way down there, take you wheelchair and everything in and out of the car, wheel you in to the return section of the grocery store so that you can get a total of $4 back when it cost me $20 of gas or whatever and you know, and stuff like that.

And I just busted out laughing.

I said, mommy, my bad.

I mean, you know, you raised me wrong.

Really.

I should know what a sale is and I just can offer you no excuse, but I can offer you buy one get one free next time and I’ll take you to Wicked.

Is that fine?

And she goes, she thought about it.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It’ll do.

Pigs from.

From that, that show.

Anyway, so I do, whenever possible, try to see the lighter sides of things.

And my.

I’ve sort of trained myself to have like, the very first filter of.

Of sensory input, whether it be something I see or hear or feel or taste into something funny.

And that’s like a muscle, you know, I don’t know the science behind it, but I bet the more you use a sense of humor, the stronger it gets.

And so that’s like my first filter.

And it is off putting to some people, you know, because, well, I mean, I can.

I. I can lose credibility.

So, like, I’ve done all kinds of crazy stuff in.

I present at a conference or something, you know, serious thing, whatever, you know, that’s why at the beginning of this conversation, I asked, you know, it was.

It was really a stupid thing to say.

Yeah, I mean, like, okay, one being fun, ten being, you know, terrifying.

And I can.

I can sort of go depending on stories.

I can make people cry, but I can make them cry from laughter or I can make them cry for, holy cow, from shock.

Look at, look at, look at what this guy went through, you know, so that’s what I do.

Those are some filters that I use.

Better than the alternative.

I think we.

I think it’s important that we all have, you know, and I think for the, for the audience that, you know, listening to what myself and Gary’s talking about is that it’s a skill that, you know, you have to learn over time, is that when things happen that you have that immediate emotional reaction, and sometimes it’s important to just take a pause and breathe.

And just.

Whether it being 30 seconds and just consuming and thinking about, like, you know, what’s the positive outcome of all of these things?

And it’s.

It’s a.

It’s even for me in my job, you know, I’ve.

I’ve been in all of customer support, I’ve been into response.

I’ve been in security research.

And in every single moment when you get in a situation where you’re like, you read, it brings out, you know, the grumpiness, as you said earlier, is that that moment is just take, take, take the pause, take 30 seconds in order to breathe and just really think about is.

Is, you know, what’s the positive here?

What, you know, are.

Are, you know, that it’s maybe not as bad as what you initially kind of your initial rebound.

It’s never as bad.

There is science behind this.

I, I don’t.

Again, I know this particulars.

I essentially there were two findings from this massive sociological study, One of which says things are never as bad as you think they’re going to be and they’re never as good as you think they’re going to be either.

So from a philosophical standpoint, I, you know, I, I would say, you know, work on being as, as, as level as, as you can.

You know, given life, Life happens.

The other thing that, that you asked me about specifically, one of the things that I do for sure is I really am self effacing, you know, and, and, and like calling myself the Forrest Gump of cyber security.

I mean, you know, I’ve interviewed people from everything from basic cyber hygiene to post quantum cryptography.

So I have picked up a few things, you know, over time.

You know, I don’t just do superhero comics.

I did some things with the National Security Commission on artificial intelligence.

And you know, I’m an advisor to, you know, AI startup right now that is working to add a layer of truth as a, you know, to replace foundational models and stuff like that.

However, I really just first, you know, go to the lighter side of things and that’s habit, you know, and I was not always that way.

I told you I was in a very dark place for a long time.

Anybody would have been.

And one day I just said, okay, this sucked, you know, I’m going to try something else.

And over time.

It’s taken me 10 years to be this funny.

Okay?

I mean, and so talk about the standard.

It’s taken me 10 years.

The rest of your audience is screwed.

Oh, it always reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where you have to do the opposite of everything you’ve normally done.

You do complete opposite.

So George does the opposite of everything you would normally do from the start to finish was, is always, always fun.

You see the kind of, the outcomes of it, which is always interesting.

It’s not a bad idea actually, you know, to try to change, you know, habits.

And I myself, I’ve been on a big health kit since this morning.

You missed that one.

You think the health is a joke?

I was on the.

I’ll, I’ll do it again.

I, I know you’re a little slow.

Okay, all right.

I was, I, I started, I was.

I’m on a big health kick.

And then you wait, you wait.

Two beasts.

I started this morning.

Okay, now I get it.

There you go.

Well, it wasn’t that funny in the.

First place, I haven’t had my coffee today, which is the only one I need to kickstart my engine.

Although I have to say, I do have an actual data sort of joke.

Only one.

Okay.

Want to hear it?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yes.

We’re, we’re good for jokes here.

What do you tell your computer when it did a good job?

That a boy.

That’s great.

I do have a dad joke to kind of add here is, you know, why did the computer go to third?

Wait, why did you call it.

Why did you call my joke dad joke?

No, no, I didn’t call it a dad joke.

Well, okay,.

Yeah, my son.

I’m a dad, so my son’s always telling me dad jokes here.

So he was like, why did the computer go to therapy?

Why?

Because had too many bad bites and couldn’t handle the fishing.

Oh, that’s good.

All right, we’re going to go down that rabbit hole.

Okay, this is a relevant1.

About one month ago, if you think of Halloween, what is Halloween’s favorite type of wood?

Not sure.

What?

Bamboo.

That is a good one.

What is Halloween’s favorite type of wood?

Hollywood.

That’s all I got.

Right?

There you go.

So, Gary, if the audience does have any questions and they do want to follow up later, what’s the.

If your audience does not have any questions about what they’re hearing, they’re not paying attention.

They will do.

What’s the best way for them to connect with you, to reach out?

Is there a site, social media?

What’s the best way for the audience that they do have questions to follow up with you on?

Yeah, I just.

On LinkedIn, Gary Verman.

And you’ll see I’m a guy in a mask and a superhero cape, so sort of, sort of hard to miss.

And my website is cyberheroes comics.com and we put up different things, you know, like some of our comics and stuff like that, and some interviews, things like that.

Fantastic.

And I’ll make sure that all of those links are in the show notes, so it’s much easier for the audience to get to and find.

So, Gary, it’s been awesome having you on.

I mean, for me, you know, this is the highlight of my week many times is to.

To really get to talk to fun, amazing people who are making the world a safer place.

And, and thank you for the work that you’re doing.

In order to make it fun and to make it lighthearted and to.

To really take sometimes the serious world that we live in and to moment where we step back and we say, what is the positive?

What is, what is the, is the advantages and what’s the outcomes that we’re doing that is making the world a safer place.

So thank you for everything you do.

You’re welcome.

My question to you is very straightforward.

Did you have fun?

I did have fun, absolutely.

Then mission accomplished.

Mission accomplished.

I think hope for the audience, hopefully this is kind of wake up call for you as well, is that, you know, we do live in a world where sometimes the seriousness takes over and hopefully you find this episode, you know, to, to really allow you to re.

Engage and to think about and take that pause and think about what is the positive, what is the fun thing, what is what, what does make you happy.

And really trying to make that the dominant part of your day.

And really it will, it will change your life, it will change your mood, it will change your health, it’ll, it’ll revitalize you.

Hopefully this is something that will make the rest of your week and the rest of the.

But your life make a difference.

At least that’s my hope.

My hope is to entertain you and hopefully make the world a safer place while doing so.

So for everyone, this is a security by default podcast.

I’m the host of the show, Joe Carson.

Every two weeks we bring new episodes, new ideas, creativity, fun, you know, make the world safer place.

At the same time.

Take care everyone.

Stay safe until the next time.

Thank you.