- Support for this program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

- Hello, this is John Harmon.

Welcome to Pathway to Success.

I'm the founder, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

We're delighted to have you here today, and you know, when you talk about security threats to your, your PC dressed, to your laptop, dressed to your business, we have an expert in the field today to come share with you his journey.

He is the owner and director of Cybersecurity consulting ops.

Mr.

Tony with Top welcome.

- Thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity for being here today.

- So Tony, you know, we're delighted to have you here today.

Let's start a little bit about you, where you're from, big family, small family.

Let's unpack it.

- I'm originally from Jamaica, from the Hills de St.

Catherine, and came from a family of eight sisters and one brother.

And I'm the brother, so I have a, I have a, a pretty big family, - You know, eight sisters.

I don't want to just jump over that.

What was it like being the only male in the house and this to your father and, and you got nine women running the show.

Help, help us understand that a little bit.

- Well, it, it, it, it teacher politics at a young age.

Okay.

And, and so yeah, it, it was helpful.

You know, you had, you know, sisters who were soft and then sisters that would, were tough.

I had a, I have a sister who, you know, would fight the boys on my behalf.

So, yeah, I, it was, it was a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun.

It was a, it was a time when you could trust others.

Right.

So we were able, the way I was raised and where we came from, you could leave your door open, you know, at that time.

But it, it was, it was fun, you know, joking around and having fun with my sister.

- So were you educated in Jamaica?

When did you come to the, to the us?

- So I came to the US in 1983.

You know, I, I was educated there, but as far as how did I get into cybersecurity, so I went to Camden County College in South Jersey, and then I went to a bible college in Florida.

I guess you didn't know that at one part of me was a preacher.

- Hallelujah.

And so, you know, is there anybody else in your family that was in the ministry that inspired you to, to take that, potentially take that route?

- I just wanted to know more at the time about the Bible and because as you know, our people are very spiritual per se, or they love Christianity, and I wanted to know more.

- I can respect that.

So what was it like going to school at Kennedy County College?

- So, I, you know, place and time is very important.

So I, I went to Camden County to register, and I remember walking down the registration walkway and I heard, a guy said to me, young man, you wanna make money?

So at the time I'm like, okay, who is this guy?

So when I look over, it was a, a older Indian guy.

His name was Dr.

Klo.

And at the time, what they were doing, they were introducing laser and fiber optics.

And so at that time I was also working, I had a job at Garden State Cable because we, at that time, what they were doing, they were moving from analog to digital and fiber optics played, was playing a key role.

So when he said that, I said, oh yeah, I'm, I went over there and I registered for a laser and fiber optics.

So come to find out, he was the assistant professor for laser and fiber optics, but the main guy that was running it, his name was Dr.

Seba.

And Dr.

Seba was well known.

A matter of fact I was in, you know, for, for introducing fiber optics to, you know, the, the entire United States.

- This guy was literally in the hallways recruiting candidates.

And he caught your attention.

- Caught my attention - When he started talking about money.

That's right.

Can you distinguish for our viewers the difference between analog and digital?

- Let me just give you an example.

Yes, sir.

When I got involved with cable, they were all analog.

And so that mean that every channel that you broadcast would take one full spectrum of bandwidth and that would be a six megahertz bandwidth.

So that is the difference with, with, with digital.

I was on the forefront of digital with Comcast, and what we were able to do was use that six megahertz.

Instead of just having one channel, we were compressing it to 12 to one.

So that simply means that now we could push through 12 channels on that one, six megahertz bandwidth.

And now that's how you are able today or that was the baseline today for giving people all those channels.

- What, what was your degree at Camden County College and you graduated, and then what was your first job?

- So the good thing about the, the job thing is I had a job before I had a degree, I had a job with Garden State Cable and the, I would go on the road as a technician, but I would have my books with me as I go out to do my job.

And so, you know, I was on the fast track because number one, I was in college, and number two, I was able to figure out issues around bandwidth really, really easily.

- You know, I tell you the fact that you carried your, your books along with you shared, told, I guess advised me that you're very intentional about where you were looking to go in your life.

And so let me, let me put a, a loop on that with a question.

Walk us through your plans to, you know, exit from college and, and start a professional career in the technology space.

I - Always had a, in interest in bandwidth.

So when I was a young man growing up, my grandma used to have a red radio and they used to broadcast RJR and JBC.

These were the two primary radio station in Jamaica at the time.

And so at night those channels would go off and you'd hear a lot of noise in the background, may mainly Latin, right?

So people broadcasting on the bandwidth for Latin from different places.

So my curiosity was what is causing this thing to broadcast?

So I would take it apart, try to look at it, try to figure out what is causing this thing to work.

Okay.

So I knew that when that, when, when I saw those satellites at the cable company, I knew this is something that I wanted to do.

I knew that I, I need to do fully understand the bandwidth and how it works, right?

The frequencies and all those different type of thing, the things that allow, you know, TV or radio to work.

So I was curious, my intention was to get to the bottom of it and make something of it.

So, - So Tony, you appear to be very curious about how things came together, right?

You're talking about the static sound, you know.

So walk us through a little more about how that curiosity led to you exploring, researching and being more proficient in the technology space.

- Back then, general instrument put out a booklet, and in that booklet it would break down the different frequencies of that radios or television could be broadcast on.

So I was studying that booklet prior to me even being in cable.

- It appears that even as a young person, you were rather curious as you looked at your, I believe your grandmother's little red radio, but this whole troubleshooting aspect about your personality, where did it come from and, and where did you think it would ultimately take?

- So as far as troubleshooting goes and technology goes, I was always comfortable, even if it was, you know, pulling my, the battery and out of my grandma Red Red Radio, increasing the, the power on it, looking at what the capacitors does after what they normally do after you increase the battery, I don't feel good.

If I am not working on something, troubleshooting something even on my days off, I'm always thinking how can I figure out if there's an issue and if there's that issue that I can't figure out, how do I figure it out?

So I'm always very, very comfortable with technology and it start with curiosity, but at the end of the day, it's something that I really and truly enjoy doing it whether I'm getting paid for it or not.

- Good.

So I guess I should ask you some more troubleshooting things to do for me in the chamber since you know, mine get paid.

All right, we'll, we'll take a break here on Pathway to Success.

Back in a moment.

- For more information, please visit our website.

- Welcome back to Pathway to Success.

And so Tony Witta, he is the own and director of cybersecurity consulting ops.

So Tony, let's pick up where you left off.

One of the places you worked for was Comcast and a few others.

Can you share a little bit about those experiences?

- After Camden County, I went and worked for Suburban Cable, which was 50% owner of Garden State Cable.

In 2000 Comcast ended up purchasing suburban cable.

And so in 2000 I ended up working for Comcast.

And so after that that the acquisition by Comcast, I was working in Oak, Pennsylvania, which was the headquarters for Comcast Technical Center around security, which is addressability, they called it.

At that time, because of my troubleshooting abilities, I was assigned the job off going in the field to fix any issues that may arise from those cable acquisitions.

- You know, I tell you, how did you feel being selected to, to basically be the man that go in where folks were having problems?

- It, it was a lot of fun.

You know, I don't know if you remember back in the day, they used to do pay-per-view where people used to put on filters on the back of their boxes.

And one of my job was to figure out how do we collect, you know, those re purchases and how do we prevent people from stealing?

So I was in the cable business and I was the, you know, I was the security guy per se, not just for troubleshooting, but also making sure that we were able to recover assets.

- So what year did you start cybersecurity consulting ops?

- I started cybersecurity ops in 2017.

The reason why I started cybersecurity consulting hops was because I got hacked.

I had a camera, if you wanna see the camera outside of your home or outside of your business at the time, you'd have to open a port and, you know, ports are the way devices speak to each other.

So I opened a port, which allowed me to see it from work, and one day I just couldn't access it anymore and I couldn't figure out why.

But one thing that keep popping up on, on my computer was my virus protection at the time would say someone is trying to steal your information.

And so that's how I, you know, that's how I was able to find out that I was hacked.

And then I was able to run a certain software and find out the device in my home that were vulnerable.

I remember going to my boss at Comcast at the time and, and, and mentioning this to him and he said, Tony, something's wrong with you.

Right?

Because no one was talking about cybersecurity hacking at that time.

But that's kind of what kind of prompt me to start cybersecurity consulting ops.

I, I had another business at that time.

I had a company called streaming churches online.com.

And so what it was doing was we were going to churches and allowing them to stream live, and that was bef way before YouTube was big.

Oh, wow.

That was way before.

- Wait, wait.

So did you miss an opportunity, Tony?

- I missed a huge opportunity.

- Okay.

- Because at the time, all I needed to do was created my own streaming services and I would've been a popular guy by doing that.

- Gotcha.

So do you have a mission statement for cybersecurity consulting ops?

- Yeah.

So our mission statement is that we help, we, we, we help those that need help.

And, and, and it simply means that at times we give our service away for free.

At the time, we, we mark down our service because we know, or I know what it feels to, to be hack or get hacked.

And I also know how difficult it is for people to understand what this is about - Because I'm, I'm really intrigued about, about the business, the business model.

Who was your first customer?

- My first customer was my sister.

So what I did was, once I found out that I could use tools to find vulnerabilities, I start using that tool with friends and families.

Wow.

- Could give us some ways to de discern what, what a, a vulnerable link might look like.

- One thing that you have to look for when you get an email, and it has to do with urgency.

Anytime you get an email and it's telling you or asking you to do things right now, never ever, ever do it.

Never click on a link or accept an email that you never ask for.

And so those are the type of things that consumer, customer, employee must know.

So what hackers know, they know that they can actually live off the land.

Where if they send you a phish email, you click on that link, they can basically live inside your refrigerator.

They can live inside your fish tank.

If you, if you heard a story about how a casino in Vegas got hacked was through a thermometer in a fish tank, and then even with generative AI right now and deep fake, they see more than that, right?

Where someone can actually capture your voice and make it seems as if it's you that is actually speaking.

So in that case, make sure that you have passphrase when it comes to transferring money, buying gift cards or anything like that.

- Oh, so Tony, you know, we've been talking, I'm assuming about issues that may arise from working on a laptop or a tablet, et cetera.

Can you have the same threats or issues with a cell phone communication?

- Yes.

Yeah, so great question that the, the cell phone is even worse.

And what makes cell phone even worse when you look at computers, right?

We could create this thing called lease privilege, and it simply means that lease privilege is that they cannot install anything on their computer without a password with your phone because you cannot create lease privilege on your phone.

When you click on that link, the same privilege that you have is the same privilege a hacker gonna have.

So your phone is basically dead in the water and they're, they're, it's allowing them to do everything that you would do on your telephone.

- Can you share with our viewers a little bit about what A VPN is and what is not?

- So what a VPN is is a virtual private network.

Say you're in a coffee shop and they're giving out free wifi or they have free wifi, anyone can look at the traffic that's connected to the wifi in the coffee shop.

But the thing is, if you have a VPN what it does, it gives you a tunnel from your device to wherever you want to go in, in a secure way.

Say you say you're VPN to a site and that site that you VPN to has malware, VPN won't protect you.

It only protect you from that traffic inside the coffee shop.

And so we gotta understand that VPN is a good thing to have, but at the end of the day, it does not provide you bulletproof protection against malicious wear Trojan.

There are limitations to VPN - Tyler, let's get back to your company and what you do.

- Yeah, so we provide employer awareness training, we build customized training.

So for instance, we build training on deep fake, we build training on fishing, we build training on anything that you can think of that will help employees.

We also, from a hardening perspective, we make sure that your, your firewall is, is set up in a way that even if your system is hacked, the hacker's gonna have a hard time logging in to set up their command and control server types of customers.

- What industries do you currently service?

- We service banks, we service school districts, we service municipalities, we service non-profit and we even service small business owners.

And so what we try to do, we try to help everyone that need help, and that's our model.

- So you mentioned earlier about free service.

Who's eligible for that?

- So we try to normally work within certain underserved communities that need training around cybersecurity.

We have two or three courses that we give away that help small business owners to understand the risk of cybersecurity and the important to have a clean hygiene around security.

- So Tony, in your bio, you describe yourself as an ethical hacker.

Can you fellow view is what that really means, sir?

- Yes.

So there are two types of hacker, they call them black hat and white hat.

And so basically black hat mean that, you know, you do this thing, you try to steal people information, you try to make money from hacking.

So what we are, you could call us a white hat.

- Oh, - And so good - Guy and white.

- So basically we looked for vulnerabilities in your system.

So think about it this way.

So a bank just talked to us and they said, all right, you do an assessment, but we want you to do a pen test.

So it simply mean that we want to see how far can you get before you get in.

And so we are able to do that pen test to say, okay, you are vulnerable and we can get in if we want to.

We are, we're ethical hackers trying to help customers or organization protect their assets.

- Let's say someone experience a security breach.

What is one of some of the first things they should do?

- Unplug everything and then reach out to someone who can do an assessment.

As you bring those devices back online, if you've been breach, you don't know what type of breach it is.

The thing is, you want to make sure you reach out to an expert that is gonna help you bring those devices up.

You should have had enough protection in place if you're a large company to make sure that you get early warnings of a breach into your system.

- Tony, what's the future as it relates to technology?

I mean, there's so many facets of technology, but from your perspective in the area that you work in, - If you needed 12 employees before to, you know, monitor your security operations center, you may only need three today because of ai.

And so what's going on is we are using AI today to be able to match signatures of vulnerabilities or attacks.

And so based on that, we're able to look in the future to say we could really build a big company based on just monitoring that will help to monitor and be able to catch malware or Trojans or worms without human intervention because we're using ai As you look towards technology in the future, I would say this would be technology from the sky.

If you look at the, the amount of money that Verizon and, you know, at and t and T-Mobile, you know, spend on the spectrum when it is in the billions.

And the idea there is because eventually most of our connection when it comes to internet connection is gonna be wireless.

You're gonna be able to have gigabits connection coming from the sky.

So starlink is doing that now.

And so I see the future where it is just wide open with ai.

The way we connect, I just think it's just gonna get better and better from a business opportunity perspective is that you have to ask yourself what degree do I need to get to be able to stay connected to the future?

For us, we know cybersecurity is gonna be huge because of all the AI malicious wear that are coming our way.

You're still gonna need someone to at least look at reports.

You're still gonna need someone to analyze is going on.

And so AI and cybersecurity is gonna be huge.

And so we encourage young people to, to get curious, get some experience, and you could start by just doing your own home when it comes to cybersecurity and then, you know, transition into a bigger bucket of ai.

- So Tony, I want to thank you for being our guest today.

Thank you very much for inviting - Me and I look forward to doing bigger and better things - Until the next time on your pathway to success.

This is John Harmon, founder, president and CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey.

Today's message, hidden Figures in today's environment where it appears that the ground is shifting beneath us and perception is running rapid, you don't know who has done what to contribute to the greatness of America.

I'm gonna just give a few name, a few people that you may have never heard of.

Katherine Johnson.

She was known as a, a key individual in the movie Hidden Figures.

It was her calculations that enabled NASA to get a spacecraft up in the air onto the moon.

Gladys West GPS mapping.

And we all know today without the GPS, some of us can't even find a local mall.

A lady named Dr.

Shirley Ann Jackson.

She was very instrumental in the telecommunication space and she worked for Bell Labs.

She was instrumental in the portable fax machine, touch tone, telephone fiber, optic cabling, caller ID, and call waiting TE and solar sales just to name a few.

Those were all foundational contributions, if you will, to a lot of devices that we use today.

And so the next time you, you enter an airplane or use your GPS or even your cell phone, these were three major black women that have impacted a trillion dollar industry today.

In closing, that's who we are - Support for This program was provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.