Jesse Mulligan (00:00):
Let's go to Tech Tuesday. Dan Watson from Vertech It Services is with me. Hi Dan.
Daniel Watson (00:06):
Hey Jesse.
Jesse Mulligan (00:07):
You've been looking at some of Elon Musk's problems. What's he up to?
Daniel Watson (00:14):
Oh, he's getting into a bun fight with the Supreme Court of Brazil. I mean, I wouldn't mess with Brazil cap fight,
Jesse Mulligan (00:26):
But
Daniel Watson (00:28):
At least make it look good while they do it. Yeah,
Jesse Mulligan (00:30):
Well I was going to say that's half dancing, half martial arts, isn't it? It's a pretty stylish way to get beaten up. What's going on?
Daniel Watson (00:39):
Okay, so Twitter has kind of had a bit of a shift in its outlook in terms of, sorry, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Now X has gone a bit of a shift of its standing as it were, whether it's progressive versus conservative since Musk has taken over and there are concerns out there generally in liberal democracies about the ability of large social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and the rest to influence their elections and the population's opinions. And that has been abused and as well documented, that kind of stuff. So there were some requirements by the Brazilian Supreme Court to clamp down on disinformation accounts and Musker said, no, we're not going to. And then they've also said, you need to appoint a legal representative inside Brazil. And essentially Musk is going, no, we are not going to comply with anything because free speech absolutist, except if you're an advertiser who chooses not to advertise on X, in which case he feels he's quite entitled to sue you for not advertising with them. Yeah, okay. Is he consistent? No. So that's what's going on out there, but I think this is part of a bigger issue internationally, is like large multinationals can kind of stomp around the globe and almost act with impunity in some cases.
Jesse Mulligan (02:31):
Yeah, it's interesting. Part of Musk's problem with Twitter when he didn't own, it seemed to be that it had been captured by the left woke brigade and that was unfairly kind of influencing the mainstream discourse. But it does seem now that he's in charge, it may have swung too far the other way, I guess that sometimes happens, right? When you try to write the balance.
Daniel Watson (02:56):
Yeah, there is such as absolutely free speech. We accept that in our society that there are limits placed upon it because it's kind of sensible that whole shouting foreign, a crowded theater, not a great idea. People will die from the rush to stampede outside and there's nothing worse than mobs, right? So if you're able to rile up a mob using lies and rhetoric, then it can be extremely dangerous. Shouldn't a decent society want to be able to place some kind of restrictions on that? There are people who are doing this deliberately. It's not like there is such a purely good thing as I can say, whatever I like whenever I like. Well, you can, but there might be consequences. This is an example of an organization saying we don't want there to be any consequences, but we also still want to do business inside Brazil with x. I always find it hard to say that and as well as starlink and that's hugely popular in there. And I think part of that is the Brazilian government is saying, well, if we are going to ban X, you as an ISP have to block it, which then again, he's going to say no to. Right? So there's that whole thing where being able to act with impunity against the wishes of a government.
Jesse Mulligan (04:25):
Yeah, I guess that's quite handy when you're the person who controls the internet getting to choose which of your social media organizations is allowed to be let in who isn't. We've only got a minute or two left, not long enough to cover this topic in any detail. But interesting your research about small and medium businesses. Do you wanted to share this one?
Daniel Watson (04:47):
Oh yeah. Look, it's the thing, part of the research is that 36% of small medium businesses have experienced one cyber attack in the last six months at least. And of these just 57% took new actions to keep themselves more secure compared to 27% of SMEs that they had not been attacked. So for me that's like, okay, cool. I'd much rather see that, at least at a hundred percent for people who have been smashed to actually go, Hey, we're definitely going to do something different. But I know from my own experience it's not been the case. So if you are one of the people in a business who's thinking, oh yeah, maybe I should do something and I've been lucky so far, I just thought I'd have three really quick tips that shouldn't cost you bugger or money to actually implement inside your small
Jesse Mulligan (05:32):
Business. Go on.
Daniel Watson (05:33):
Alright, one, go and get some ongoing cybersecurity awareness training for your team. This is not tough stuff. Don't do it one off because your data, dump it like your fifth on science exam study prep, right? Encourage your staff to report on anything unusual in it because it might be that it gets through all the other protections and it's only because your employee goes, Hey, that's a bit weird. Got
Jesse Mulligan (06:01):
It. And 10 seconds for the last one, Dan. Go ahead.
Daniel Watson (06:05):
Get a security audit of your Microsoft 365 environment. Every so often, the rules change in that place and the ground doesn't stay the same. You need to keep it updated.
Jesse Mulligan (06:14):
Thank you, sir. Great to have you on as always. Dan Watson for Tech Tuesday.