Unspoken Security Ep 24: The Journey from Victim to Advocate

Unbeknownst to me and my wife, they had actually set up a shadow company using a different name, but using all of our intellectual property. And I found out about that just because one of our clients sent a PowerPoint deck with a capabilities presentation. It didn't have our name on it. And it had their name on it. We later learned there was an entire social engineering campaign. Around destroying us so they could steal our clients and our business. And so, for example, they went to our landlord and said that we were going to be declaring bankruptcy, you know, which was not true.

Welcome to Unspoken Security, the raw and gritty podcast for security professionals who are looking to understand the most important issues related to making the world a safer place. Including intelligence-driven security, risks and threats in the digital and physical world, and discussions related to corporate culture, leadership, and how world events impact all of us on and off our keyboards. In each episode, host AJ Nash engages with a range of industry experts to dissect current trends, share practical insights, and address the blunt truths surrounding all aspects of the security industry. Hello and welcome to another episode of Unspoken Security. I'm your host, AJ Nash. I spent 19 years in the intelligence community, mostly at NSA. I've been building maturing intelligence programs in the private sector for about 8 years. I'm passionate about intelligence, security, public speaking, mentoring, and teaching. And I also have a master's degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University. Go Zags! And I continue to be deeply committed to servant leadership as a result. This podcast brings all of those elements together with some incredible guests to have authentic, unfiltered conversations on a wide range of challenging topics. It's not gonna be your topical— I'm sorry, it's not gonna be your typical polished podcast. Perfect example, I don't do a lot of editing. My dog might make an appearance. She won't today, I don't think, cuz she's not around, but it happens. People argue and debate. We might even swear here. I'm notorious for that, and that's all okay. Think of this as a pot— the podcast really is more like a conversation that you'd overhear at a bar or after a long day at one of the larger cybersecurity conferences. These are the conversations we usually have when nobody's listening. Today I'm joined by my good friend Gary Berman. Gary is CEO of Cyberman Security and refers to himself as the Forrest Gump of cybersecurity, which I think is fantastic. He's got a 30-year career focused on marketing communications and consumer research. Until recently, uh, he knew very little about technology and even less about cybersecurity, but now knows everything about the devastating effects of losing a company to a persistent series of insider attacks. Gary pivoted from victim to advocate to help others avoid the life-altering consequences of hacking. His educational vehicle is a superhero comic series and animated platform called The Cyber Hero Adventures: Defenders of the Digital Universe. And he's also the host of The Cyber Hero Adventures show, where he shines the light on the true cybersecurity heroes who toil in anonymity to keep all of us safe online. And I'm hoping many people in the audience are going to connect with that. I know a lot of folks are having these discussions right now. Gary began his career as a founder and CEO of Market Segment Research, a leading firm specializing in the demassification of American marketing. His clients have included AT&T, Best Buy, Ford, General Motors, a lot of the big ones, right? And his research on multicultural markets led him to an appointment on President Clinton's Commission on Race. He's married to Valerie and is dad to Sarah and Ilana. Gary, is there anything more you want to add? Excuse me. Anything I left out of your bio or anything else you want to highlight there?

No, thank you so much. First of all, for having me and thanks to you, AJ, for your service at the NSA and throughout your career. And, and I, maybe this is a bit of a mutual admiration society. It's just that, you know, part of my mission is to shine the light on the unsung cyber heroes who toil in anonymity to to keep us safe at, you know, work, at home, at school. So thanks to you.

Yeah, no, and, and thank you for that. So as we get into the topic today, like, you know, we mentioned, you know, victim to advocate was in here and that's actually the, the topic today. The topic is the journey from victim to advocate, right? So listen, the world's a dangerous place. We all know that. I think, you know, every adult, I think even most children do. It's dangerous in the physical world. It's dangerous in cyberspace. Even for people who are, you know, educated, aware, smart folks, you know, becoming a victim of criminals is not, does not mean you're any, you're not any of those things. It just means it happened. Like the criminals are also aware and smart and working very hard to, to do bad things to us. So, you know, you have this comic book series. And so I'm a bit of a comic book fan. I'm not an expert. So anybody out there who wants to quiz me on details of comic books, you're gonna find very quickly when I say I'm a fan, it probably would offend you. I'm not that deep into it, but I liked comic book movies. I grew up on some comic books and what I remember about comic books is that every hero has an origin story. So does every villain, I guess. But every character of main— every character of significance has this origin story. You know, they were somebody and then they weren't. You know, Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider. You know, Batman's parents were murdered when he was a child. You know, there's something that, that made them change, right? That, that the catalyst that sent them on a different path. So you have an interesting story as well. I, I don't think there's any radioactive spiders involved, at least I haven't heard of them, but I really want to dig in a little bit to your origin story. You talked about going from victim to advocate, you know, and I think this is a really, really impactful story. So can we talk a bit about your origin story and what motivates you and what you're passionate about now?

Yeah, thanks for that. That great question. You know, this whole notion of origin stories I learned is really in large part based on a well-regarded mythologist, Joseph Campbell, who's passed away. But, you know, he was considered by many to be one of the generators of the hero's journey. And there's been a lot of science about that. And most stories, at least according to Joseph Campbell, have exactly what you described. And there are actually a number of steps that can kind of be codified through the hero's journey. And, you know, a hero could be anything, you know, it could be because you're a good father, or you love your dog, or, you know, fill in the blank. It's the nature of storytelling. And so for me, just the fact that I am telling you that I learned this is part of why I refer to myself as the Forrest Gump of cybersecurity, you know, because everyone knows that movie and Forrest just shows up in these historic and amazing situations and has no idea of why or how he got there. Well, you're looking at him. I mean, really, and we'll unpack some of the reasons why I say this, some examples of why I say that during our conversation. But to make a very complicated story short, as you mentioned, my wife and I had started a marketing company, data analytics, things like that, was very successful. We, after 10 years, were able to sell 49% of it to, at the time, I think the largest or the second largest marketing company in the whole world called the WPP Group based out of London. And they owned about 90, you know, companies, giant. And we were the smallest. We were just like a little rounding error, but still, you know, we're incredibly grateful when these big companies didn't want to take on an assignment, you know, for like $200,000. We said, yes, please. You know, and it was great. It was really working. And until one day we started. Realizing that, you know, sales were sort of leveling off. You've been on a hockey stick growth curve. We didn't really have any understanding as to why, because, you know, we had a stellar reputation, had done work. You mentioned national security for the White House and other things like that. And to, you know, sort of get to the bottom line, unbeknownst to us at the time, A group of insiders, trusted insiders, basically spoofed my identity and our company's identity without anyone knowing it. So at the time we had no idea. One day I got a call. Remember those Motorola phones, the big bricks with the—

Sure. I had one of those actually. I thought I was so cool with that giant brick phone. It was good for about, you know, an hour maybe. And it costs like $12 a minute to use or some garbage, but yeah, I remember those.

Well, that's the point. So because it was so expensive at the time, I didn't I didn't give the number out to, you know, many people at all. Only my, my better half and my joint venture partners. So lo and behold, my phone rings one day and, you know, I just knew that it was important for the reasons I'm saying. And, you know, one of the CEO of one of our sister companies that we're doing great with, she, what is your policy on swearing? I don't know.

Swear all you want. This is an adult program. Swear all you want. Yeah. I think the audience is aware. I say all sorts of things, so you Direct quote or swear, however you feel.

Well, since there might be, you know, children, I'll just use the term. She said, WTF is going on with your company? And I'm going like, what do you mean? Uh-oh. You know, that's what I said. And she said, I just got a call from one of your people. I now know who it was, but at the time had no clue. And the partner said to me, I was told that she had found religion and that she could no longer live with her conscience. Oh no. Because there was rampant fraud in the call center aspect of our business, which by the way, this insider ran. And there, and so I went, oh, you're no way. Anyways. And she was steaming mad because we were friends. It was going great. They wanted me to take over one of their divisions. And things like that. And right then this happened. So I said, let me get back to you by end of day. I called an all-hands meeting, including the criminals, but at the time I didn't know that.

Didn't know they were the criminals, right?

No. And so we completely revalidated the work without even asking. I refunded $185,000 to the client. It was a big automotive company. Yep. What year was this? Uh, this was along, uh, would've been like 2000, 2001.

Okay. I was just thinking for context. I mean, $180 grand's a lot every day of the week, every year, but even more so if you're talking about, you know, 20+ years ago now.

That's right. And so, uh, but this is relevant still and I'll explain why. So I took a deep breath, you know, did the responsible things that I just mentioned and, and other things just to make the client whole and to kind of get the relationship on the right track. And then guess what happened?

They still left you as a client and bad-mouthed you?

No, I got a second call from a different client.

Oh, oh, sure.

Verbatim, the exact same thing. And I said, you're kidding. Now these are significant companies.

Targeting—

this was a global consulting company, and I was doing all the due diligence for their acquisitions. So the information I had was valuable. Right. You know, to individual companies or even not to sound arrogant, but maybe even to the country a tiny bit and to national security a tiny bit. And so I went the same exercise and then a third client called and I said, WTF exponentially. And I said, this is just nuts. Anyways. To make a very long and difficult era a little bit short, I literally caught one of the culprits red-handed when I walked into his office and he happened to be downloading all this client data onto an external hard drive. And he had no authorization to be there. There was like zero rationale. I said, what are you doing? And he, I'll never forget, he just gave this like maniacal smile. And he laughed and he took his finger and he pointed it like right at my nose within about 3 inches. And he said, you have no idea what stalking is. Oh my God.

Wow.

And I went, you need to leave now. Anyways, we got him out of the building and I'll pause. Because there's a lot more to why I just said that to see what you think so far.

Well, I mean, it's fascinating. Like I, and you don't have to pause even. We'll keep going because I think it's fascinating. So, you know, we're in 2001, you're running a successful business and it turns out that there are people in your company that are undermining you and damaging your business and your reputation with some of your biggest clients. And this is, listen, I'm not an insider threat expert. I work with some folks in insider threat. I've had some on the show and we'll have more. I know the monitoring has improved a lot since 2001, certainly, I know some of it at least existed, but again, some companies didn't have it and some still don't have great monitoring of insider threats because it's just, it's not in the budget or whatever it might be. But what was, did you figure out like, what was the motivation? Like, why were these people doing this? What were they getting from this? You know, were they stealing the refunds? Like, what was coming from this? Like, why was this happening?

Yeah. So the first motivation was financial. Unbeknownst to me and my wife, they had actually set up a shadow company. Using a different name, but using all of our intellectual property. And I found out about that just because one of our clients sent a PowerPoint deck with a capabilities presentation. It didn't have our name on it and it had their name on it. We later learned there was an entire social engineering campaign around destroying us so they could steal our clients and our business. And so, for example, they went to our landlord and said that we were going to be declaring bankruptcy, you know, which was not true at all. Yeah. And I mentioned the word stalking, so that manifests in terms of cyberstalking and a whole bunch of techniques that are now very well understood. But at the time, you know, we weren't really thinking about cybersecurity, wasn't part of the, country's zeitgeist, so to speak, or certainly mine, you know, and one of the things I really own up to is I was like Bambi, you know, like, like really just, or, you know, sitting duck and hugging everyone and giving them raises and cars while they work for me. And they were doing this right under my nose. And so it went on for a long time, like maybe 5 years I struggled. I ended up losing everything, had to sell my house. And it wasn't just me in aggregate. I had to lay off about 100 people, you know, that kind of thing. And it destroyed my life.

But greed was the motive. It sounds like then from their standpoint, they just want to steal it, right?

First of three motivations.

Okay. Okay.

Kind of fast forwarding to what I'll call modern times, which for me is about 8 or 9 years ago. So during the intervening period of time, I worked on things like veterans causes and my wife and I started a tutoring program for children and things like that. So fast forward to 8 or 9 years ago, literally just to put food on the table because, you know, I paid back money that I was not responsible for just to keep my name and things like that. So I asked my wife if what she thought about me sort of reentering the ecosystem that I had left 10 or so years prior. Wow. So I took a deep breath and, you know, I put out a few, you know, calls or emails, you know, like less than 5. And I was really humbled to be invited to be a keynote speaker at a pretty big conference.

You can name it if you want or not, but I'm just so you know, you're welcome to name anything you want.

Yeah. I mean, it was a big conference and so it went very well and people came up to me, hey Gary, are you still doing these, you know, big reports or, you know, are you still doing this and that? Can I get a proposal, you know, from you? Cause I had a great reputation really, you know, we worked very hard to earn the respect of a very important community of people. Anyways, so I had this big stack of business cards, you know, all these people came up to me and I'm I'm thinking, yeah, you know, thank you, God. You know, Phoenix rising from the ashes, you know, easy peasy. You know, we're back. And so, you know, I had a great night's sleep, got up really early because I'm pumped up, you know, like at 4 in the morning. And I decided to go to LinkedIn, which is not something that I really had occasion to use, but I did. And the day following my speech, not one, but two of the criminals checked my LinkedIn profile on the same day.

So, and this is 9 years later, you're saying 10 years later?

That's right.

So you're talking 2011, 2012, something like that. But they stayed persistent. They still kept track of you long after they had destroyed you and you'd moved on to other things.

You don't know the half of it.

Oh my God.

So, Anyways, they checked my LinkedIn profile and I documented this stuff because I thought it would be an interesting story, you know, and that no one would believe, including your listeners. If I unpack a little bit more, I'm going to be judicious about sort of how far we can go in a forum like this. But suffice it to say that, you know, I dealt with the FBI, the Secret Service, and other things. Anyways, so. The day after my speech, I would, like I said, I was all excited and guess what happened?

Hmm.

Boom, boom. The attacks started again. Oh my God. And at the time, you know, I didn't know that I could see some effects of things just as a regular consumer, just a person using a laptop or a phone or GPS or, you know, other things, other devices, just so, you know, I can see it and say, well, that's weird. Why is my screen wobbly? You know, and, and, you know, I'll just tell you one of hundreds of incidences that I can enumerate, but wobbly screen came to mind, which is now everyone knows that you can track a car either by an Apple AirPlay or something more sophisticated. Or GPS, you know, on your car or whatever. But at the time I had no idea. And so my GPS screen in my car was wobbly. So I said, oh, okay, I'm just going to go to the car dealer and fix it. Like I wasn't hypervigilant or anything yet.

Sure.

You know, I am now, but at the time I wasn't. And so I go to, you know, local General Motors dealer or whatever. And I said, oh, my screen is wobbly on my GPS. Can you? You know, fix it. So I'm in the waiting room. The guy that came out was the boss's boss of the guy that took, you know, that I met, the service guy. And he takes his finger and he waves me over like this. And I go like, me? He goes, yeah, I was in the waiting room. And he was white like a ghost. I mean, really, it was surreal. And so he said, here, follow me. I went, okay. So we go into the service bay, you know, with all the cars, noisy, you know, car repair place. And I saw that my car was up, but now it was down on the ground on a, you know, ram. And he says, go around to the passenger side. I said, me? I thought I was just going to drive my car home or get it. And so I go into the passenger side, I go in, and then he gets in the driver's side. And he says this out loud to no one. He goes, ma'am, I have the owner of the vehicle with me now. And I'm going, oh great. I'm having all this crazy shit happen. And now I got a guy who's talking to no one, you know, what could possibly go wrong? And it turns out it was OnStar, the operator from OnStar. If those are not familiar, that's a General Motors customer service thing. And he, she said, How many vehicles do you own? And I said, one. He said, well, there are 36 cars attached to your account and they can hear every word you say in your car. Wow.

Wow.

That's what I said. I said, what do you mean 36 cars? 36 vehicles? This is horrible. Do you own a Yukon, whatever? I go, no. Do you own a GMC, whatever? I go, no. You know, I just had one, one car and I knew no one would believe me. You know, that's a recurring trope.

It's unbelievable.

Just like Forrest Gump. I mean, you know, he just shows up like, I don't know, I played ping pong or I met another president, whatever. Right. Right. I'm telling you, that's me. Or it was. Anyways, so I said, would you be kind enough to put this in writing?

Sure.

Yeah. Because I might use this in some way. At the time, I knew nothing about what I'm telling you or what I'm about to tell you. I was completely naive and I didn't know who— I mean, I had an idea who the insiders were, but that's different than proving it in court, I have learned. And so they wrote it, and I have a document with— from the letterhead of the car dealer that this happened. And that's when my antenna started going up and I started realizing all these other what became known as attack vectors that seemed to happen, but not forensics, you know, just experiential things. And, you know, and I had— I created a slide deck just to hold some of my images, not with the intention of showing them to anyone.

Yeah, I've done that for sure.

I just thought, you know, it was an interesting story. You know, and I don't know, I didn't know what I was going to do with it. So anyways, to go forward a little bit, there were actually 19 attack vectors, both through Spider and, excuse me, through Cyber rather. And also, um, some things in real life that happened.

Um, this is horrifying.

I'll stop there.

Well, I listen.

So stay tuned for more. No, here's the commercial break. I mean, there's people like, no, don't stop. I want to No more.

So this is 10 years now. I mean, you've had insiders who you employed who have destroyed your business, destroyed your life financially speaking. Like they stole your accounts, they destroyed your reputation, they bankrupted you. You rebuilt, started over, had a whole different career, decided to come back into the, into this industry, do one keynote address, and they're still right there 10 years later apparently. And they're everywhere from what you're saying. Like they're, you know, you said 17 vectors. So, you know, I have to assume like email and phones and, you know, your cars are obviously, you know, compromised and, and I'm sure there's others you're gonna mention. So, you know, at this point, like, I mean, you've, you've got law enforcement involved. How, I mean, I tried. How did you, how did you feel? But I mean, the answer's gonna be, you know, pretty obvious, but law enforcement, how did you feel is one of the questions. And the other one is, I know we talked about motives. Financial was one. I know you said there's a couple more. I do want to get into like, what did you learn about the motives? Like somebody was this persistent for this long. It wasn't just about money. So, you know, how are you feeling at this point and what are you learning as you go through on this with, you know, whoever these people are?

Well, there's a lot that I can fill you in now, maybe a tiny bit, but to answer your question about what have I learned, you know, cybersecurity has this very, you know, common term, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, FUD. And I was in that headspace for a long time and I decided to pivot from FUD to fun, just from a purely emotional and psychological, You know, survival, you know, sort of technique for me, you know, and so many other cyber-related things happened. I'll just skip for a moment. And then I want to go back to the other motivations to answer your question more thoroughly. So I knew I had to learn about cybersecurity and like, where do you start? I was 57 years of age at the time. So I bought a book called Cybersecurity for Dummies. You ever seen those yellow books, like with the black stripe on them? Yeah, absolutely. I'm very self-aware. So I got this book and page 1, by only page 10, AJ Nash, I was lost. So rather than quitting, I looked on the back. It was put out by Palo Alto Networks, this book. And I found the CISO of Palo Alto Networks at the time, great guy. And I got him on the phone. And by the way, the only reason I got him on the phone is one of my redeeming qualities, if I have one, is I'm pretty relentless. So of course, my name is Gary and I called this guy 17 times. And finally he answered the phone. He goes, hey, John, how's it going? You picked up the wrong friggin line. That's the only reason I got him. And I went, oh yeah, this is Gary Berman. He goes, oh shit. You know, and, but we became friends and I told him that story that I was lost after 10 pages and he started laughing. So I'm like a funny guy, you know, having lost Everything. And I asked him, I asked, why you're laughing so hard? And he essentially replied, well, it's not really for beginners. And why do you call it Cybersecurity for Dummies? Right. You know, and that's when I realized there had to be a different, perhaps better way to distill the complexity of cybersecurity into something people could get their heads around. And you, as you can see from my background here, I thought, you know, superhero comics, because I happened to see Spider-Man. You mentioned Peter Parker and the light bulb went off. However, there were some problems with that. Number one is I had no idea about the topic or what I was talking about. I knew no stories other than my own.

Right.

And I didn't know anyone to talk to about it. Um, but other than that, I guess I was perfect. So, you know, I went on LinkedIn and I did a search by CSO and I got, you know, all these people and invited one at a time. To connect with me, to send me real life stories of cybercrime, answering the questions, you know, what happened? What were the consequences? What were the lessons learned for possible inclusion into, you know, comic or something? And last time I checked, I have 23,000, 24,000 connections on LinkedIn with the most important people in the world. They're all high-level people like you.

Well, hold on a second. You have one not very important person because I'm in that network and I appreciate the compliment, but I am not in that category. So I appreciate that I've snuck in somehow.

Copy that. See, I just said copy that. Like, why would I say those words? You understand?

Very military or law enforcement thought process. Or both.

Yeah. And anyway, so it became a thing. I started doing these comics. I went to 54 cybersecurity conferences and I'll show you the source of my superpower.

Gotta be the best collection. Yep. We've all got one of these, right? These are the best. I love a good badge collection. Conferences, they're good though. I love the good badge collection. So this, I mean, you're getting into the next question, which is great, because my next question was why comic books, right? We've talked about the origin story, and I know we'll get more in there, but now you're starting to explain the why comic books. I personally, for anybody who hasn't, I will say it's humbling when you read a book that's for dummies and you realize you're too dumb. And I've been there, and I don't mean you, I mean me. When you realize you're too dumb for the book for dummies, you're like, wow, is there a book for imbeciles? Like, what's next? So it's interesting that you saw this, and from what I'm hearing, and we'll get back to your story on it, as a, you know, an opportunity, right? Hey, there's a better way to communicate. There's a different way to communicate because a lot of these books that say they're for dummies will do nothing but make you feel dumber. I've had it happen. So this is interesting. So you saw comic books as a means, right? So yeah, keep going with that, please.

That's right. But it had, and they have substantive information in them. So, you know, it was a very interesting series of experiences attempting to learn about storytelling and, you know, what, how to ideally strike a balance between the substance of what you're saying, which is, this is not for children. These were for the inner child of adults, to be more precise, and style of how you go about it. So it's like this balance of style and substance, you know, which is, I've learned, not easy to do. Well, and anyway, so it became a thing. I started going to conferences. I occasionally wear a costume, a cyber hero costume. My wife thinks I'm batshit, but that's a whole different story.

Certainly a possibility, by the way, these are not mutually exclusive.

I'll go with that.

You're crazy in a good way though.

So just call me Forrest. There you go. And so it became a thing. So I would autograph comics at DEF CON. I like one year I autographed like over 3,000 copies of the comic. Yeah. It turns out people in cybersecurity technology like Marvel. They like, oh yeah, see, they like comics, video games and all that stuff. It was not intentional. And then after going to a number of conferences, I became a reporter for cybersecurity magazine. So the whole ecosystem, you know, kind of turned towards me because they wanted me to write about whatever they were working on or whatever their solutions are and things like that. And I've never been a vendor, you know, I essentially donate just about everything. I've had a few sponsors for our comics, but I've never really tried to make money, which is, turns out to be a really good strategy to earn trust in a zero trust ecosystem.

Oh, nice.

So now I can pick up the phone or whatever and talk to, you you know, highest level people in government and big companies.

Well, they know you're not going to pitch them, right? They don't cringe. Exactly. You don't duck the phone call. Everybody's caller ID, right? Everybody knows somebody. They're like, ugh, I can't talk to this person. And they don't have to worry about that with you because you're there to try to provide a service or counsel or something like that. I happen to agree with this. I mean, there's money that tends to be made from this eventually, but it isn't so overt and pushy. It does take a lot of faith that what you're providing is valuable and that people will see value in it and there's a way to generate some revenue later because obviously I mean, unless I'm mistaken, your mortgage company is probably like mine. They don't take smiles. They actually like cash. So we all have some bills to pay, but I think it's great that, you know, people know, hey, if Gary calls, I should pick up the phone and talk. It's probably going to be, you know, useful and valuable. And it's not just going to be some hard pitch to give me money, right?

Yeah. It's taken me 9 years to earn that. Um, and the most common question I always get is, how do you make money? Or said a different way, are you non-for-profit? I go, I'm for-profit. I just don't make any profit. So, but it is cathartic, which is why I did it, you know, from the beginning. And so only now, you know, in the last couple of weeks after all this time. Oh, by the way, I want to fill in one other quick thing you mentioned about the show. I've interviewed over 300 thought leaders on the most important things in the world, you know, geopolitics, you know, the role of quantum cryptography. Which I failed algebra, by the way, but don't tell anyone.

Well, I think you just told everyone that.

Oh, well. And, you know, the role of AI and authors and luminaries and just scientists and super smart people about all this crazy.

And for those who are, who miss, those who missed the opening, this is the Cyber Hero Adventurers show you're talking about. This is your show.

Yeah.

So yeah, this is worth checking out, you know, so anyway, I just make sure people know as you're saying this, the context, oh, I should go look at that.

So yeah, I just put it on LinkedIn. I don't even put it on YouTube or anything. I, you know, I've never. Tried to do anything with it. It was really more, you know, catharsis. And I guess maybe that's why I have, you know, like these 24,000 followers and stuff like that.

Yeah, absolutely.

But it's very hard to do what you do at the level that you do it. And I congratulate you, you know, for it. Yeah. I think people may not understand it. So even for me, you know, so Like I have 3 sort of shows that I have to edit and, you know, I'm just like doing this all myself and, you know, it's a slog, but hopefully worthwhile. So let me go back to the reasons, like why did the attackers do this? And for such a duration. So the first one was money. That's easy to understand. So as I, you know, tried to work with various law enforcement agencies over a long period of time. You know, I had, for example, two FBI agents looking over my shoulder at my laptop. And right when they were there, this giant cursor starts moving around my screen with my hands. And I go like this, look, do you see that? You got it? Yeah, we got it. We got it. They saw it with their own eyes.

Sure.

But I wasn't able to prove economic damages that rise to the level of their, you know, decision-making, although they did present it to the district attorney, but it time they didn't take the case, you know, and it's not for lack of trying, but I love law enforcement, by the way, and I love the cyber people in law enforcement. I've done many shows shining the light on what they do and why they do it. I think they're real unsung cyber heroes. So anyways, so the first motivation was money. The second one was this— I'll pull back the curtain a tiny bit by telling you that You know, I'm going to use the word apparently. Apparently there's some connections to a criminal organization that kind of represents itself as a religious cult.

Okay. Yep. Yep. For those who put those together, I got it.

Say anything else about that except, you know, my impression and what I've learned is I am not the only one this has happened to. Add-on, and they're actually written policies that talk about how to deal with, you know, sort of enemies of this organization, which, okay, I was designated one, I think, you know, all those years ago, because inadvertently we hired someone who, I'll just put allegedly, or, you know, was a member of this organization and we didn't know. And so that's part of the approach that apparently, this organization uses, you know, widespread. And the really kind of third motivation around that is they happen to be, I have learned, really fixated on statistics. Um, and I owned a market research company that generated statistics. So, and there's one last sort of nexus. These are my hypotheses. And there's one of the Nexus, which is this whole idea of superheroes and comics, and it's found in, in their legacies and stuff. I mean, it's really just not believable, you know, and I'm, I didn't believe it for the longest time. However, eventually something looks like a duck and walks like a duck and squawks like a duck. It's probably a duck. And so. That's the contours of that may ans— help answer some of the motivations.

You got greed and you got religious zealotry. I'll go with that. And I know why you're not naming the group. I think most people can probably figure out who we're talking about, but I also won't name them for respect cuz you haven't. If you choose to, I would, but I'm not gonna put something in that obviously you're intentionally avoiding saying. But I think if anybody—

well, they're very litigious.

Exactly. Yeah. If anybody wants to, you know, put the dots and connect the dots, they can. If they can't, feel free to reach out to me.

I'd rather don't just treat this as a You know, a random thoughts of a cluttered mind, right?

Hey, don't steal that. We had this discussion. I think I'm gonna use that for something. Like, no, it's, I guess you can't steal it.

You can go ahead.

I mean, but I may steal that for something else. All right. So you got financial motivations, you got religious zealotry. Was there a third motivation tied to this too?

Or was it just, it was just, well, they were, it was statistics and then also the, the, I do superhero comics and it's a thing. Okay.

All right, cool. Well, that explains it.

I mean, it's, well, there's actually, there's another. Forgive the interruption, but there's another thing, and this is totally Forrest Gump, but, you know, I was, I think, socially engineered on how my journey in cybersecurity has happened and who, why, and who. That's all I can sort of say about that, but it's why I'm so interested in cybersecurity specifically and why I've stayed with it for the duration that I have because This idea of shining the light.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, Justice Brandeis, I think, uh, to paraphrase, he said sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Yes. Yes.

I mean, he said something much more elaborate than that, but you know, I don't know. I, I think it's, uh, sort of cool shining the light, you know, without identifying and that kind of thing.

Yeah, no, that makes sense.

This is the first time I've ever spoken publicly about this.

Oh wow. Well, I appreciate it. I'm honored that this is a place you felt comfortable enough to do that. Good news is I have like 9 listeners, so nobody's gonna know any more than they knew before. At least.

But it's quality, not quantity. You have to—

that's exactly right.

Think about your metrics.

And it all, it also makes sense cuz I was, you know, in my own head as we were going through this, I'm like, all right, financial motivation, I get criminals do that all the time, but why would somebody stick with it, you know, 10 years later? And the persistence, and it's the zealotry then that makes sense. That, that makes people become fixated whenever that whatever that belief system is, and I'm not interested in judging other people's belief systems, at least not today, but whether it's politics, whether it's religion, it's gotta be something so deeply ingrained that they feel a compulsion to continue. So it's a mixture. It's not, you know, the financial stuff, it's unlikely somebody would continue to keep tabs on somebody for a decade and then try to ruin them a second go around over money. They probably would've moved on. But this other piece, this fixation, which is—

Well, it's actually codified.

Hmm. Okay. Oh, even worse. So it's actually part of their requirements, sort of like, to use a different example, if you had an organization where it was built into their rules, right? Their laws, their rules, that they must go out and convert, let's say. We'll use that example. That's right. And so you have people that, that will then, I mean, they're not doing it even by choice, so to speak. They're part of a religion. They're part of a group. They're part of an organization and they deeply believe in it and it is compelled. They're compelled then, like this is part of the part and parcel of being in that organization. So knowing that it's codified into the rule system, yeah, that means they're going to be very persistent, unfortunately. And as you said, they're also—

well, there's a simple reason for that to me. I mean, simple, that's not the correct adjective, but it's easy to understand why it works.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, bullying is a successful tactic if you don't care about morals or ethics and you have a significant advantage over your targets. Bullying's pretty successful. It will make people change their behavior or go into hiding or whatever, bullying and stalking. And I mean, horrible things are successful tactics if left unchecked. I mean, they just are.

So, yeah. So what, what tools does a victim have in this kind of setting? And there are many public court cases and things like that documenting this, nothing to do with me. And so I do something that I just sort of call it mirroring. I mean, actually that is a Communication technique, but, you know, so if I see, if I, the first thing I do is like naming it, you know, so for me, I just referred to them as goofballs because it's just less scary, you know, and so I created characters, I anthropomorphized my characters that essentially are, you know, depending on how you look at them or think about them. Can be real people. So I have, you know, Sonny the Social Engineer. Each one has its own origin story. And, you know, Ivan the Identity Thief, or Vernon the Virus, or Boris the Bug, or Phoebe the Fisher, you know. So I, I came up with these anthropomorphized characters. Like, you see a couple.

Yeah, I see behind you. Vernon's back there.

Yeah, I came up with 16 characters, 8 were villains, 8 were heroes, and some amazing stories about the heroes. These are based on real people, but they, but we don't draw them so they look like themselves unless they want it.

Yeah.

Okay. I've had some who want to be depicted just so they can show their families what they do at work, you know, but many people I deal with are in clandestine sorts of things. Cybersecurity, whatever. And so, huh.

What, I mean, what a cool idea. You took a terrible circumstance, it's something, you know, a terrible event, survived it, and then actually were able to turn it into something positive because you found another opportunity, right? The whole, you know, For Dummies book series not really working for dummies like me at least, and said, hey, you know, the ability to do that. I mean, I gotta be honest, the resilience, the courage. You know, to come back into the industry and the creativity combining with the creativity. Listen, I, I've seen, you know, some of this and it's, it's good, you know, and it's beyond like, you know, it's not amateurish. You know, if, if I tomorrow said I'm gonna do comics, nobody's gonna want anything to do with those cuz even children would say this is garbage because I don't have that skillset. I don't have that talent. So first overcome everything you have and then to, to be able to turn it into something so positive and so productive is, I mean, it's just really remarkable. To be honest with you. And it leads me to the next question, which is what now? Like, what are you working on next? You know, you had a career, you had a business, you had a very successful business, you had wealth. Things didn't— you were a victim. I mean, there's no other way to put it. You were a victim and ended up in a very bad position that you didn't deserve and had to rebuild. You've done that again. And you've got this very cool platform. You know, I know, you know, I've seen pictures obviously of you in a cape and a mask and doing this superhero thing at the conferences and you've built something very cool and very contributory to society and to our industry. What's next? Like, what are you working on now? What's the new cool thing?

First of all, thank you for your kind words, you know, and to your listeners, you know, something I say because I really mean it, you know, thanks for who you are and for what you do and most importantly why you do it. So what's next? I'm working on something pretty cool, which is, it started last November. One of my many men— mentors, and that's one of the great things about my Forest Camp journey. I have some unbelievable mentors. We meet every week and talk about different cyber or national security things. And so one of them in November of last year was not his usual self. You know, all my mentors are sort of bubbly and on the fun side, even though they were incredible, like you. Um, You realize you're being adopted now live.

I get that.

You're being social engineered.

Yeah.

I was like, not very good because I said it out loud, but yeah, you're not really sneaky about it, but I appreciate it. Yeah. You have to be sneaky. So anyways, was not his usual self. And I said, you know, is everything okay? And he goes, not really. I just got unceremoniously fired from my company along with 10 of my colleagues. And my jaw just dropped because he was a field CISO., for education. And from what I understand about this ecosystem, um, they're great to have because they have the technical chops, you know, to be able to understand cybersecurity, but, you know, very effective communicators, you know, and thought leaders and things like that. And so, and he went on to tell me that it wasn't just him, it was him and 10 other people. So the PLCs, so for financial services, telecommunications, so on and so forth. And my jaw just dropped and I started getting angry because he's such a great guy. And after a little while, I said, Bob, forgive the interruption, but I have an idea. And he goes, what's that? I said, let's start a company. And he goes, what do you mean? I go, I don't know. When smart people get together, good things can happen. And so we started just listening to the, my community, so to speak, and how's it going? And I started hearing some, you know, very consistent themes, like for the first time there are layoffs in cybersecurity because of the macroeconomic conditions, this whole notion of working anywhere, you know, and virtual and fractional employment, the role of artificial intelligence in the future, you know, the nexus of cybersecurity and AI and its implications. And all these other things. And so it started percolating and, you know, we basically are with some smart people are co-creating a, in the beginning stages of developing a platform that will solve a number of problems that, that we listened and learned about. And there are 7 of them, but the first one and most important one is just, if you think that Gary, if I tell you that I'm a CISO and you think that I am, You know, there's no CPA test. There's no bar exam. There are lots of certifications. However, they may not mean things to different people, you know, and this is especially true in the midsize market, you know, small to medium business market. 80% of them don't have any IT help, let alone something sophisticated. So this could be, you know, critical infrastructure like water treatment facilities or electrical, uh, although electric is pretty good, um, you know, transportation, so on and so forth. And so I decided that I'd like to find a way to scale high-level CISO talent in a fractional way to protect the hundreds of thousands, millions of small to medium businesses that reside in the United States. And we're developing, you know, a way to— we hope a pretty innovative way to do that. That's all I can say at the moment.

You know, some of what you've mentioned because I've experienced it personally. I'm obviously seeing some of this. We've known, we've all known for a long time in this industry that small and medium businesses struggle with security and with cybersecurity. They struggle with the budgeting. You know, this is, it's a hard thing because cyber is everywhere if you're connected, right? I talk about this being the cost of living in an interconnected world, but then not having the resources to keep up with the adversaries. And a lot of people think, well, you know, we're small, we can hide within the noise, or really they just don't have a choice. I mean, it's not that they don't underestimate the threat, they just don't have the resources for it. And every company I've been associated with, that's the flip side is companies saying, how do we capture the small and medium market? Because there's so much potential there, but we can't get our pricing in a position where we can help, right? So it becomes a challenge. And I've seen that. And then the other thing that you mentioned, you know, fractional, you know, this big push towards that, you know, organizations not wanting to have full-time senior people in a lot of places, including security. You know, I've seen CISOs that aren't what a lot of people might consider a CISO. I mean, they hold the role, or maybe they don't even hold the title. They have responsibilities, but you look and you go, well, this person hasn't been doing it very long. And I'm not trying to denigrate anybody's skillset or anything, but you're just looking, oh, this is not what the position used to be, but this is what they're willing to pay. And then that person has those responsibilities and maybe didn't have that background. So I think this is great that you're saying, hey, you know, we've identified these challenges and, and you're developing a platform with, I won't poke too much on this. I know it's something that's, it's early stage and, and I'm not trying to get ahead of you on this, but I, it's something I'm definitely gonna wanna follow and learn more about if I can help. Obviously I'd, I'd be interested in it because I think there's a market, there's an opportunity there. And frankly, you've shown, for those who are curious in my opinion why it would matter, you've shown all the things that I would want to be associated with. Somebody who's resilient, somebody who's smart, somebody who still has a positive attitude and wants to contribute. Like that isn't, I don't think how everybody would've reacted to what you've been through. Some, I think a lot of people would've run away and hid and never done it again. I think people might've come back vindictive and bitter, which would've been justifiable in my opinion. And you're neither of those things from what I can tell. Like if you are, you're hiding it really well. You said, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do more to help people. And you're so creative that I have to assume this is gonna be successful because you, you've identified a problem and you're a good person who wants to solve problems in a, in a positive way. So I mean, from a business standpoint, you're not focused on profits, which is great as a customer, probably not great business math. I'm sure you'll figure out a way to do that as well cuz you're gonna win, make some money along the way. But I'm very interested to see it. Like I, You know, when we connected and I started reading through some of, you know, what you've done, and then you started telling me the story when we prepped for this, I was just blown away. I was like, this guy's too good to be on my show, to be honest. So I was like, this is a pretty amazing, you know, amazing person. And I'm super excited, you know, that we've had the chance to meet and talk through this. I'm looking forward to doing stuff off camera and off microphone. And like, I can't thank you enough for what you're contributing to the community and just for continuing to do it, you know, for being who you are, basically. Like you're a big positive part of the community. That started out in such a horrible place, that origin story, right? Which, which, you know, brings us back to this. I think you are the superhero. I don't know if you've drawn yourself, I don't know if you are one of the characters, but I mean, you're clearly one of the heroes. Like you have the origin story, you've come back and done positive things to make the world, you know, the cybersecurity world better and safer and, and to raise up the capabilities of people who, you know, struggled with things as simple as Cybersecurity for Dummies, which is, as we both agree, not simple, that book. You're one of the heroes. Have you drawn yourself? I mean, you're pretty humble, so I think that's humorous, but have you drawn yourself? Are you in the, are you in the comic, you know, hero universe of your own making or not?

Um, I'll invite folks to go to cyberheroescomics.com and we have some of our comics up there. I'm not sure, um, about the answer to your question, but maybe people can decide on their own.

Okay.

All right.

Cool. I like that.

Well, I'll tell you one thing, I'm not a villain.

I agree.

But thank you so much for your kind words. And it's incredibly meaningful and it serves as my fuel, just so you know. You know, it's a privilege for me to do what I do. And I wake up every day, you know, excited and optimistic and incredibly grateful based on, you know, the things you just said. And I don't know, I mean, I don't know how this is going to end. You know, because if you think of Forrest Gump, um, and if I just sort of showed you what's on my desk right now and the people and the characters, uh, you know, I'll just, I will show you.

Yeah.

So this is my muse.

That's Albert Einstein.

I'm pretty sure it is. It's Albert Einstein.

Yeah.

And if you look real closely, you see he has a logo there.

Okay.

That's from Sandia National Laboratories.

Oh yeah. All right. Very cool.

Why, I would ask rhetorically, would I have one of those? Stay tuned for more. It's a teaser. It's a teaser. All right. So it is.

And the labs, Einstein. All right. Gary's got something.

Well, yeah, but the thing about Einstein, wait, just equate me with Einstein. I wasn't thinking other than in this way, which is. You know, one of the tools, the coping tools in my quiver through this whole experience was I read a quote that about Albert Einstein and a reporter asked him, he said, Mr. Einstein, on one hand you have science and physics and mathematics and all that. Then he said, on the other hand, you have many people who believe in some universality or God or karma or, you know, those kinds of things. How do you reconcile those two? Views. And to paraphrase, coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. And ever since I sort of came up, you know, I came across that he said that, I went, oh, that's cool. You know, so what it's enabled me to do is to be open, like to this conversation. You know, I take a deep breath and go, okay, here it goes. Let's see what happens and do the best we can with the resources we have available at the moment. You know, which for me happened to be quite sparse other than the tools that you pointed out about resilience and friends. I, and mentors, I have a lot of them, you know, and, and, uh, it's, it's really been my savior for sure. Well, it's, I mean, it's a great community. Cybersecurity is a great community. You know, it's full of helpers. It's full of legitimate, you know, defenders of this country from a national security perspective, critical infrastructure. Education for children, you know, it's an amazingly wonderful community. It is, however, undergoing some really rapid stressors, you know, that have been well documented, like what I said earlier about layoffs or fractional employment or AI, you know, a lot of people in cybersecurity are exhausted.

Absolutely. Burnout is a huge problem. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I, and this is not my assessment. They tell me. You know, and I've done several shows on wellbeing and mental health and, you know, things like that to help a tiny bit and stuff. So I, what I would like to leave the audience with is this notion of hope that, you know, when, as I said earlier, when smart people get together, good things happen. You know, we're definitely stronger together. I think that was the theme of RSA this last year or a couple of years ago.

Yeah, it was one of these years. That was one of, I don't know if it was this year. I'll have to look up, but yeah, RSA did have a theme one year of stronger together.

Yeah. And just, you know, try to pivot from FUD to FUD. Fun, you know, I love that notwithstanding the seriousness in some cases, um, life sorts of threatening things, like in the case of a 400-bed hospital that gets hacked, you know, or whatever. And we just found out recently that, you know, no surprise actually, China is in our telecom networks, you know, from big ones and all this craziness. So it's a legitimate battle for values. You know, and it's like that. So I want everyone to get pumped up and feel that there are a lot of people that are grateful.

Yeah, agreed. Uh, just a note, Stronger Together is 2023's theme for anybody who wants to spot check us. 2024 is Art of the Possible. I have the advantage of the internet right here, so I'm searching as we go, but yeah, it was a good one. So listen, we're going to wrap up here. We're getting to the end. I want to, I can't thank you enough and I will in a minute again, but as you know, the name of the show is Unspoken Security. So there's always a question for every guest at the end. Nobody gets to duck it. And with the, with that in mind, I'd like you to tell, you know, tell me, tell the audience something that so far has gone unspoken, like something we don't talk much about.

Well, I act brave because nobody can tell the difference.

That's true.

There you go. So you're, I mean, you're saying that's my unspoken secret.

Yeah. It's so you act brave. Okay. I think I hear what you're saying. And, and I think a lot of us do. And if you do it long enough, you convince yourself you are, right? And bravery is our actions, right? That's, you know, I used to say, you know, it's not the absence of fear, it's the ability to overcome fear, which sometimes means acting and, you know, just kind of saying this is where, you know, most people I know that are really brave, there's a lot of, you know, scared going on there. They're no different than anybody else except they just put it aside and act differently and kind of overcome it.

So, well, the thing about that from, from what I just said, is, you know, I'm acting. Well, but that doesn't mean deceiving, you know. It just means, okay, you're confronted with X, so okay, what are you gonna do? You know, you can, you know, fight or flight in the back of our neck, you know. So, so do you freeze, which is a legitimate response?

Sure.

Um, do you run, you know, which is a legitimate response?

It's the right one a lot of times. Yeah.

Do you confront it, which is a legitimate response, or do you take the fight to them, which is also a legitimate response, you know? And that's how we're all made. You know, this is deep brain survival, you know, stuff. And so basically I lean towards, you know, the, the latter, like acting brave and doing what I can.

And you may be underestimating. Yourself, or I don't understand, you may be undercrediting yourself, right? It's, if you act brave, you are brave in my opinion. Like, that's just how it works at some point, right? We are our actions. People who talk brave and don't do things when needed are, I mean, I was going to say cowards. I don't want to be cruel. Like, it doesn't, listen, their survival skills are just different, right? But if you act brave, you are brave. I mean, there's, that's just how it works. We are who we are. And I don't think there's any doubt in my opinion, at least based on your story, you are brave. I don't think most people would have, would be where you are now based on what they went through, based on what you went through. I don't think most people would be where they are, where you are now. And I don't think they would have done the things you did. And it takes courage. It takes bravery. It takes a generous heart as well. Like, again, you continue to want to give, you know, even though giving and helping and being who you were, you know, led to somebody taking, you know, terrible advantage of it and turning things upside down for you. And yet here you are again saying, hey, I just want to keep doing good things. So Yeah, you can say you act brave. I'm going to say you are brave and, you know, we can, we can leave that one on the table.

Well, I'll just say no, I'll say thank you. I'd like to leave your audience with a tool that I have found very valuable to get through to this moment and these thoughts that you're so kindly saying, you know, which is, and this is something also I don't think I've ever said, but when I started realizing, you know, what I think was actually happening. I don't remember if someone sent me a copy of the book or I bumped into it, but there's a very seminal book. It was called On Death and Dying.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

By Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. And she has like the steps of grieving and it was based on her research of researching people who had just lost loved ones or were in the throes of it or after. And so she came up with, you know, these seemingly recurring stages that people go through. And, you know, so I went through that, you know, and I started with, I think the first one was denial, like this is not happening and all that. And, and then, you know, I don't want to mangle the order, but it's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

Again, I have the advantage of the internet, by the way. That's right. Brilliant. But yeah, denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, or depression, acceptance.

Yeah. So I was stuck in denial for a long time and I was angry.

I understand that.

For a real long period of time. 10 years.

Yeah, I believe it.

At least, you know, and then fast forward to now. I mean, I'm not at acceptance. I, that I'm just not there because, you know, I'm motivated and I'm using to the best of my ability, what happened, and to turn it into something constructive, as you were kind enough to point out. So I'm not at acceptance, but I'm not angry or in denial either. I'm somewhere in there.

And if I'm not mistaken, not to speak out of turn, uh, about Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's work, but I don't think acceptance means you accept it like it's okay. I think it's just accepting that it happened, right? Because denial was saying something didn't happen. It's not possible. It didn't, like, in our mind we're saying this didn't happen. This isn't a real thing. Acceptance is just getting to the point of saying, okay, this happened. This is real. I have to accept that. And I think you are there. You don't accept it in terms of I'm not going to do anything about it. It's okay. It's good. I think, but you certainly, it appears to me, got—

Yeah. Thanks for the clarification. I, that is accurate. Yes. I, I've accepted that this, you know, was real. This happened. You know, I found Solas. In a community. I'm not talking about cybersecurity at the moment, in a different community of people who know a lot about this.

Mm-hmm.

And they were victims manifest in all types of different ways. And, you know, so I found some solace in knowing that I'm like not alone and that I'm not, you know, off my rocker because it's very easy. You're familiar with the term gaslighting. You know, it's very easy to doubt, you know, things, or, you know, if your antenna are like too high up, then you can see. In fact, there's a very interesting book for our audience, if you want to learn about that, called Ghost in the Wire.

Ghost in the Wire is a great book. Absolutely.

It was one of the, one of the earlier books I read about that. And so you could see ghosts like in technology and all that. And you wonder, oh, is Is someone tracking or listening to my call? Whatever. I have actual evidence that these things actually happened. And I was one of the first, you know, sort of an early adopter, an early case, use case of Bluetooth vulnerabilities, you know, and just, well, there were 19 at the time. So all this craziness. I gave a speech, which I just posted. Thursday for the first time, I guess I'm sort of entering this sort of next stage of what am I going to do about all this stuff? You know, of my speech and, and I've been a public speaker my whole career and I love doing it because I, you know, I make it about the audience and I have a lighter touch. So it's funny and things like that. But for this particular speech at the Gartner Security Risk Management Conference in Washington, I was nervous. And I remember sweating like a pig. And the reason I was nervous is because it'd be the first time I'd ever present, you know, some, I'll use air quotes, like evidence to people who could call BS. And so I went and I had taken some of these screenshots of different things, like, you know, spoofed Google two-factor authentication, spoofed three different Wi-Fi's, user interfaces that were spoofed. LinkedIn live, you know, shows that were hacked and notes that said, we know it's live and we're watching you. And, you know, on my screen, you know, and so it's very easy to get this stuff wrong. Like, oh, you didn't update your firmware, whatever, you know? And so I went up and I spoke for 45 minutes and guess what happened? I got a standing ovation.

That's fantastic.

And from the cybersecurity community who were in attendance, there were, I'm not exaggerating, 30 or 40 people waiting in line to talk to me. I said, how did this Bluetooth thing happen? How the hell am I supposed to know? All right. You're the one who's supposed to know this stuff, you know? And I developed friendships, you know, and now, you know, 8 or 9 years later, you know, some trust.

Yeah. Well, Ghost in the Wires, for those who don't know, and I'd be surprised if many listening, don't. Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick. You know, he's world famous and, and we lost him last year, unfortunately. It's a fantastic book. It, it's held up over time. It's, it's brilliant. And even dummies like me understand it. So it's, it's a good read. So listen, we're running outta time. Actually, we're a little over, which is fine because I'm always a little bit over when I have good guests. But I wanna thank you for being here, obviously, you know, thanks for being my friend and for joining the show and for sharing your story. And thanks for everything you've done and keep doing. Like, thanks. Thanks. I'm glad you came back to the community. I'm glad you're in the community. I appreciate your work and what you're doing, and I'm excited to see, you know, this next stage. So I'm just, you know, I wanted to say thank you. I'm grateful for everything you do and, and for being here. I'm gonna wrap it up. I don't know if you have any last thoughts. I know we, you know, you, you've already given some kind of ahead of time on what you wanna leave the audience with. Is there anything else you wanna say before we close out though?

Just what I say very often. Thanks for who you are and for what you do, and most importantly, you know, why you do it. And, you know, to the cybersecurity community and people in national security and law enforcement, same thing. You know, you're a real, like, unsung hero, and there are many people, especially me, who appreciate you very much. Yeah.

Great message. And I agree. We have a lot of people working very hard every day that nobody knows about. Nobody talks about. They don't talk about themselves.

They can connect with me on LinkedIn also. It's probably a good way to do it, or cyberheroescomics.com if you want to read, see some of our comics and, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, 100%. Highly recommend it. Cyberhero comics.com or reach out to Gary on LinkedIn. Um, and if for some reason neither of those work, reach out to me and I'll help you get to Gary. I can't imagine that happening, but, uh, again, thank you very much for being here, Gary. Thanks for sharing your story and, and for everything you do. Uh, that's gonna wrap it up here. So for everybody listening and watching, thank you, uh, for, for being here. And if you like what we're doing, I appreciate if you could subscribe, follow, like, share the news with other people, please, so we can keep this show going. I appreciate everybody out there, you know, so we can keep having people like Gary out to tell stories, uh, about amazing things going on in the industry. So thank you all. With that, we're gonna end it. And it was great having you here. This has been another episode of Unspoken Security. That's a wrap for this episode of Unspoken Security. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. See you next time.