Video: ISM Group CEO on Battling The Forces of the Dark Web

hey Channel insiders welcome to part one of a special two-part bonus episode of Channel Insider partner POV I'm your host Katie boso my guest today is Simon David Williams CEO of ism group Simon David and his team spend their time protecting their clients from being exposed and exploited on the dark web they're also taking down the criminals who operate there and mitigating the damage if the worst does happen for their clients Simon David's own Journey with the dark web started when he became a victim there and his information was exposed now he's educating clients and channel solution providers about the dark Forces of the dark web Simon David welcome hi thank you for having me thank you so much for being here I've been wanting to have you on the show since I got started here you were one of the first people that I thought about having on and I can't help but think back to when I first met you at a Ingram Micro conference and you very very casually said to me you were so kind and so much fun to talk to and then you said do you want me to look you up on the dark web and see if you're on here and I went what do you mean and you open your laptop you go I could just I could see if you're on here and I said don't do that I want nothing to do with that I would rather live in Blissful ignorance but it was so amazing to be able to speak to you and know that you had that capability but I should I'm getting ahead of myself I should let you talk about who you are talk about ISM group and tell us a little bit about your business so ism is a very Regional business uh of Montreal in Quebec Canada uh we're a small business we're 55 employees we do it uh at our best uh the best we can uh to uh corporate clients between I would say 20 users to up to 300 users we we're very close to our clients of course at our office we have horses in front of the office a quadrail behind we love the region and love the people also we're very integrated in the community of course so we work for businesses that do manufacturing uh they could be Services Company automobile dealers anything that you know basically runs a business and we have a whole lot of smbs in Quebec uh a whole lot of entrepreneurs uh that work every day dedicated to their product or their services so it's fun to uh meet dedicated people and uh help them out each day that we can we've been a uh in business for 15 years now we're celebrating our 16th uh soon it techs are dedicated we have an arcade room downstairs we have a old jukebox and we have a call center that everybody works you know from 7 to 9 and we're modering all of those clients we are not integrating new clients as of now because we have so much work to do so we're working on our goal to get our doors open to new clients soon I think that's so important to mention though that you're dedicated to the clients you have wanting to make sure that you have enough resources for them and as you said you specialize in those those SMB businesses ranging from manufacturing and Beyond though uh the way you described your office with horses outside and a quad trail out back you would never really know just by looking at it that you specialize in the dark web it it's it's it's funny yes because of what happened in 2017 we learned a lot and we're sharing that knowledge with uh it msps or clients that are inside a dark situation I would say we've been there and we can help you get out of it can you tell me about what happened in 2017 for our audience basically ISM was victim of a major cyber crime so we had a whole lot of information from us from ISM and of course as an MSP and a value added reseller we have access to a whole lot of systems and private information from ISM was filtrated outside of the business and we were at risk for a certain time so in our case we were lucky I mean the information was not published anywhere and we had control of that information but uh as of now hackers are publishing U you know data from businesses that are being hacked in 2017 that was not the business model as of now it is so they're sharing passwords pii uh credit card information directly on Hacker's website public if they don't pay The Ransom of course and that's amazing to hear about your story where you have that direct knowledge of what it's like to be exposed like that and and exploited on the dark web for you what was going through your mind at that time it started off quite weird because it was simple at the beginning I received a call from uh one of our texts he says he signment I have access to your mailbox inside my Outlook I said oh my God you have a whole lot of emails because I I I don't sort my emails I just read them and leave them there so uh yeah he said he said to me my Outlook is very slow Simon I said okay close it off and that's it it's going to be faster after and I hang up 5 seconds after I was cared because and I have the shippers because hey wait a minute how come he has access to my mailbox so I called him back he said I'm looking at what happened and it happened on October 23rd 2017 I gave myself access to your mailbox at 3:00 a.m. in the morning I said what were you're doing up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning he said Simon I was sleeping oh so it was in you right it wasn't him so that it it all started like that and eventually uh you know while researching what was going on on October 23rd it happened that somebody had access to every client inside ISM so I said okay and where that information was was exfiltrated he said to me Simon it's on the dark web and at that time I didn't know what was what was a dark web so I said okay dark web you mean something mean right something wrong he said terribly Simon so it wasn't published to the dark web it was just transferred to the dark web so they use the dark web to transfer information so at that moment I had my first anxiety attack I said it I said to myself it's over it's finished I'm done I mean the worst case scenario every every it business or it Department in the world just happened to me so I lay down on the grass uh took four tis it works don't do that at home don't do that please it worked for me and after a couple of minutes or I would say hours maybe I went back to the office I was able to drive at a at a point and I discovered what was the dark web so what was happening to me and everything so all the knowledge we gained on that day I I would say multiple weeks or month uh we're sharing right now in die against Pirates and and also clients and it businesses because usually when that happens and it does happen a lot uh we can talk about many cases that we had recently people are getting nervous they're scared they think everybody's against them and it's usually not the case usually it's not targeted hacking it's just you were unlucky or you didn't you know patch your software you're clicked on the link or you open up the an attachment and we help them out in their emotions and and also getting the hackers out of the systems that's what we do inco back that's an incredible Jedi origin story considering that you you knew what it was like firsthand how do you feel that that changed everything about your future and everything about what ISM group does now at that moment I thought my my my career was over I would say I'm proud because we we didn't sleep for weeks we had a whole lot of you know uh security to implement to all of our clients and of course ourselves in you know a short period of time it was a time race to against the hackers but we were lucky in our case it wasn't hackers so but as of now we were I was very proud of what we you know did a couple of year backs and every day right as not everything that we learn we're giving that out to the community or other businesses that needed and I feel I would say accomplished of what happened it didn't happen for nothing where helping out people with that right now so I would say accomplished I would agree so you mentioned by the way uh Jedi against Pirates can you tell our audience what that is yes Jedi against Pirates is a full Conference of what happened back in 2017 at ISM it's also a a way of exposing how easy it is to be a hacker so you can easily get to be a member of a hacker group so I present the different hacker groups that's out there I show people in the it Community how to join them and how they they work so how's the business model how are you being paid the tools you have to be a hacker so when they learn that they see that's okay it's so easy to be a hacker now I have a choice to make making money to be a millionaire so a hacker a dark Sith Lord or a Jedi continuing in it and in cyber to you know optimize the prati the business practices optimize the network infrastructure to be able to save the business against the Sith hackers so Jedi against Pirates exposes the reality of cyber crime and how easy it is to make a choice each time people take a choice to be a Jedi they get you know this this little uh they they this little pin and they put it up hey I is excited to be a Jedi and I'm proud of it I might be poor by I'm doing it right reasons not Soul poor not not Mor moral poor so that's the best part of it we should take a step back for our audience members that may not know what the dark web is I think at this point though the majority of us have all heard the dark web whether we've heard of it as you know in pop culture or we have heard of it or potentially been exposed to it so could you do me a favor and just Define the dark web for me what is it and how does it contrast from the surface web and the Deep Web so the dark web there's multiple dark web out there one of the most popular one is Thor the onion ring and I love their name the onion ring is basically layers of security so that's why they have their marketing image behind uh the onion ring the onion ring is a nonprofit organization basically what it does that Network it's a that's a nonprofit uh organization that run a network that's the tour Network the onion ring Network what does it does is guar these uh people that you're anonymous on the internet I mean it was created by very very brilliant people it Texs uh developers and people that have a cause and one cause is to be anonymous on internet they're tired of Facebook and Google are collecting our information and using that information to sell us stuff so they said we should be anonymous on the dark web and there's different scenarios that you can think about let's say you're a private in investigator and you're under cover you want to send communication to the head office or another agent maybe or I don't know you use the dark web you're totally encrypted totally Anonymous and it's secure most people buy you know software like VPN and things like that to be secure but you're never Anonymous or rarely Anonymous the dark web guarantees encryption and being anonymous another case could be a journalist that wants to send out a story in an internet control country let's say you're in Russia and you want to send a an article out to I don't know Canada or United States you want to be sure that it gets true you're going to use a dark web traffic is going to be encrypted people won't be able to see what's going on on the network and what you're transferring it's not a regular email that everybody can read it's simply encrypted so when you're going to open the packet they won't understand what's in that the tour Network uses always three nose to go out so let's say I go on the dark web and I'm here in Quebec Canada I'm going to go through three different nodes one maybe in Africa one may be in South Korea one may be in China and each node won't recur in my IP address because what identifies everybody on the Internet is your IP address that you have on your devices using threee nodes and those three noes you know not tracking you and erasing the origin of the IP address essentially you're anonymous but that's good that's very good way of seeing things but since you have a choice as a human to be a Jedi or a Sith if you're a Jedi you can probably use the dark rad for good reasons right but here if you're Sith you can use it for bad reason like hacking or selling Firearms or selling drugs or you know publishing pii publishing passwords to other hackers and script kitties that can use those passwords against you selling private information things like that how do you get there cuz in my mind being somebody who has never been to the dark West and I don't intend to go anytime soon although talking to you somehow I have a feeling that I might end up there at one point to be like all right i' I've looked around enough and now I'm leaving uh but how do you get to the dark web because I'm thinking oh Google I just go to a browser is it that simple it is so if you can do if you install Google Chrome you can become a dark web expert because it's essentially the tour web browser so connecting to the tour network is using a browser it's the same thing they have a search man the URLs are a little bit different they're more complicated and they're not Orca they're onion but when you understand that they do have their search engines also so as soon as you connect to the dark web through their web browser is you're going to see a progress bar connecting to the dark web and then you're going to go when it's connected you connected to those three nodes of course and then you go on search engines and you can search websites and you can basically since you're search is totally encrypted and secure you can misly search whatever you want and do what whatever you want and now it becomes a choice of what you're going to do because it is legal and illegal activity going on there it's just done anonymously and I think you the examples you gave some of whether it be drugs whether it be illegal firearm sales things like that so who's at risk of being exploited or having personal information published to the dark web I every buddy each day I'm auditor about 174 groups I remember a year back I think we were up 151 now we're at 174 each day I goes I go see their big data publishing website the way it works as you know I explained the last time but quickly a hacker gets access to an Enterprise or an individual or whatever he stays in the system monitors the system of course deletes the backup uh get every personal information that he can get passwords credit cards Social Security numbers everything he can he gets a hand on and gets out that out of the systems or phones and collects that information to eventually encrypt and stop the the business or the individual if might be recipes and photos or it might be I don't know plans and uh and computers it it depends on you know who he's lucky to to get as a victim and after that he's going to say if you don't pay the ransom I won't decrypt your system of course that's the usual ransomware but if you don't pay the ransom I'll public private information on the dark web publicly so everybody can go media looks at it uh authorities looks at it for us there's a whole lot of levels we have the provincial government and the federal government that also check the dark web we have laws in place they want to be sure that you get you know an impact of not paying that Ransom so there's a whole lot of people that are being hacked right now now uh on those 174 right now as of today just this morning before our interview there was at least 50 corporate business throughout the world that were hacked this morning usually in a case of a ransomware uh you have a note on your desktop and it says uh you've been encrypted if you want to get access back to back to your files communicate with us either through our memil a chatbot a chat window I mean or or whatever they use a whole lot of Technologies like there's five or six and um you're going to have to pay and you contact them and you negotiate the price and if you pay they don't pop they won't publish that information on the dark web they're going to say you're okay and uh they're going to give you the decryption key but if you don't it's going to publish by information so usually the business are aware because they see the the you know there's a business impact first of all they see the file and they can't operate any of their data that's the first reason uh secondly let's say the it text goes right back to the system restores the backup put everything's back in place the business doesn't know let's say pii is going to be eventually published on the dark web the authorities monitor that but not only that if you have let's say a login and password of a personal Facebook that somebody uses the company computer for Facebook probably in individuals will be hacked eventually after that so they're going to know even though you come back with the backup everything was fine there's always a second wave of attack after that's not based on the business more on the individuals that the private information was exposed because scrip kit is going to use that information probably the hacker group also everybody's going to go through that data getting you know to get money basically thanks so much to Simon David for being on the show and thank you for watching or listening part two of this episode comes out on Tuesday if you want more episodes of Channel Insider partner POV check us out on channel insider.com on YouTube at Channel inssider newws and Trends or on your favorite podcast platform if you've got a question or you want to be on the show email me at partner poov Channel insider.com I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time oh

This transcript was generated automatically from the video's captions and may contain errors.