Powerful And Unpolished

Good day everyone. Welcome to Powerful and Unpolished. I'm Tim Salmans. I'm your host. Uh, we have another. Wonderful, exceptional guest today, Jeff Cox. Welcome Jeff. Thank you for. Being our guest today, um, you're amongst the, the diverse I should say, because it's like we've had stuntman on this show. We've had, uh, spiritual leaders, we've had entrepreneurs of all different shades and colors, and now we have Jeff, which is, uh.

Data security, migration and all this kind of stuff. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a brief little intro of what I know a little bit about Jeff's business. So Jeff Cox, his business is No Bravo, Sierra. We're gonna explore that here in just a minute. Um, but Jeff's background is, it's in data and the movement or integration of that data to other systems.

All of that is relevant to small and large businesses. A lot of people think it's like, for me, I think it's about large businesses, but being a small business, I'm telling you, I'm always bumping up against data and application and system issues and stuff like that. So, um, uh, Jeff says that it is usually complex, which a lot of people I would agree.

Um. Understanding its foundation. Doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be complex. Educating people on the IT and how they use it or would like to use it can usually be related to something they already do in their everyday life. So drawing those parallels and explaining that to others, Jeff has a lot of fun in that.

That's sort of, so that's a little brief description of kind of Jeff's business. Um. What are your thoughts, Jeff? I'm not, so when you said there's a bunch of diverse people that you've had on the, on the show, like I'm just the IT nerd now, so Yeah, yeah. Anyway, you're the it My wife would introduce me as a social geek, so I'm, uh, I'm, I'm fairly outgoing.

I sit a lot of times my job entails not only understanding the business issue and problem, the why do we care, but then the technical, how do we fix it? How do we, how do we deal with it? So. Um, very much enjoy talking to people. Not one, one of those mushroom developers where you, you put me in a dark closet, shovel shit on me and, and watch me grow.

So I like to, uh. To think I'm not one of those, those mushroom types. I like it. I like that. Never thought of that analogy before, but yeah. Okay. Wow. There's um, so how long have you been in it? How long have you been doing the data work? Since my, so very first class in college, it was like a survey of technology and it was a little bit of software, a little bit of hardware, some programming and.

I kind of had no idea what I wanted to do when I went to college, but that class and, and maybe as much of the class as it was, the instructor kind of piqued my interest and from my, my freshman year in in college have been doing something along the lines of. Uh, something related to it, whether it's websites or databases.

Um, but, but formally, uh, literally even right before graduating college, I worked for a couple of the, the, the colleges within the university that, that I went to, uh, doing all kinds of stuff it related. So, um, my entire career. Wow, that's pretty impressive when, uh. A place where you're learning, they actually pull you in to, you know, oversee and run sort of the, the programs and systems.

That's pretty powerful. Must have done something right. And the only class, the only class I I got a C in ever in college was it happened to be a database class and it kills me. And I just, just missed an assignment, had no idea it was due. The instructor asked for it and he said, oh, by the way, it's half of your grade.

And I about soiled myself and uh Oh wow. Anyway, so. Irony has it that I would obviously be doing database things for my entire career. So being, being that the one that I got the worst grade in, in college. So, wow. I love that dichotomy there though, that, you know, I mean it's like we think that people, I mean oftentimes just your story there.

So back when I was working at the hospital as an EMT and I was a tech in the er and I remember, uh. Someone was, we were getting IVs on this person and they had, they were hard to get their IVs. Some people are easy, some people are hard, and this person was a a bit challenging and before anybody tried anything, this person wanted the doctor to do the IVs.

And the, the concept was that, well, this is the highest educated person in the room. I want them to do it. And it's like going of all the techs, of all the nurses that do hundreds of, of IV needle sticks a day, a doctor probably hasn't done a needle stick in or, or a, a, you know, an IV or anything if ever. I was gonna say maybe residency.

Right. But maybe, maybe. Yeah. And, uh. You know, a a a simple IV isn't the same thing as putting in a port or putting in a, you know, medical procedure. But that's what it made me think of is oftentimes people think, oh, this person, you have to be straight A's in this in order for us to value your Well, yeah.

If you wanna value my resume and not necessarily my performance. Go ahead. Yeah. There are plenty of, of 14, 15, 16 year olds what was in the news most recently, a 15-year-old. Youngest person to graduate with a PhD in physics or, or astrophysics. Really? What were you doing as a 15-year-old, so, right. Anyway, trying to, trying to get my driver's license so I could get out of the house on a regular basis.

Exactly. Yeah. I didn't have, I didn't have that loftier goals as, as a 15-year-old PhD in astrophysics. It's amazing. It's amazing. Well, and the, yeah, there's so many different walks of life. Real quick question though. You, you mentioned something that piqued my interest was, um, so this first class that really impressed upon you, but you mentioned that the instructor impressed upon you.

What was it about the instructor that really stood out for you? I think it was her enthusiasm. Nothing more than she was enthusiastic about what she had already seen. The trends that she was seeing kind of over time, and then teaching that course knowing that a lot of the people in the class had never been exposed and that that just, that enthusiasm was the contagion.

Right. And so I didn't know at the end of that semester, I didn't know whether I wanted to program, I don't know. I didn't know if I wanted to, you know, do networking like it. Some people think it is just, well. Turn it off and turn it back on. Well, cool. Sure. But you gotta know something a little more about it.

And, and there's as many things if people can classify it, uh, uh, thousands of different ways. Right. So I had no idea what I wanted to do at the end of this course. I just knew it had to involve technology. And so her enthusiasm kind of rolled down onto quite a few of us, actually. 'cause I think there were, there were a few of us in the same boat of.

Just went to college. Undeclared majors had no idea. We were in a college of business, so something business related and, and I very quickly shifted to, uh, management Information Systems was the degree. So Bachelor of, of Science and Management Information Systems or, yeah, bachelor of Arts. Um, no, bachelor of Science.

Excuse me. But that course, sorry, the. My, my college career then it wasn't just the finance classes and the stats classes and the accounting classes that you'd get a business degree in. I, I did all kinds of other things, networking, um, databases, three or four different programming languages like c plus plus and Java and Visual Basic at all.

I kind of really like more low level stuff. Never had to write my own device drivers. We, we were just getting on the call here and my camera didn't work and my microphone didn't work and, you know, so I've never been at that level, you know, screwed with the hardware. Um, nor nor writing an operating system or anything like that.

So, uh, people can program far, far better than I can, but it's important to understand how it's all put together and that's really what that force was understanding a little bit of everything. And then knowing where to go from there. And again, it was just her, her enthusiasm for it all kind of rubbed off.

Nice. I think one thing that I was just getting outta your description, outta your explanation there, and it applies to so many aspects of life, but I think it is a great example, is I think a lot of the mass majority of the populace who are listening. Um, it is, turn it on. It should work. It should work the way I want it.

Just create what I, you know, but really it's what you're talking about is the system, the structure of it. It's, it's like a symphony. Like you have, you know, a horn section. You have, uh, you know. Percussion, you have so many different influences that add to the completion of the experience. The, just the technology that we are using right now, audio and video over the web seems simple and it's, I mean, I certainly take it for granted.

I'll be the first one to, to, to admit. I take it for granted that I can click on a link. That webpage displays on my phone within, I don't know, somewhere between a third of a second and a second usually right? Sometimes faster, sometimes slower. And the amount of, the sheer number of devices that, that information had to, to, to traverse to get from the server wherever it is, might be on the West coast of the United States, might be in Europe, might might be anywhere.

The number of devices that it has to traverse, going through fiber optic cables and cell towers and underground and over sea and all of it, it's, it's pretty ridiculous that it even works at all. Um, and knowing little pieces of that is fun. So the other piece, and, and what you mentioned in the, in the intro was explaining things to people.

Nobody needs to know all of it. I don't know all of it. Right. There's just too much. So I, I've heard others explain it to people and it's the, it's the crusty, nasty it guy. Like, wow, you're dumb for not knowing this. Why You can't expect anyone to know everything. So don't approach it that way. And, and my approach is always base it in something in real life.

Like, like your, the bio mentioned. So for example, my current client. Is a global data center provider, and all that means is they have a building, they have the power and the cooling to have other people's servers run there and be connected to the, to the, to the internet and their equipment is massive. I mean, they, they would power entire neighborhoods with the amount of power that they can deliver to just one of their buildings.

When you, when you get down to it, it's exactly what you have hanging off the side of your house. You have an electric feed from a telephone pole, or you know, a power pole out by the street coming to the side of your house into a big old breaker, probably a 200 amp breaker that feeds your breaker boxes.

You probably have 48 breakers all the way down and wires going from those breakers to things that you power a fridge or a. Washer dryer or whatever. It's the exact same thing in a data center. So if you can understand how your house is powered, you're 90% of the way to understanding how a data center's powered.

It doesn't have to be, doesn't have to be complex. It can be relatable. Well, it's a, it is an, uh, what I'm hearing you say is it's a system awareness, understanding the system, you know, apply the application well and, and understanding the system from a high level. Because I don't have to understand that phases of electricity are 120 degrees of the three phases of a 360 degree circle.

And the 120 degree of 120 degrees of amplitude makes one phase. The next 120 degrees of amplitude makes another phase. Like you don't have to know any of that for three phase electricity. Electricity once runs through a wire, that that's, that's enough for people to understand how your power gets from the street to the side of your house.

You don't have to explain it that, I mean, there are people that need to know it, and, and I mean, I, I don't even know it that well. There are people that need to know it at that level, but I'm not one of them. Um, hopefully, hopefully those people that, that do know it, that well, know what the hell they're doing when they hook those wires together, but.

That's kind of all men, not me. Thankfully. There's a a and, and you're right. I mean, it's, it's, you peel back the layers and there's more and more, and there's more expertise in certain areas, certain emphasis. And so this'll be a good jumping off point. So my question now with what you were just sharing is what were you like as a kid?

Uh, I, I, so full transparency in my, my, my, I'm in my mid forties. That means that I got the best of both worlds. I grew up and, and go outside and play was just the thing that you did. So I grew up on a, a bicycle jumping, you know, little jumps and dirt mounds next door. Uh, making trails through the woods to run or to ride bike across or through.

Uh, I mean, I think some of my friends' houses were on the other side of the town that I lived on. So like 18 mile ride one way. And as a 13, 14-year-old, they can't drive a car yet. Saddle up, you're, you're going for a bike ride if you want to, if you wanna go see your friends in the summer. So outside a lot.

And then this whole interwebs thing came along, you know, early, early nineties is really when I started to like, realize that it was a thing because everybody had a website, well it's a website, um, and. And now, I mean, I couldn't imagine life. Well, I, I could imagine life without my phone because it dings and beeps and burps and all kinds of things.

And I would love to not have them most of the time. But like anyone, I would be lost without the thing that I call a phone that is basically a laptop in my pocket, right? So I grew up in both sides. In, you know, in my, my mid-teens kind of started to transition too. Playing video games and things like that, and we're indoors, but my childhood was, was completely outdoors.

Swimming in the lake and like I said, riding bikes and things like that. Did you play sports or anything growing up? Yeah, I did. I played football in high school. Thankfully wasn't that great at it, so never was a, like, I never aspired to go, you know, D two or D one or anything like that. Um, so my knees and my hips are still intact.

Uh, I have shoulders that work. Um, played track, or sorry, ran track. Uh, very much enjoyed that, and I think that's more or less what I kept. Um, I do, I do quite a bit of exercise, both lifting and, uh, and, and running. So I've run a marathon. I don't recommend it. I've, I've run, my last marathon happened to be my first marathon.

Where was that at San Diego? It was the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego, the home of where it actually started, and my legs quit at mile 17. I had nine miles to go, managed to finish it. And, and not all altogether un respectable time, but it was so much leading up to it, the, the six months prior to the race.

And I'm sure I, I mean, I could have trained differently, which, which made me, would've made it easier. Um, but it was one of those things, set your mind to it. Check the box. I did it. That's just one of those things I don't need to do again. Well, yeah. Good for you. It's, uh. It's part of what, what, like you said, it's like you're out there, you know, living your life, exploring your life.

That's pretty awesome. Um, we're gonna bounce back and forth between your life and your business. My question, well, here's the interesting thing. One thing you said earlier about, you know, your, your phone and your hand beeping and burping and all this, and I don't know, I, I've heard this before, so I guess I'm confirming it with the IT person if, you know, you may not know, but.

Is it true that the phone that's in our hand is more powerful than the spaceship that got the first crew to the moon? It absolutely is. I've heard that, I've heard a version of that, that a Casio wristwatch had more computing power, and I don't think that's true. Um, in, in certain measures maybe, but overall, no.

Um, but, but yes, any iPhone or or Android phone in the last handful of years. Is absolutely better equipped, uh, processing wise, memory wise than, than the first, uh, the first spacecraft to the moon. Um, I was just listening to, I forget what show it was. He was talking about his first computer. Oh, I know exactly what it was.

It was Chandler on Friends because my wife, if, if she is nothing else, she's a fan of friends. Uh, she's probably watched every episode without joking six or seven or eight times. Wow. But he was talking about his brand new laptop that his office gave him with 12 megabytes of RAM and a 512 megabyte hard drive.

Uh, what, so I'm talking to you on a laptop that has 64 gig of ram, I think, and a 16 core processor. I dunno. Um. As an aside, recently watched, uh, a YouTube channel called Veritasium. Went through what, what they called the most important machine the world has ever known. I think they said it was the, the cost of this machine was $400 billion.

And if, if you have any interest in Moore's law is what we're, we're actually talking about, the doubling of hardware. Speed and, and having of its size every year. It's called Moore's Law, right? So next year space, you know, hard drive size will be twice as much for half the price, roughly. You know what I mean?

Um, but if you've ever thought of how processors get made and, and when a processor says that the architecture is two nanometers or four nanometers, that's minuscule. That's, that's smaller than the width of the hair. And there are billions packed onto every chip That, again, is in the laptop that I'm talking to you on.

The process that makes that is, is unbelievable. And it's unbelievable From, from humans being able to dream up an engineer processes that are so precise, and again, to any of your listeners, I make no money by referring you to this. Veritasium is a, is a great, uh, is a great YouTube channel. It ends with humans have been able to engineer equipment that can create 100,000 drops of liquid tin, hit all 100,000 of those drops with lasers three times each per second.

This machine never stops and it's, that's. What the engineering that goes into making the wafer, that, that ultimately ends up as your processor. Unbelievable. I I couldn't fathom that human engineering could get to a level of that sophistication. And, and again, what I do is, is, is not that, but I find it absolutely, uh, unbelievable that we were just talking about the moon.

Right. 63 years after the very first airplane flight we were on the moon. 60 something years later blows my mind. So again, to, to bring this all the way back to, you know, what I do on a, on a day-to-day and what I get to see, it's, it's pieces of that, it's pieces of the growth. It's seeing two systems talk together for the first time, or changing the way those systems interact to do something actually kind of cool.

Maybe cool means a business makes more money because they can do things faster. Maybe it's cool because to a consumer it's a whole lot less hassle. Um, but it's, it's fun to, to be in the industry and see such a, a rapid change. Right. Hopefully for the good. Well, and I can, I can see, um, first of all, I I how you mentioned the passion that your teacher had.

You have a passion about you. Right? I mean, you know, I mean, even. Even the wherewithal of, you know, it may not be your expertise, but you have an idea of how it contributes to an overall greater application. Right. And that's the thing that I really wanna highlight here is, is our ability as human beings, our ability as creative sentient beings.

I honestly believe we could be flying around the stars. If we'd stop trying to like, be such cavemen and, uh, you know, let our egos run around and start wars and, and create, look, you know, look, I have so much money, I'm, I will never do anything with it. You know, some of it, right? The Far Trek. Isn't that what you're talking about?

Oh, like, like, like we, we could legitimately already be flying around the, the stars because I believe human, human capacity to understand, you know, energy and capture energy and use it as fuel and, and use it as a way to create food and sustenance and, and, you know, however you, you would do that. I don't know how to do that, but I know that when you look at what human beings have accomplished.

In the timeframe that they've been here because a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, and it just keeps going through my head 'cause I've said it for years. When I work with private clients, I say, you know, think of your belief system. I said, go back a hundred years. Go go back 150 years and tell people that you will be able on this little device in your hand to call someone on the other side of the planet.

And have the picture of them while they're talking to you and you're talking to them. And so you go back 150 years, you tell those people that, and while they're burning you at the stake for being a witch, you say, no, no, no. I'm a smart human being. You know, it, it, it doesn't, it's like, it's like we're only smart in our application, not necessarily in how we get caught up into.

Other influences in our culture, in our society and stuff like that. You know? Yeah. Redirect. Redirect all the hate into something positive or something useful, right? I, yeah. If we didn't have such weak egos out there fighting to, to control and dominate, man, the power, we could pull people together to do. I mean, really if you had people who weren't so, um, still stuck in the lower vibration of, you know, I can't trust anybody because everyone tells me not to trust anybody.

And it's like going, there's a lot of people out there you can trust. Maybe not everybody if know, but if, if we actually brought our resources, if we brought our ability. To, um, because when we work together, when, you know, we, you and I could be totally different. You could, you could work in a realm absolutely different than I can.

But to be able to see something, like if I could see something in your world and be like, wow, I can take that and adopt it into my world, and vice versa, all of a sudden we are now, what was that? You said it was Moore's Law. Moore's Law has hardware of doubling of capability, right. And whatever. Yeah. But I'm like, let's call it the Sum Moore's Law, which is.

You know, well, no, if we actually do this, we could double every year what the human capacity can do, not only on this planet, but throughout, but we don't, we don't do that. We, we, we unfortunately, get hung up in, uh, the system. Speaking of which, this, this takes me to a different question. Where do computer viruses come from?

Uh, very, very smart individuals. With their own motives. Um, the not a computer virus, the, the, I guess the history of, of a bug, right? So when you, you hear something's not working, it's got a bug actually came from, I think I, so I, I'd have to fact my check myself, and I'll fact check myself after their call here.

I fairly certain, ENaC ENaC was one of the, not the first computer, but one of the, one of the very. Early computers also happen to be very large, made up of all kinds of vacuum tubes, and it was enormous, sizable warehouse, roughly, or, or a very large room. And doors literally would be open and bugs would fly inside, hit vacuum tubes and poof.

And so that's where the term bug comes from. I think, like I said, I'll have to fact check myself. Um, computer viruses are nothing more than very, very smart individuals. Understanding the mechanics. Like you said, we were talking about the very, very low level stuff and the application that the computer processor and, and the software on that computer is going to apply to set instructions and making it do something.

It, it, it wasn't designed to do. So a computer virus. Computer virus, you think of. Movies with hackers and whatever. Computer virus doesn't have to be malicious. Um, oftentimes they are, but, but again, viruses, computer viruses don't just happen. They are concocted because a, they know a browser is going to treat a particular string in one way.

So when the browser does that and there's an error or there's some flaw in the browser that can be exploited. And, and redirected, um, that that person who created the virus can now make that browser do something that it, it wasn't meant to do, it was meant to do what the, the computer programmer wanted it to do, right?

So typically nefarious, but, but not always. And again, very, very smart people understanding the guts of hardware, of software and the interactions between hardware and software, uh, oftentimes are. We create them. And, and for me, I, I, I love what you're saying, but I'm gonna say it this way. I don't know that they're smart people, they're intelligent people.

Fair Because smart people, smart people to me, actually have a broader awareness than just their own selfish. That's fair Application. I'll buy. Good. I'll sell it to you. No, uh, my question to you is, where did you come up? I mean, how did you, how did you come up with no Bravo Sierra? Actually, uh, I'll credit my wife with 60% of it.

I'll, I'll credit chat GPT for another 35% of it, and then the last 5% of it is what I had to offer. Um, but, but my wife literally, so I'm, I'm a veteran. I, I spent some time there. I'm a National Guard. Um. I am, I, my communication style is direct. I prefer to be communicated to directly. I would love to have a five minute meeting and not a 30 minute meeting if we only have five minutes of stuff to cover.

Um, so my wife knows all of this about me, obviously, and the, uh, you know, it came time to pick a, a company name and she fed all this, this stuff into chat, GPT. Popped no Bravo, Sierra. And if, if you're military type, uh, that's phonetically no bs, otherwise called no bullshit. So I love it. Um, most people, most people get it.

Most people have heard, you know, phonetic alphabet enough that they put that together, uh, pretty quickly. My current client, um, there's a few people that actually reached out. They're like, oh my God, that name is a one. That name is Awesome. Two, oh my God, does that name fit Like, good job. Because they, they've known me, they knew me in the past as well.

So, um, so yeah, use, use of use of AI and uh, and the willingness to. You know, contact the state of Colorado and say, I want an LLC that's called no, Bravo, Sierra, LLC. That's all it took. I love it. That's awesome. I thought that's what it was, but I was like going, yep. You know, I'm not gonna make an assumption here, so.

Right. Um, but I, yeah, I think it's, I think it's great and it's, um, I, I like your approach. You know, if you, if it's a five minute meeting, have it be a five minute meeting, not this. Let's spend time on the calendar. I got stuff to do, right? I've said out loud a few times too to people. If you don't wanna know the answer, if you don't wanna know an answer, don't ask me the question because I don't have much of a filter other than I'm, I'm just gonna tell you the truth as I see it.

Hopefully it's the truth. I don't, I don't try to, to, you know, the snow people, but that actually, so, so truth just, just had me rethink of something. So my wife and I moved to Colorado in 2006. We ended up renting for a very short time. Found a house about three months after we moved to Colorado and we were pulling up to the front of this house.

It happened to be very late December, pulling up in a moving truck, right? So we're kind of moving across town, across, you know, one Denver suburb to the next. And I get outta the truck and there's this guy on a cell phone's just pacing around in his, his driveway outside. And he said, hang on, lemme call you back.

He hung up the phone, he walked over and said, shook out, you know, stuck out. His hand shook hands with me and he is like, Hey, my name is so and so. The code to my garage is 4, 5, 6, 7. Go ahead and put anything in there that you want. Um, why don't, why don't you and your wife come over for, for dinner? We'll, cookie dinner tonight just to get to meet you.

And he, he later then gave me a book. It was like a month later, he gave me a book called, uh, titled called, I think the Speed of Trust. And I had literally taken four steps from the truck towards him and he's already telling me his garage code. You don't know me, but that's set the stage for he knew. He knew, he knew I would do anything for him and he, he me.

Right. So when he was gone, happened to, you know, be traveling or whatever. Yep. Absolutely. We'll look after the house, that kind of thing. Just barriers gone. Going back to, to no bs I, I'd much rather just have the honest conversation. Sometimes they're difficult. Um, but you can move forward a, a whole lot quicker when, when you're all on the same sheet of music.

And, and part of that is trust and, and honesty. So that's also where the No BS comes in. Absolutely love it. It's, um, well, and it also adds the fact of, you know, my background, I got a degree in communications and part of the background is, is. I mean, a lot of people don't realize, if you look at usually the number one or number two, um, issue in a work environment like personal issues, you know, staffing issues, stuff like this, it's interpersonal communication.

I, oh, I'm gonna, I I'm gonna make an assumption about you rather than actually go up and talk to you. Um, and so I read it. I read their, their. Nonverbal language, it's like going, yeah, but you read it from your own biases. So how, how often have you read that same chapter over and over again? It just happens to be different people.

Right? So, so I, yeah, I think that's awesome. That's a great thing though. The, and it was called What of Trust, um, the Speed of Trust, the book called again. Speed of trust. The, the speed of trust. That's cool. I later found out he was an executive at, uh, a, a rather large company. I think he was the, the chief marketing officer of a rather large company.

So again, he, he could have been the typical like, walk, walk back to the door, shut the door, continuous phone call like that. I wouldn't have known the difference, frankly. I, I wouldn't have thought good or bad, right? It just, he just went inside to talk on the phone, but instead. Instantly we have this, I mean, I'll say relationship, right?

Like good neighbor type relationship and, and that always stuck with me, so, wow. Very cool. Here's my question. The other question that I have sort of around your work, what is your philosophy on it? Security and you, you said why it involves trees. Why it involves trees. Yep. Uh. I, I will steal this. I will credit, uh, a friend of mine, uh, former, uh, information security executive.

Uh, there's no such thing as, as perfect security because it would mean you'd have to unplug and bury and, you know, a computer that's unplugged and buried isn't very useful. So in order to be useful, you have to put it out there a little bit. And so it's always vulnerable. Your computer systems, your servers, your.

Ring cam on your front door, like everything is susceptible eventually. And the, his saying was, security is, is, is like a tree. Don't be the lowest branch, don't be the easiest thing for people to get at. That was, that's really it. So for me, I'm, my, my business is, is me. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm not filthy rich.

I'm not out there. I'm, I'm not a celebrity. Why target me, right? So I'm, I'm not a huge target, but you also don't wanna be the lowest branch either. So I don't keep passwords under my keyboard, right? See, promise. Um, so, so you, you, you have to do what you need to, to, to stay at least ahead of the curve, but you don't have to be the most secure.

You just can't be the least, um. Not being, not being the least, probably a bar you should set a little higher for yourself. But, but yeah, don't be, don't be the lowest bridge. So coupled with that, I'm gonna ask you a question. How many sites do you log into? And I'll say, I'll say sites that matter and, and everyone thinks of that differently.

Sites that matter to me are my, my bank accounts and, and tax form sites and, and that kind of thing, right? So real sensitive personal information. How many of those sites do you have multifactor authentication enabled on? And if the answer isn't 100%, you should change that today for the, for the sites. Are you, do you do it on all your sites?

I, I, no, I don't. And that's what I mean, like the sites that, that I, I care about if somebody hacks into my, you know.

Blah. Like, I, I don't care. Right. Because you're not gonna be able to spend any of my money, and it's not a social media account that you can deface and, and do all kinds of crazy stuff with, but for the sites, then that's why I say air quotes for the sites that matter to you, right? Your bank account sites, maybe your social media, things that relate to your business, obviously, because that's how you get paid.

That's that's your email. Yeah, exactly. Those kinds of things. The reason I bring it up is it, it's still kind of stunning to me. That when I talk to people, and this could be execs at large companies or my neighbor or anyone in between technology wise, right? Either business or personal. You talked about where the computer viruses come from and it's those very intelligent people.

Um, there are all kinds of ways to pack into sites and it, it gets a whole lot more difficult for all of them if there's some kind of. Check some kind of code that gets emailed or text that comes to you with a, with a code on it. Even better if you have an authentication app on your phone. Microsoft Authenticator or I think, um, I mean Apple I think has one baked into iOS, right?

Key chain I think is what it's called. Um, Google has authentic, uh, authenticator, Microsoft, that you can either, any kind of app based one even better, that thwarts. I'll regurgitate statistics of 95 to 99% of all of those, I, you know, somebody logged into your account and then did some really heinous stuff, like transfer 20 grand to a, an account on the Caymans and now you're out 20 grand or whatever.

Right? So for anyone who's listening that has that website and you're like, ah, it's a pain in the ass. Yep. Suck it up. Don't care. It'll save you in the, in the long run. Yeah. Well, and we, we have double dual, um, what, what is it? Yeah, it's called multifactor. Yep. Or, or dual factor multifactor. So we, we have that, you know, like on all of our bank accounts and all of that kind of stuff.

But it's interesting because we had someone, a, a year ago, year and a half ago, they got our banking information and the bank that we have actually allowed them to take. The money to buy a car now because it was, it didn't come through us. The banks, you know, uh, the insurance covered it and they, they fixed it that way.

But it was like, you know, when we got the phone call, we were actually on a cruise and they're questioning us like, who did you give your password to? Who did you, and I'm like. First of all, the fact that you'd make that assumption, it was, it was, to me, it felt like they were, whoever I was talking to at that moment was passing the buck.

I'm like, you just gave away a car. We've never bought a car with cash, but all, you know this. And it's like, it was absolutely completely ridiculous. Social engineering. So not all hacking involves computers maybe. Maybe that's another lesson. And I mean, you've seen TV shows and you know, somebody calls on a phone and pretends to be.

A maintenance person or whatever, you know, and, and get some information. Great. So now you know that person's, you know, first, last name and maybe their door code. And, and now what do you want? So now you're in, you know, you've coded the front door. Now what? Right. So, uh, it's called social engineering. What are your thoughts on this though then?

Um, because we, uh, one of our, our security, our virus securities, you know, gave us this whole package and did this stuff. Said you were exposed this many times on the dark web, like all your information, right? And I'm like going, I swear in one year we get 2, 3, 5. Oh, we've had a, we've had a, an information breach, you know, from somebody somewhere, some community, some bus, some business we did business with, and now all of our information, social security and everything else is out there on the dark web.

What the hell do you do with that? Not much can do. Uh, I mean credit monitoring, a lot of times those instances come with credit monitoring. My insurance provider, I won't, I won't say it 'cause I don't know if I can or not legally, but, but it's very public, so insurance provider breach of, of tens or hundreds of millions of, of accounts and very sensitive information gets leaked.

I mean, I found out, I think somewhat through, through methods like you did. Where, where companies monitor dark web for those kinds of information releases. But I got a letter from him saying, Hey, we had a breach. This is telling you that there was a breach. And oh, by the way, here comes, you know, a year or two worth of credit monitoring for free.

Great. I'd rather not need it. But, but okay, great. I'll take it. Um, a lot of times those breaches are name, maybe phone number, email address, and a lot of times if. The sites that you're, they're using don't do what they should be doing. They have your password as well, or at least a hash of your password.

And that becomes critical when you use the same password for your bank account and your cell phone provider and Facebook and everything else. And so there again, just like multifactor authentication is probably the single best thing you can do. To keep people out of your, your really private stuff. If, if you let a password manager of any sort, choose a random password for each site that you visit, then in those breaches, when they do get your password, they might have your password to one site, or maybe it's, maybe it's two sites.

But if you use the same password everywhere and you write it and on a sticky note underneath your, underneath your keyboard, that's, that's on you. That's not, that's not on a hacker. That's, that's just on you. And I, I have less sympathy for people that get caught up when they say, well, I use that password for everything.

Well, you shouldn't have, yeah, it's not really much of a password then, is it? It it's not at all. So, so those are, those are things you can do to, to protect yourself. Like I said, credit monitoring, that's all after the fact. You just gotta hope that the people that bought that information or that stole that information, sold it to people that, for whatever reason, decided not to use yours.

Um, 'cause again, maybe you're not interesting enough or maybe you don't have enough money for them to target. I was gonna say, who knows, right? The low hanging brewing branch. Right? I mean, how many times have you gotten those, you know, the messages from Facebook or from Twitter, X you know, Instagram and, and you just know something's not right and then 12 hours later they're like, oh, sorry, my account was hacked.

Sorry, but your account was hacked. Change your password, put multifactor on it. And, and again, if you're talking with someone, do you recommend, um, because there are some of those programs out there, those apps or whatever that pull random passwords. Um, I actually have one of those, but every time that random password comes up, I'm like, I'll never remember this password.

I don't Well, but the beauty is you don't have to, because when you go back to that same site. The piece of software, whether it's, you know, whether it's specific software on your, on your computer, or whether you use something built into one of the browsers, that they will create that password and then store that associated associated username with the site that you're currently on.

I mean, the beauty is you don't have to remember a password. So, so yeah, let it, let it choose a random string of garbage. 'cause I mean, if you can't remember it. I don't think anyone else is gonna know. And, and if they do find out, it was, it was just brute force. It was just dumb luck. And they were able to put enough computing power behind it and they just really wanted your Facebook password.

You know, so at, at a certain, the computing power exists such that if somebody wants to crack your password again, they can, but they would spend hundreds or thousands or maybe tens of thousands of dollars on electricity. In order to crack that, is your Facebook account worth $3,000 to them? And the answer's probably not.

So everything's crackable given enough time. And if they, if, if, you know, said actor has enough patience, but, but again, don't, don't be the lowest Don most. Right. You work with these big systems, but do you work with small or entrepreneurs? I mean, tell me, tell me about. Who you work with and how you can help 'em.

Yeah, so the, like you said in the bio, uh, you know, applicable from, from really large companies down to, to very small ones. But everyone moves data around, whether you're an entrepreneur or a small business owner running payroll, right? So you're HR system has to talk to your payroll system. Maybe they're the same, maybe they're not.

Um, maybe you have a lead generating site, so your website has a little form, a contact me form maybe that needs to go to the, your, your CRM, the your CRM software. Um, maybe you just have an email you, but right there, that's data integration from a webpage to your email inbox. That was a, a change in modes, right?

So I'm on a webpage now. An email is created and that email's in your inbox that's actually an integration if you think about it, right? So taking in data in one, transforming it a little bit and, and shooting it over in an email so everyone can relate. At some level, whether they're, it's just in your personal life or if you're on a small business, you're entrepreneur or you're department head at one of these big companies.

Um, I generally, I love helping, especially small business owners understand the, the not so happy path. And it sounds a little bleak, but what I mean is. When somebody contacts you and said, well, hey, why haven't you called me back yet? I went to your form on your website and I've heard nothing from you, but you then also don't have an email in your inbox.

Do you know where to go to figure out what's broken? Most people don't keep track of all of those little interaction points and what's responsible for the actual integration itself. So if you have two or three or four systems, some, some companies, even small companies, use something like Salesforce. Um, a lot of things can connect to Salesforce.

Um, almost like programming, right? So I can, I can use a, a webpage and say, well, when Salesforce, when a, when a lead comes in, I want something to happen. So there's all kinds of little things that, that can, that can really help businesses optimize what they're doing. A lot of times comes with these integrations or these data exchanges and understanding when they work well is great, but sometimes understanding when they don't work well is equally important.

Because if you are not getting leads through your website, not only do you not have leads, but now you have bad customer experience also because you never knew you should have contacted them back. It's, it's fairly detrimental or could be fairly detrimental. So understanding, do I need to monitor that the thing actually works?

Maybe you have once a week you have something, go and, and actually test filling that contact out, hitting the submit button and you getting the email. So like if you don't see that, that thing is right away in Monday morning in your inbox, maybe your website's not working. But every week you have that, that thing tested and, and now you know it's working.

So there are strategies for. Not only understanding when things are working and, and what that should, should look like, but things, things that you can do or maybe should do depending on the, the urgency or the necessity of it, of what we're talking about. You want to protect against it, not working or understand where to go and who to talk to when it doesn't work.

That might involve maybe a third party. Maybe a third party. Does your website. Maybe, maybe you yourself have put together some of these integrations. There are platforms that help you connect, you know, system A with email, system B, or you know, like I said, Salesforce to a payroll system or an HR system or something like that.

So, um, knowing who to talk to and where you can help a small business actually set these up and make sure that they're working effectively. Yeah. And someone, this documentation, someone was just writing it down in my own work. I'm terrible at documentation. I'll say I'm terrible at documentation. There's the no BS part.

Um, it's not fun to do, but, but oftentimes very, very helpful. So yes, as a small business owner, what do you have time to do? Do you have time to sit on the phone and or pour through things that you'd rather not know anything about, to try to figure out what's broken? Or do you want to actually go to a three page thing that says how it works?

Who to call when these specific places don't work or you don't think they're working, or how to diagnose that yourself, right? So maybe there's just steps in this documentation to help somebody. Small business owner, again, who doesn't have time, who doesn't wanna think about these types of things, and so they just can deal with.

Call who they need to call, resolve the situation, get back to their actual job, which is running their small business. Well, we could keep talking 'cause I have plenty more questions, but we're, uh, we're really pushing the time. That was empower, so. Yeah, I know. That's amazing. Flies by. I, I looked up, I was like, oh my God, we, we went, we went on.

Yeah. So hopefully people find it interesting and, and you know, got something out of it or will continue. Sure. And, um, you know, maybe we'll have you back here in the future and, and. You know, ask some more questions, get a little deeper. Yes. That's, that's great. I, I have no packages to offer. I've got nothing other than if, uh, if any of your readers and, and listeners find this interesting and find this helpful, happy to have a conversation.

Um, and. And yeah, like I said, the education is, is almost more fun to me in aspects than, than just the, the IT stuff in general. So happy to help your, your listeners and how, how's the best way for them to, to get ahold of you? Probably just email. Um, I'm kind of old school in that I don't have a bunch of social media.

Um, and, uh, I mean they could find me on LinkedIn of course. And, uh, just good old email, text, phone call. So, is it jeff@nobravosierra.com? Yes, sir. And then, uh, look for Jeff Cox on LinkedIn. And um, well thank you so much, Jeff. I really, it, it's actually fun. I'm like, I have all these other questions I've kind like may have you back, so that's cool.

Awesome. All right, thanks Jeff. And for those listeners out there, thank you very much for hanging in there and listening to, uh. This exploration. It's really, you know, learning about people's business but also really learning about who they are in those, this world and, and you know, Jeff obviously has a real passion and cares for.

Educating, helping, supporting others, and that's really what we're here to do as well. So we hope you have a great day. Uh, until next time, we wish you all the best. Cheers.