About Georg Dauterman:
Georg believes in the fusion of technology and creativity. With a background in both fields, he started his career in IT departments of publishing and advertising agencies, realizing the critical need for tech aligned with business goals. Joining Valiant in 2004, Georg’s expertise and passion for efficiency brought industry recognition. He holds a history degree from Queens College and serves on Datto’s Global Partner Advisory Board. Beyond his leadership role, Georg enjoys exploring culinary skills, fitness, and outdoor adventures with his family.
About Megan Quick:
Megan is a member of the Valiant Marketing & Sales team, assisting in demonstrating the value of our services and ensuring positive experiences for prospective clients. When not working with technology, she is a theater production manager and performer, producing her own comedy shows, and is an avid writer. Megan has a B.A. in Theater from Sewanee: The University of The South.
Megan Quick:
Hello and welcome back to the Creative Stack. It's a podcast where we talk about the intersection of creativity and technology. And today we're also gonna look into our personal lives a little, not to get too scandalous here. George, hello, I'm joined by my illustrious co-host, George Dauterman. How are you doing?
Georg Dauterman:
I'm great today, I'm very excited. This is a topic.
Megan Quick:
This, well, it is a good topic and I don't want to show people how the sausage is made too much, but you came to me with this topic, I feel from a real, it was a real point of passion for you, you wanted to talk about this. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, yeah, I did. did. uh, it's, yeah, it's important to me that I feel like it's one of the things that is, uh, very commonly overlooked in our day to day lives.
Megan Quick:
You know, and when you suggest the topic, I, so just so everyone knows the topic is like, are you, I don't want to like wait too long to reveal it. are you your family's it guy? Is that you? And then what does that mean? And why, what happens when there's one person who really understands it? And, know, when you brought up this topic, I was like, that's like such a good topic. It's kind of quotidian and like interesting detail oriented. And then I was, I feel like actually there's.
Georg Dauterman:
Hahaha.
Megan Quick:
we don't have to get into all of it, but there's actually a lot of like societal reasons and like sociological reasons why some people are good at IT, some people aren't, and for a variety of different reasons. Yeah, yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yep. If you're a kid, if you're, know, I find that it's, know, the person's not afraid to take something apart and put it back together again. And you might've had a screw leftover and you're like, well, it's still working.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, we don't know. I can do that with like a bookshelf. don't with a computer. I'm I'm I'm a little scared.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. It's not as hard as it looks. Clock is much more complicated. I'm speaking from my childhood experience of taking a clock apart. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it's that sort of like, I don't know what's inside of here. And it's sort of a very common thing when you meet people who do IT work is sort of the person takes it apart, not afraid. you know, as you get older, I'm less.
Megan Quick:
Wait, that's really interesting. I don't know, but you might have just been a kid. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
I'm well, I really want to this thing back together again? If I can't, you know, maybe I'll just leave it alone for now. Um, but, but, uh, yeah. So I always find like the question is like, are you the IT person in front of your family? um, most of, uh, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure I, but, uh, and it's actually interesting is I'm probably not a great IT person for my family is my patience is very narrow for, for their special needs.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, you're like, I don't know. Yeah. Are you George? Big reveal. You send this episode to your family. You're like, here's here's what you're doing to me.
Georg Dauterman:
Uh, as, as my family or, uh, my mom and dad and yeah, yeah. Like you should watch it. It's sort of like a requirement to watch this first and in its entirety before I can help you sort of like, it's sort of like the pre flight, but, yeah, I think there's so many, there's so many little things here. And like, I, I sit at my wife all the time. Like, I don't know what happens. Like, I understand how this works and she's actually very good at technology and she understands a lot of it. And she's, I'm like, for people who don't understand is how.
Megan Quick:
you
Georg Dauterman:
how do people function in our modern society without understanding how this all works? Like, what do you mean? I get Google and there's not just AI tools, but it's still pretty confusing at times. And there's a lot of little nuance to it. And I think it's a great, a great topic is to kind of like put it out there like, Hey, this, because we, we, we spend so much of our time on like business technology and business and, know, advancing our, our operations and stuff. But, you know, a lot of our personal tech really matters a lot.
Megan Quick:
Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
And I have some fairly strong opinions on it.
Megan Quick:
Well, and I think, and this is maybe to, I mean, I think a big thing at Valiant is we always say we support people, not machines. because at the end of the day, it's how, how are employees interacting with machines? And actually this topic, I feel while we're talking about our families or like, I am not my family IT person, by the way, reveal I'm in marketing, everyone. No, I'm the podcast person. I think it's.
Georg Dauterman:
Yes. Right.
Megan Quick:
it but a big part of it is like how do you explain to people how do you put it in terms that they can approach how so yeah go on sorry
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. It's especially when you have your elderly parents on one side and children on the other and, people that are just not into this, like it doesn't interest them. They just want it to work. You know, they look at it as sort of like an appliance and should just operate. And so that's really an important part of this conversation, I think.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. No. Yeah, I feel like I know I have some parents who the where they leave their laptop is sort of incredible and how precarious it is. I'm like, and they treat it kind of like it's a I don't even know. I don't know what else they treat like a sock. I'm like, where? It's kind of like on its side. I'm like, yeah. Sorry, Mom.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Uh, yeah. Or like, or like, it's sort of like, you know, yeah. I mean, like, I had to know that personal pet peeve is people pick them a laptop up by the screen. It's like, it's abusive. It's like, you know, you're, if that was like a critter, you'd be mad at the person. Like, how could you do that to, how could you do that to like your cat? You wouldn't do that.
Megan Quick:
feel like you gotta know. Yeah. And then they wonder why, like, why does all my technology like die? Mercury's in retrograde. I'm like, no, you're grabbing the screen. You stepped on it? Yeah. So, to your, let's go back. You are your family's IT guy and,
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. No, you just, you dropped it like more than once. it, it has the evidence of abuse, you know? So, but yeah, yeah, totally, totally, totally. But I, yeah. I am.
Megan Quick:
I think an IT guy of New York, I would say, out and about on the town. So what are the most common issues you see with like family IT situations?
Georg Dauterman:
I Uh, there's a lot and it's sort of interesting because, um, well, first off, um, I just want to say that if you have children in school or actually anyone, but children, particularly they're using it all the time in school, right? It's part of like your day to day, but they're not usually instructed to how to use it properly. Like they don't have a lot of instruction. Um, so I think it's like sort of as a parent, you're sort of responsible for talking about it. Um, also if you've. people older in your life that you're that you sort of are responsible for or helping with, you know, try working social security or healthcare or insurance or, scheduling doctor's appointments. all uses mobile devices and phones and laptops and all this sort of stuff. So I think common issue is that most companies providing services to people now. require you use a computer or a mobile device to do it. And I think that the number one problem, mean, may not number one, but like a critical problem is people have way in the echoes in the business world as well. said too many logins, too many passwords. And especially if you're trying to manage like kids and parents and you know, everything in between, sharing those passwords, sharing that information with each other.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
being, you know, while we're expecting so much privacy, but also be able to help them. So I think that's really complicated. and I think that the other piece is that, a family will start accumulating devices over the years. Like I know my house, there's, know, there's five of us and, we probably have like, you know, 15, 20 computers by the time we're done, there's counting everything in the house and there's, there's each of us have a phone. Probably most of us have a tablet that we have a monitor. Then we have keyboards and then we have gaming councils. we then we haven't talked about IOT devices, which we'll get to in a second. And, and, and, you know, TV by the way, is a computer now and all has connectivity. It's all on the network. It's all on the internet IP, internet protocol. So, I mean, I think the issue is that a, we have a lot, the biggest issue, common issues are passwords and sharing passwords. the proliferation of devices like There's so many devices in a common house. and that, and then it can be split into like computers, mobile and IOT. And then I think the other issue is that, a lot of people aren't even given the most basic education on how to use the tools. Like, you know, like, you know, people talk about children and young people being digital natives, but no one taught them how to use these things properly. They kind of go through school. It's not like there's a, you know,
Megan Quick:
Yeah Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
We always talk about every school should have a financial literacy class, but I always thought there should be a cybersecurity class in cyber basics because we live so much of our life on these tools and these systems. We should kind of know a little bit how they work.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, I think this is kind of interesting because actually I've heard this being discussed a lot on like podcasts I like to listen to they're talking about the digital natives which is I won't. the generation younger than me grew up without, like, they don't remember getting a computer in their home. I still remember, like, third grade, getting a computer. My poor mother, I was trying to watch Hilary Duff music videos and downloading viruses. Literally, that's what I did. And I, but it's like, I understand that there's a troubleshooting mindset, even though I'm maybe the biggest IT, like, dummy.
Georg Dauterman:
Right, me too. Yeah.
Megan Quick:
And then there's the generation, obviously, that spent most of their lives without computers. It's only happened in the last 20 years, 25 years, that it's been so ubiquitous. So I know also computers existed before, then I won everybody.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Oh yeah, no. Well, think, think, I think, you know, it's, it's a twin rise of the internet and mobile devices that made it so ubiquitous and social media. Um, all those, those three things kind of colluded, like even myself, grew up without computers and you know, it was like, it was like a S it was sort of like an esoteric thing to stick. You know, I studied computer science and the Mengera program or you worked on the mainframe and it's, you know, utterly different than what we, what we do today. So.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Yeah, but there's still it's almost like you understand if you and I have the benefit of like the building blocks like we know. Yeah. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Well, we grew into it as opposed to being, this always was. I think what it is is the folks that are younger, it always was operational and they just sort of like assume how it works and don't have a troubleshooting mindset, as you said, and they don't necessarily kind of think about like the... And this is sort of my, I always say the wonderment of it all that it works the way it does. How, how, I mean, this, fact that you can watch a video from around the world in seconds is unbelievable to me. Like you were thinking about it for a second.
Megan Quick:
No, and they don't even question it. It's just what they've grown up in.
Georg Dauterman:
Right. It's not part, it's not part of it. Exactly. It's not part of that flip side. There's older folks who are like, who are like, I don't know how computers work. And you're like, you need to use this because this is how everyone's communicating. you know, try calling Amazon's, on the phone. You can't even do that. Like, yeah, right. Or, or any of these big providers. So you, you know, the
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Right. I wish.
Georg Dauterman:
someone picking up the phone is a big deal. And it's a cost, you know, it's a cost of that. And so I think what happens is there's a lot of older folks who don't have any sense of how this works. They don't, trust people. They, you know, they sort of believe what they read on social media. They, they give away passwords. They, they fall prey to social, to, to, you know, uh, social engineering and phishing scams. And there's also stuff like that. that, know, so I think,
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
There's a big piece of, of, of, education that's tailored to both sides of it. And I think the obligation, if you sort of get it is to educate people. And so I, I started to do my family and even on a personal level, like, sometimes people are like, Hey, just don't do this as a bad idea, you know, get invested in a past manager, make sure you're multifactor identifications on duties, like fundamental basics. Um, and in your personal life, those fundamentals can go really long way to protect you.
Megan Quick:
Well, and it goes back, we always say this with our clients to really drive home how important cybersecurity is, it's, mean, this metaphor actually even works better with folks and their personal IT. It's not if, but when, and also hackers are not just going for the big fish. They are, it's like your identity, your personal stuff is a car in the parking lot. They're just seeing if the handle, they're just seeing if it's open. Don't be open.
Georg Dauterman:
That's right. That's right. Right. The, the personal, yes. And, and, and, and, and I'll say it's a thousand times worse and getting thousands of us with AI. Um, there's so many risks now with, um, it's a concept, a thing called deep fakes where they're using recordings. Um, you know, if you're ever ever recording of you on the internet, they can take your voice and capture it and manipulate it, you know? So.
Megan Quick:
Yeah
Georg Dauterman:
It's not that the dangers changed. The risks are the same. It's just that the medium has gotten more sophisticated and simpler for the attacker. In the past, could, know, when I was a kid, was like, you know, someone comes to pick you up at school. You didn't, you didn't go with them. Like, oh, your mom sent me, there's no way my mom would never send anyone to pick me up. You know, if I, like I had, I didn't know, you had to know the person. They had to sign them out here. It's like the equivalent of that, but
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hahaha.
Georg Dauterman:
Now it's a phone call that sounds exactly like your mom or your grandmother or someone like us, someone close to your family. And so, you you need to have some, some protocols set up in advance to prevent that. so I, I, I, I know I can, I kind of get ahead of myself, but there's a lot, this is one of the things I'm, I always think about, you know, with my kids or people I know is like, Hey, you gotta make sure that they know that you're actually the person who they think you are. or you have to be able to validate who you are and authorize and,
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
and make sure that they know something that is not on the internet, that's not available, that's not ever been spoken in a recording or even in a password sheet, it has to be in your head, where it cannot be recorded and used against you or used to trick you.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Yeah, actually, even this came up, I had to ask my mom for something and she had to send it to me and then she called me and she goes, did you just ask me for this? Like to make sure, you know, it was some.
Georg Dauterman:
And she's not wrong. Your mom is spot on. And she's right.
Megan Quick:
And then I, she's, she's pretty savvy about this stuff. And then she, well, cause she told me, she was like, there are these scams that are happening and I'm like so freaked out. And then, but I just said, okay, ask me a question. Only I would know the answer to, you know, it's sort of like, and yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, it's kind of like those, like a kind of spy movie, but the reality is set that stuff up in advance. I mean, that's what we, that's what you should do with your family. I know I said, again, a little ahead of myself, but I think this is such a critical piece of this is literally have that code word for a family, have certain protocols in place about like money and transferring money personally. The same processes you follow in any business, you should follow in your personal life.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
It's really important is, uh, every day, uh, older people get scammed. mean, right now it's, it's just a couple of days after tax season and tax season has traditionally been a massive attack, uh, vector, uh, tax surface of people getting scammed. I'm, this is Joe George, so-and-so from the IRS and you owe this money. You do need to send to go to your bank, put your bank account into this account so we can take your funds away and
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
Like literally millions of dollars get stolen that way every year and people gain access to it is so and so from the tech, like, you know, you got, you got, and especially if you have elderly parents, you really need to work with them to make sure that they don't like let someone on their computer or have remote, you know, remote access to, you I'm calling from Microsoft to help you. Microsoft is never going to call you. I assure you.
Megan Quick:
I feel like that's a bit, cause like I know Chase will be like, we will not call you. Like they actually say that. And I think that's a good rule of thumb for most companies. And then also like even what you were just saying, it's really important to, like you said, have those protocols in place, have those words that your family has agreed upon beforehand. And
Georg Dauterman:
correct.
Megan Quick:
I think, sorry, I lost my train of thought. Rob, make sure you take this out. Sorry. I, ah, this moment where I knew what I was gonna say. Fuck, sorry. Oh my God. Well, anyway, I think that's all, that's all really, oh, I remember what I was gonna say. At Valiant, we do a lot of like trainings and just, we reestablish basic rules and George, those examples you were just using.
Georg Dauterman:
Believe it right in Rob.
Megan Quick:
It's if it's fear based or urgent, the urgency, if they say, put your card in now, you're gonna get arrested, this is gonna happen, we're gonna seize this stuff, we're gonna freeze this. If it happens, it happens, but that is not how it happens. if people are, if they're playing with your emotions, take a step back, just say, actually, let me call you back.
Georg Dauterman:
That's not how it happens. Correct. Let me, what's your number and who's your supervisor? If someone's really into you, someone to you usually comes in certified mail or it's going to be delivered by someone serving you papers. So, you know, it's like, don't worry, they'll fund you. I assure you, you know, it's like, won't worry about it. So I think that's really important. And I think some of the other things that are as important is that, you know,
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah
Georg Dauterman:
The big, some, this really three things you should do like right now. Fundamentals a protect your email with a multifactor limitation. just, it's just, just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. then I'd say start with the password manager, have complex password. Don't use the passwords. Use the tools within the password. All of them are pretty good. Dashlane one pass keeper, passable. It doesn't matter. They're all fundamentally.
Megan Quick:
It's there. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
the same will serve the same purpose. Whatever you like using. Also, install it on your mobile device, your Android or iPhone, whatever phone you're using, so that's consistent. And then the last but not least, please, please, please, please keep track of your credit card numbers and all that fundamentals. And some really cool card functions now with these virtual cards or these synthetic cards. So if you do a lot of purchases on the internet, can be really didn't protect you. know, just keep track of that sort of stuff and check your auto bill pay. Just make sure there's nothing in there. It happens all the time. Yeah.
Megan Quick:
Check your Chase. Yeah, I was getting charged for some weirdly enough. It was supposed to be like a cybersecurity whatever and I had never purchased it and it was like, you and just keep an eye on it. Check your credit card statement. Just check it.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, it sounds simple, but like, I couldn't tell you how many times you start talking to folks and how often this happens in personal things like that.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, life is overwhelming, I get it. There's no shame in this conversation. Now, and also this conversation we wanna bounce around. I'm gonna take us back just a little. George, when it comes to just getting things to function, sometimes I feel like I know I can get stumped or frustrated.
Georg Dauterman:
Yep. 100%. Right.
Megan Quick:
And as a seasoned IT guy, as your family IT guy, what are some things, basic things people can do to educate themselves, but also just like, what are some fundamentals you teach like a tier one support person to get started? Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Oh yeah. mean, well, first, first and foremost is, uh, Google is your friend. You can Google anything. YouTube is super helpful. I use it all the time. Um, if you think that, if you think that we don't, we don't, there's so much variation in so many things, you have no idea what it could be. Um, some of the AI tools are amazing. I mean, they can really help you, um, put a very specific problem in a very specific result. Um,
Megan Quick:
Me too.
Georg Dauterman:
And it can just be helpful. Just put it in there. Now my warning with AI tools, don't please don't put your personal information in unpaid for unsecured AI tools. But if you say like, well, how do I, how do, how do I best set up a wireless network? It will tell you what model do you have and where should I place it? And that's what there's some really cool stuff with that. Um, so I think that's, that's one of the things where I would start there. Um, I would just start with, with keeping track of. what accounts I have, like email accounts, um, social media accounts, uh, bank accounts. And, know, I like log in this to like financial institutions, credit cards, that sort of, and then, and then I would really just start basically working from out from there. And I think another thing that's really important is that any device you have floating around the house that's on the network is connected to the same network as your device.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Georg Dauterman:
So I think that's one of the areas that have risk that we don't necessarily pay quite a close attention to. ring cameras, you know, nanny can nanny. Yes. Yes. So IOT means internet of things, right? It's a strange term. I don't fully understand it. Why they call it that myself, but it's called internet of things. It's like a weird term, but
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm Are these IoTs? this? Yeah. Internet of Things. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. And small endorsement, everyone, I did a fundamentals training when I first started at Valiant, the CompTIA fundamentals, and that's why I know this. I also work here, but I remember learning that. Like, I remember, so, if y'all wanna.
Georg Dauterman:
No. Yeah. It's, it's the best way to think of it. Those are like little embedded devices that have computers, like lightweight computers in them. Yeah. So Alexa, your, you know, Siri, your, your Apple speaker, your fridge. Yeah. Actually most modern appliances have internet in them and they do weird things sometimes, you know, they'll sit there and like, they're sort of useful. They're sort of not useful in some ways, depends what it is.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. You're Alexa, right? Your fridge.
Georg Dauterman:
garage door openers, you name it in a modern house, there's probably like 30 devices that'll connect and 40 devices. If you have a lot of cameras and wireless bridges and outlets and also Bluetooth speakers. And so it all adds up. Like it's, really does all add up onto, and the thing I remember is that all those things need to be patched. Correct. Every.
Megan Quick:
Mm I don't think people think about it that way. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
So every single device in your house at some point will need to get updated and patched because it'll be out of date. You also need to, at some point dispose of it because it may be too old. and to go back to some of the that you asked, what should you do today? Never ever accept the default pass login and password to any of these devices. They must be set with the individual one that you're ideally storing your password manager so that you're not losing it. But the idea that you don't have to reset it because the defaults, there's been numerous attack factors where attackers will just look on the internet for unsecured cameras, unsecured door access control systems, unsecured... garage door openers. Anyone of those things, mean, and it's pretty scary, right? Because imagine if someone can control your garage door opener, that can open your garage. And many garages in America are connected to your, are actually inside the house, sort of connected to the house. So, or your ring camera, can watch you and your family come and go. That's really scary when you stop and think about it for a second. So we really want to, you really want to stop and just take, take.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Another cyber security thing we talk about in business constantly is if you don't know about it, you can't secure it. You should, know, if, this is one of those like rainy Saturday afternoon activities. If you really want to do it that way or is to, especially depending on if you have a, you know, a normal American house, you should probably take stock of all the things in your house. Be it from anything that connects to wifi has a wire in it. That sort of thing. And that's going to be your TV, your Apple TV, your Roku, your, you know, if you have any kind of wise cameras or ring cameras or any of those things, all of that stuff. And by doing that, you'll get a good sense of what you have to do there. And I had to maintain it. Now I'm not to scare anybody. It's not what I want to do, but you should kind of know what's in the house because it could be impacted.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, and you'll be surprised. feel like it'll be one of those things where you're like, yeah, probably eight things. And by the end, you've counted 30 vectors. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, I don't want tell you how many. I don't want to tell you how many in my house. It's a lot. Yeah, when I did a schematic of it, was like, that's quite more than I thought it was going to be.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, I still rent, but okay. Yeah, and I feel like that just drives home the like, no, we're not telling y'all to, you don't have to become my tea guys to, you don't do that. But, but I think there are like basics you can learn a mindset you can have, especially with security George, like we said, like, like just be, take that step back, especially when someone's playing with urgency. And also, like you said, know what you have, take an inventory of it.
Georg Dauterman:
Nope, don't do that. Yep. No jab, right?
Megan Quick:
And I mean, we did bounce around a little, I actually feel like we covered everything really well. George, want to end on like, also, I always love to tell people turn it off and on it does help unless you haven't saved. Although I was writing something and I, well, I won't even go through that, but make sure you're saving things as you write. Yeah. Yeah. Backup backup.
Georg Dauterman:
Hey, really does. It really does work. Yes, save your data. It's really important. Backup is a critical thing, especially
Megan Quick:
Ask your older family members if they back up and when they look at you blankly, you say, let's sit down and yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Let's get this set up. we'll some Google. Maybe we'll set you up with some small, low cost. Also,
Megan Quick:
Google's great. I almost write in Google because I know it'll be there.
Georg Dauterman:
Backup. So also one other last public service announcement on this. If you didn't pay for it, you're the product. So that free Google and free Facebook account or free insert, whatever it is, it's not free. You're paying. Yeah, there's no, no free. It's, it's, it's, have to link about this for a second. And it, you know, um, I always tell folks like for a low cost, you can get yourself a, you know, a low cost family.
Megan Quick:
I was about to say that earlier. Yeah. Free AI.
Georg Dauterman:
uh, Microsoft 365 or Google plan. Um, there's a, if you want a little more privacy, there's some other proton mail or some other, there's some really good products out there. Um, that you can even, even the built in Apple, uh, Mac mail is quite good for what it is for a family. If you don't want it, if you don't want to spend any more money than normal, that's a good way doing it. So there's some really cool stuff you can do out there to secure it and, and, and
Megan Quick:
Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
and keep it either, if your family uses Apple devices, the key chain's a great product built into the Mac. And to find why, some of that, there's some risk with that too and the Apple ID, but trade-offs.
Megan Quick:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Gosh, I maybe want to do an whole episode with you on location sharing at some point because I don't I don't do that. But I also know anyway, sorry, that's a whole that's a whole.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, it's whole thing. Location sharing. Yeah. I mean, we can actually do it. I mean, this may be a good episode, like family Apple devices, because I know it's so many folks, iPhones and, know, and, and, this Apple and their device. And, and there's some really cool stuff that, that you can do with it. That's for a family. It's quite helpful. yeah, I mean, other thing I'd say recommend, change the password to your, wifi router.
Megan Quick:
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Do it.
Georg Dauterman:
which may not be as simple as you think, but change that password because that password set, depending on where it's from, how old it is, it could have a default that is open to the world. So just saying that loud.
Megan Quick:
Mm hmm. No, and I think when you were describing that earlier, I was thinking about like how technology has improved our lives in so many ways and made it's made our appliances like smart, quote unquote. But then, like you said, there's this there's this window to the outside that didn't exist before. So you have to change how you think about your perimeter. I hate to say it. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. correct. Yeah. mean, there's, well, there's almost, there's no perimeter, just the device and they're all connected to internet at times. Yeah. I see swooped in on our minds there. but yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot to this and this is just really truly scratching the surface at the home. But I think, you know, I think if you really break it down, there's your identity, which is the, like the, the logins and access control to systems.
Megan Quick:
Justin Pinchina just comes in. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
There's devices, and then there's like workstations and mobile devices. There's IOT devices and there was a workstation mobile. Each one of them are sort of unique and have to be thought about uniquely and managed separately from one another, but they all share that want to, fundamentally you just want to keep the passwords unique and you want to keep them patched and up to date. And you want to know that they exist. That's sort of, those are the three kind of bits and bobs for those.
Megan Quick:
Great. Yeah. I feel like that's a great place for folks to start, honestly. Just like, see what you have in your house, patch them, change the passwords. You've already done the biggest foundational chunk of it, and that's a very actionable thing to do. George, I'm really enjoying this conversation. I do think maybe we should revisit it. Maybe there's a part two. Maybe there's part two. Yeah.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Yup. Right. Correct. Me We'll have part two. There's a part two. There's definitely a part two when they're around, I don't some next steps, but I think this is a good place to start. Figure out what you got. Start there.
Megan Quick:
Yeah, figure out what you got and just check in with the people in your life that sometimes you're like, please don't, please don't lean the laptop on the table where the cat jumps. you know? The cat wants to knock.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah, maybe don't put that cup of coffee on the edge of the laptop. It's probably a idea. Over the laptop, over the laptop. Or use the laptop as a tray. I've seen that one. Don't do that. It's not trying.
Megan Quick:
Maybe you don't eat a bowl of cereal on the lap. It's it's not a trick. There's like a famous I think there's like a video of I don't know if she really did this, but there's a video of Ariana Grande cutting something that looks like she's cutting it on a MacBook. And it's like. But that's it's such a good metaphor. Sorry if that's misinformation, everyone, but it's a good metaphor for how I think especially digital natives feel about appliances or or our technology and.
Georg Dauterman:
Yeah. Yes. Computers as appliances. That's how it might sit.
Megan Quick:
We, exactly, and you need to just take a little step back and just remember what it's there for. And remember what it, and it's power, yeah. All right, well great. This great episode, George, thank you for joining me again today and I'll see you next time. All right, bye everyone, thank you.
Georg Dauterman:
Mm-hmm. And what it does and how it functions. Yes, exactly. Awesome. This is great. you're welcome. It's great. All right. Thanks so, so bye now.