In honor of McAfee’s Global Community Service Day this week, our President Mike DeCesare and Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom spoke at a local Bay Area High School about the responsibilities they have as what Newsom calls ‘Digital Natives’. This term means that Generation Z was born into an amazing technical age; having study sessions on an iPad with students scattered around the globe comes as naturally to them as hopping on a bike and heading to your best friend’s house to study for Spanish was to us. Gen Z doesn’t know a world without rapid technological advances – they have lived and breathed technology from before they could speak (have you ever seen a 1 year old navigate an iPad? I have.) . The rest of us, who can remember when the internet was something called America Online,  are what the Lieutenant Governor calls ‘Digital Immigrants’ – we might be able to pick up the language, but we will never understand it in the same way that the Natives do. As DeCesare commented to the crowd, “In an incredibly connected world, you (Gen Z) are the generation which will be leading one of the most major transformations of mankind.”

Great power indeed.

Digital Immigrants, the people that are responsible for educating the future generations, are put at a great disadvantage. We will always be behind the curve, struggling to keep up and understand the world from the eyes of the Natives. What we can do, however, is educate these future technological prodigies in values that have been ingrained in us since we were children; Responsibility, Self-Worth, and a little something called Doing the Right Thing.

In a world where inappropriate videos go viral and get a million hits in a single day, where teen moms can become famous for their indiscretions, and where celebrities get more press time when their lives are spiraling out of control – it can seem that these traditional values no longer apply. Yet when given the opportunity to share their message with a group of children for an hour, both DeCesare and Newsom spent their valuable time on one of the oldest values in the book – Responsibility.

Will Generation Z use their power for good or evil? Only time will tell.  One thing clear right now, it is up to us to teach them, guide them, and empower them to use their power responsibly.

How will you empower your children to be responsible and do the right thing?

Comment below, and for more information, follow me on Twitter @tctompkins.

Imagine that driver posts online about cutting you off, mocking the kind of car you drive, its color, or maybe that it needs a wash. They take it a step further, start talking about the way you drive, your hair color, your weight, your skin, and then, hundreds of followers, start commenting, and agree “What a total LOSER” “They are SO  fat, ugly, and stupid”.

You’re an adult. You can probably handle this type of criticism from strangers, because you know who you are. You have the life skills and experience to adequately shrug off this type of behavior.

If you’re 11, you don’t have this capability.

Recent stories in the media, like the Stuebenville, OH and Saratoga, CA  cases, are examples of bullying that ended tragically. The sad truth is, cyber bullying runs rampant globally. When we present to both parents and students, we see the reality of online bullying in their faces.

We’ve seen the girl, in the back of the crowd in a middle school classroom, whose face changed when we mentioned the word cyber bully. She had brown hair and a jean jacket on. The presentation had to keep moving, but it was difficult because the way her face changed caused extreme emotions to come up. Peter’s voice stumbled, he hesitated, and that’s a face that he won’t soon forget. Bullying was her reality. Her every day. Her this morning.  He finished his section on cyberbullying with words he hoped gave her  courage “Don’t be a victim. Don’t let somebody tell you who you are.”

One slide in our presentation highlights the consequences for the bully, which include: suspension, expulsion, and criminal charges.

But what we’re concerned about, are the consequences for the victim. These include: depression, withdrawal, low self esteem, and harming themselves.

The tool we teach your kids: Stop. Block. Tell. Stop means don’t respond (side note, it’s key to tell your child not to respond because that creates conversation, not bullying, in the eyes of the law. It is very difficult to prove a case of cyber bullying when there is conversation back and forth), it also means don’t forward to friends. Block means use the technology for good – block, unfriend, unfollow the bully. Tell means find a trusted adult and tell them what’s happening.

 The tool we hope you teach your kids: self-worth. Teach it early, teach it often,  teach it NOW. Kids who feel good about themselves are less likely to end up being the victim or the bully, they are also less likely to share inappropriate pictures of themselves online. Have conversations with your kids that bring up concrete examples of real life consequences for those who share online inappropriately, or what we call the Wave of Regret.

We’re here for you and your questions. You can comment below, or follow Taylor on Twitter @tctompkins

While the outlook is bright for businesses in these countries, the flip side is that all of this change and growth breeds favourable conditions for cybercrime. The cost of cybercrime in South Africa is estimated to be worth $573 million, representing 0.01% of the GDP. And as the adoption of IT, mobile and technology such as cloud computing become increasingly widespread, this figure is set to rapidly increase in 2013. While the finance and telecoms industries take security quite seriously, there are still areas that need to be improved. McAfee is committed to supporting customers in this region with our extensive portfolio of Next Generation Endpoint Security, Network Security, Security Management (SIEM), Database security and Web security solutions.

My next stop after South Africa was the McAfee Cork office, for the very intense closing week of Q1. The Cork office is the headquarters for our EMEA operations, including engineering, R&D, procurement and logistics. A few weeks ago it ranked among the Top 100 Great Place to Work in The Irish Times, so it’s always a pleasure to be in that kind of environment.

During my time in Ireland, I was interviewed by a journalist from the Irish Examiner. We discussed the growth currently taking place within the business, including the 60 new hires McAfee is making for its centre of excellence. This was particularly hot news for the journalist – earlier in the week, Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, and the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) – an organisation responsible for attracting foreign investment to Ireland – visited McAfee Co-Presidents Mike DeCesare and Todd Gebhart at the McAfee headquarters in Santa Clara.

The interview with the Irish Examiner also explored the major changes currently happening in the security market.  Due to the rise of trends such as Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) and cloud, antivirus security is no longer sufficient to protect businesses from smarter, more targeted cyberattacks. Instead, businesses need to be looking at holistic, real-time and actionable threat intelligence solutions.

The highlight of my trip to the Cork office was the McAfee Coderdojo class that was underway in the cafeteria. These Coderdojo classes are hosted every Tuesday afternoon by McAfee employees in the engineering and R&D departments, and are focused on teaching young people how to code. Our Cork office was the first to start the programme in Ireland, and it’s a great achievement for our business that I personally am proud of.

What a great Q1 the team has had. Here’s to an even better Q2!

We call it ‘The Wave of Regret’. This term, coined by my Online Safety for Kids partner, Peter Andrada, defines a movement we predict will happen in the near future where content shared by kids on social media applications will come to life and change their future permanently.

We’ve all done things in our youth that shaped who we have become as adults. We have all been in a sticky situation here and there where we have come out on the other side a little tougher, a little stronger, and a whole lot smarter. The difference between our childhoods and the childhoods of kids today, is that our less than shining moments weren’t documented for anyone we allowed to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ us to see. They were not ‘tweeted’, ‘facebooked’, or ‘instagrammed’. Our moments, while forever etched in our memories, were just that. In our memories. Today, passing thoughts are tweeted, random moments are posted for all to see, and we share the inner workings of our lives with our 800 closest ‘friends’.

Why is it dangerous? Kids equate the amount of followers they have to how popular they are. I regularly ask kids how many followers they have…100…200…1,000… they nod their heads. The issue with this is that it is incredibly difficult to keep PII (personally identifiable information) out of a photograph. From a single glance you can tell where the photo was taken, when it was taken, and do investigative work from there. Instagram also has a feature called ‘geotagging’.  Geotagging allows the user to embed the GPS coordinates of where they are when the picture was taken. This information stays embedded in the data of the image forever. Many times, a user is unaware that the geotagging application is activated in the application they are using.

My advice: Help distance your child from the Wave of Regret. Download Instagram on your smartphone, and follow your kid. It can be a very fun and informative way of getting a glimpse into your child’s digital life.  You will be able to intelligently guide your child to making better decisions when posting online. Also, have your child put their profile on private. It is simple and easy to do in Instagram’s settings. Lastly, go through your child’s follower list with them – anyone who they cannot immediately identify, have them unfollow and block that user.

What steps do you take to keep your kids safe online? Comment below, and follow me on Twitter for more information @tctompkins

Note: Instagram is not intended for children under 13. If your child is under 13, Instagram recommends you delete their account.

The online world, while amazing, is a scary place. Recently I was presenting at a local school where a third grade girl raised her hand and told the crowd of 300+ that she had been solicited and cyber bullied by an older man while playing computer games on a popular website. Stories similar to this are shared by children and their parents in every presentation. This is the rule, not the exception. With their ‘that will never happen to me’ mentality, kids are opening themselves up to a world of possibilities, many of them dangerous.

Digital media that is shared can move quickly from device to device, and images and information go viral within a matter of seconds. Viral means national news, thousands of Facebook shares, millions of YouTube hits. Viral means you don’t get hired by your dream company because they saw what you posted on the internet. Viral means haunting you – very possibly for the rest of your life.

This leads me to Snapchat.

Snapchat is an application for your smartphone, and is advertised as ‘the fastest way to share a moment’ which means it is a way to share photos (with video capability recently added). The Snapchat website boasts the ability to control how long you want your friends to have access to the shared message. This application is popular with users between the ages of 13 and 25, and as of today, over a billion photos have been shared.

Why is it popular? Snapchat touts the ability to delete images at any time – users LOVE this notion. This advertised feature reduces social inhibitions of messaging. For this reason, it’s widely used for sexting.

Why is it dangerous? While Snapchat advertises share media cannot be saved, it is absolutely possible to save pictures on Snapchat…in fact; I saved a picture this morning. Since you can save the digital media (and potentially share with whomever you like, who can then share with whomever they like, and so on and so forth…), Snapchat becomes a functionless application… users may as well share images using their smartphone’s built in camera. They do the same thing.

My recommendation – have your kids delete Snapchat. If the fact that messages can be saved isn’t enough to convince you, think about this: messages sent over Snapchat do not appear on your phone bill, meaning you have no visibility into who your child is sharing information with.

Note: Snapchat is not intended for use by children under the age of 13. If your child is under the age of 13, Snapchat recommends you delete their account.

What steps do you take to keep your kids safe online? Comment below!

For more information about keeping your kids safe online, follow me on Twitter @tctompkins

Founded by International Data Group (IDG) in 1988, The Computerworld Honors Program is governed by the not-for-profit Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation. Computerworld Honors is the longest running global program to honor individuals and organizations that use information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change. Additional information about the program and a Global Archive of past Laureate case studies, as well as oral histories of Leadership Award recipients can be found at the Computerworld Honors website.

McAfee Cares – Online Safety for Kids is a school initiative that employs volunteers to help train school-age children and parents on ways to stay safe and secure, as well as maintain good ethics in their online behavior.  Each Online Safety for Kids session provides students or parents with content and materials based on the STOP.THINK.CONNECT™ national cybersecurity awareness campaign. This campaign was developed by the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Messaging Convention, a public-private partnership established and led by The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), of which McAfee is a founding member.

As a founding member of the program, I have spoken to more than 10,000 kids and parents since its inception.  Online Safety for Kids is MY PASSION.  Every time I am in front of kids I hear stories of creepers approaching them online.   Just last week, my OSK partner Taylor Tompkins and I spoke to 300 fifth graders.  A girl in the front raised her hand and shared that she had a 20 year old man approach her in a virtual space where she and other kids go to communicate.  He asked her to add him to a friends list, and then he followed her and other kids from place to place online.

This really made my blood boil.  I could sense my adrenaline spike as she recounted the story—I could tell this really affected her. It affected me.  It affected us both.

Online occurrences like this happen every day, all day, around the world.   As much as we’d like to be involved in our kid’s online activities, we can’t be with them every second. So what can we do?  We must give them the tools to navigate this world, teach them self-worth, and lead by example.   In my house, when it is time to put the mobile devices down for the evening, Dad’s iPhone goes into the wicker basket FIRST.

For younger kids K – 5, they need the concrete, clear rules set by McAfee’s Online Safety for Kids talks.  For middle school kids, we have them admit a little of their online use and then warn them in a real way, on their level.  You should see the seventh grade girl’s face go OMG when I tell her Snapchat is a LIE.  That Snapchat pics CAN be and ARE saved.

For high school kids (WAAAY too cool for us visiting speakers) I hammer home an idea I’ve been thinking of for some time now.  What I call The Wave of Regret.   It’s coming.   Behavior on sites like reddit and tumblr are outrageous (and I do not say this from an ivory tower).  I’ve made mistakes myself online and I have felt the stress from those choices.  My goal is to speak to kids plainly, as real as possible, so I can reach them.

We must stay in the fight.

To learn more about the McAfee Online Safety for Kids program, or if you are an educator and would like to schedule a school visit for McAfee’s Global Community Service day, contact: Cybereducation@McAfee.com or 888-782-8892.

McAfee has a fantastic program that teaches kids how to navigate the dangers of the Internet. It’s called McAfee Cares – Online Safety for Kids and it’s a year-round school initiative that employs volunteers to help train school-age children and parents on ways to stay safe and secure, as well as maintain good ethics in their online behavior.  Each Online Safety for Kids session provides students or parents with content and materials based on the STOP.THINK.CONNECT™ national cybersecurity awareness campaign. This campaign was developed by the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. Messaging Convention, a public-private partnership established and led by The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) and National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), of which McAfee is a founding member.

If you are a parent or an educator, and want to learn more about the program or schedule a school visit, contact Cybereducation@McAfee.com. We expect to have more than half of our work force participating in our day of service this year, and will be lining up school visits around the world.

McAfee launched its Global Community Service Day last year in honor of the company’s 25^th anniversary, helping thousands of people in need around the world.

Anticipation and long term vision are critical in our industry. This view is also shared by our parent company Intel. In fact, Renée James, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Software and Services Group paid us the honour of joining us for a relaxed, open and candid interview with Mike DeCesare.  She told us how much she believes that Intel and McAfee have a unique opportunity and position in the market which enables them to serve their customers and make our world of the predicted 50 Billion interconnected devices, a safer place.

Cybercrime is crossing all boundaries; we witnessed it again with the recent attacks on several US media groups such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. McAfee has released its 2013 Threat Prediction Report setting the scene of new attacks. At the same time we noticed that older cyber threats which some people see as no longer valid are still very real and even mutating in the way they are used by the bad guys, Trojan Citadel being the perfect example, especially here in EMEA. Therefore I could not welcome more the latest commitment and resolve of the European Union to fight cyber threats. McAfee and Intel  work together in Securing the Global Digital Infrastructure (GDI).

In Las Vegas, I also had the pleasure of holding a specific breakout session with my EMEA Team.  We went through our 2012 results, looked at what we accomplished, what we could do better, and our top performing regions and Business Units. I launched our 2013 priorities and goals with our EMEA 2013 theme: PACT which stands for People, Activity, Commitment and Teamwork. Corporate Executives Steve Redman, Pat Calhoun, Ken Levine, and Candace Worley joined us for an interactive Q&A session.  I am really excited about our business. I must say that we have already had a good start to the year. We have the market, we have the momentum, we have the people and these three elements, combined with our EMEA PACT strategy, give us all the cards we need to make 2013 a fantastic year for our customers and partners.

 This Friday, 7 October, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and other officials will join NCSA stakeholders and leaders from the Department of Homeland Security to officially kick-off National Cyber Security Awareness Month. The official launch event will take place during the Michigan Cyber Summit and is expected to draw highly regarded cyber security experts from around the world. NCSA leaders will also share several findings from a national poll on security and online safety for users.

You don’t have to be there in person – join us via Facebook Live. For more details or to register, you can visit: www.michigan.gov/cybersummit. 

If you are a cyber security professional in the U.S. or abroad, start thinking about how you can share your knowledge with those in your community who need more cyber security assistance and insight. 

Of course, you don’t have to wait for any official Cyber Security Awareness event – just consider this month’s activities here in the U.S. as a gentle reminder that you have a lot to give to your communities in this way! Join us in celebrating National Cyber Security Awareness Month!