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Interface is a podcast where we connect technology and culture through conversation. Interface is brought to you by EMPOWER at PROS. EMPOWER is dedicated to attracting, developing and retaining Black talent at PROS. PROS helps people and companies outperform by enabling smarter selling in the digital economy.
Ep. 306 - Dante Jackson
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Jennifer: [00:00:00] [00:01:00] All right. Hello. I'm Jennifer Plummer. My co host today is Sierra Barnes. Uh, today our guest is Dante Jackson, head of security resilience at Truist Dante is a seasoned professional with a wealth of experience spanning both the financial sector and the U. S. Government currently serving as the head of cyber security resilience at Truist Truist Bank.
Dante brings a unique blend of expertise to his role, drawing from his extensive background in security management and And strategic leadership with an MBA in technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a master's of science degree in criminal justice management from Sam Houston State University, Houston. Dante's academic credentials underscore his commitment to excellence in both technical and managerial domains. His tenure [00:02:00] in the financial sector, coupled with his previous roles within the US government had equipped him with a holistic understanding of cyber security challenges. Positioning him as a trusted authority in safeguarding critical assets in today's digital landscape. Welcome to the podcast
Dante: Hey, thanks guys. Man, that made me sound, uh, like somebody really, really special. It's funny how the verbal gymnastics there works, right?
Siara: You are very special to us. We are very excited to have you on the show.
Jennifer: absolutely
Dante: me, guys. Yeah.
Jennifer: to be the head of security resilience? Like how did you have you know, what interested you to go into that field? And what's your story? Yeah
Dante: right? So, um, with Truist, obviously we went through the largest bank merger in U. S. history between SunTrust and BB& T. Um, which we now we're born into this [00:03:00] organization known as truest. And I was a, uh, what was known as a heritage centrist teammates.
So. I joined the bank prior to the merger, um, and joined when it was SunTrust. And at that time they were looking to develop their cyber security program and cybersecurity talent. So there was an opportunity there as I was, I was transitioning out of the government, um, to take advantage of that. And I did.
So initially when I came on, um, I helped build out their data protection program for SunTrust. So I was. Um, had a lead role there and data protection. And then from there, um, I helped build out their insider threat program. Um, I then moved on to a business information security officer role where I was aligned to the enterprise data office.
And I partnered with the chief data officer for the bank. Um, when the merger happened, they asked me to come back and build their insider threat program again, but for a much larger organization. And then recently I took over the responsibility of building out their cyber resiliency program. So that's kind of, um, you know, my history there with, with Truist, if you will.
We'll, we'll just keep it simple since the merger has passed and we are Truist now. A lot less confusing. I mean, [00:04:00] that's my story, you know, but, um, I have, I have an interesting background because I had, I did a complete career pivot, right? So, um, obviously I had a career with the Department of Justice where I was working various crimes, um, from there.
And as I started to really get into my career, I noticed a pivot, um, into more, um, Email related crimes, right? Like a lot of, uh, guys were transitioning, right? And it's a lot of fraud and we were doing a lot of things with respect to online and, and, and, you know, guys would clean their money online and things of that nature.
So that I've always had an interest in computers and things of that nature, but that really made me start thinking about what was next and where I was going to move to next within my career. So that helped me transition there pretty quickly.
Siara: So your transition from the Department of Justice into sort of the corporate world, how was that transition? Did you find it difficult? Was it pretty easy considering the, you know, the work that you were doing with the Department of Justice?
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Dante: Yeah. So it was very different, right? And a lot of people struggle with [00:05:00] that transition because, When you're working for the government, you're in that ecosystem, right? And everything is kind of built around, um, the government, the agency that you're working for from things such as even like teams and communication.
I mean, there's a lot of their own developed software that they use independently that's built specifically for that agency that you're working for. So the, really the stickiest transition for me coming out was. Teams and outlook calendars and, you know, kind of the very simple things, right? Like, you know, and you're in a corporate environment, so it's very different.
It's very different work. The people are very different. So, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't an easy transition, but it wasn't very hard. I've seen a lot of people struggle, especially, um, guys who are in the military, right, where there's a lot of cyber security experts that were, uh, have prior military experience.
So there's a lot of guys transitioning from the military and sometimes they kind of struggle with the hierarchy and the organizational structure. Um, with respect to coming into the corporate world, but like anything, right? You either roll with it or get rolled over. Right? So, I mean, I had to, I had to adapt pretty quickly.
Jennifer: You said [00:06:00] you're
building the structure at truest what's the difference
when you
are building something from scratch then when you're kind of inheriting,
Those sorts of processes?
Dante: So I always like things, building things from scratch, right? Cause that way you're not inheriting someone else's problems or someone else's vision. Um, cause typically what happens is when you do inherit somebody else's organization, um, you're going to make changes because everyone wants to come in and they want to put their own stamp.
On what they're doing, especially for leadership, for the visibility. So I always enjoy starting from scratch. And usually if I do come in and I take something over, it's in its infancy stages. So, you know, you can always take bits and pieces. You never have all the answers, so you can take bits and pieces from other people's ideas and incorporate that into your own kind of structure and what you're looking to do in your own vision.
But I'm a guy who really likes to start from scratch. I like to hire my own people. Um, I like to. Kind of work with those people to see what the vision is. Like I may have a vision in my head, but I'd like to [00:07:00] incorporate the ideas of others. And it's very, very hard when you come into an established structure.
In my opinion, it's very, very hard when you come into an established structure or an established program, um, to really put your imprint on it without really tearing down a few walls, if that makes sense.
Jennifer: Yeah for sure So what is the day in the life of the head of security resilience? Are you, um, working? Like you said, you have a team of people. Are you working closely with them? Are you kind of working with just a certain level of people?
Dante: So the beauty of this particular role, right, without getting into too many details, is that I get to work with a lot of different teams. Um, so you kind of touch everything within the cyber, corporate cybersecurity space, which is why I really, really enjoy the role. Um, you have an opportunity to get visibility, to have insight, to have a voice within all the new technology that we're looking to incorporate.
Because from a resiliency standpoint, the easiest way that I can describe it is, Um, when people say, okay, what are your responsibilities? Um, if the bank were attacked, how will we be able to defend ourselves? That's [00:08:00] the easiest way I can put it, right? So what do we have in place to either withstand a secondary attack or to withstand subsequent attacks as the bank is trying to kind of stand back up from a, from an attack or some type of cyber attack.
So I think it's, it's really, really, uh, it's a really cool job because you get visibility and get to work with a lot of different teams. And I, like I said, I have a great team and everyone's very, very busy and we've got some really cool projects that we're. looking to develop to kind of, um, stand up the, the, the, the, the security program and the robustness of our cyber defense within Truth Bank.
Jennifer: What, what?
Dante: Yeah,
I guess I'll be, I guess I'm Chita, uh,
Chita, I'll go with that.
Siara: never thought of that term the way
Dante: I never thought of that term, but maybe I'll use that.
Siara: Yeah, that's good. I might, I might start assigning some, some,
Dante: that's good. I might start assigning some nicknames [00:09:00] to some of my teammates.
Jennifer: So, so I know, um, you know, from software engineering teams, um, when we're,
Siara: um, when
Jennifer: using tools to, um,
you know, assess our security, I guess, resiliency, I guess it's the words you've been using. Um, sometimes there's like a pushback, right? Because everyone, you know, you're working on a feature, it's ready to go. And then all of a sudden you run a scan and oops, Oh, there's some sort of, um, uh, CVE that pops up and it's like, okay, now we got to go back and kind of, Interrupts the plans, um, of, of getting software out on a schedule.
What would you, what is your response to those sorts of concerns?
Dante: So I think for my experience with that was really in my data protection space where, again, I work for a bank, right? The business drives the bank. The business is the moneymaker of the bank. When you get into large corporations or any corporation at all, when you think about cyber [00:10:00] security, I compared to car insurance, right?
People don't care about that. Want to pay for it. They don't want to look at it until they need it. Right. So when an accident happens or, you know, there's a breach or something like that. That's when everybody's kind of saying, Okay, what type of the cyber security do we have? How did this happen? You know, we need to get, you know, more robust and stand up our cyber security defense a lot better than currently what our current state is.
So again, that kind of backtrack the business drives the bank. Right. So when I was a data protection, Um, you know, there was a lot of pushback from some of the things we were looking to do from a data protection standpoint because it impeded the business. Um, or they saw it as, as, uh, impeding their, their, their progress and their processes and things of that nature, right?
Security is not convenient. It's not supposed, it's not meant to be convenient, right? It's meant to protect the bank. So, but you have to be good stewards of the business because the business is driving. The revenue for the bank. So what I found was is that, um, there's nothing like good communication. Good communication goes a long way.
Um, and when you really, really try to sit down and explain to leaders why you're doing things and then take into account what they say too, right? Cause they're the, they're the boots on the [00:11:00] ground. They're the troops. They're the ones that are telling you, Hey, this is what we do on a day to day basis, because I don't know what wealth does on a day to day basis.
I don't know what their processes look like. So if I can help automate things to speed things up, to make their life easier. Right. That's better for everybody because we can't walk away from what we're looking to do from a security standpoint, but they also have a job to do to, you know, continue to drive revenue so I can continue to get paid.
Right. And everybody can continue to get paid at the bank. So it's in everyone's best interest to work together.
Jennifer: What advice would you give to people that are interested in the same career path?
Dante: You know, it's funny, I went in, actually earlier this week, I was speaking to some Georgia Tech student athletes that are about to graduate. It was a great conversation that I had with them, my alma mater there. You know, I, I tell everyone when they ask me about, Hey, I'm, I'm interested in a career in cybersecurity and the dynamics have changed.
The, the, the playing field has changed, you know, two years ago, cybersecurity was it, I mean, that's, everyone was saying going to cybersecurity, that's going to be, [00:12:00] um, you know, a guaranteed job, guaranteed paycheck and things, things change, right? You see, you've seen a lot of companies lay people off. There was, um, heavy hiring during COVID.
So you're seeing a lot of companies, you know, looking to trim the fat a little bit, you know, reduce, um, you know, and then you have this whole. Yeah. Introduction of AI, right? And we're in the initial stages of AI, but in five to six years, it's really going to blow up. And, you know, a lot of people think that's going to, you know, take away some jobs.
I see things a little differently and we can talk about that a little later if you'd like to. But my advice to people who want to go into cybersecurity is know what you want to do. Um, you know, people come to me and they say, Hey, I'm interested in cybersecurity. And then my first question is, Oh, really, like, what do you want to do within cybersecurity?
Cause that's a very broad statement. Um, and they're like, Oh, what do you mean? I'm like, well, do you want to encryption? Do you want to pin testing? Do you want to be data protection? Um, there's a lot of different, do you want to work on the sock? I mean, there's a lot of different things that you can do. And I think, um, you know, the, the best thing for you to do is to get in the space or try to get in an area where you can touch a lot of different things.
Um, and because there's a big difference [00:13:00] between, and this is more geared towards younger people, right? Who are looking, you know, go to college, maybe, um, explore cybersecurity. There's a big difference between enjoying technology and cybersecurity, right? You can like the latest iPhone, the latest apps. You know, whatever, you know, RoboBot vacuum, you know, you might, you might be the person who's on cnet.
com looking at, you know, foldable phones. And I mean, there's a really big difference between technology and cyber security, right? I mean, coding and encryption and some of these abstract methodologies out there. So, so make sure that, you know, you understand that distinction before you go head first into anything.
Jennifer: Maybe, yeah. Could you maybe explain the different, um, fields under the cybersecurity that you mentioned?
Dante: Yeah, so, so we can touch on that. So pen testing, for example, right? Um, that's. to attempt to gain entry into a company's, um, network essentially. Right. So, so Pentester's jobs are to, um, act as bad actors, right. And identify [00:14:00] vulnerabilities. So, you know, if you have an interest in that type of thing, it's a really, really cool job.
It's, um, it requires a lot of experience. Um, but it's, it's, it's excellent to be able to really help companies identify or their vulnerabilities are and then how they can remediate those vulnerabilities. You know, data protection, you know, protecting, protecting, um, personal identifiable information from within any company.
But for example, for us, for the bank where we have credit card numbers and dates of birth and social security numbers and names and addresses, you know, all those things identifiable, as PI is, as is more commonly known. Um, there's a lot of different things there, a lot of tools, a lot of methods being able to identify those vulnerabilities.
You know, write a little bit of code, right? Being able to create rules on as an engineer. Um, you know, so there's a lot of different, you know, encryption, right? Being able to encrypt out as it goes out, out of the company, or maybe even as it comes into a company, right? Or encrypting data while it's inside the company.
Um, so there's a lot of different engineering roles that you can do within cybersecurity, a whole host really.
Siara: Getting into cyber security, would you say, [00:15:00] um, the The barriers to entry have changed, you know, over the years as it's become a little bit more, I will say popular. Cyber security has sort of come to the forefront. Do you find that there are maybe non traditional ways that people can get into the field, you know, if they're, you know, maybe have already gotten their bachelor's degree and they're looking to switch careers?
Can you give a little perspective on that?
Dante: Yeah, I have seen a change in this way. Um, Degrees don't mean as much anymore as they used to. Interestingly enough, experience outweighs a lot of things now and you're, you're really seeing that in the cybersecurity realm where people have a lot more interest in your experience and they're sometimes willing to waive you having that type of technical degree that traditionally has been required.
There's a lot of different certifications out there too, you know, your CISSP, your CISM, there's, there's a lot of different certifications and I always caution people. To be careful with certifications, you don't want to over certify [00:16:00] and you don't want to overpay for things because there's a lot of different things out there that people advertise and they sell, hey get this cert, get this cert and the stuff isn't, it's not cheap.
It's very, very pricey. A lot of boot camps out there and I just always caution people to know exactly, you know, know exactly what cert you're going for and be very strategic about it. Um, will it lead you to where you're looking to go? You know, don't just go out there and pay a bunch of money and grab a bunch of certs.
Um, and then on the flip side of that, I've interviewed people that have a lot of certifications, um, have all the education, all the background from an educational standpoint. But then when you give them scenarios, they can't answer the questions because they don't have the hands on experience. So nothing trumps hands on experience, and I can't emphasize that enough.
If you can get the experience, that will trump the education requirements. That takes time, right? I mean, that takes time to get it and the experience and the education, that's not to say there's no value in the education because the education leads to networking opportunities. It will kind of boost you, right?
A [00:17:00] little bit. It reduces some of the experience requirements that you need, but nothing trumps experience. I mean, if I have a guy that's been an engineer for 20 years, um, in corporate cybersecurity, and I have a kid coming out of college that has a degree from Georgia Tech with no experience, I mean, you know, we got it, you know, depending on the role, right?
I mean, that person with the, with the 20 years experience, you know, depending on how they do in the interview, both parties, I mean, if I'm giving them questions based on scenario, they can probably answer those questions cause they've been there and they, they, they, they've been through the fire.
Siara: Yeah, I think that's really good advice, um, being strategic about what you're spending your money on and will this, you know, help you get to where you're trying to be is really, really important. Yeah. And Yeah. And, and, and networking, right? So if you're new, if you're looking to, you know, the, the original question was if you're looking to get into cybersecurity, um, networking, right? Um, and I really try to talk to young adults about that. Um, and we're in a society now, especially post Kobe, where, um, a lot of young adults are struggling to talk to people.
Dante: It's very, very [00:18:00] difficult for them to talk to people. We've gotten addicted to our phones. The communication has just changed. Um, you know, for better or for worse, I'm I'm from a different generation. So, um, I've seen both sides of it. I was actually talking to a friend of mine the other day. I think we hit the sweet spot at my age cause we saw the, the no tech or the minimal technology, then we've seen the technology boom.
So, you know, when I was a kid, you know, you got pager, right? I mean, you know what I mean? It wasn't, you know, you ran into that payphone to call home, right? Or you were just gone. You were just gone. I mean, you know, somebody calls like where's the auntie? I don't know. You, you know, you go look for where the bikes are in front of somebody's house.
Right. You just gone until you got home, but now you can't get away from anything. You know what I mean? It's so crazy. It's so
crazy. I'm like, I can't have from anybody anymore, you know? So, um, but you know, you, you, you have to be able to talk to people. You have to be able to force yourself to network. I mean, practice that with whoever, if it's practicing in a mirror, if it's practicing with your, your significant other, if it's practicing with family, get out of that comfort zone, because if you don't know how to talk to people and network and socialize, [00:19:00] you're going to, it's going to really hold you back.
It doesn't matter how smart you are. If you can't, if you Get that, your thoughts out of your head and communicate that to someone to articulate yourself and show them your intelligence level and your capabilities. You're going to be sitting on the bench.
Jennifer: are there internship, um, opportunities for people trying to enter the field or conferences that maybe will give people a little more information about, um, that career path?
Dante: There are, um, I can only speak for Truist, but I know that Truist has a lot of internships. We have relationships with Georgia Tech, um, Georgia State, Wake Forest. We have a really robust, um, internship program with Truist. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, uh, I work with some high schools. There's, there's a lot of like, Cyber security programs where they're trying to offer like classes and just opportunities for even high school kids to do things in the summer.
Right. Cause you know, some of these high school kids are really, really brilliant, really, really, um, fast learners. And they're just so advanced when it comes to computers and you know, they're looking to take that next step, you [00:20:00] know, even before going into college. So, you know, I encourage people to get on the internet and do some deep diving and get on social media and see what's out there.
You'd be surprised. Some of the opportunities are free. I mean, a lot of opportunities are free, especially if people of color. Um, you know, take it, take those, uh, those opportunities to see what's out there. It's not a lot of us in corporate cybersecurity, um, it's really not, but, um, especially female, black females, you know, we definitely need more of them.
So, um, you know, look out there, there's a lot of opportunities, you'd be surprised, a lot of scholarship opportunities, um, to, to, that we, we need to take advantage of because You know, I don't know how much longer a lot of that stuff is going to be around, you know, I mean, a lot of this stuff is slowly disappearing.
I was reading yesterday about Duke University eliminating, um, they, they had scholarship programs like for our scholarship programs for, for us, for people of color, and they've eliminated that. And it's gotten me really worried. I mean, I have a friend that went to Duke and graduated, brilliant guy. Um, and, you know, he was a recipient of that scholarship and, you know, Duke was like 300 something thousand dollars for a full four year degrees, like I would have never been able to go. Um, and then he's, he's [00:21:00] amazing. Um, so, you know, I say all that to say it makes me a little worried about some of these, some of these scholarships and where they're going to go.
So, you know, just jump on them, you know, while we can.
Jennifer: That is the perfect
segue, um, to, uh, What do you think companies should do to have more black people in? cyber security roles?
Dante: Look,
'cause they're out there. Uh, I, I think nothing frustrates me more when I hear people. You know, I've, I shouldn't say I, I've, I hear this a lot, but you see comments like, well, I didn't, you know, there's none here. I don't know, you know, there's none in the industry. There's, you know, we, we can't find any black people to fill these roles.
And I'm like, where are you looking? Because I go to a lot of different conferences for, you know, African American conferences, and I, I see an auditorium full of people from all over the place. Brilliant Black Minds that are out there that are looking for work.
So I, you know, you have to look because it's definitely, it's definitely people out there looking for opportunity.
I mean, you have to go to college [00:22:00] campuses and, and I think to, um, you have to take risk on people. And I'm not saying risk in a manner of a negative risk. I mean, you have to give people opportunities. I mean, you know, someone graduates from college, they may not have the work experience, but that doesn't mean they can't do the job or you can't train them and ramp them up.
So I think sometimes we're, as leaders, we're hesitant. We always want somebody with that 20 year experience and, you know, they've been there, done that. Well, what about the person that's been in it for three years? And maybe they got a whole different idea of things you never thought of. And why don't you bring that person in and get them trained up and see what they have to bring to the table and give them an opportunity.
Somebody gave me an opportunity. Somebody gave you guys an opportunity. You have to give people an opportunity to allow them to shine.
Jennifer: I completely agree.
Siara: the heat check. Uh, heat check is a segment where, uh, the Interface co hosts will share a hot topic in tech or black culture.
Um, And as our guest Dante, feel free to chime in on these topics. You don't have to, or [00:23:00] if you have a hot topic of your own, we are, we welcome you to share with us. Um, and Jenny, I'm going to let you go first today.
Jennifer: Okay. I picked this one, especially for Dante.
Yeah.
let me ask you, Sierra, do you typically enable multi factor authentication on your apps When it's an option,
Siara: I'm gonna be very honest here. If I don't have to, I won't.
Dante: That's funny. Social
Jennifer: I usually,
Dante: sure. Yeah, so
Jennifer: if it's an option, I will enable it thinking this is going to protect me from everything. But I found this article on thehackernews. com Four ways hackers use social engineering to bypass multi factor authentication.
basically it kind of outlines four different, ways. Um, adversary in the middle attack, uh, which [00:24:00] is basically, um, you trick someone to, uh, it's kind of like a
phishing email that says, go log in here, you think it's from somewhere.
And so you go there. They use your credentials. so while you're logging in and then they use your the credentials and then you'll get the, you'll get the ping to say, oh yeah, except this, but you really, they're logging in somewhere else with your, with your details. So I do use that as often as I can which is interesting. But I also use 1Password, so I have like My passwords are pretty ridiculous because I let, I let the, the, the software create them, but I still use Authenticator because the, that's one of the things with AI, right? The, the AI explosion and bad actors have leveraged AI and they've gotten so good and creative on the phishing attempts, the, um, the email scams.
Dante: I mean, it is really, really, really good. And I think that any layer of protection that [00:25:00] you can add is helpful, um, in helping to defend, you know, your personal property within the cyber realm. So I would always encourage people to use two factor authentication. I know it's a pain, like, especially if you're just trying to get on your email.
Every time you gotta, like, go into Authenticator and it's just, uh, really, really annoying. But, you know, you will thank yourself, you know, if something happens, I mean, and, um, you know, you're able to save yourself a lot of heartache and data. I would definitely encourage it for, uh, banking stuff. Um, if that's an option for like anything related to your credit cards or your banking information, even if you don't do it for your email, you know, if you want to be strategic about, um, what you're using it for, like, you know, you might not need to get two factor authentication to sign into Footlocker or Nike.
com, right? But, you know, if you're trying to go into your, your, you know, Bank of America or your accounts, I would definitely recommend you
Siara: I would definitely
Dante: to have a very challenging password.
Siara: I'd like to amend my original statement. I do avoid it for low risk things, okay? I am very vigilant about, you know, phone calls, text messages, voicemails, you know, [00:26:00] intimidation types of things.
If you call me from an unknown number and you didn't leave me a message, you aren't real to me. If you're a real person, you're going to leave me a message. And you know, I, I try to impart that to people, you know, in my life, but low risk things. I'm not turning on multi factor authentication, but banking, you know, that type of stuff.
Yes, I will do it. You
Dante: that's fair.
Jennifer: Dante, You had a good point
Dante: crawl, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta crawl before you can
Siara: about the
Jennifer: You had a good point too about the passwords that you use. Um, like I think it was only a couple years ago where I stopped using the same password with maybe one character difference for every app that I was logged into. I tried a different password. be a little more, uh, robust now. So also, yeah, password strength and is good to use. And what's your opinion on, because basically basically I think at one point I [00:27:00] was like, it's better to have a long password, so I'll use like, whatever song was in my head that day.
And some. some lyrics out of that and kind of form a sentence with that So it's easier to remember Um, you know, exchanging some characters for special characters or whatever
Dante: Yeah, yeah, as long as you're not writing them down or using password 1234, I think you're okay. But I always recommend some type of application just to help store. I have so many passwords, like I have so many passwords. It is impossible to keep up with the number of passwords that I have. So I have to have some type of application to organize my passwords.
Uh, ensure that there's not duplication and that, you know, I can access it when I'm not in front of a computer. So I can't say enough about, you know, some of the applications out there that help you create and store your passwords. Cause, you know, if you're trying to do it all in your head, that it's going to be a big mess.
Siara: a big mess.
I'm going to do better, I promise, after today.
Jennifer: Well, if you're interested in the four, um, we'll,
we'll put the link in the
in the [00:28:00] show notes, um, on the different ways that MFA can be
Uh, circumvented. Uh, So Sierra, what's your heat check?
Siara: So mine is a little, um, I'll be honest, I didn't give myself a lot of time to find my heat check today. So this is just, you know, a fun little factoid for us.
Um, I found an article about the anniversary of Gmail. It's 20 years old, uh, April 1st. And I did not know this, that it started as an April Fool's joke. And now it's an email giant, which was really interesting. So, Google had a reputation for pranking internally.
And so when they launched this email thing, everybody thought it was, you know, just one of their regular jokes. And now it's turned into this huge email giant, you know, I guess jokes on, on us for real. Um, [00:29:00] But I wanted to talk about the sort of when they launched like their stats. So they offered one gigabyte of storage.
So you could hoard up to 13, 500 emails. I'm well past that in my personal Gmail account. Now, um, search was a big deal where you can instant, like just search for an email and it will pop up immediately. I mean, that seems like really basic today, but back in 2004, it wasn't. Wasn't a thing. Um, and then also threaded conversations was something that was really new when Gmail launched.
And again, something that seems really basic now wasn't so much 20
years ago, which also let's just talk about 2004 being 20 years ago,
Jennifer: right?
Dante: Time, yeah. Where did the time go?
Jennifer: you remember what you used before you started using Gmail?
Siara: I was an AOL. I mean, I didn't have business [00:30:00] having emailed anyway. I didn't have any real business, but AOL was where I was
Jennifer: I
think I was using hotmail. Yeah
Dante: I still have my hotmail account, actually. I have like a, I,
Jennifer: still, there's still Hotmail out there?
Dante: Yeah, I,
still, I think it's live now, but I still, mine's still hotmail
So, I use that for like when I'm ordering stuff, like junk email. And then I have a personal email that's exclusively for like friends, like real stuff, you know.
Jennifer: Uh,
that's the cyber security guy that
he's, yeah.
Dante: Yeah.
yeah, gotta, gotta, gotta work your way through that junk mail. Keep it down.
Siara: junk mail. That's actually not a bad idea.
Dante: Yeah. Um,
Siara: Awesome. Well, thank you Dante for hanging out with us today. Um, we really enjoyed the conversation. yeah, thank you guys. So, the, the one thing I, I did want to share with you guys is, um, I'm very excited. I'm starting my own cybersecurity consulting firm. Um, I have the shirt on here, Circadetech [00:31:00] Security. We are launching next week. Um, and we will be targeting small to medium, large size businesses. Um, and our approach is a little different, right?
Dante: We're doing a outside in approach. So we'll be using pen testing to identify vulnerabilities for companies, showing them those vulnerabilities. Um, and then from there, you know, we will offer our remediation. We partner with some, some very big, um, software applications out there. Big ID rubrics, um, proof point.
So CrowdStrike, we have some really awesome partnerships with some very big companies that, um, we're, we're excited about, um, you know, to be able to help, uh, some of these medium to small to large size businesses kind of improve, um, and strengthen their cybersecurity security posture. Um, we also offer, uh, forensics, um, we're doing, uh, computer forensics, uh, for, for, um, law firms and things of that nature for a client.
So there's a lot of different things that we're doing. Again, we're excited, uh, to be launching out, uh, next week. I'll be doing a big, uh, blast on LinkedIn. So by the time this is out there, um, you know, we'll be up and going. The website is, uh, www. [00:32:00] circadetech. com. Go check us out. And again, thank you guys so much for having me.
I really, really enjoyed this conversation. Yeah,
we're
Jennifer: That's amazing. I mean
Dante: on
Jennifer: Having um, I would think as if I was had a small medium business and I wasn't
as much as I knew about, um, you know, cyber security or or just, um, vulnerabilities, I don't think I would be thinking about that.
And I think it was a big hurdle to, you know, overcome to figure out how to get started. You know, even most people are like, Oh, I don't even know if I have security scanning working properly on my personal computer. So I think that's a great opportunity to have a small small medium businesses, um, reach out to your company
Dante: Facebook. We got all the social media linked in. We're out there everywhere on all the platforms. So, um, you know, come check us out and if we can help you guys, we'd love to help you. So, you know, thank you for, again, for, for having me here. It's always good to be amongst us and be [00:33:00] able to share some thoughts and, you know, we definitely want to get more people of color into the cyber security space.
Siara: And Dante, if our listeners want to connect with you, where can they find you out on the interwebs?
Dante: Yeah. So LinkedIn, uh, I'm on LinkedIn. Feel free to, to reach out to me there on LinkedIn. And also the Cercat tech that's S E R K E T dash tech T E C H security. Um, you know, again, Instagram, uh, Facebook, LinkedIn, um, and the website. So we're, we're out there. We're fully exposed out there with the, with the business, right?
We fully out there. Me, I'm just on LinkedIn. So I'm not out
there
like
that, but, uh, the company, you know,
Like we talked about earlier, I'm not hard to find, as Deion says all the time, right? I'm not hard to find, like Coach Prom says, so definitely, definitely if you need me, come get me.
[00:34:00]