On this week of The Tech Ranch, “Guru of Geek” Marlo Anderson is missing. Seriously! Some speculate he might be in the
Colorado Rockies, while others speculate he is being held for ransom somewhere in an undisclosed location. In the meantime, Rockin’ Dave Blair and Captain John Cybernet Nagel (Cybernet Security)  have decided to cover the show until information is received on the whereabouts of our infamous Guru of Geek, so for the moment will be talking about cyber security, cyber groups, cybersecurity risk assessment, a great asset for every type of company to maintain their data in a secure and safe storage while sharing it to specific participants keeping it confidential and accessible to only the ones with access.

HELD FOR RANSOM
To begin this episode, Rockin’ Dave and Captain John Cybernet decided it might be a good idea to revisit internet security and protecting ourselves from being attacked by cyber groups across the world. Both agree there seems to be an epidemic of hacking going on with all of our electronic gadgets lately and for this reason they encourage people to start with a ISC2 CAP course, specially if they are business owners and manage all their information  online. No one is safe from the depths of hackers. It’s a scary feeling to think that someone is holding your personal information hostage. And, it happens. Every day. According to Captain John Cybernet, hacking is a lucrative business. Even though hackers are considered bad guys, there is some benefit to understanding what hacking is and how it all works. If you are a business owner, you’ve got a solution to protect your business from cyber threats. Hightower Risk can help providing a wide range of exclusive insurance programs that can eliminate dangerous gaps in your protection.
White Hat Hackers
There is a term often referred to as “white hat” computer hackers in cyber world. White hat hackers are normally used as “good guys” because they have the skills to hack, but use their skill to test hacking possibilities for companies legally. Though white hat hackers can be dangerous, most use their skills for ethical reasons and are employees of companies to help find vulnerabilities within their systems. Organizations take the information white hat hackers present to help prevent future hacking problems.
Gray Hat Hackers
“Gray hat” hackers are often referred to as hackers that don’t really do anything bad, but have potential too. These types of hackers often use hacking as a means to infiltrate systems without permission. This type of hacking is often the result of having the ability to hack, but not going forward with any threat. Gray hat hackers know it’s illegal to hack computers; however, as long as they don’t do anything illegal, gray hat hackers don’t see a problem with what they are doing. The problem with gray hat hackers is they often work for more lucrative people who are willing to pay for information on how to hack businesses and corporations.
Black Hat Hackers
“Black hat” hackers are the most dangerous of all hackers. Their purpose is to break into information systems with malicious intent. Unlike white hat and gray hat hackers, black hat hackers take full advantage of their system break-ins and do several things to a computer for a fee. Recently, the WannaCry Ransomware (previous episode link) was in the news as hacking several systems throughout the world. In order for the files to be recovered or saved, the black hat hackers demanded money to release the informatio...