Looking Forward: 2020 Tech Predictions

About this episode

JANUARY 10, 2020

The year 2020 opens a new decade of innovation and opportunities for incorporating new technology in the workforce. Heading into the new year there is clear momentum for emerging technologies in automotive, 5G, A.I. and automation, augmented reality, and much more. In this episode of the GEEK FREAKS PODCAST, Ron, Luis, and Kris share their own personal technology predictions and discuss statistics for the year 2020.

MEET THE GEEK FREAKS

RON HARRIS

VICE PRESIDENT

15 years in the industry.
Enjoys spending time with his family, riding his Harley, and finding time to sleep.
Fun fact: Ron broke both of his arms.
He's a simple person, enjoys work, but also enjoys being alone reading a book or learning something new. Loves candy DOTs!

LUIS SANCHEZ

GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Bachelors in Graphic Design and Film, Video, Media Studies from Western Michigan University.
Certified in Inbound Marketing and YouTube Creative Essentials.
Has experience in branding/identity, web design, video editing, motion graphics, and digital cameras.
Likes dubstep, tacos, video games and nerd culture.
In his free time, you can find him making art, exercising, or just hanging with friends.

Kris Peck

SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR

Bachelors in Information Technology from Central Michigan University
Certified in Networking and various software administration
Has experience in scripting for Powershell, hardware and software troubleshooting, inventory management, and MDT automation
Likes seafood, video games, Magic the Gathering and other nerd stuff.

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Transcript 17

Ron: (00:00) Welcome to The Geek Freaks Podcast, your go-to destination for answers to the most crucial business technology questions every business owner needs to hear.

Music: (00:08) [Intro Music]

Ron: (00:19) Today's episode is about the 2020 tech predictions. We're going to look into our crystal balls and see what we find.

Luis: (00:29) What an intro.

Ron: (00:32) Sorry, there's three of us sitting in here. Ah, so I guess, Luis, go ahead. Start off again.

Luis: (00:38) Yeah, let's do it. Tech industry, worldwide stats. Um, these are from various different sources. Uh, the first one is about augmented reality. So Gardner predicts that 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality by 2020. It also predicts that 85% of customer interactions we managed with without a human by that time.

Kris: (00:59) Hmm. I don't know about that one.

Ron: (01:00) That's like the, the mirror stuff.

Luis: (01:02) Yeah. What do you think?

Ron: (01:02) Before we get too far riffing, I forgot to introduce who's here. So, yeah. Luis Sanchez and Kris Peck today in studio with us. Again, they just, we, we, uh, last month we talked about the '19 predictions that didn't happen. 2019.

Luis: (01:16) Yup statistics for 2019. Everything that did and didn't happen.

Ron: (01:18) So now we're back with the 2020 crystal ball. Okay. So we're at retail consumers, which I think would be cool if you could look at like, I dunno how many times I went into a store and bought what was on the mannequin and then put it on my chubby body and it didn't look good. You know what I mean?

Luis: (01:30) Yeah.

Ron: (01:31) That would be cool.

Luis: (01:32) I mean I think so 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human at the time. I think that makes sense. I think stores now we're trying to like, I mean for the most part like self checkout and stuff. I mean it's, it's weird cause like even at Walmart when you go to like self checkout, like there's still a person only because of theft and like, yeah.

Ron: (01:47) But there's one person for...

Luis: (01:49) Yeah, true.

Kris: (01:50) It's mainly because they break like every five minutes.

Luis: (01:52) Yeah.

Ron: (01:53) And which is crazy to me because the ones that the people are in, it's easy.

Luis: (01:56) Yeah.

Kris: (01:57) Yeah. I don't, I don't know what it is about those um, self scan ones, but they really got to fix those, when I worked at Meijer, they broke all the time.

Luis: (02:04) At Meijers?.

Kris: (02:06) Meijer Meijers. It's all the same.

Ron: (02:10) No dude. You put a little wow SPECT on their name.

Luis: (02:12) Okay. As for augmented reality, what do you guys think? Like 100 million consumers will shop in augmented reality.

Kris: (02:18) It was only a hundred million consumers?

Luis: (02:19) Yeah, that's pretty small.

Kris: (02:21) Yeah, I think that's pretty fair.

Luis: (02:23) Remember this is worldwide stuff. So yeah, I...

Ron: (02:26) Well think about my bank. I go to the, there's no tellers. I go to an ATM with a lady's picture on it and she a lady like on a webcam pops up and she was like, Hey Ron, what are you doing today? And I was like, Oh, depositing money or I'm taking money home.

Luis: (02:38) I think of most, when I think of augmented reality, I think I always think of like phone stuff that you use your phone to like scan the app.

Ron: (02:45) So like I always think of holographs.

Luis: (02:48) I mean I wish, I wish. Can we please have holograms yet?

Ron: (02:52) No, it's not on the books.

Luis: (02:54) Anyway, moving on. Internet of things in 2008 they're already more connected to the internet than people. By 2020 the amount of internet connected things will reach 50 billion with 19 trillion in profits and cost savings coming from IoT over the next decade.

Ron: (03:12) Yes, I believe, I believe that.

Luis: (03:14) So we already surpassed the amount of people or amount of things connect to the internet than people, which was like not surprised.

Kris: (03:21) Certainly see that. I mean if you look at everything you can connect with it with the internet of things, you certainly have like five plus. You could have five plus per people.

Luis: (03:31) I know that's great. 50 billion versus 7 billion people. Like that's crazy that, I mean think about also like, I mean I don't want to, you know, be like to the hippy dippy stuff, but how much, how much waste and like plastic and stuff we're using to create that many devices like versus people like where's it all going? I mean, I guess we're not recycling a lot more, which is good.

Kris: (03:51) But like right, ends up in that like plastic island off the coast of like...

Ron: (03:58) They're cleaning it up. Okay. The turtle with a straw, he's going to be fine. Um, but I was just in my firewall the other day trying to fix something.

Luis: (04:05) Paper straws are trash.

Ron: (04:06) Yeah. They're trash. They're stupid. Um, that, so my house has, I think it was like 57 things on the internet and I was like, wow, that's crazy. But it's my light switches. It's my, the TVs in all the rooms. It's, the Rokus on the back of the TVs. It's my Sonos speakers. It's the laptops, tablets, all that crap. So much crap in my house connects to the internet.

Luis: (04:28) Yeah.

Kris: (04:29) Yeah.

Ron: (04:29) I don't, yeah, I don't like it, but it is what it is. So yeah, I know. I think that becomes a thing like, cause my, the, uh, what is it? The internet of things.

Kris: (04:37) Yeah.

Ron: (04:37) So like my Samsung thing that controls all my lights and all the automation on my house. That's, that's there. It's here. It's easy. Uh, you know when the sun goes down, my outside lights come on until I think midnight and they shut off all of them. I don't to do anything with the lights.

Luis: (04:54) How many things...

Ron: (04:54) I open my door and my kitchen lights turn on.

Luis: (04:56) Yeah, I was going to say with how many things we have connected to the internet, I'm still surprised we haven't like improved. I know we're pushing big for 5G but like wifi and like where we have wifi six or something right now.

Ron: (05:07) Oh I don't know.

Luis: (05:08) I don't know.

Kris: (05:08) I thought I had heard something that they were working on the next standard they had finished it or something or whatever.

Luis: (05:15) I think that's pretty important.

Ron: (05:16) ABCDG?

Kris: (05:18) Yeah or something. I can't remember off the top of my head what it is. Right.

Luis: (05:21) I remember, I wish I had the standard statistics.

Ron: (05:25) Wifi is going to get better.

Luis: (05:25) I freaking hope so. Cause all wifi providers are...

Ron: (05:29) It's pretty good now.

Luis: (05:32) What compared to China.

Ron: (05:33) No, but like we complain about it like I know that you're younger than me. Think about having like Sprint.

Luis: (05:41) I do have Sprint!

Ron: (05:41) And you go up North. Yeah. You go up North, you go an hour away from where you live and you have no cell phone reception. You know what I'm saying now? Now we're complaining because Snapchat loads slow.

Luis: (05:52) I think that it should load faster and I wish I was in China right now because I want to be able to download something in one second.

Ron: (05:58) No you don't want to be in China right now, it's a mess. It's a mess.

Luis: (06:00) I know.

Ron: (06:01) They're working on it. All right. What else?

Luis: (06:03) We got cars by 2020 it's estimated that 90% of cars will be connected to the internet as compared to 10% in 2012.

Ron: (06:12) Yeah, no easily. That's gonna happen.

Luis: (06:14) I used to, we were talking about that earlier. I like my car doesn't do it and it's 2017.

Ron: (06:18) Do you have...

Luis: (06:19) I don't have a hotspot in my car.

Ron: (06:20) Do you have navigation in your car?

Luis: (06:22) No, I could. It connects to the Bluetooth. I have an a...

Ron: (06:26) So anything with nav or...

Luis: (06:28) Does that count?

Ron: (06:29) Yeah, that's all satellite controlled. So it's internet. So like a downloads, new maps. It gets updates.

Luis: (06:33) Oh no, I guess it does do like updates.

Ron: (06:35) We got my wife a new car. I started it up, drove it around, we went to the airport and stuff and came back and the next day it started it up and I was like, Oh, there's a software update for your car. Just go ahead and hit update, leave it running.

Luis: (06:46) Oh, leave it running?

Ron: (06:47) No I shut it off. But you couldn't like it wouldn't, it was telling me like the car is not going to run but it's going to be on like all the lights were on and they were flashing and stuff. Yeah dude, it's all connected to the internet. I mean even Chevy I think. Any Chevy now you get has 4G in it.

Luis: (07:00) Oh.

Ron: (07:01) My Lincoln has internet in it. I didn't do anything.

Luis: (07:05) A really cool thing that I found that my car did though. The other day was when I went to a concert in Detroit. I forgot what I parked straight up, but my phone, I guess like since it's connected to my car, like it tells me where my car is parked. So like Google, like Apple maps or whatever. But like, yeah. I was like, crap, what did I park? And then I looked at my maps and it said what my little car was parked. I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing.

Ron: (07:29) You got bigger issues in life. If you can't remember where you parked your car?

Luis: (07:32) No, no, no. Okay. I just, I've never even been to the, what is it? Masonic temple in Detroit. It's interesting.

Ron: (07:39) Yeah. It's a crazy place.

Luis: (07:40) Yeah.

Ron: (07:40) Sometimes I park in the back here when I go get snacks.

Luis: (07:43) There's no parking.

Ron: (07:44) Here?

Luis: (07:45) Oh, here.

Ron: (07:46) So I park in the back here and then I'll walk out the front door and I'm like, where? What happened to my car? I can see my car from my office all the time, but for some reason I just...

Luis: (07:53) It's just a known territory.

Ron: (07:55) Um, yeah.

Luis: (07:56) Yeah. Cars, self driving cars too.

Ron: (07:59) Ooh, that's a real deal, baby. That's coming. I hate all this stuff on the internet when people were like, you don't have, I'm going to be, I'm going to be, maybe he's sleeping in his car. Yeah. That's the reason we're doing it. You know what I mean? I, yeah, to increase human efficiency, we're making it so cars are autonomous. So if Bob wants to catch a snooze on the 405 and stop and go traffic and his cars handling it, chill out.

Luis: (08:24) It reduces, isn't this supposed to reduce accidents too? I mean...

Ron: (08:28) Yeah, but every time there's an accident it's super overblown because it's like, oh they were using AI but there's not AI, billions of accidents and people die every day.

Kris: (08:35) Usually the accidents are a lot of times just a car driven by a person. It's what caused the accident.

Luis: (08:41) You think about those little, what are...

Ron: (08:42) Or the dude watching Harry Potter that was a...

Luis: (08:44) The vacuums, what are they called? The circle ones like...

Ron: (08:47) I Robot.

Luis: (08:48) Like yeah, that is I Robot, no vacuum. Anyway, those are like kind of like self-driving. They don't get into many like bumps. So like it's the same time.

Ron: (08:58) But have you ever seen one come out of the box?

Luis: (09:01) No.

Ron: (09:01) It runs into everything.

Luis: (09:03) Really?

Ron: (09:03) It learns the pattern.

Kris: (09:04) Yeah.

Ron: (09:05) Learns the pattern and then it does its thing. So once it figures it out, it's fine. Disclaimer, though there was a, they were in hot water because they were, they could sell, they'd know what your house looks like on the inside. Oh, that's true. They know the layout of your home. It was crazy.

Luis: (09:25) Moving on. A random one, drones. 127 billion. That's how much the drone industry could be worth by 2020 according to recent reports by PWC, it also reported that some of the greatest increases could be in business, farming, and special effects applications.

Ron: (09:41) Yeah, yeah, sure.

Kris: (09:42) Definitely.

Luis: (09:43) But isn't there so many like regulations for drones now it's kinda like, like it's almost pointless to buy one.

Ron: (09:48) Now the drone market pivoted, so now they're making better devices that don't need to be registered because they're smaller or...

Luis: (09:55) True. And like for businesses like drones who, or like super farming is a little surprising to me.

Ron: (10:00) Uh, farming is awesome. We have a customer that uses drones, really expensive and it shows them hot spots in the field, dead spots in the field. So now instead of the farmers walking in it, they can fly the drone capture all of it.

Luis: (10:11) It is great to see like the ariel.

Ron: (10:13) Like stitch it all together and they can see what's going on with it.

Luis: (10:15) That's amazing. Wow. Who knew. You knew, I didn't.

Ron: (10:19) Yeah, no, it's cause I spend time with farmers. Um, so like my, my thing, I mean the cyber truck got released, right? That was this week, last week.

Kris: (10:29) Or announced.

Ron: (10:29) Yeah. Or announced. Not released yet.

Luis: (10:31) It got a lot of backlash.

Ron: (10:32) It did, but then they said they sold 200,000 preorders.

Kris: (10:37) The preorder is only like a hundred bucks.

Luis: (10:39) The freaking windows broke.

Ron: (10:40) Yeah. But $200,000. Isn't that a couple million?

Luis: (10:44) Yeah, I dunno.

Kris: (10:45) That's still like to reserve your spot. It's some really low amount. You don't have to pay like full price, I don't think yet.

Ron: (10:51) Got it. But that's, so that's coming like I, my big prediction is that more, um, the automotive industry is going to change tremendously in the next year or two with automation or, um, EV cars.

Kris: (11:05) Yup.

Ron: (11:06) And I think that's going to be...

Luis: (11:07) What is that? I don't even know that is.

Ron: (11:08) Battery cars.

Luis: (11:08) Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I hope so. I mean there's already a big push for like eco friendly this whole like past two years.

Ron: (11:15) Even as I say that I'm getting a new giant truck. I mean, but it's, I dunno. I feel like...

Luis: (11:23) Would you get the Tesla?

Ron: (11:24) Would I get the Tesla?

Luis: (11:25) Yeah, you're getting a truck. If you had the money, would you get that new cyber truck.

Ron: (11:29) Cyber truck?

Luis: (11:30) Yeah.

Ron: (11:30) No.

Luis: (11:30) You wouldn't roll up to Omega with your fricking big like soldier looking thing.

Ron: (11:36) No, no I like the way I like the technology about it, but it's ugly as sin.

Luis: (11:40) I agree. I agree.

Kris: (11:42) Tech is really cool, but it does not look good.

Luis: (11:44) Yeah. And it goes really fast too. And like, I mean if, I don't know, like everything about it, it's pretty cool. Besides that...

Ron: (11:49) Except the way it looks.

Luis: (11:50) Yeah.

Ron: (11:51) There's a reason I wrote, I was reading an article there's a reasoning behind it because of the unibody of the frame.

Luis: (11:55) To be more aerodynamic or something. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah. Like it's not, I like it cause it looks different. That's pretty much it.

Ron: (12:02) So that's where I'm going. I'm going car automation and electric cars. Where are you at Luis? Give it to me hot.

Luis: (12:13) I think 5G is actually going to do its thing this year.

Ron: (12:17) By it's thing, you mean give us brain melting radio waves.

Luis: (12:19) This is going to be the year of 5G. I don't know. That's still like up for debate. We talked about this in the last episode. Apparently a 5G could potentially be bad for your health. Um, I mean...

Ron: (12:30) I think it's going to be fine. I don't think that these major companies are trying to kill everybody in the United, continental United States.

Luis: (12:36) All right.

Kris: (12:37) They don't make as much money that way.

Luis: (12:38) Yeah, true. They need us. They need us for our data.

Ron: (12:41) That's also true. So you're saying 5G, what's the benefit of 5G?

Luis: (12:45) What's the benefit? Faster internet for the millennials.

Ron: (12:49) We're going back to your speed. Speed kills.

Luis: (12:51) Heck yeah. I don't want to be like on Instagram and not see the videos I'm trying to watch. You know, like that's what kills me inside.

Ron: (12:59) Yo. Okay.

Kris: (13:01) I will tell you that from my experience it's not that much faster.

Ron: (13:05) They're saying it's supposed to be like near fiber speed on your device, like five gigabytes.

Kris: (13:11) Yeah. But.

Ron: (13:13) No way.

Kris: (13:13) Yeah. From what the current implementation I've used, it's nowhere near that. So I think you might be hoping for another few years Luis.

Ron: (13:22) And then think about how many devices that you have to replace to get 5G.

Luis: (13:26) Yeah.

Ron: (13:27) They're all the laptops that we sell without the E built into it all the...oo baby. So expensive.

Luis: (13:33) Way more. Um, adding more to that number of like plastic.

Ron: (13:38) He's big on the plastic right now. He's going through that plastic phase.

Kris: (13:39) He cares about the environment.

Luis: (13:43) I do.

Ron: (13:43) Give it up.

Luis: (13:44) Um, so I was looking at a study by the State of I.T. annual report. It was just pretty interesting. It happens in July of every year. And they were predicting that AI among emerging technologies is expected to quintuple by 2021.

Ron: (14:02) AI.

Luis: (14:02) Yeah.

Ron: (14:03) Yeah. Easily.

Kris: (14:03) Yeah.

Luis: (14:04) So that makes sense. I dunno, I thought it was pretty interesting.

Ron: (14:07) Oh wait, I mean it goes back to like robots building cars, right? Like that's always been an advancement that people are making now the Teslas are being made quicker, faster, more effective or efficient with roadway, AI doing it. Um, I think our jobs are going to be better with AI and there's just going to, it's going to come everywhere. I mean, I guess even my house turning on like the lights turning on at sunset and turning off in a few hours, that would be considered AI. That makes my life, I wouldn't say easier. I'm a lot lazier because my lights just turn on when I do stuff or when I need to have stuff happen, but I think it's going to be in everything.

Luis: (14:44) Yeah. And other cool stuff I found from this report though was, and it was um, this was from a survey from people are from companies and businesses in the U..S and Europe, but the survey found that 88% of businesses expect I.T. budgets to either grow or stay steady over the next 12 months.

Ron: (15:02) We're not going down.

Luis: (15:03) Yeah, no, for sure. Like the 88 just like want growth and I.T., which is really, really fascinating to me.

Ron: (15:10) Well, you have to think about it. I mean cybersecurity is now a thing. You have more people losing information and data every day. And it's I don't know how much, but I think Baltimore was like $18 million they spent to get their stuff back.

Kris: (15:24) Probably. I know it was some ridiculous amount.

Ron: (15:27) I think that's going to be it that's going to be a bigger issue.

Luis: (15:32) Yeah.

Ron: (15:32) I think that spend needs to go up because like our customers before they're, when we take them over there, it's a lot of like do it yourself or my cousin's neighbor's brother does it and there's no security. There's no, there's nothing. There's no passwords. There's not a DC there's not, there's not anything.

Luis: (15:50) And thinking about just how many breaches happened in the past year alone, like it's insane. Like it's, it's pretty important to just one more thing about this report though, to dig deeper into why I.T. budgets are expected to grow for most of these companies. 64% say it needs, they need to upgrade their outdated infrastructure. I.T. infrastructure, 47% say they uh, or are increased security concerns, which backs up your thing in 47% says employment growth.

Ron: (16:18) Yeah.

Kris: (16:18) Yeah. Also true.

Luis: (16:20) Like pretty awesome. So we're only expected to grow. That's, that's, that's amazing.

Ron: (16:24) The market is, yeah. Hopefully it's us too.

Kris: (16:26) Yeah.

Luis: (16:26) Yeah. I mean, but like I think that relates to a lot of us cause like these are the, the report was for or um tech buyers. So it was just like, it ranged from like, you know, I.T. Directors to CEOs of companies to like, you know, whatever. Cause I mean...

Ron: (16:41) What their expectations...

Luis: (16:42) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I mean everything is, yeah, security and hardware.

Ron: (16:48) Yeah.

Luis: (16:48) Software

Ron: (16:49) Just needs to happen.

Kris: (16:50) Well also to tie in a little bit to automation as they want to improve their business. They want to automate more and more things. So they're running stuff through their I.T. It'd be like, Hey, how can we make this faster?

Luis: (17:02) Absolutely. Yeah.

Ron: (17:04) Like we were talking about in the last podcast, we were talking about the fast food kiosks and with you know a wage being an issue and the other side of it is how many orders get screwed up because somebody misshears your [inaudible]. So now the only person you have to blame when your hamburgers wrong is yourself.

Luis: (17:19) Dummy.

Ron: (17:20) So, like that automation is helping out tremendously. Whether it's, you know, we, we don't have to have a minute staff are now at the, at the counter or we have less food waste because now we're responsible for what we're ordering.

Luis: (17:34) Yeah. With all this growth too. I mean the big thing happening next year, which we talked about a lot is the death of Windows 7. So that's probably going to do a lot of changes in the hardware world. Yeah. The hardware stuff. Exactly. So.

Ron: (17:49) And I think the security posture being at 40, whatever it is, 47%, I think that's low. I think that needs to be a lot higher.

Luis: (17:57) This is also a total though. Um, like I said, it's both the U S and...

Ron: (18:02) Yeah, I would, I think the change of Windows 7 to go into Windows 10, I don't think it impacts the hardware as much as we think it's going to do cause a lot of people are going to do in place. It is, well if you haven't invested money in 10 years, you're going to be spending cash. But I think a lot of it is going to be security. I think it's gonna be a lot of fear driven. You know, a rederick that's going to be going on that's driving things, these budgets, right. Cause everybody's scared. I mean it happens all the time.

Luis: (18:26) So insecurity relates to hardware and software.

Ron: (18:29) What do you think KP what's your, what's your big prediction?

Kris: (18:33) Ransomware is only going to get worse.

Ron: (18:36) Just jump. Just pile it right on there, huh?

Kris: (18:38) Yep. I took the easy route. The ransomware is definitely going to get worse.

Ron: (18:42) Yeah, no, that is an easier out. But that's also true.

Kris: (18:44) It's also very true.

Ron: (18:45) I think it's, it's, I think the way that we're receiving it in the way that it's interacting with us is going to be more complex.

Kris: (18:50) Yeah.

Ron: (18:51) Right now I think you can go to some websites and just see ads and get a payload delivered to you, so now it's fileless. There's a lot of things that people don't take into account that are really going to screw their business up.

Kris: (19:01) Oh yeah, definitely.

Ron: (19:02) And my prediction, my other prediction is a lot of businesses are going to have giant issues with it and not just, oh, we've got a virus and it's two days of downtime. Oh, we've got a virus. We've, we've now completely lost all of our information.

Luis: (19:14) It's just like the whole fight for data like and how important it is to keep your data secure or else, I mean, you're going to be held for ransom or else it's going to be gone.

Ron: (19:25) And no longer have people like popping your, your AD password and being like, I own your network now. Pay me. I think it's going to be I have your data and I'll be...

Luis: (19:32) Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's some pretty important thing.

Ron: (19:36) We've seen it a lot. I mean, not a lot, but this year alone...

Kris: (19:39) Yeah, there's been tons of reported ones, a lot of city, uh, governments that were affected by various ransomware attacks throughout the year. Some even having to spend like millions of dollars to recover because they didn't want to spend the ransom and they thought they could fix it themselves.

Ron: (19:55) Oh, then yeah, then the downtime then you have, I mean, we just had a customer's co colo get it now, get another vendor, get it from somebody, like another company got it on that vendor's location. Yup. And it caused our customer downtime. So even that ramification is huge and never can afford. Like if somebody else gets it, you're in trouble too. You don't think about that because that's not what a good sales guy sells. We don't sell fear. We sell solutions and value.

Luis: (20:22) I think also the industry is being attacked the most now, um, since we've been researching a lot in marketing right now is um, the health industry and the finance financial industry, which is, um, I mean obviously they have like so much information that it's,

Ron: (20:37) Well, it goes back to...

Luis: (20:37) That they're big targets.

Ron: (20:38) The conversation we had last month about regulations, those are two very highly regulated industries. So now not only do you have to worry about your data missing, but now you're going to have the government knocking on your door or regulators knocking on your door asking you what happened with this information. And that's an even scarier thought, right? We're not encrypting stuff as much as we should. We're not backing up like we should, we don't have good password hygiene.

Luis: (21:05) It needs to be regulated because it's so much like they get one of your medical files, they have everything.

Ron: (21:11) Yeah. And then it's, it's crazy to think that that's super highly regulated. Like, I can't send you an email with my, uh, like with my health information on it, but my watch at home has it all in it that now Apple controls, right? That's, yeah, but that's not regulated, right? So I think that they, if they're going to look at it as a whole, they need to look at it what your information is doing as a whole because we're giving it up without even giving it up. Like knowing we're giving it up. But if Bonnie sends an email that's not encrypted to another customer that has health records information, they can pay $1,700 fine per email. And then now a lot of people have cyber liability insurance. The cyber liability insurance can be canceled because of negligence. So what's the negligence when it comes to that? You don't have, uh, any written policies. You're, you were just not using encryption. You have bad password policies. Like they're not going to keep paying out on this stuff because you're not doing the right thing. And I think that's a lot of companies, you're like, Oh, I got cyber. It's fine. I got cyber, you're fine. But now they're, these audits are getting more and more granular as the regulations getting tighter and tighter. It's going to be, it's 2020 is going to be a crazy year for cyber criminals.

Luis: (22:19) And as new tech comes out and technology itself grows. Like there's going to be new ways to go about like getting that information. Like you said with like, like Apple watches and just different stuff like that. It's crazy.

Ron: (22:28) The mobile, the, the big shift that we made probably in 16,17 where everybody wanted to be mobile laptops. That's also the bane of our existence.

Luis: (22:37) Right. People don't think about like your device. Like it has so much like just as much as the computer...

Ron: (22:43) Yeah so if somebody gets your phone. So like if I was to hand a stranger, my phone right there, you can go through it and learn all about me.

Luis: (22:48) And there's ways to unlock them. Like it's not like it's totally,

Ron: (22:52) Yeah, yeah, no, it's totally secure. We give it up baby. We give it up.

Luis: (22:57) I've already lost like 10 phones in my lifetime.

Ron: (22:58) That's crazy.

Kris: (23:01) How?

Ron: (23:01) I didn't have...

Luis: (23:02) I just have terrible memory and I just lose them. I dunno.

Kris: (23:05) [inaudible]

Luis: (23:05) It just, yeah, it's not that simple man.

Ron: (23:11) Dude, I was, we were just talking about this the other day. I have probably 3000 pictures of my family on my phone.

Kris: (23:18) Yeah.

Ron: (23:19) But no physical photo album. Think about that. I have, I have pictures that only I have seen on my phone that I don't share. I like, I send them to people, but it's not like what it used to be where you go to your house and you're like, Oh, here's the little pictures of baby Louise. Nah. It's like here, look at my phone. I mean our nanny made a scrapbook.

Luis: (23:39) But what happens if all your memories get lost?

Ron: (23:41) Bro. That's what I'm saying.

Luis: (23:42) I mean they would have services now where you can print like phones to mobile. Like, I mean, I don't know.

Ron: (23:47) I, all my stuff gets uploaded.

Luis: (23:49) Yeah, exactly.

Kris: (23:50) I have two separate photo backups that just upload automatically when I take pictures.

Luis: (23:56) Yeah.

Ron: (23:57) But still, now it's in the cloud. Do you know what I mean? Your iCloud gets hacked. Next thing you know, you're on some websites.

Kris: (24:04) That's why you make all...

Ron: (24:05) Doing all your traveling.

Kris: (24:06) ...make multiple backups.

Ron: (24:07) Travelocity, Kris Peck there he is nah and I think it's gonna get worse. I, I think the bad stuff is going to get worse. The good stuff is going to get better. Right. I mean those are two generic generic, but I really think that's going to be the case. The AI, the cybersecurity, all that stuff is going to get a lot better because it has to. Yeah, exactly. They use all the bad stuff is getting more sophisticated.

Luis: (24:30) Hopefully they realize that before all the bad stuff happens.

Ron: (24:34) I think they do. I think there's a lot of smarter people than us, these types of conversations that are kind of get ahead of the ball,

Luis: (24:40) But I think it's sometimes a wake up call when something happens.

Ron: (24:43) Yeah. Oh yeah.

Luis: (24:44) And it's needed.

Ron: (24:46) No, I think...

Luis: (24:46) To force change. You know, especially in established like like companies and stuff like, I don't know now.

Ron: (24:52) And you don't hear a lot of big businesses get hit too much.

Luis: (24:56) Yeah, true. It's always slightly smaller ones.

Ron: (24:59) I think they shifted their pendulum of like, okay, you know, getting into the Fortune 500 is really, really tough because they have pretty good posture. It's now like the SMB that we service is now the target because they may not have 50,000 records, but they got 5,000 records.

Luis: (25:13) Also SMBs are statistically proven to like invest away less in cybersecurity. That's why they're...

Ron: (25:20) That's why they're the easiest. I bet you can go into some, some potential customers or clients and get into their, uh, their, uh, router or firewall by just putting an admin admin, right, because nobody, you don't think about that. It's the same way. Like when we go in and we do audits on customers or potential customers and we're like, Hey, what are you paying for your internet? And they're like a hundred and you know, 200 bucks. Oh, let me call you, make one phone call. Oh, we could save you $80 a month. It's just because we're, we have this small SMBs have this, you know, we're too busy. Our time's better spent other other places. Somebody else handles that for me. We don't really have enough time to invest in any area. So we become a jacket.

Luis: (26:03) They just think it won't happen to them.

Ron: (26:04) Correct.

Kris: (26:06) They don't see the value in it as well.

Luis: (26:07) Yeah.

Kris: (26:07) They look at it also an issue side thing. They don't really did care about.

Luis: (26:12) Right, you need technology for growth. Like know it's kinda how the world's moving too.

Ron: (26:16) So yeah. The stats point to it that they're going to have to spend and like you said, it's going to be that moment of, you know, Hey, the neighbor's the neighboring doctor's office got shut down because CryptoLocker do we need to do something?

Luis: (26:29) As much as it sucks it's kind of like what people need sometimes. Like, Hey, this happened.

Ron: (26:34) Yeah, no, it's, it's a bad, it's a bad place to come from. But uh, yeah, those are our predictions for 2020. We're excited for baby new year to be here, uh, this coming month. And uh, we appreciate you as listeners to our little podcast here. It's been fun. We're what 20 episodes...

Luis: (26:50) Oh, um, yeah. Probably like, I want to say like 15 to 20. I can't think God can.

Ron: (27:00) I dunno. Oh, it can. We've been doing a good amount of them and we appreciate you guys listening. Have a great new year, have a great holiday. Enjoy your time with your family, and we'll be back in the new year in 2020 thanks guys. I appreciate it. You're supposed to say thanks.

Luis: (27:14) Oh, you're welcome. Bye.

Kris: (27:16) Bye.

Ron: (27:16) Say something just don't stare at me.

Music: (27:20) [Outro music].