AS HEARD ON: WGAN Mornings News with Matt Gagnon: Elections, Hacking, Dominion Voting Systems and Online Shopping

Good morning everybody! 

Happy Thanksgiving day to all!

I was on WGAN this morning with Aaron Chadborn and started off this morning talking about electoral issues that are taking front and center in the result counts going on.  I discussed Dominion Voting systems and how they meet even the level of cybersecurity that is required at your local pizza shop. Then we discussed online shopping, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday Deals. Here we go with Aaron.

These and more tech tips, news, and updates just visit - CraigPeterson.com

---

Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey good morning, everybody. I hope you are going to have a great Thanksgiving this year. We're just so busy, my wife and I getting everything ready, doing all of that.

This morning I was on with a new guy because he's sitting in for Matt. Gagnon. His name is. Aaron Chadborn. He's been involved in politics for a long time.

In fact, worked for the governor for a while. We talked about this dominion voting system. We got into it a little bit. I'm going to get into it a lot more on my show this weekend. we also spent a little bit of time talking about shopping this season here, where should you go? What should you do?

What can you expect? So here we go with Aaron on news radio five 60 am and 98, five FM W  G A N. I had to put that in there. Well, I didn't have to wait anyway. Here we go.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:00:56] I'm Aaron Chadborn filling in for Matt Gagnon. We wish him a very happy Thanksgiving. He's on vacation all week.

We are not in Jeremy mixer in the sound, but with a freezing, I'm sensing a theme. I think it's cold outside. It's very cold outside.

Well, we are pleased to be joined once again for Tech Talk with our good friend, Craig Peterson, Craig, how are you?

Craig Peterson: [00:01:16] Hey, good morning, doing well. A little work in the bathroom, remodeling, and the normal COVID stuff.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:01:24] Well, I think that during COVID, everyone's been home much more than usual, and I've been talking to folks who are contractors or who are at Home Depot, Lowe's and they say that everyone's doing a new project. So I think you're in good company, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:01:40] Well, looking at the stock value of Lowe's and Home Depot. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:01:48] The year 2000 for elections, it was Florida, Florida, Florida. This year. It seems like it's Dominion, Dominion, Dominion. Obviously, a lot of people are very concerned, whether they're hearing about technology and these dominions voting machines.

Craig, I know you've been watching the issue closely. What can you tell us about what's going on there?

Craig Peterson: [00:02:06] Well, this is huge. In fact, I'll be talking about that on my show on Saturday at one o'clock right here, but in doing a deep dive, but it is really very concerning. You know, I do security for a living. That's what I do.

I run the webinar training series for the FBI and their InfraGard program. Ideal with everything from a pizza shop, all the way up through Department of Defense contractors and providing cybersecurity for them. So I kind of know a little bit about cybersecurity when it comes right down to it here, Aaron.

What we're seeing now with Dominion is very, very concerning. And I wanted to just make a comparison between what's happening with our voting systems. the majority of states in the US are using the Dominion voting system and compare that to the very basic the bottom, the beginning, of where you should be in cybersecurity.

Now the basics when we're talking about cybersecurity are what is known as the payment card industry standard. PCI has been around for a long time, and it is what you have to do to accept credit cards. This isn't DOD stuff. This is very, very basic.  In fact, what your local pizza shop has to deal with. They have to be PCI compliant. There's this massive 400-page document that they have to accept and then go on from there.

So I got a call from a pizza shop. They had been informed that they were going to be audited because there were some questions about some credit cards that have been processed. So the payment card industry was going to come out just to find if they had been breached and the data was out on the internet about people's credit cards. Was more than a hundred dollars per credit card that had been taken by them over the last year? We're talking huge, huge fines. So we went out, we had a look and sure enough, they weren't compliant and they needed to be compliant within two days. So we got busy and we upgraded their security, but it's very, very basic stuff.

So comparing Dominion, which is our voting. This is our right here as citizens of the United States. Comparing Dominion software and voting systems to what a pizza shop and has to comply with, Aaron, what do you think? Do you think pizza shops should have more security requirements than the voting systems?

Aaron Chadborn: [00:04:50] I think they certainly have higher thresholds and better resumes. then some of the people running our voting systems, Craig.

Craig Peterson: [00:04:58] Well, PCI, the payment current industry standards have 12 different requirements or controls that you have to meet in order to accept credit cards. Of those 12 requirements, the Dominion voting system meets only two. It fails on everything from built-in firewalls, through proper password protections, a cardholder data, or protecting voter data of maintaining antivirus software being even patched up to the latest versions of Android or Windows, restricting data access. Having logs on the voting machines that cannot be modified. You can go in and modify them with just a basic admin password using the same password on multiple machines. It goes on and on-air, just how bad this is.

When you compare an online voting system, for instance, or I'm looking right now at a company and you can find them online called elections online, and they have a basic set of online voting software. They are PCI validated. They meet the basic requirements. It's $800. Versus $800,000 for Dominion system

Aaron Chadborn: [00:06:25] You're listening to WGAN Morning news. This is Aaron Chadborn in for Matt Gagnon. And we're talking with Craig Peterson. You can hear him every week on Saturday afternoon from one to three.

Now, Craig with Thanksgiving coming up tomorrow, Friday is Black Friday. I know you always have tips and tricks for Black Friday. What are you pointing people toward this year?

Craig Peterson: [00:06:44] Well, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, frankly. Have been changing places over the last few years, and this year. It's completely different again, because of what we're seeing is that the deals, the great deals that we used to have online just don't really exist this year.

Yeah. There are some deals and you need to be an informed shopper, and that means you've got to go online. You've got to poke around. I can guarantee you that Amazon does not have the best prices on things. Guaranteed. Amazon has now taken its market leader position and been cranking up on the prices.

Walmart, when we're talking about online has some great values this year. So look at cyber Monday a little bit more. Don't just buy something on Friday this week, thinking that it's going to be a good deal. It's guaranteed to be a good deal, cause it's not true. Cyber Monday, we're expecting even better deals.

I think the bottom line this year, Aaron when we're looking at all of them, is to pay attention. Shop around. There are a lot of reasons not to shop this year on Black Friday. One of the biggest ones really is that the deals are hard to come by. These bargains aren't necessarily as good as they appear to be. There's plenty of other chances to save, even later in the season this year.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:08:16] Well, I think that, you know, we were talking earlier in the show, Craig, that it's going to affect a lot of brick and mortar retailers in a number of ways. This is going to be one of, I think the most difficult holiday seasons that a lot of our local mom and pops and local retail shops have ever seen.

So I know as much as I like getting deals online, I'm trying to do some of my shopping in person this year. I'm spacing it out. I'm not waiting in line on Friday morning. I'm trying to make sure that those people that are using those payment systems, that local pizza shop is still going to be here.

We lost bull moose music. We just learned yesterday in Portland. Um, but you know, I, I think a lot of us are looking for new ways to support our local retailer.

Craig Peterson: [00:08:53] And that's a great thing to do. I've been doing that as well in many of these retailers because of COVID because it can have as many people in the store at one time, they are now going the whole week, this week, and probably all the way up through Christmas this year, in providing deals for people that come in and you know what? I like that friendly face, a small local toy shop.

One of my daughter's first jobs, I think it was her first job. She was fifteen and she had the key to the toy store.

They went out of business years ago and now you'd have a look around. You're not going to see Toys R us anymore. Even the very big, you know, opposite ends of that scale. Aaron, all retailers have been hurt.  I do try and go local. That's a good consideration this year.

Aaron Chadborn: [00:09:43] So for folks looking to tune into you on Saturday, Craig, what else do you have coming up?

What topics are you going to cover?

Craig Peterson: [00:09:48] Well, we're going to do a deep dive we're into the whole Dominion, the whole voting system thing where we're looking at what's happened with Texas. Why did they reject it? And they had a lot of good reasons for rejecting that system.  How can we keep our elections safe?

In addition, we are going to talk a little bit about holiday gift shopping and how Apple is trying to stop some of the creepy user tracking that's been going on.

Of course, a little bit about how cyberattacks are working today. Are we expecting too much from our internet service provider?

There we go. I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. It is a wonderful time of year. I actually kinda like this time of year.

Take care. Bye-bye.

--- 

More stories and tech updates at:

www.craigpeterson.com

Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating:

www.craigpeterson.com/itunes

Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at:

www.twitter.com/craigpeterson

For questions, call or text:

855-385-5553