[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Pixel Parenting, the podcast that helps families raise kids in a world full of screens using science and curiosity. Here we share science backed strategies and real conversations to help you build healthier digital habits with practical tools for everyday parenting in this digital age. Let's get into it Today I'm talking with cybersecurity experts and co authors of Cyber Smart, Kay David and Chad Rajczewski. Together they translate the IT security talk into simple practical steps parents can actually take, like how to think about your child's digital footprint, what risks really matter, and why open conversations matter more than strict lockdown controls. We also get into grandparents, oversharing photos, kids bypassing parental controls, and how to start that very first cybersecurity conversation at home. Let's get to it. Thank you Kay and Chad for being here. I'm very excited about this conversation about cybersecurity for parents and kids. I'll have you introduce yourselves first and then we can jump right in the conversation.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So my name is Kay David. I have been in cybersecurity for a little over 10 years. I specifically work within the tech sector, so working with large scale enterprises for software and platform companies along with hyperscalers. I am one of the co authors for Cyber Smart Parenting.
I'm based in Baltimore, Maryland and really excited to be here to speak with you today.
[00:01:31] Speaker C: And I'm Chad Oslowski calling in from North Carolina. I've been in CyberSecurity for about 16 years now, primarily working with public sector clients, K through 20 clients, basically bolstering the resilience of the institutions that my children go to. So I have the four and eight year olds that are definitely into technology and sports and all that fun stuff. And what drove the partnership with K and I and the co authorship was all the questions I kept getting at the baseball games and all the different events. So there's a lot of parents in my life then. I like to tie the two things together. It's been fun.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: What got you to write a book on cybersecurity?
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Well, at the time Chad and I actually lived in the same city, so we were both in Durham and we would often get coffee or breakfast and just kind of talk about the industry and what we're seeing and what we're hearing across the board. And one day we just started talking and noticed that there was a huge gap when it came to knowledge for parents. Something that could be very like practical and tactical for parents to be able to learn about cybersecurity without necessarily going through 10 plus years of experience related to cybersecurity. And we would constantly have these conversations with parents whenever they found out that we were in cyber. And we wanted to be able to see scale our education and our knowledge so that parents would be able to feel protected to protect their children in the digital world and be able to start having a strong foundation of knowledge for both themselves and their kids. So we thought what would be a better way than to write a book, Something that's, you know, 100 pages or less during the weekends or after work. Just being able to put our brains to the paper of what is the main things that parents should know at least when they're starting to go through the digital landscape with their kids.
[00:03:28] Speaker C: There was a lot of anxiety in the space. All the conversations I was having too. And then the books that we looked at, they were 250 pages and sure, consultants with 15, 20 years of experience, but it was a lot of big words, a lot of things that folks couldn't understand. So we wanted to break it down and we've, we've been told that it's quite simple to read. And that was, that was on purpose. It's a short book, it's 8,000, 8,485 pages, big print, very tactical, very practical. And that was completely on purpose because of what was in the market. Like we were saying.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Can you explain a little bit? What do you mean when you say cybersecurity for parents versus cybersecurity, you know, for it people?
[00:04:04] Speaker C: It's hard to take yourself out of the job sometimes when you've been doing this for so long. You think about passwords and controls and security frameworks all the time. But normal folks aren't thinking about that. They're thinking about Facebook, they're thinking about posting pictures of their kids online.
They're not thinking about the risks and the ramifications. So when we talk about it from the parental lens, it's really educating folks on the risks that exist out there. Not only from what their children can do online, but what they're doing online that expose their children's footprints.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah, and I'll just add to that too, is in our day to day profession, a lot of times we're working with enterprises and corporations that think of cybersecurity from helping to protect their own institution and thinking through from a more technical control implementation and being able to look at the different landscape specific to that corporation or enterprise. When we talk to parents, they're not thinking about how to protect 500 plus employees, 5,000 plus employees. They're not Thinking about what tools do I need to implement into my enterprise to help reduce the legacy systems? Parents are just trying to protect probably a handful of employees, which is really just their children.
And they're trying to think not about tooling from an implementation implementation perspective, but more so of what kind of tools do I need to use in order to help protect my children online and what are the educational pieces that I should be starting to have conversations with my children to make sure they can protect themselves online.
So that's kind of the differences.
It's still about protection and safety, but from an individual perspective, it actually is a lot closer to home when it comes to parents versus when talking to it for, you know, large scale enterprises.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: So related to that, what are the major risks? Are there like risk buckets for parents that they should be looking at?
[00:06:00] Speaker B: I think that's a great question. I think there are certain risks that are specifically tailored to parents and what they should be thinking about when it pertains to their family, to their children.
So cyberbullying and just the risks of having, you know, more of a negative experience online, whether it be via cyberbullies or potentially predators or being groomed, that's something that, you know, IT professionals don't necessarily think about within enterprises, but it's incredibly high risk when it comes to parents. Thinking about for their children is thinking about not only their mental well being and safety, but also their physical safety as well of, you know, what kind of risks might happen if they provide too much information about their children online and what kind of physical risks that could involve.
[00:06:51] Speaker C: I'd say pay attention to the news when you hear the word cybersecurity because it's everywhere these days. There's information being leaked through student information systems. The amount of applications as a parent that I see every single year that change, there's a new application, a new place for my data, a new password to put in. All these things are spread and hopefully not sold right. The data is the biggest important thing for me to explain to parents and how risky that is. And data can be a password, it can be a birthday, it's anything that's personally identifiable. What we try to explain to the kids of this special information, we call it things that you don't want to tell a stranger. But beyond that, a picture. With AI and everything in the mix right now, a picture goes out there and how could it be used for good or bad? A child could manipulate a photo, an adult could manipulate a photo or your voice or a video.
So those risks kind of amplify. When you introduce AI to the data.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Perspective, you mentioned you've been talking to parents. So what are parents usually more scared of than they should really be and what are they not scared enough about?
[00:07:56] Speaker C: I'll start with the not scared enough about. And we're going to stick on this data thing for a second. It's how many pictures are posted because people are proud of their kids, proud of family moments. You post a picture of your child with your school name, what they want to be when they grow up, the date you've just given the Internet a permanent record of a bunch of different data points. And then I'm a bad guy for a second, putting that hat on. I can go scrape that across layers of photos that you've posted and start tracking and digging in and start stealing identities. So that, that leads into the credit freezing thing that folks don't normally think about. You probably thought about it as an adult, it's pretty easy to freeze your credit, but for children it takes a good three, four hours. We've gone through that process with our kids and it's, it can be a little daunting, but people don't normally think about that. They don't think about the risk associated to it and then they don't think about how to mitigate it or reduce that risk.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: I think that a lot of parents are hyper focused on specific platforms, on specific tools and what they need to do for those tools specifically. For instance, you know, what are your kids using if it's Snap, if it's Instagram, if it's Facebook, et cetera. Like what are the specific technical controls I should be aware of as a parent? And that is important, you should know, but I think it's over indexed in the sense that they forget about. But have you talked to your child, have you talked to them about safety precautions? And that's maybe something that they aren't necessarily focusing on as much is because there's always going to be risks. Unfortunately, we live in a world of risks and we live in a world where, you know, you can't configure every technical control to keep your child safe. But what it really starts with is does your child know how to keep themselves safe? Do they know that they shouldn't be posting pictures of themselves or providing this information online? Do they know that they shouldn't be engaging with a stranger and giving information that is personal to themselves? Do they know that certain platforms provide misinformation or deep fake images? And how can they spot that? I think that's an area that a lot of parents might necessarily double click into.
And that's why in our book we talk about a lot of like conversation starters, because it can be intimidating. You don't necessarily maybe know exactly how do you start the conversation with your child to say, to talk about deep fakes. So we have kind of some prompts in our books where it's like you can talk through X, Y and Z. And here's a conversation starter. So this is something you could start with to talk to your kid about that topic.
[00:10:33] Speaker C: The communication piece is like one of the foundational bits of the book. And it's all throughout. On the back we found a stat that's on the back. It's in the book. We wanted to point it out multiple times. On average, parents only spend 46 minutes from birth to 18 years old talking about cybersecurity, which is just nuts in our world because that's all we ever talk about. But look at that from a tech perspective too. Most of us that are in our 30s, 40s grew up with technology.
So we had typing classes, we had Internet classes to understand the technology that was being rolled out. Now kindergarteners, first graders get Chromebooks, one on one Chromebooks. And most parents don't know this because the kids aren't coming home and talking about it. But there's the problem, right? There is the communication's not open. We're not parental counselors. Right. But we do believe in the communication aspect of that. And I definitely talked to my kids about it a lot. I loved asking him what his password was and he openly shared it with me. And that was a nice little lesson that we don't share it. Thank you for sharing it with your father, but let's not share with anyone else.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: If you've never talked to your child about cybersecurity, where would you start?
[00:11:37] Speaker C: So I started recently with. We had a really cool blog series over October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month. And it was Halloween themed. K came up with some really cool games and we've recently converted those into any time of the year. So I gave my son Amaze a word search. Think about the things your kids like to do and incorporate cybersecurity into those, like password protection, talking to strangers, simple controls that they need to be thinking about. But working it into gamification just by putting it on a piece of paper and having them work through that type of activity, I think it taught him a lot. I loved talking to him afterwards about like, what did we learn about that? And he was able to rattle off a couple of those things about what an important password is, what a phishing email looks like. I was really impressed that this child that just started reading last year was able to identify a phishing email. When I work with some 30 year olds that have a hard time, yeah.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: And I think it also. So it depends on like when you start the conversations with your child. So obviously maybe someone who's in elementary school is going to have a different perspective than if you start the conversation later on like in middle or high school. But the recommendation would be almost start with an open ended question, right? So maybe ask them what do you know about cybersecurity?
Or how would you define cybersecurity? Because that's allowing you as a parent to have a good baseline to see like what does your child think of when they think of security online? Do they think about privacy? Do they think about passwords? Do they think about deep fakes? And kind of just start it as an open ended conversation with that question and see where it takes you. So that way you also learn what your kid knows or maybe doesn't know when it comes to digital safety and cybersecurity.
[00:13:21] Speaker C: I think using that approach, most parents are going to be impressed. So like my first time going into a school talking to a fourth grader, they were using email and macros and Excel and I was just blown away. But then you ask different age ranges what they know about cybersecurity. To K's point, it's not that different. It's where they concentrate on it based on their age group, on what platforms they're on, what they're doing. But by and large, I think whether the schools are teaching it or the kids are learning it from somewhere else, they do know a baseline. It is great to learn what that baseline is before you start the conversation.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: What if you give, let's say you've never talked about cybersecurity, your child has never been exposed to a computer with Internet, and they are, let's say in sixth grade they have a lot to learn because by sixth grade they're probably on the verge of getting a phone, on the verge of getting access to social media, et cetera, et cetera. What is the major lesson, the most important lesson that they need to know about?
[00:14:18] Speaker C: So we'll pretend that they've engaged with something else like a newspaper. So I remember being told as a teenager that if you're going to put something in an email, just pretend it's going to go in a newspaper one day. Be comfortable with what you're putting online.
So imagine online being online or any device you're using being that form of permanent record. So it's an open communication to be able to talk to people all over the world and talk and do different things that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise with that vast network. But everything that happens on there has a record and a log. And that, that to me is the most important thing to explain to children because of that permanence that exists online.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: One of the very first things that would be important is to talk about your digital footprint with your child. And the reason being is once something is out there, it is near impossible to be able to fully scrub it from the Internet. And so you want your child to know they've potentially interacted and started putting their digital footprint out there themselves, that this isn't just a screen that you type something on and you can delete it later if you don't like it. No, this is something that is permanently out there in the world so that they're aware of any type of information you put out there stays out there. So to Chad's point, it's like a newspaper. There is a record of it, it's been printed, and people can use that in the future as a site source of information from you. So that would be the one thing as like a plus one. Just talking about their digital footprint. And to that same degree, I think growing up, it's also the stranger danger that we always learned, like off the, like off the cusp, right? Like, don't trust the van. Like, if someone's like trying to get you to go in their van and they have candy or they have the lost puppy, like, it's just like the day one. What parents usually teach their children, being able to teach that in a digital space as well, of stranger danger still exists even when you log onto these devices. Not everyone is who they say they are and not everyone is going to give you what they say they will and is positive. So just being able to contextualize that stranger danger also exists online so that they come in with a healthy level of skepticism before they even start engaging with quote, unquote friends.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: What about grandparents? I send my kids picture to my mom and then she sends it to broadcasters among her friends.
I'm worried about that. Right? That's digital footprint. And I have to explain to her why that is not right. And the answer usually is, but they're just my friends.
How would you approach that? And I hear this from a lot.
[00:17:08] Speaker C: Of parents, I think Some of us may have already approached that. No names, but communication. Like having this same conversation that we're having right now with grandparents, with parents explaining the ramifications of these things and the trust that exists in the world today. It's not hard to talk about trust and the lack of it, really. So to me, it is all about the communication. Hopefully you're not reacting to something.
It's great if we can tackle these things before they become an issue. But I think folks are afraid to have that conversation with their parents, with grandparents, about laying down the law, if you will. But I mean, they're your kids, so have the conversation because it's kind of your responsibility, I think.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: And also being able to give again, a little bit of a healthy scare. The reason being is it's possible that again, every generation has grown up with a different type of technology in hand. Some generations didn't ever have that technology in hand. So there's a little bit of a learning curve that happens as well when you're dealing with maybe an older generation. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of like, even if you just like Google or use YouTube of like videos of deep fakes from photos and being able to show them the type of technology that exists today in like, a healthy way to show that, hey, with just a photo that you send to your friend, this is actually the kind of video that can be posted online of your kid and it can be manipulated and can really ruin their future. Even though it is fake and just they might not necessarily be aware or believe that that technology exists and being able to show them. So in like a healthy, like, very controlled manner, it might help with that light bulb effect. Because, I mean, even today, like, kids are showing us like the type of technology that they know how to use.
And it's like reading about it is one thing, but then seeing a child use, like, certain apps that like, you didn't even know existed and like, you immediately start thinking, oh my gosh, if they can do this, they must be able to do that. And then it's just that snowball effect.
So your parents or the grandparents might know that, hey, there's like some, like, maybe things that could happen with this photo, but, like, that's. That could never be possible. Like, maybe that technology exists, but I really don't think it's real. And then being able to show them, no, it is really like real. And this is how it works. It's like a. Oh my gosh. Well, if they can do that with this Photo. They could do that with this other photo. And if my friend sends it to their friends, then, oh, my gosh, like, what could happen? That could be like a good conversation starter and learning curve as well. That might drive the effect Home for grandparents that are oversharing information examples come home.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: And I would like to thank Hollywood for a moment for spotlighting cybersecurity so much over the past five years. There's plenty of movies that you can show a grandparent and be, this is. Okay, sure, it's Hollywood, it's a movie. But it's a great example that we can watch together and realize what those ramifications are.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Let's talk about when things go wrong. So my kids see something online that they shouldn't. What do we do?
[00:20:22] Speaker B: We always have this saying in, like, cyber security, it's not a if you get hacked, it's a when you get hacked. So it is unfortunately inevitable things will go wrong. So in that instance, it is unfortunately inevitable that at some point, at some time, your kid might come across information or see something that is just way beyond their maturity level.
The best thing that could happen, though, is that you are aware of it because your kid tells you so. Again, kind of driving back to that communication point, you want to be able to have an environment where if your kid sees something online or gets exposed to something that they just don't feel comfortable with or it doesn't feel right to them, that they can immediately come to you and talk about it and say, hey, I saw this online.
This is the site, et cetera, et cetera. So then you can be able to sit down with them and say, first off, thank them for coming to you so that they know that they have a safe and trusted adult that they can come to whenever they see something and then maybe talk about it as well, to say, well, did you mean to go to this site? Were you looking on other things? Did you believe this? Did someone point you to that site and kind of just get the information you need as a parent or trusted adult to then be able to potentially report it if it is being targeted to your kid, for instance, like cyberbullying, or if it's a site that maybe you need to be able to put some stronger parental controls in place. So just be able to have that conversation with them and make sure they feel in a safe space to have that conversation instead of a, oh, I saw this. And it's an immediate negative reaction of like, oh, my gosh, why were you on that site? What were you doing? You should have never been able to do that. Give me your phone. It's gone for like the next week. That would be, you know, when it does go wrong situation being able to be level headed and start gathering the information you need to be able to give the right actions next. Whether it be stronger technical controls or maybe maybe the stronger communication with your kids of what they need to do as as well for themselves.
[00:22:30] Speaker A: What about the parental controls? Would you put them up with them as part of the communication? Like I'm going to set this up for this age range. Block this content because you're not there yet.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: Conversation again. So you're not setting rules, you're having the conversation with them. Page 77 of the book is our favorite page because it's, it tells you to rip it out. It's a mad lib type of contract where you fill in the blanks with your child. It's not supposed to be filled out and you point it to them and say I'm hanging this on the fridge. And these are the rules that we're following. You agree to them with the child so they understand the basics of what screen time is, where we keep the phones in the general areas. You don't, you know, take them up to your room and scroll the Internet doom scroll as adults do all night long. But having the basic conversation around what you're doing I think is great. Being a cybersecurity expert, writing the blogs that we write, I'm going to show them to my child. This is how we lock down your firepad. This is how we lock down your Nintendo Switch. Just so he understands some of those technical controls. Because wouldn't I be a proud father if my son went into cyber security one day? Right. So having that conversation at the technical level is beneficial on multiple angles, I think. Yeah.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: And I will say like, it's obviously like again, as Chad had pointed out earlier in the conversation, like we're not parental like coaches of telling you how to raise your child. Like at the end of the day it comes down to your values and how you want to implement certain rules in the household or outside of the household. But we will say in our conversations with parents, it has become a reoccurring theme where parents implement certain controls or firewalls without necessarily talking to their kids about it. And then they find out later that their child has been able to circumvent those controls and just like bypass their firewalls. So kids are very creative and they will find a way when you say no without a conversation with them and Understanding why you're saying no, they'll find a way to make it so it's a yes for them, even if it's a no for the parent. So that's why we do kind of stress open communication. And to your point, like sitting down and talking through like, well, this is why I'm putting in this control in place. It's because, you know, the same way you have rated R movies and it's because there's certain, you know, content that you're just not ready to see. This is what those technical controls are for because there's certain content online that you're just not ready to see quite yet. And being able to explain it to them and have that conversation, this is.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: All super valuable information. Where can we find your book and the contract that we need to rip off to talk about it with our kids?
[00:25:13] Speaker C: I'd say start@cybersecurity parents.com just because there's a couple different places you can buy the book on there. The main one would be Amazon, but the website also has blogs because the book is. It's a point in time. We didn't really get into a lot of the. The different technologies that exist because we know that they're going to change. But there are blogs on the website that get into some of the technology as it's being rolled out, as we're rolling out things to our kids to further educate adults and parents on what they should be doing outside of the book. But the book is primarily on Amazon. Definitely go to cybersecurity parents.com to check out some of the other things on there too.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: Can we reach you by email? And listeners can send you questions or contact you.
[00:25:56] Speaker C: So on the website, there's the contact page, but it's infoybersecurityparents.com and we'll get that. We'll get back to you as soon as we can, obviously, but we'd love to get questions. Love questions. We love having talks like this, love going to talk to schools, whether it's PTAs, PTOs, staff, the students. We just like sharing this message as much as we can. So feel free to email us.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: Well, this was the end of our conversation.
Lots of practical tips. So thank you so much for being here. Kay and Chad will be in touch.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: Thank you for having us.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: That's it for today's episode. I hope this conversation with Kay and Chad gave you a clearer, calmer way to think about cybersecurity, not as something reserved only for IT professionals, but as an everyday parenting skill. You can build over time. If you want to go deeper, you can find their book Cyber Smart Parenting and more
[email protected] including their tech contract that you can fill out with your kids and some fun activities to get the conversation started. If this episode was helpful, please share it with another parent. And don't forget to follow or subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Thanks for listening and until next time.
