Any parent of at-home children worries about cybercrime and the potential for exploitation. But the threats are worse for children of military families. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charlie Moore would know as a parent of two and as a former deputy commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And what are the special threats that military children face because they have difficult enough lives as it is moving around so often?

Charlie Moore: Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I think you really have to start with what’s the threat overall and then why specific to military families in the military children. And I always think about is what is the threat? Why does it exist and then what can we do about it? So first, what is that threat? Obviously, as everything has moved into the digital environment, the threat to our families across all societies increased significantly. And so cybersecurity should be at the forefront of everybody’s mind. In fact, I like to tell people that cybersecurity is family security specific to military families. Forty percent of military families report having some type of online experience that resulted in fraud or online crime. I mean, that’s pretty that’s pretty significant. They’re three times more likely to experience some type of an event as it relates to cybersecurity than our civilian counterparts are. And of course, when you look at those numbers, that also means that the threat to the children go up as well. But I also want to mention that about 30% of those military families have no idea because of their service and the specifics of their service, they’re at increased threat in their civilian counterparts. And so that’s why it’s great to be able to talk about it on a show like yours.

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Tom Temin: Yeah. How does that work that the people in the military services are the uniformed personnel are at greater risk? What’s the mechanism that makes that so?

Charlie Moore: Yeah, so that’s great. That gets into the why and what these crimes look like. And I think the first thing you got to talk about is frequent relocations and Permanent Change of Stations, or PCS as we call it. So you can think about every time a military family moves, they have to engage with everything from utilities to financial institutions to schools. And that starts on the location where they leave. And of course, it also begins on the location that they’re going to. All of these interactions open up your military family for potential more fraud because you think about the type of personal information you’re sharing about yourself and your family any time you do that. The second one is cybercriminals go where the money is and our military members are attractive targets because of their steady income, because of their benefits and because of possibly having high security clearances. So that’s in the minds of those cybercriminals as well. The next reason would be unique family circumstances. So a lot of military families, particularly with children, they face unique challenges like the absence of a parent during a deployment. That’s something that could cause a child to feel very separated or alone, which opens up the opportunity for some type of activity online where someone could take advantage of that child, also opens them up to bullying or other things that you might expect any time you’re having to move and try to find new friends and find how you fit into the new social dynamic that you find yourself in when you go to a new school, etc. And then finally, I would say it’s the unique benefits that military families have. So the scammers are oftentimes targeting or coming up with schemes that go after specific military discounts or benefits or deployment related services.

Tom Temin: Yeah, that’s a pretty long laundry list of threats. And I guess getting to that point about the fact that people may understand that there is at least one parent gone because of a deployment, that’s probably a good case against posting deployment information on social media.

Charlie Moore: You’re exactly right. I mean, it’s still amazing how many people will very freely go on social media and talk about everything going on with their family and where they are, the fact that they’re not home, etc. And you really, really have to avoid the temptation to do that.

Tom Temin: We are speaking with retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charlie Moore, who was deputy commander of U.S. Cyber Command. And what are some of the things you saw as overseeing Cyber Command, of all places?

Charlie Moore: Well, obviously, at Cyber Command, we weren’t necessarily focused on the protection of individuals and their kids. But what we were focused on were our adversaries to our country and our nation and the impact they were trying to have across the cybersecurity spectrum. And obviously, that’s continuing to grow at a very, very rapid rate. And they’re really concerning thing is the rapid rate of change. When you look at this through a military lens, we can often, from a traditional standpoint, forecast what we expect a threat to look like. And we may look out 10 years in the future or 20 years in the future. But when it relates to cyber, this is changing at a much rapid pace. And so we have to be able to position ourselves to respond to that with speed and agility.

Tom Temin: Yeah. And the thing to that is implied in a lot of this is that the vector by which families or individuals are reached is not necessarily sophisticated hacking, but simple phishing.

Charlie Moore: That’s exactly right. That continues to be one of the, if not the No. 1 way in which cybercriminals or malicious actors will gain access to personally identifiable information and or your family’s data.

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Tom Temin: And as you point out, this was not the chief concern of the deputy commander of Cyber Command. But yet it’s a topic that has followed you into the private sector, into your post-military endeavors.

Charlie Moore: That’s exactly right. And so I’ve really enjoyed continuing to work in this area, in the private sector and with organizations or companies that are focused on trying to make the cybersecurity environment a more secure environment for our citizens.

Tom Temin: And what’s your best advice for military members serving to make sure they stay out of these exploits?

Charlie Moore: Yeah, I would say remember three things or look for three things. Look for companies and or tools and capabilities that are comprehensive, that are easy to use and that are proactive. And by comprehensive, I mean you want a company that covers the totality of your family’s digital risk from your information, like your Social Security numbers and other personal personally identifiable information such as birthdays and addresses. You want to make sure you get fraud alerts in regards to your credit, your bank accounts. You want to be notified when things like your passwords have been exposed on the dark web. You want to make sure that you have a virtual private network that’s encrypting the information. It’s coming in and out of your home’s network and you can buy all those services individually. But it tends to be a lot cheaper and a lot more effective if you look at companies that provide you a comprehensive product. Second, make sure it’s easy to use if it’s not easy to use. You and your children and the rest of your family aren’t going to use it. And so you want to make sure that the product fits that bill. And finally, there’s a lot of companies that will come and tell you, hey, your identity has been stolen and someone just open an account with your information or they got a mortgage or whatever. Well, the horse is out of the barn, as they like to say. What you want is a company that tells you we’ve seen your information now exposed on the dark web. Maybe it’s time to put a lock on your credit scores. Maybe it’s time to change your passwords and the like.

Tom Temin: And what about parental controls available on smartphones, that kind of thing? There are things people can do specifically for their kids, right?

Charlie Moore: Absolutely. Without a doubt, want to have a product that includes parental controls. And you want to be able to set time limits on usage for their devices, whether it’s a phone or an iPad or their computers or whether it’s their video games. You want to be able to view your child’s on web or excuse me, online history, what they’re searching for on the web, who they’ve interacted with, etc. And the other thing I would mention is that one of my colleagues at Aura has said that the way you want to think about parenting as it relates to the digital environment is to friend, follow and lead by example. And I thought that was really, really good. So in other words, engage with your child on social media, but don’t just stalk them on social media. Respect their online freedom. Avoid commenting on every post that they put on. But be a very good role model for good digital behavior. Exercise kindness in your online interactions and know when to unplug at the end of the day. You’re essentially teaching your children about good digital citizenship, right?

Tom Temin: And let them see you read a book maybe some evenings.

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Charlie Moore: Well, there’s a great idea as well.

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