All right.
Welcome everybody to Master Class tonight, August 3rd, 2023.
We have a big group of presentations tonight and
presenters some recordings to go along with that too.
So let's get started as soon as we can here and enjoy these
wonderful presentations that are coming to us.
Matthew, Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Get away.
All right.
Can everybody see my screen?
Yes.
Excellent.
Good evening.
My name is Matthew Davis.
Today I'll be presenting to you success strategies in the scope
of failing forward.
Our agenda for tonight will start off.
We're going to stand up and then we'll set some goals and we'll
sit down and we'll look at creating some smart plans, a
little history of success and hard times.
First I'd like to start off with sharing a comic strip from
Nathan Planet called Sorry, Nathan Pyle called Strange
Planet.
Tomorrow we awake pre star for strenuous actions.
Regrettable agreement, but this machine's gentle tones will
alert us to rise.
Soothing melody.
I wish to harm the melody machine.
I'm sure a lot of people have a similar kind of relationship to
their alarms in the morning, the writer for Strange Planet,
Nathan Pyle, explains in an interview.
One of the points of Strange Planet is that this, as he
gestures in every direction, referring to the world around us
and the comic series is all delightfully odd.
The aliens use deadpan technical terminology on a planet where
they are about as technically advanced as we are, but a little
more emotionally advanced.
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and
loved much.
The opening line of a poem from Bessie Anderson.
Stanley.
More Heart Throbs.
Volume to I encourage you to look it up and read the rest of
it, Herbert Bayard Swope, who also coined the phrase Cold War,
once said.
I can't give you a surefire formula for success, but I can
give you a formula for failure.
Try to impress and try to please everybody all the time.
In just a few minutes, we've gone through 24 hours of
someone's life.
We've started on the strange planet.
We planned to do something the next day.
Woke up, lived, laughed, loved, and tried to please everyone.
Failing forward is taking the mentality of future, or sorry,
the mentality of failure as a loss, then changing that
mentality to where failure is a gain.
You gain insights into what didn't work.
Experience is learning from trial and error.
All right, now I'd like everyone to stand up, put your arms out
to the sides and spin them.
Kind of like wind turbines with your palms up going clockwise.
This is just one of many steps from the Agasku method.
That is a good way to get your blood flowing.
Get your mind going.
Now put your palms down and go counter clockwise.
Small circles going around.
Little moments like that can help you improve a lot of your
starting your day, So small exercises like this are a good
way of starting your day and also increase your blood flow
rate.
All right, now I really want you to stand up.
Put your arms out to the sides and bend them slowly, moving
your hands into fists and resting them on your hips.
Lift up your chin and head high.
Say I can.
Put your heart into it.
Say I can.
You're putting yourself into a position and a posture of a
superhero, which when you do that and then you create your
process moving forward of whatever you're going to be
doing for the day or whatever you're trying to convince
yourself you need to do.
You're a little bit stronger and you can increase your success
rates.
A lot of this is based off of some Tony Robbins stuff that
I've heard.
I attended one of Tony Robbins Success Strategies Motivational
Talks and it typically starts with high energy build UPS.
Getting everyone excited, get their blood pumping.
50 minutes alone could be spent on the build up for the sake of
brevity.
That's all we'll do for today.
A morning routine mixed with grateful thinking and mild
exercise is a great way to start.
When you change how you think, you open your capabilities up to
new possibilities.
When you tell yourself something over and over, you make it true.
Your subconscious will try and enforce it and push your life in
that direction.
So change your mind.
Change your life something To make something great you have to
make something new.
Create a new.
Let go of what was say this with me.
The quality of my life is the quality of my emotions.
So the way that you react to everything creates your own
reality.
You're in charge of it.
It's all you.
So you ask yourself, what parts of me need to grow or expand to
gain an extraordinary quality of life.
Fear is the cause to so many hurdles in life.
People make it a complex process of I don't know why I feel this
way.
I don't understand.
Often it's just as simple as being afraid what might happen.
What if I fail?
What if this?
What if that you must get rid of fear?
And if you can't get rid of fear, then use it.
Turn fear on itself.
Turn I'm afraid of into What if I don't?
What will you be missing out on?
Fear is nothing more than an obstacle that stands in the way
of progress.
Use it before it uses you.
Find what is holding you back.
Find your excuses, excuses.
Help us stay in that safe and comfortable spot.
Be aware of the ones that you tell yourself.
When you look at a problem and think you can't solve it, you
are creating a self fulfilling prophecy.
Change your mind.
Change your life.
You're likely a have heard of a can do attitude.
Have one.
The simplest first step is the change from can't do or won't do
to can do.
Put yourself in the right state of mind.
Position yourself as a superhero.
Fear of failure is understandable.
Failure is inedible, though.
It's part of the process.
Set goals.
Some of them will fail, and that's OK You'll start right
back to go eventually.
When we make goals that we want to accomplish but can't seem to
get them done, try to consider comparing the reasoning.
Are you thinking you should or are you choosing to?
Should leads to a decision which leads to a sacrifice.
Eventually you make a decision.
Saying I choose to leads to a choice which leads to
commitment.
Choose to accomplish the goal.
Take note in the difference between I should and I choose to
make a starting point.
Have it one that is easy, that can lead to the next step
automatically for the things you want to be doing if you continue
to not succeed, maybe you're relying too much on my should
rather than your intrinsic desire to do it.
Ask yourself, how willing am I really to make this change?
There's something that's been around for quite some time.
A bunch of different places will recommend it, and you've
probably seen it if you haven't, it's really a good baseline for
setting plans.
They're called SMART goals or SMART plans.
A SMART plan is specific, measurable, actionable,
rewarding, and time specific.
Set your goal with those in mind, then re evaluate it with
no or Yes.
Don't try to use a maybe or sort as yes or no answers.
Only if you find that your goal is specific, great.
You ask yourself, is my goal specific And if no, add
specifics, measurable.
If no, add milestones, actionable.
If no, add actions rewarding.
If no, add values time specific.
Be specific and concise.
Include the measure and the time frame.
So set action steps to achieve success.
Make a starting point.
Habit one that is easy and leads to the next step automatically.
What is the first action step you are going to take to achieve
your goal?
Once you get into the habit of doing the easiest part, the rest
falls into place, creating a subconscious process that your
brain will follow and help you skip past the I don't want to
like take your pre workout mix the moment you get home.
Then you'll feel like, well, I already took my pre workout.
Next thing you know, you're at the gym.
Take a look at what challenges they have to overcome.
People are always looking to avoid problems.
You have to look at problems as gifts.
Only people without problems are in cemeteries.
Problems are a sign of life.
Next, what resources and skills are needed?
Find out why the goal is relevant.
What are the benefits?
Each of these steps of a smart plan should help you lead to
your goal.
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing
Walt Disney.
When you begin, something pushes you back.
Find insight as to what happened.
Something hit hard.
Use pain and setbacks as tools for growth.
Success does not only flourish in the best of times.
Here is a timeline dating back to the early 1800s where very
successful businesses started during times of economic crisis
or depression.
Rockefeller created Standard Oil in February 1865.
That was the final year of the Civil War.
Procter and Gamble came about during the Panic of 1837, Coors
during the Depression of 1873 UPS, and General Motors in the
Panic of 19 O 7.
The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939, time when many
successful brands got their start after 11 months of smooth
operation.
The 12 month of operations for Walt Disney Company was the
market crash of 1929.
Then Fortune Magazine came out 90 days after the market crash.
United Airlines also started operations that year, Then
Revlon came out later in 1932, Hewlett Packard in 1935.
Then in the 1970s.
FedEx started shipping during the oil crisis of 1973, Charles
Schwab during the market crash in 1974 to 75, Microsoft during
the recession of 73 to 75, and Costco in the recession of late
70s.
Most recently LinkedIn came in 2002 during thepost.com bubble.
Lots of these companies are very well known or household names
all started out in times of that were very hard.
They pushed through.
They found a way to get to make it.
So.
In summary, change your mind.
Change your life.
Everything that you look at is your perspective.
You're in control of how you react to it.
The quality of your life is the quality of your emotions.
Your reactions are what define you.
Failure is always inevitable.
So set goals that you choose to do, Make smart plans and
remember history is on your side.
I'd like to thank you for your time with my talk.
If anybody would like to add me on LinkedIn, feel free to.
Anybody has any questions.
What was that then?
Thank you.
That was wonderful.
He actually made me get up.
Anybody have any questions?
Yeah, This is a good Ted talk.
Exactly.
Thank you, Alec.
All right.
Thank you so much.
That was great.
We will move on to Rachel.
Are you ready?
Hi.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
All right.
Yep, I'm ready.
Let me share my screen.
OK.
Can you see my screen?
Yes.
Yep.
Yes.
All right.
Well, hi, everyone.
My name is Rachel Passell.
I'm an intern in the Cybersecurity department, and
tonight I'm going to be talking about how social media impacts
cybersecurity.
So for the agenda tonight, I'll talk about some social media
statistics, some of the positive and negative impacts that social
media has on cybersecurity.
We'll discuss some secure social media practices, and then a
conclusion.
So let's start out with some social media statistics.
According to Data Reportal, there are 4.8 billion social
media users around the world as of April of this year.
That's about 60% of the population, and it's growing
rapidly every day.
The more popular social media networks as of April 2023 are
Facebook at 2.9 billion monthly active users, YouTube at 2.5
billion users, WhatsApp and Instagram both at 2 billion
users, WeChat at 1.3 billion users.
And if you don't know what WeChat is, it's a Chinese
instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app, and then
TikTok at 1 billion users.
Additionally, data reportal shows that the typical social
media user uses or visits an average of 6 different social
media platforms each month.
So this widespread use of social media amplifies its impacts on
cybersecurity, making it even more important that we
understand its implications.
So social media has both positive and negative impacts on
cybersecurity, and we'll talk about the positive impacts
first.
So social media platforms have contributed to raising awareness
about cybersecurity threats and best practices.
Cybersecurity experts, organizations, and influencers
use social media to share insights, resources, and tips
with a wide audience.
Platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn allow professionals to
engage in discussions and address emerging threats
collectively and in real time.
Users can follow cyber cybersecurity focused accounts,
participate in discussions, or join communities to stay
informed about the latest security threats and
preventative measures that they should know.
You can also find cybersecurity industry associations on social
media platforms such as Twitter.
The pictures show three of them that I found, including the
National Cybersecurity Alliance, the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Anti Phishing Working
Group.
Social media platforms can also enhance training and skill
development in cybersecurity.
Many cybersecurity experts and organizations use social media
to promote and offer online courses and webinars on
cybersecurity topics like network security, ethical
hacking, and secure coding.
Users can access these resources through social media links,
learning at their own pace and growing their knowledge.
Also, cybersecurity professionals will often host
live Q&A sessions on social media platforms so individuals
can ask cybersecurity specific, specific questions directly to
experts.
YouTube is a great social media platform for staying up to date
with the latest threats and preventative measures.
Some popular cybersecurity accounts include the PC Security
Channel, who creates content, malware, scams, and other cyber
threats, John Hammond, who is a cybersecurity research
researcher and he makes videos on all the latest threats.
And then there's Kit Boga, and he takes a more comedic approach
in his videos.
He's a scam baiter that poses as potential as a potential victim
and exposes scammers and teaches the audience about the latest
trends in cybercrime as well as how scammers operate, operate
and what tools and tactics they use.
Another positive impact that social media has on
cybersecurity is that it facilitates the swift
dissemination of information about current cybersecurity
threats, vulnerabilities, and security updates.
Professionals in the industry utilize social media to share
real time alerts, research papers, and news articles about
recent developments in cybersecurity.
The nature of social media allows for the information to be
spread quickly and for it to reach a vast audience so that
people are informed and can take the necessary precautions to
protect themselves or their business.
On the right is a screenshot from the Cybersecurity News
Facebook page where they were sharing an emergency patch to
address a zero day flaw in iOS and Mac OS.
And now for some negative impacts on cybersecurity.
So social media is a very easy way for an attacker to access
sensitive information for an online crime, including both
personal and professional data.
Attackers exploit social media platforms to gather personal
information and engage in social engineering attacks.
People tend to overshare on their social media accounts, and
they have information on there that attackers love to have,
such as birth dates, addresses, e-mail, phone numbers, and
employment information.
Attackers can then use this information to perform different
types of social engineering attacks.
Some of those attacks include account takeovers and cloning,
and this is where the attacker takes over the victim's social
media profile and makes posts to their profile, Taking the
victim's contacts or sending a message to their contacts with a
post, sharing a hilarious video that they have to see, or some
weight loss solution, or just something that's supposed to
grab their attention.
The post or message aims to get the victims contacts to click on
a malicious link that may then download malware on the device
or send them to a fake login screen where they have to sign
in again and their profile credentials are then stolen and
the cycle will just keep continuing.
I see this happen all the time on Facebook.
Where I'm tagged in a post or sent a message with a link to a
video that I must see, and the count doesn't always need to be
taken over, the attackers can just create a similar copy or a
cloned account of a person's account just by using the
publicly available available information they have gathered
from the targets profile.
I see this on Facebook all the time too, and I received
received countless friend requests from freak accounts
that are impersonating my grandma.
I'm pretty sure it's from all those Facebook quizzes she fills
out, which may seem harmless but actually collect a lot of
information about you.
Attackers will use all the information you share on your
social media platforms for curated phishing attacks, as the
more information an attacker can string together about a victim,
the more likely they will be able to create a realistic,
realistic looking e-mail or text that you will engage with.
This puts not only you at risk, but the company you work for at
risk.
I found a good example of this from a company called BH
Consulting which offers a Red teaming service.
They said one of the first things they do when performing
the red teaming service is go to the LinkedIn for the company and
hunt down information shared publicly through the accounts of
the company's staff members.
By looking at profiles, they can gather what technologies are
being used in the company based on the certificates the
employees have received from different vendors.
With this specific client that they were doing the red teaming
service for.
They were able to find a project manager that listed two to three
projects they worked on which were linked back to the clients.
And it turns out the company had a confidentiality agreement with
one of those clients promising not to disclose any work they've
done for them.
So this confidential information was publicly available on
LinkedIn, and in the wrong hands it could have been used as a
valuable as valuable profiling information to help launch an
attack.
Using social engineering, an attacker could have used that
information to maliciously win the trust and manipulate the
actions of a potential victim of that company.
Attackers will also pose as legitimate companies or people
that the victim knows or instinctively trusts.
And again, LinkedIn is a popular vector for this.
Another great example from BH Consulting of this is when they
created a fake LinkedIn posing as a large cybersecurity
conference and they targeted a company's Chief Information
Security officer after he had just spoken at some conference a
few months earlier.
The fake LinkedIn conference reached out and asked if he
would be available as a keynote speaker for their conference.
And the CISO was responsive, sharing his e-mail address and
more, and he was compromised within 12 minutes.
I found this to be very interesting when I was doing my
research because I wasn't fully aware of how much LinkedIn is
used for social engineering attacks.
There are also targeted scams on social media, which I'm sure we
have all seen, like cryptocurrency scams, romance
scams, fake ads, job scams, lottery sweepstakes and giveaway
scams, and many more.
These kinds of scams will also typically be aligned with your
interests to better target you and get you to click on them.
These photos, the top one shows a message like I was talking
about with a malicious length that appears to be coming from
your friend with a video or whatever that you have to see.
And then the bottom picture is a tweet from Barack Obama during
the 2020 Twitter Bitcoin scam, where many prominent, highly
highly followed Twitter users posted double your Bitcoin
tweets and it was discovered these accounts were hacked
through social engineering attacks on some of Twitter's
employees to gain administrative access to high profile usernames
and passwords.
Social media data breaches are another negative impact and are
also becoming more common.
LinkedIn reported that in 2021, data from 700 million users had
been leaked.
In 2019, Facebook reported a breach that compromised 533
million accounts, and Twitter was breached in 2018, resulting
in 330 million compromised users.
Identity theft is another negative impact of social media
on cybersecurity.
With the increased global use of social media, there are more
opportunities than ever cybercriminals to steal
identities and perpetrate fraud online.
Most people know not to share their driver's license and
Social Security numbers online, but many social media platforms
ask for, or even require similar sensitive information that can
be used against you, including your full name, your date of
birth, relationship status, hometown, school locations,
graduation dates, pet names, and other affiliations.
As millions share this information to register with
multiple social media platforms, the data becomes vulnerable as
attackers and identity thieves use it for malicious objectives.
The last negative impact I'm going to discuss is malware
distribution.
Social media platforms are a very effective way to distribute
malware because there is a very large user base.
Constant sharing is encouraged which can quickly propagate
malicious links or files.
Social media platforms often use URL shorteners to save space and
posts, and attackers will hide the true destination of a link
behind the shortened URLs, making it more difficult for
users to identify dangerous links.
And social media is heavily accessed through mobile devices,
and mobile platforms have less robust security compared to
desktop computers, so they are more susceptible to certain
types of malware.
The many different delivery methods on social media also
make it effective for distributing malware such as
malvertising, drive by downloads, digital media, shared
links and images, fake software updates, fake apps and games
promoted on social media and of course phishing and users.
Constantly sharing content and user profiles further promotes
the spread of malware.
Social media users usually feel comfortable clicking on on
things on their trusted platforms and this is something
that attackers exploit.
So how can we protect ourselves when using social media?
Some some practices we can all use in our personal lives when
using social media include using two factor authentication on all
of our social media accounts.
To increase the account security, we can avoid
suspicious messages and links either sent in private messages
or posted publicly by someone who appears to be a friend on
that account.
We can refrain from sharing personal information, including
location, and we can create strong and unique passwords that
are different for each social media account.
Lastly, we can review those privacy settings to make sure
that your account is protected as best it can be.
And As for a business, a business should have a
comprehensive social media policy that outlines the best
practices, guidelines and security protocols for
employees, and it should also define acceptable and
unacceptable behaviour on social media.
Social media training is important to ensure employees
are familiar with the best cybersecurity practices to
increase security when using social media, as well as
teaching them the threats that are out there.
Employees should be taught how to recognize things like
suspicious messages, links, requests, and to avoid clicking
anything from an unknown or unverified source.
The weakest link in cybersecurity is humans, so
providing proper training is crucial to protecting the
organization.
Strong authentication measure measures should be implemented
such as strong and unique passwords and two factor
authentication for the extra layer of security and these
authentication measures should be reviewed regularly and
updated to stay current with the latest standards.
Also, there should be an incident response plan in place
to follow if there is a social media incident or security
breach.
This this should establish reporting channels for employees
to report any concerns or incidents related to social
media.
And lastly, businesses can choose to monitor their
employees social media use to protect itself from cyber risk
via social media if the employee were to share sensitive
information.
So in conclusion, the impact of social media on cybersecurity is
undeniable, presenting both challenges and opportunities.
Social media platforms contribute positively through
increased cybersecurity awareness, rapid information
sharing and enhanced training opportunities, but must also
remain vigilant about the negative impacts such as social
engineering, malware and identity theft.
It's important that we strike a balance between leveraging the
benefits of social media for cybersecurity while also
safeguarding ourselves and our businesses from potential risks.
By using secure social media practices and staying informed
about emerging threats, we can stay safe from those who want to
exploit us via social media.
And here are my references.
And thank you.
Great job, lots of information.
Anyone have any questions for Rachel?
Did I stop sharing?
Yes.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
Any questions?
Yeah, I've got a question.
Yeah.
You were saying that there's a lot of like social engineering
attacks on LinkedIn.
And so I'm somebody who's kind of looking through, you know,
the jobs with things and everything like that and
LinkedIn and so is there any, like advice or watch outs that
you would have for that to avoid getting bamboozled?
You know?
Well, I guess really look into who you're like.
Like how the example of the people that reached out to the
CISO really check out who you're talking to to make sure it's a
legitimate like posting or whatever.
I know there's a lot of fake posts out there too.
I'm just, yeah, really check it out before you're messaging with
someone or.
Yeah.
OK.
Thanks, Mika.
So in in addition to your suggestion, I I would recommend
if you see a position you like, you just go directly to the
company's website and apply there.
Yeah, that's a good idea.
All right.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Anyone else have a question?
All right.
Thank you there.
One for Michael Bueno.
I think I forgot this.
Can everyone see the screen?
Yep.
Yes.
Hello everyone.
Thank you for attending my presentation over endpoint
detection and response.
I do apologize for not being able to make it tonight.
I had a family emergency so I had to do a recording.
Hello Everyone Endpoint Detection and Response or EDR is
a cyber security technology and approach designed to detect and
respond to cyber threats and attacks on endpoints.
Endpoints are critical components of a network, and
they are often the initial targets of a cyber attacker
seeking to gain access to a system or network.
Through continuous endpoint monitoring and rigorous data
analysis, businesses can gain a better understanding of how one
threat or another infects an endpoint and the mechanisms by
which it spreads across the network.
Instead of remediating threats off hand, organizations can use
the insights gained via EDR tools to harden security against
future attacks and reduce dwell time for potential infection.
Some examples of endpoints are laptops, desktops, servers,
applications, and any other Internet of Things device.
Monitor.
Endpoints in the audio's lagging identify potential threats
before they can cause significant issues.
It also provides A comprehensive view into endpoint activity,
processes, and network communication, which enables the
security team to improve their incident investigation approach.
They can also conduct proactive threat hunting to identify and
eliminate hidden threats that may have evaded automatic
detection.
EDR solutions also provide the ability to automate responses to
certain types of threats, such as quarantining files or
processes that perform behavior that's deemed a threat, like
HIPAA or GDPR.
And with EDR, companies can monitor for any suspicious
activity and investigate the source of any potential threat.
This helps organizations ensure that their company is remaining
compliant with industry regulations and standards.
A key benefit to Edr is the ability.
While cybersecurity is a critical aspect of modern
digital life, it does come with its fair share of challenges.
Here are some common cybersecurity challenges that
organizations and individuals face.
Threats are always evolving, becoming more sophisticated and
adapting to security measures.
Things always have a risk of employees and individuals
unintentionally compromising security by falling victim to
phishing attacks or mishandling sensitive data.
They also face a risk of employees intentionally causing
harm to the organization.
Many organizations are moving to the cloud, and the biggest
challenge with that is that they're relying on the vendor to
secure the data.
Since they own the cloud, it's important for companies to
discuss any concerns with the vendor to ensure security is
still priority for them as it is for you.
There are different models of cloud security where the cloud
vendor strictly secures the endpoints of the application and
the organization is still responsible for the internal
application security measures such as you know which access
you know a certain user gets to certain data.
Another big challenge is keeping up with vendor patching
schedules.
I know from my organization we were struggling finding a way to
keep up with Microsoft's Linux patching cycle for Microsoft
Defender.
For endpoint, they require you to be within two versions of
their ATP, which is Advanced Threat Protection releases.
And our software rollout cycle typically took about a month and
1/2 where we targeted dev and test for the first three weeks
and then we slow rolled into production at the end of the
month, which still moved into the next month.
By the time we had a a version fully rolled out, Microsoft had
already released a new version, sometimes 2.
Luckily we were able to automate certain things that allowed us
to now start testing a new version once it's released and
then rolling it out shortly after.
I was doing some research to give you an example of when EDR
was successful in stopping an attack, but I did come across an
article that described how EDR was used to sort of monitor
behavior for a ransomware attack that happened back in 2017 and I
thought I thought it was more interesting, so I wanted to
share it here.
So in 2017, there was a massive Wanna Cry ransomware attack.
It was a global ransomware attack that targeted hundreds of
thousands of computers worldwide.
The ransomware exploited a known vulnerability in Microsoft
Server Message Block protocol known as Eternal Blue.
This vulnerability allowed Wanna Cry to spread rapidly through
networks by exploiting unpatched systems, even those that were
not directly connected to the Internet.
Once the system was infected, Wannacry encrypted the users
files, making them inaccessible.
The ransomware then displayed a ransom note demanding payment in
Bitcoin to unlock the encrypted files.
Victims were threatened with permanent data loss if they did
not pay the ransom within a specified time frame.
What ended up happening is a kill switch was found which was
discovered in the malware's code, which helped organizations
stop the spread of the attack.
So why am I showing you this attack without showing how EDR
stopped it or prevented it?
Well, there was a a research team, a malware research team at
Cyber Bit which is an EDRA company.
They wanted to see if their EDR tool would detect and respond to
the Wanna Cry attack.
So they infected a computer that had Cyber Bit EDR already
running in real time.
And as soon as they launched the attack on their computer, the
EDR noticed the suspicious behavior and created alerts
immediately.
The researchers kept the malware infection running on the
computer so that the EDR solution could generate A
behavioral graph to identify a pattern in the process of the
malware that it was taking.
The behavioral graph above shows that the ransomware payload was
executed and dropped several files to gain persistence, as
indicated by dropper nodes in the graph, which is sort of on
the left side.
It then initiated A lateral movement by dropping a host name
dot CMD command which you can see there in the middle of the
graph and then the ransomware then ran a command via the
command prompt which modified the register keys and then it it
hid the attributes of the drop files by using the ATTRIB the
attrib command which you can see there also at the bottom of the
middle of the graph.
I was doing some research to give you.
After the attack was stopped on the Windows machine, the
researchers opened EU dot wannacry file for a drill down
view displaying the results of a static analysis of the file
which confirmed that it contains suspicious import functions used
in the PE import table to encrypt data which was the crypt
release context and they also it also modified the file time with
the set file time both imports which you can see there in the
top left image.
Towards the bottom of that of that screenshot, the researchers
also drilled down into the CMD icon to see exactly what was
happening, which revealed that a CMD batch command was used to
add the malware to the registry and to the auto run list, which
is a straightforward persistence mechanism as shown in the image
on the bottom right.
Although the EDR tool did not stop the attack from the
beginning, it did help identify a new way attackers are
executing malware, which helps organizations create new rules
to stop similar attacks in the future.
While EDR tools provide an abundance of benefits for
organizations, there are still a few things to remember with EDR
tools, such as the false positive alerts that they can
generate indicating threats are not actual threats or even false
negatives, which is failing to detect an actual threat.
Striking the right balance between sensitivity and accuracy
is crucial to avoid alert fatigue and ensure effective
threat detection.
Another thing to consider for EDR solutions is that it can be
resource intensive, particularly on endpoints with limited
computing power or memory.
Continuous monitoring and data collection may impact system
performance and slow down endpoint operations.
This is especially difficult when enabling real time
detection since it's always going to be running.
For example, Microsoft Defender for endpoint on Linux is an EDR
solution that I'm currently managing right now, and the
biggest challenge that I've been facing so far is managing the
CPU utilization when other processes are also running hot.
So in this example above on the right I this is.
This is an example I found online.
This isn't from my workplace, but the image on the right shows
a common or a command called MDATP_AUDISP_PL.
There's another there's another process called W Dave Damon and
there's one called audit DMDATP_AUDISP_PL.
This is a component of the anti malware software that monitors
any system calls made by another job.
So in this case it would be the system journal command which is
the first process running there on the right the West Dave
daemon process.
This is the anti malware anti virus Microsoft Defender agent
that's monitoring all the other processes and when other
processes start to consume a lot of CPU, the antivirus anti
malware tool which in this case is the West Dave daemon, it also
starts to use CPU so it can keep up with the real time detection
scanning while everything else is is actively running.
The same goes for Windows based operating systems as depicted on
the image on the left.
The antivirus agent is monitoring our studio, but it's
still using a lot of utilization since it's continuously scanning
another software that's also using quite a bit of memory,
which is our studio.
Because our studio alone already uses quite a bit of CPU while
it's while it's running, implementing endpoint detection
and response effectively requires best practices to
maximize the benefits and improve the cybersecurity of an
organization.
Here are some key best practices for EDR solutions.
Ensure that EDR is deployed on all critical endpoints within
the organization, including servers, workstations, and
mobile devices.
Comprehensive coverage ensures that potential threats across
the entire network are monitored and detected.
Once you have the necessary coverage across the enterprise,
it's critical to also regularly update the antivirus so that
your organization is up to date with security patches.
The Wanna Cry malware attack that was mentioned earlier was
only successful on endpoints that were running in old version
of Windows, and if they had been updated to the latest versions,
they would have received the patch for the vulnerability that
was exploited.
I also mentioned a big challenge with EDR was the stress it can
put on some devices, but it's still recommended to enable
continuous monitoring of endpoint activities in real
time.
EDR should provide up to date visibility in the processes,
network connections and file modifications to quickly
identify potential threats.
It's also beneficial to integrate EDR with security
information and event management known as SIM solutions and
threat intelligence feeds to enhance threat detection and
incident response capabilities.
This integration allows for correlation of EDR data with
broader security events and known threat indicators that are
not provided with just EDR alone.
And lastly, educate employees and users about cybersecurity
best practices, including the importance of recognizing and
reporting suspicious activities and detecting potential threats.
That was really good.
Endpoint detection and response, Excellent job.
He comes back to watch this.
Very good.
OK.
Michael Floyd, are you?
Hello.
Yep, you just pull up the PowerPoint.
So I will try to keep this to 15 minutes there.
Oops, wrong screen.
Yeah, no problem.
Can you guys see my screen?
OK, then yes.
Yeah, little background.
This is just some research that I had worked on in the past.
Think it's super interesting and kind of demonstrates a little
bit about the scientific method.
And so I am a researcher by trade.
That's what's got me into data analytics.
So you know, in a way this has helped lead me to where I'm at.
So anyways, so enhancing force spectroscopy, biomolecules, I'll
kind of go into what different things are.
I'll try to keep it as high level and then any questions you
guys have, you can ask me at the end.
But here in just this first slide, I've got the some
pictures.
So you know, are you able to see my cursor by chance?
My mouse?
Yeah, I see your curse.
Awesome.
So up here we got some molecules, over here we got some
DNA, some lab instrumentation and then kind of a little visual
of what or spectroscopy is.
So I will go on to the next one.
So some background.
There's a lot of basically this research project involves
something called DNA origami is kind of the basis.
And so I have a link in this PowerPoint that I can share to
the chat and in the presentation folder.
But essentially it'll kind of talk about what DNA origami is.
It's a very new discipline of biophysic that probably came
about in the last, you know, 20 years early 2000s.
So scaffolded DNA origami consists of several kilobase
pairs, single strands of DNA and basically you can Orient them
and create them in a way that once you mix them together, they
will create a three-dimensional structure.
And so think of like normal origami.
You, you know, take a piece of paper, you make a swan or you
know a house or whatever.
The cool thing about DNA is it folds itself.
So you know you have all of your base base pairs, A to T to G and
so on and so forth.
They they will fold themselves.
So you can make really, really, really small structures, which
is really cool.
We can use a CAD software to essentially create these cross
linking staples is what I we call them.
And then you send that off to a lab, they'll generate it for you
based on the structure that you sent them.
Super cool.
And then this, yeah, talks about the the process, you heat it and
cool it to kind of give it its shape and then for it to like
kind of bleed off if you will, some of the the weaker pairs or
missed pairs.
And at the end you can see at the bottom here you kind of have
these little structures.
So you have the little man here that you made with the CAD
software.
This is what it's going to look like.
You're going to get all these different base pairs of the DNA
that you'll mix together over time, you heat them and they
will eventually become kind of like the little guy here.
So this is actually ATEM microscope.
It uses electrons to generate an image.
So what we're looking at and these little images are at the
nanoscale, so very, very tiny but you can see take something
on a computer and create a small you know bio structure
essentially which is really cool, so enhancing force
spectroscopy.
So in general DNA kind of has a limit you know single molecules,
DNA they they have limits of the amount of force that you can
apply to them.
So if you apply too much force or too little force you run the
risk of either getting too much noise and some of the data that
you might be trying to generate which you can't draw conclusions
from that or you run the risk of destroying the DNA essentially
and or the single molecule and unfolding it, tearing it apart,
you know and then your experiment is ruined.
And so the high level of this is essentially creating a hinge
structure out of the DNA, origami, the scaffold, the DNA
and then applying like like being able to set a single
molecule inside of the hinge and then applying larger forces
beyond that 60 piconewtons to that hinge to get a higher
force.
But it won't disturb or it won't destroy the DNA on the inside.
And so that's kind of what you're seeing here.
And those two pictures at the bottom actually did end up
making the hinge.
And so that's what it looks like on the TEM.
But then the conceptual drawing of it was all right, you know,
if I can create this hinge, I could put a little hairpin in
it.
And I want to see like at what forces I can essentially open
and close this hairpin using the hinge, so applying the force to
the hinge and not the molecule itself.
So just getting a little more granular control over the actual
experiment in such a small scale, so I will leave it at
that.
So preparing the experiment, you know you who basically the, the
basis of the experiment is I need to be able to one, create a
hairpin and two how am I going to attach the hairpin to the
hinge itself.
And so essentially what you can see here is you have like
smaller strands of DNA and then all of these little lines,
different colors, our different single strands of DNA.
And so we cross link them at certain points to create this
long, I guess rope if you will.
And so I have a rope on either end of this hairpin.
A lot of the experiment to begin with involved just applying the
force to the hairpin.
So we could see at what point the hairpin opens and close as
kind of a baseline before we put it into the hinge.
And so this is supposed to represent a flow cell, which I
think I'll show you on the other slide.
But essentially we have like a little cell that you would like
the slides that you put into a microscope created like a little
channel in it.
And I put some DNA essentially attached it to the bottom of
this, the the slide.
And so that will allow these different base pairs to come
attached to it and be stationary.
And then you got your hairpin.
And then this big thing up here is a, call it a magnetic bead.
It's essentially a small little iron molecule and it has the
stripped Avidin, which is a say, I guess it's a bio molecule that
is attached to it.
And so when I mix all of this, you know, stuff together, it
will, you know, connect, make this rope and then the point of
the, the magnetic bead it is I need it to be magnetic because
I'm using something called magnetic tweezers to apply a
force to it.
So kind of jumping ahead here, but this is generally, you know,
starting the experiment.
This is the flow cell right here.
So just like I have all my different pieces and parts that
were in the slide before, you know, you kind of mix them
together in a certain order.
You, you flush the cell with the stuff that's supposed to rest at
the bottom and then you kind of add each piece of the rope one
by one.
And then eventually you have that, you know this.
So magnetic tweezers, what are those SO told you about the
magnetic bead?
So essentially, once I create that rope that has that bead and
that hairpin in the cell itself, I will put it under a really,
really small microscope.
And so it's not a visual microscope.
I'm not necessarily seeing the DNA itself.
It's too small, but I can see the bead on the screen.
And So what I'm doing is I'm applying this force over time to
the flow cell so I can try and identify where I have, you know,
a single bead and a single hairpin attached to a single
rope.
And I use this worm like chain to kind of determine that.
And so this is a model that is you know known that exists.
It is for biomolecules and and DNA.
And so essentially at this extension, at these different
extension points and forces, I can say definitively like OK,
this is a single strand, so go to the next slide.
So more on the magnetic tweezers.
This is kind of the output.
So you can see these, you can see the magnetic beads here.
So I have magnetic beads and stationary beads.
One of them is like fit at the bottom of the cell which are
these little these big ones here, these silver ones and then
the magnetic beads are kind of throughout the the cell.
So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to find individual ones.
I do not see this on the actual magnetic to either device but I
put this under a microscope just to get like a visual of what
they look like.
And so I use a stationary bead as a control.
So I can help, like I can use that to essentially calculate
out the noise of all the different movements in the cell
and then get a very clean or a much cleaner read on this
magnetic bead here.
And so I'll just go to the next slide.
So the results, the results were pretty cool.
We're able to establish the baseline and we determined that
around 30 to 40 piconewtons is when the hairpin opens.
And so that is pretty cool to be able to do one a lot of work to
go into creating this flow cell and creating this hairpin and
then you know, to be able to find the right force that needs
to be applied to the hairpin to open it.
So that's great.
Now next step is to put the hairpin into the hinge.
And then now that we know like what the baseline application
force is to open the hairpin, we can then use that to build on
what the force is going to take to use the hinge to open the
hairpin.
So we know we, you know, there's.
I'll just leave it at that.
So that is essentially my presentation.
Here's all my references.
I did a lot of the ground work and foundation to work on this
piece, but it wasn't without help.
Lots and lots of help.
So I will leave it open to questions.
Got about 5 minutes, no questions.
OK, well, I'll leave it.
Leave it at that.
Yeah, I'll put the link in the chat.
You guys should definitely check it out.
You know what DNA Origami is?
It's really cool.
One thing I did forget to mention, one of my favorite
parts about it, and one of the reasons I got into biophysics is
because by creating this three-dimensional structure out
of a bio material, there's like, you can make smiley faces and
little robot things and hairpins or whatever, But there are some
pretty there's a high potential for some significant healthcare
applications.
So there's other work happening around the country, around the
world to create a box, little boxes and you know, things like
that that will essentially contain, you know, a medicine or
a drug, you know, think of cancer or or diabetes if you can
put it in this biological structure, you know and and
it'll be a a way to target have more targeted drug application
and delivery.
So, you know, a little box comes, there's a little lock on
the box that has a specific sequence of Ena.
And once it comes in contact with something like a cancer
cell that also has some kind of, you know, Ena that you're, you
know, what kind of cancer it is, it'll come in contact, react,
open the box and deliver the drug directly to cancer cells.
So it's it has the potential to be a more targeted way of, you
know, something like something like cancer treatment.
And there's a lot of other things too.
Do you ever work with RNA?
I mean they they kind of go hand in hand, but no, not I don't
from what I remember from high school is that RNA you can
actually change the structure.
Of the cell, is that correct?
I don't know the definitive answer to that.
So I I focus a lot more on the physical interactions of
everything.
And so I know how to like grow the bacteria and harvest the DNA
and follow these steps, but I am not the one who creates the DNA
origami structures.
I do not.
I am not a biology person.
So I'm more focused on like the application of the force and you
know, just if it works or not basically, and then tell them
what I need them to do different and then they they make the
adjustment.
So I'm not sure about, you know, the the RNA question, cool
stuff.
You and Landon probably have a lot to talk about probably.
Yeah, I was hoping he'd be here for this one, but I'll have to
just share it with him later.
Yeah, Tell him to watch the video and starting at about one
hour and it'll be there.
Awesome.
Great job.
Thank you.
Definitely.
OK, I'm gonna do Pete Garcia.
Hopefully it will go on its own.
Let's see.
All right.
Can you see the cow on the screen?
Yeah, there you go.
Good evening, everyone.
I decided to do my presentation on advancements in technology,
specifically around dairy farming or agricultural.
This is something that I have recently learned about, and I
think it's interesting to me at least because I feel like the
technology may not be widely known good.
So the dairy industry has made some huge improvement.
So the dairy industry has made some huge improvements since
2007.
Today, the US dairy industry's carbon footprint has drastically
cut down to less than 2% of all greenhouse emissions.
It it's also it also accounts for only 5.1% of all water
consumption and takes up approximately 3.7% of US
farmland.
Previously to produce one gallon of milk in 2007 emissions were
up 19%, consumed 30% more water and occupied 21% more land in
the US Next slide please.
Obviously agriculture has a great impact on many aspects,
from the environment to other cows and farms, and can even
have a direct impact on people.
This is why some farmers are leveraging the power of cloud
computing, such as the AWS platform, to increase
productivity, reduce food waste, manage power and water
consumption, and sustain other areas of farming.
Not to mention the well-being of these dairy cows, which to me is
the most important part at least.
A great example of this is Norway's largest producer,
distributor and exporter of dairy products.
I believe it's Tyne SA.
I'm not entirely sure how to pronounce it, but we'll go with
that with over 9000 cooperative farms.
Tyne SAS goal was to become more data-driven and utilize
predictability models.
Their goal was to gain insights and better understand the
well-being of the cow, the quality of their milk, and other
aspects throughout their life cycle.
This was accomplished by partnering with a company called
Crayon, which specializes in AI and machine learning.
Crayon created the cloud infrastructure and management
tools that today feeds a data lake with 2.5 million data
points for their Norwegian cows.
In the near future, they do hope to increase this to 250 million
data points.
Some of these data points include details of the cow's
life, such as familial data, feeding habits, health and
growth trends, as well as other useful bio data.
Next slide please.
Aside from cloud computing, there are robotic technologies
that help owners maintain and improve their businesses while
continuing to lessen their impact on the environment.
One of these technologies include manure collectors.
Because of the threat to the environment and the surrounding
areas, as previously discussed, manure collectors can be
configured for custom routes and be set up for automation.
Essentially a Roomba for dairy farms, just a little fancier and
a lot more expensive.
In some farms, they've even placed sensors in key areas
around their fields, which collect data about current
conditions to help farmers make better management decisions.
Another very useful but often underutilized technology
revolves around the methane produced by hundreds of
thousands of cows.
A methodology that farmers have recently adopted makes use of
that technology to to transform those emissions into usable and
renewable energy sources.
For example, anaerobic digesters or otherwise known as methane
digesters utilize microorganisms and the lack of oxygen in order
to feed on organic material like manure or food waste.
As a byproduct, bio gas or mixtures of different gases are
created.
Next slide please.
This byproduct can also be used for, you know, things like
vehicle fuel, compressed natural gas, heat and electricity.
It can also produce sustainable materials such as fertilizers,
compost, and even bedding specifically for animals.
Next slide please.
The last technology I wanna talk about in terms of like robotics,
those are robotic milkers.
Personally, it's my favorite technology here.
One particular farmer, his name is Dan Ventiker of Iowa, outfits
his dairy cows with E collars so that when they enter the milking
station, information about that cow is transmitted.
The system then makes a decision on whether to allow or deny an
individual which utter or teeth to milk or avoid milking, and
for how long.
The Cloud connected system ingests all of these data points
to ensure that his cows not only get milked on their own
schedule, but also ensures the safety of the public by
analyzing the milk from each teeth for quality health issues
such as mastitis, which is what happens when a milk duct gets
clogged.
It also checks for quantity anomalies and abnormalities that
may be present.
The system was also smart enough to detect that cows developed
the habit of wanting to get milked just so they can have a
snack.
So these cows eventually got rejected until it is, until it
was appropriate for them to have another milking session.
Next slide, please.
Again, the farmers that are taking advantage of cloud
computing are taking all of these All of this data from
environmental data points, robotics programs and
automation.
All of that data is being fed into a cloud connected
infrastructure like AWS for machine learning, transforming
the industry to digital herd management systems and providing
insights like never before.
So since there is a shortage of cloud computing professionals
already, and even more so those that specialize in agriculture,
I thought it would be interesting to look into the
kinds of jobs that are out there.
So some of these jobs include Planning Coordinator with the
focus in Dairy Production, Data Scientist and Data Scientist
with a focus in modeling SharePoint, Farm System
Administrator and Digital Farming Solutions, DevOps.
These are only just a few positions available off of 1
site, but it's interesting for those that might want to combine
their love of the two.
That's all I got for now.
Thank you and for your time and have a good night.
Well, that was a great job too.
I learned so much that every week I just got to say I learned
so much from these master classes.
Wonderful, wonderful job.
So I'm going to cut in here.
I had one more than recording, but I'm going to put them down
to an area where there's more time.
This one's kind of long so and I don't want to hold everybody for
too long tonight.
We're already past 10:00 and I'm sure most of us want to get
going.
Thank you everybody for coming.
I hope you enjoyed all the presentations we have this
evening.
Everybody did a great job, wonderful job.
Congratulations on getting that done and thank you all.
Have a great rest of the evening.
Take care.
All right.
Take care, Paava.