In recognition of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we dive deep into a life-altering hacking incident that reshaped our guest’s perspective on cybersecurity. Discover how this experience turned a victim into an advocate, and gain valuable insights on protecting yourself from cyber threats. Don’t miss this transformative discussion!
Guest: Gary Berman, CEO, Cyberman Security
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-berman
Host: Dr. Rebecca Wynn
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/rebecca-wynn
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Episode Description
In this episode of the Soulful CXO, host Dr. Rebecca Wynn speaks with Gary Berman, CEO of Cyberman Security. Gary shares his harrowing journey from victim to voice in the fight against cybercrime. As we continue to recognize Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the conversation covers the emotional toll of experiencing a major breach, the lessons learned, and actionable advice for individuals and organizations to bolster their cybersecurity defenses. Tune in for an eye-opening exploration of resilience and awareness in the digital age!
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Resources
National Cybersecurity Alliance Free Events and Programs: https://staysafeonline.org/events-programs/
CyberSecure My Business Program: https://staysafeonline.org/programs/cybersecure-my-business/
Cybersecurity Awareness Month Resources: https://staysafeonline.org/programs/cybersecurity-awareness-month/
Data Privacy Week Resources: https://staysafeonline.org/programs/data-privacy-week/
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The Life-Altering Hacking Incident That Changed Everything | A Conversation with Gary Berman | The Soulful CXO Podcast with Dr. Rebecca Wynn
[00:00:00]
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Welcome to the Soulful CXO. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Wynn We are pleased to have with us today, Gary Berman. Gary is the CEO of Cyberman Security and refers to himself as the Forrest Gump of cybersecurity. His 30 year career focused on marketing communications and consumer research. He began his career as the founder and CEO of Market Segment Research, a leading firm specializing in the demassification of American marketing.
Clients included AT& T, Best Buy, Ford. General Motors, P& G, and many other Fortune 500 firms. His research on multicultural marketing led him on an appointment to President Clinton's Commission on Race. He pivoted from victim to advocate to help others avoid the life altering consequences of hacking. His educational vehicle is a superhero comic series animated platform, [00:01:00] The Cyber Hero Adventures, Defenders of the Digital Universe.
Additionally, he hosts the Cyber Hero Adventure Show, where he shines a light on true cyber security heroes who toil in anonymity to keep all of us safe online. Gary, it is great to see you again. Welcome to the show.
Gary Berman: Uh, thank you so much. What a privilege, uh, to, to be here with you.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Your background is fascinating.
You have a long background in marketing and then you went ahead and you decided to go ahead and make a complete career change to technology when you didn't have a big background in it. Can you walk us through that? Cause there was a lot of struggles, but it's a very inspirational
story.
Gary Berman: Yeah,
thanks for that.
Um, and uh, let me begin by saying thanks for who you are and what you do and most importantly, why you do it. Um, well, I, I didn't really make the decision. The decision was actually made for me. Um, because as you mentioned, [00:02:00] I was the CEO of a very successful marketing, communications, research and big data, uh, firm.
Uh, things were going great. Uh, this is about 20 something years ago now. And, um, one day, uh, we were hacked. And I had no idea what was happening, but I could see the impacts of it. And so it turns out, like layers of an onion, over time, we learned quite a bit about what had transpired at that time. And so what we had learned is that it was led by a group of insiders.
So commonly referred to as insider threats, and they were actually part of a criminal organization that I'm unable to identify, you know, uh, in public. And so, uh, like I said, like layers of an onion, we started seeing anomalies. In some of our data, and [00:03:00] it became incredibly egregious when one day I got a call from our joint venture partner who, by the way, we had sold 49 percent of the company to the largest marketing communications in the entire company in the entire world, called the WPP group based out of London, things were going really extraordinarily well.
And we got a call from our partner, uh, screaming at me. Actually, she she said, What the blink is going on with your company and my jaw dropped, you know, I had a stellar reputation with the some of the clients and government agencies that you had previously mentioned, and I could not believe my ears. So I responded.
What are you talking about? He said, Well, you I just got a call from one of your people that there's rampant fraud in your data collection operation. We had about 100, uh, call center stations at that time where we did market research, um, and, uh, [00:04:00] big data analysis and things like that. And I go, what are you talking about?
Who called you? She said, well, you know, I'm not going to name who it is, but, uh, and here was the kicker. Wait for it. He said that we were under investigation by the FBI and that I should cease all communications with you. I almost fell off my chair. And so I responded rapidly. I said, okay, I'll call you by the end of the day with an update on what we understand to be the situation.
So I hung up. I had to catch my breath, you know, talk about soulful CEO or CXO. I, I had that moment where I was searching for everything I had and You know, I was hoping that God was kind of watching out for me because I had no idea what was happening. I was terrible at technology, uh, as you mentioned.
Plus, things like [00:05:00] hacking were not part of the zeitgeist of the world at that time. You know, Facebook had just been launched and things like that. Anyways, so... I called an all hands meeting, and I explained precisely what I had just heard, and so we took some, two immediate actions. One was, we did a complete audit of the research project that we were working on, 100 percent validation, and we found literally zero.
anomalies, zero errors. And then the second thing is I, without even asking, refunded $185,000 USD to our client, which was a very big auto manufacturing company, without even asking. Which was a lot of money for us, but my reputation and our company's reputation was everything. That's all you have in a, in a intellectual property oriented sort of business and stuff like that.
So anyways, uh, that happened and I went through about [00:06:00] five years of unbelievable sort of, uh, torment from the hackers. They had set up their own company without me knowing about it while we were paying them. And they were stealing our client information, they were stealing our intellectual property. They redirected the phones that were supposed to come into our office to their exchange that they set up, representing that they were us.
So, another way of thinking about it, I have since learned, is it, it's kind of like a massive identity theft, but it was also a corporate identity theft. You know, which is sort of an unusual and so I had to close the company did the best we could with the resources that we had available at the time, and I lost everything and I even had to lose my home and the devastation for my wife and our family is rather impossible to calculate.
[00:07:00] I subsequently decided to pivot into learning about this stuff and then ultimately to try to help people avoid what happened to us.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: That is just amazing. And I, even though you and I've spoken many times. I didn't know the gravity of that full situation.
So thank you so much for sharing that. How in the world did you pick yourself up from that and move back forward? How did you do that? Cause that was
tough.
Gary Berman: I appreciate that question. I mean, um, there's a lot to this story, so I'll just, um, give you a short answer. I'm still picking myself up. Um, I think this is after 20 something years.
This is the kind of damage that, um, you know, is life altering and not just for me. I had to lay off a hundred people. I mean, just to clarify. Um, and, and so, uh, about 10 [00:08:00] years went by and I worked on other things. I worked on veterans causes, uh, helping them reintegrate back into civil society after serving in theater.
Um, my wife and I started a children's education, a tutoring company for kids and things like that. So 10 years go by, and finally, literally, just to put food on the table, because I, I ended up losing a lot, um, I, my wife and I made the decision that I would see if I could re enter kind of the marketing communications research ecosystem that I left 10 years prior.
And so I put out a few, you know, sort of emails to old people from 10 years earlier, haven't talked to any of them. And I was incredibly humbled by the response, you know, and so soon I was invited to be a keynote speaker at a marketing conference. And so I did, and it went great. I had this big stack of business cards.
Gary, where have you been? Are you still doing these, you know, big reports or, you know, [00:09:00] can we get a proposal from you? Like, I couldn't believe it. I was so grateful. Came home, almost like tears of gratitude. Woke up nice and early the following morning, ready to go. Phoenix, rising from the ashes. And so, I go to LinkedIn, which is not something I'd ever really used.
And I happen to notice that after 10 years of no communication with any of the alleged perpetrators, we knew who they were, which is different than proving it in the judicial system, which is another whole show. Um, I'm a huge fan of law enforcement, but they are under resourced, you know, and they have to pick and choose what they can do.
Anyways. Um, after 10 years of no communications, I, I, I affectionately referred to these people as goofballs. And the reason I named them that way is it just takes the sting out of it a little bit. And so not one, but two of them checked in my LinkedIn profile on the day after I gave my speech. So either that was [00:10:00] random or they were at the conference.
Or they heard that I was speaking at the conference and something like that. And guess what happened? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The attack started again. We subsequently identified 19 attack factors. And it wasn't just in the digital universe. It was also physical stalking. And a very comprehensive series of, uh, some people refer to what had happened as like being in a Truman show.
It sounds nuts, and I'm the first one to say it. And throughout that journey, I said, okay, uh, this is my imagination. There's something wrong with me, which is a very typical thing that victims do. And I learned two things about being a victim. Number one is that there's so many victims of so many injustices in life, so it's not unique.
And the second thing, which is answering your question, how did I pivot is it's just exhausting. And I decided, okay, [00:11:00] take a deep breath, muster the resources that I have at the moment, which were de minimis. and get into cyber security. So I bought a book called cyber security for dummies thinking, okay, you know, those yellow books, like with the black stripes on them.
And I said, I'll start there. I'm very self aware. . So I don't know if you can teach an old dog, new tricks, but I was barking. Page 1, page 2, by page 10, Rebecca, I was lost. So rather than quitting, I found a company that put it out, Palo Alto Networks. I got the CISO on the phone and the only reason I got him is after 17 times calling, you know, my name's Gary.
I hear on the phone. Oh, hey, John, how you doing? He picked up the wrong line. There's no way I was going to quit. So I got him and I explained to him what happened, that I was lost after 10 pages and he busts out [00:12:00] laughing and like, I'm a funny guy, you know, having lost everything. Better laugh than cry. Or you I suppose you could do both.
Um, and I said, May I ask why you're laughing so hard? And I'll never forget. He replied. Well, it's not really for beginners. Then why do you call it cyber security for dummies? And that's when I realized it would be a better way to distill complicated technology information into something people could get their heads around at least a little bit.
And I happen to see Spider Man light bulb goes off superhero comics. The only problem is there were three problems. I knew nothing about the subject. I knew no one in the industry and I knew nothing about comics. I wasn't even a fan, you know, but other than that, I thought I was perfect. My wife thought I was just crazy.
Um, but I said, I'm on a mission and I'm going to just do this. So I went to linked in again and one at a time. I did a search by the title C. S. O. And I got all these [00:13:00] people, and I invited them to connect with me on LinkedIn, send me real life stories of cybercrime, answering the questions, you know, what happened?
What were the consequences? What were the lessons learned for possible inclusion into some kind of comic or something? I went to 53 cybersecurity conferences in a period of just under five years at my own expense.
And I did start learning a little bit about many, many things, but I didn't really know anything in that. Um, I became a reporter for a magazine. And so the whole sort of cybersecurity ecosystem sort of turned towards me because, you know, I could write stories about their solutions or whatever, you know, whatever it was, um, and conferences were and continue to be my, my, my beat.
And then COVID hit. Uh oh, no more conferences, you know, bam, right down to the ground again. I said, okay, what do I do now? So I said, I'm going to do a show and I'll use air quotes. Like, what is that? And just started listening and learning from [00:14:00] the smartest people in the world, such as yourself. And I've done over 300 interviews, you know, with, with these amazing people.
And, and, um, I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity in my life at this stage.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: I think one of the biggest challenge always is getting over our own fear, uncertainty and doubt.
And then finding at least just a couple people who will support you no matter. What? So did you, I know you, you have a strong family. Did you have business partners who stayed with you or was it just on this journey that you started finding more like minded people like myself along
the way?
Gary Berman: Yeah, it's a little bit of both.
Uh, you know,
God bless my wife.
Uh,
if I were her,
you know,
maybe I couldn't do it because this stuff. It was just so all encompassing
and,
and [00:15:00] just,
uh,
not believable.
You know,
people have trouble believing victims of all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons.
Um,
but she did and does,
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: our time has run short, unfortunately.
Gary Berman: Yeah, thanks for asking, and thanks again for your time and consideration.
Uh,
you can go to cyberheroescomics. com, H E R O E S comics. com, to see some of our stuff.
Dr. Rebecca Wynn: Most definitely. Gary, thank you so much for being on the show.
Gary Berman: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'll tell my wife.