WorkLife with Adam Grant: Bonus: Fadbusting with Freakonomics
34m 26s
In this episode of Money-Making Conversations Masterclass, host Rashawn McDonald interviews Gregory Richardson, a cybersecurity expert and AI consultant. Richardson begins by challenging multitasking, asserting that humans perform best when focused on single tasks. He shares his extensive background in cybersecurity, noting that threats have escalated to billions per hour, prompting the use of AI for threat prediction and classification. He advises listeners on practical security measures, including using unique passphrases, password vaults, and two-factor authentication, while warning against scams that create false urgency to steal personal information.
Richardson recounts his journey from studying civil engineering to embracing his true passion for technology, influenced by a friend’s observation. He emphasizes that doing what you love sustains effectiveness through adversity. Transitioning to AI, he acknowledges security and privacy concerns but frames AI as a transformative opportunity, akin to the printing press pulling Europe out of the Dark Ages. He highlights how AI enables anyone to build custom apps without large investments, citing a toll-tracking app for car rentals that became more profitable than the rental business itself. Richardson focuses on helping churches and nonprofits leverage AI to spread the gospel efficiently, given their limited budgets. He concludes by inviting listeners to connect via GregoryRichardson.ai, and McDonald encourages the audience to subscribe to the podcast for more insights.
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My guests founded a company that helps churches
and nonprofit organizations specifically
to understand technology and help them
use artificial intelligence technology
to help them spread the gospel.
Please welcome to Money-Making Conversations Masterclass,
Gregory Richardson.
How you doing, Gregory?
Fantastic, Rashawn.
Thank you for having me on your program.
Can you hear me?
I'm pretty good.
Where are you based at, Gregory?
Where are you based?
Where are you based?
I live in Dallas, Texas,
and I am right now in my office in Dallas, Texas,
but I move around a lot,
but right now you caught me at home.
Well, good.
Well, good.
Well, I know I just mentioned that.
Let's get a little,
let's get a little background on you.
Is working in AI,
is that a full-time role for you,
or you do other things?
Because you seem like a man who multitasks.
You spit a mouthful at me there.
Let me start at the end
and say I firmly disagree
with the notion of multitasking.
In my fairly limited experience,
I'm approaching,
I'm approaching 60 years old.
So I'm not a million years old or anything like that,
but in my experience when I try to multitask
or when employees of mine try to multitask,
what they end up doing
is not doing any of the tasks really well.
Humans are fundamentally designed to single purpose task.
Obviously you can chew gum and walk at the same time,
but I don't think your brain functions well
doing two separate tasks.
The context switching and other things that need
to happen when you're flipping and flopping between tasks
end up making you more inefficient.
So that's one part of it.
I just like to always-
- I like that.
I like that because I always,
I always proclaim myself as a multitasker.
I really do.
It means I'm doing a lot of things.
Not saying I'm doing them simultaneously.
It means that I got a couple of things happening.
I got a couple of gigs.
I got a couple of deals.
I got a couple of things and my fire's burning.
They don't mean they on fire at the same time.
That means I got a motivated to get these actions
done.
I will tell you this Gregory,
I hear what you're saying.
If you're trying to do something,
anybody,
if a computer is trying to calculate something
simultaneously,
or you trying to load something on wifi simultaneously,
it's gonna drag.
So you're absolutely correct.
When you're trying to multitask simultaneously,
it will not be effective.
- That is facts.
Now, to get to the core of what you,
I believe you were asking,
I'm confident you were asking.
You were spot on.
You detect that I am a multi entrepreneur,
a serial entrepreneur over my life.
I've ran, owned, operated, started multiple companies
from car rentals to restaurants, to you name it,
to consulting companies, software companies,
real estate company.
Like my wife and I, we do entrepreneurship really well.
In addition to that, I 100% do have a full-time job also.
I am what you call an ethical hacker.
And for maybe the last 40 years or so,
my career has been cybersecurity.
How do I help large, typically large organizations,
the world's biggest banks, governments, companies,
GM, Ford, you name it.
That's my day job.
Now, how that connects to AI.
- Okay, before we go there, let's go back.
Let's go back to this cybersecurity.
'Cause that's huge.
We have people doing cyber ransom.
You know, you have a banks, hospitals,
governments are being held hostage by people.
Talk to us through that whole process
when you're talking about cybersecurity
and we're talking about people who still use
one, two, three, four as their password.
- Oh yeah, that's, there's so much there.
One of the things I like to kind of like
flow the conversation with is cybersecurity
because of the volume, the share,
the magnitude of the number of threats
that we've been seeing and it's been growing like crazy.
It's literally billions of threats per hour.
So it's more than maybe for the last 15, 20, 30 years,
it's been more than you could hire humans to fix.
- Right.
- So that's why we started leveraging AI
to help us do things like prediction and classification
and quickly looking at a million, five, six, seven, eight,
and 10,000 things, which of these are bad files,
which of them look like files that were bad files yesterday
that were viruses or malware or ransomware, et cetera, et cetera.
So that's a big part of it.
The other part of what we do in cybersecurity
is called security operations.
That's where you're engaging with the users
and working against things like you just mentioned.
Hey, you can't set your password to one, two, three, four.
Even bigger, most people get that by now.
Even bigger, you don't want to reuse the same password
on your Gmail, on your Facebook, on your Instagram,
on your this, on your that, on your banking.
You really ideally should have separate passwords
for every single public facing service that you connect to.
And in my, from my perspective,
what I recommend customers and employees and whoever else,
I don't even use passwords anymore.
I'm either doing biometric finger, eye, hand,
facial recognition, or if I do have to type something in,
I'm using what we call a passphrase.
A real world example of that, look, when computers started,
you know, or the internet connectivity started,
a password could be eight to 10 characters long.
There ain't a system in the world,
a reasonably modern system where you have that constraint.
So therefore, why are we trying to squeeze a password
into a couple of characters?
I'll give you a real world example.
My password on one of my social medias right now,
good luck trying to hack it though,
is philippians space two colon three.
Three comma consider others more important
than yourselves, period.
That's literally a scripture quote with the comma,
with the period, with the spaces,
with the capital letters, philippians.
- That's your password, Gregory, that's your password.
- That's one of my probably 500 passwords that I have.
That's why I said, I'm not afraid to put it out there
'cause I also change my passwords constantly.
But yeah.
- Let me ask you this, let me ask you this, Gregory,
'cause I love talking to you, I love your energy.
because I've never talked to a guest like you
that had the knowledge 'cause what we're talking
about is you know the simplicity and how people kind of really disrespect the process and then
when it gets scammed then they don't know why now the two-factor that's the big thing I use
two-factor a lot what are your thoughts on two-factor because I do use passwords I do have
a password vault because I do have a ton of passwords and I do change every password for
every account the value of the password vault allows me to do that what do you say when people
are these systems recommend you use two-factor you know authorization 100% agree with that and
you're going obviously we've we just met Ruzan but you're you're absolutely doing the things you
need to do a password vault obviously you want to make sure it's a password vault from a very
reputable company I personally use a google password vault I also use google authenticator
you could use a microsoft password vault maybe that's a little bit less secure but use a password
vault from a very reputable
company not some little mickey mouse startup that if something goes wrong you could at least sue
them and get uh you know tens of thousands of dollars from them so that's step one and you're
you're doing that step two you absolutely the password vault allows you to use multiple passwords
without having to remember or write down on a piece of post-it know what the password is so
excellent step two you unequivocally do want to use two-factor authentication what two-factor
authentication is it's a second factor so the first factor could be
fingerprint or your password or your facial recognition or whatever the second factor is
it sends something to something you have so first factor is something you know or something you are
a fingerprint or something you know a password the second factor could be something you have
your cell phone so it'll send a text to your cell phone saying hey if you're great if you're really
greg you're you're not only supposed to know the password but you should have your cell phone with
you as well i'm gonna pop a code up on your cell phone put that enter that here and then i'll know
that it's you that's one in and of itself so i'm going to pop a code up on your cell phone and
then i'll know that it's you that's one in and of itself so i'm going to pop a code up on your cell phone and
example of a two-factor absolutely recommend that i get my facebook for example gets bombarded
i guess you were trying to log on greg or you know it looks like you lost your password i don't even
bother with them anymore because i know i have two-factor i'm turned on so even if someone
manages to somehow guess or finagle my password two-factor is going to stop them from getting in
greg because you just hit home with these uh bank of
america type emails or these facebook emails or these america that's what i get they look like
american express you know exactly you know they look like a bank of america they look like they
look like you know the facebook and the matters talk about you violated the copyright if you
if you don't click this link we're going to take your site down how does one you know don't become
don't be uh misled or uh by this fear of of of clicking
the wrong thing because they always say the elderly community community is victimized the
most but talk to us about avoiding those type of scams avoiding them is practically impossible and
i'll actually take a step back if i may what has caused or what is causing that drastic uptick that
we've seen for the last 5 10 15 years in those types of scams it is simple opportunism in a
Around 2012, the FBI, they released reports every year on the state of crime and that kind of stuff.
Somewhere around 2010, 11 to 12, I don't remember exactly when, for the first time, the FBI released a report called the State of Cybercrime Security.
It wasn't the first time they released a report, but what I'm about to say is the first time they stated it.
And in that report, somewhere around 2010-ish, they stated for the first time that revenue from criminal organizations that do ransomware and viruses and spam and scams via the Internet surpassed, for the first time in history, all revenue from all cocaine sales, heroin sales, and marijuana sales globally.
So when criminal organizations start noticing, hey, I don't need to buy a suburb.
I don't need to buy a submarine and smuggle drugs and this and that and the other, or I could keep doing that, but I can also generate a lot of money over here by doing these computer things.
That is what triggers the attacks that we're seeing now.
Criminals are notoriously opportunistic, and you have to look at every email you get, and this answers your question directly, as is someone trying to get something that's mine?
Please don't go anywhere.
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Because money, we also want to be cautious nowadays.
The biggest target is PII.
It's called Personal Identifiable Information.
That's the biggest target.
Is someone trying to find out from me my first name, last name, date of birth?
First name, last name, date of birth, social security.
And if someone is trying to get that or any other, and even just first name, last name, date of birth, like if they're not asking for social, still be paranoid.
Is someone trying to get my username and my password?
Anytime you get emails requesting that type of information.
You need to pause, take a breath, and be very, very, very, very cautious.
What's the source of the email?
Can you pick up the phone and call the Amazon or Facebook or whoever and verify, "Hey, did you send me this email?"
Like, is my account at risk of being-- that's how you have to handle that because that's what-- those criminals are opportunistic.
It's like parking a bunch of cars on the street.
Happens in neighborhoods all over the world, even fancy ones.
Criminals will walk past and say, "Hey, what's going on?"
Criminals will walk past and just try door handles.
Which car are they going to rob first?
The one where the car is unlocked.
They are opportunistic.
So the easiest target is the one that gets hit.
Wow.
And because of the volume of that, you know, it's no longer, you know, Billy Bob or Nicky in his grandmother's basement playing around on the internet doing some scams.
That's not what it is anymore.
It is fundamental, well-funded and resourced.
And resourced criminal organizations that literally have office buildings.
They go to campuses to recruit smart computer science kids to come into their criminal organization and create ransomware and create viruses and craft these sting operations, etc.
So that's what you're going against.
These people-- it's no longer, you know, Susie in the basement.
It is now an organization coming after you.
So you've got to bear back.
And one of the known things with scams, it's always they try to impose a sense of urgency.
You've got to do this right now.
Right.
Any time you see that, feel that in a--
Either that or they threaten you with an ultimate penalty if you don't respond, you know.
And I will tell you this.
I'm talking to Gregory Richardson, AI expert, cybersecurity expert, a man who loves his job.
I'm just telling you.
It's a level of passion.
How did you--?
And we're going to get into the AI in the next break.
But how did you know this was for you?
Like, I have a degree in mathematics.
My minor is in sociology when I graduated from college.
I started out in computers.
I love the logic.
How did you know from a state of passion that this is where you knew your career and your life would be, Gregory?
It's a very, very interesting story.
I am in college.
I left at a fairly young age.
I was just turning 16, late part of my 16-year-old, that phrase, when I left the Caribbean island that I grew up on and my parents and all of my family are from.
And we moved--well, I was sent, actually, to the U.S., the middle of the U.S., the Midwest, to college.
Kind of stupid.
You know how kids are when they're stupid, think they know it all, et cetera.
But my major initially was civil engineering.
You know, people told me a good job is, you know, civil engineering.
You'll build roads and buildings for governments.
And it's good job security.
Now, while that's my major, I am in my dorm room.
And this is the early '80s.
Right.
So, like, there is no Internet yet.
There are no computer stores yet.
I'm in my dorm room building computers from scratch and selling them on campus to students.
And I'm literally investing all of my--that was the joy that I had.
I hated my classes.
I hated every--and after about literally--I switched my major from civil engineering to electrical engineering.
Then I switched it to math.
Then I switched it to business.
Like, I was all over--I was stupid.
I was dumb as a bat.
No, no, no, no, no.
You were me, Gregory.
I started out in civil engineering.
Then I went to accounting.
Then I went to chemical engineering.
And then I wound up getting my degree in mathematics.
Stay with us.
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Welcome back to Money-Making Conversations Masterclass, hosted by me, Rashawn McDonald.
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When I click emails, I'm nervous.
I'm nervous. And I'm not very comfortable. And that's the world we live in. It's a world of
fast-moving activity. But are you uncomfortable as I am as we navigate through this new world of
technology that's being put forth out there that we have to use in order to participate?
Great, great, great, great question. And I'll answer it with a little, a tiny bit of background.
Okay.
I am a staunch believer in the. in the concept that we find in the Bible in Jeremiah chapter one, somewhere around verse four or so.
And that's Jeremiah being spoken to by God. Jeremiah is a prophet. And God tells him,
before you were formed in your mother's womb, I intimately knew what you were made for.
I firmly believe in that. That's why I jokingly said I was dumb as a bag of bricks, because
I was 12 years old in high school. A bunch of friends and I had a little public access TV
program where we taught adults how to use computers. So it was very obvious to me that
my passion was technology from 12 years old. Yet when I go to college, I'm doing everything but
technology. It took two and a half, three years into college for a friend, happened to be the
chaplain, to walk, he was on my floor, to walk up to me and say, dude, why are you not studying
computers? I'm like, it's not. I'm
an electrical engineering or business major. He said, dude, all you're doing all day is sitting
here behind this computer doing computer stuff. That is obviously your passion. And that was
kind of like an aha moment for me. And that is what fuels not only my success, but my ability.
And I say this to entrepreneurs, business people, people, you know, early in career or late in
career making changes. If you can do what you're passionate about, I'm not guaranteeing you're
going to make a million dollars or whatever, whatever you might, maybe not, but at least
you'll be able to function and be effective through all adversities. There's been many
rough periods in time. I remember 20, 30 years ago, cybersecurity was a terrible industry to be in.
No one wasn't hiring. I'd go and visit banks and businesses, especially in the Caribbean where I
was living at that time. Hey, do your cybersecurity. No, we don't need no cybersecurity. My IT guy
handles that. It took Target getting hacked, Home Depot right there in Atlanta getting hacked
for suddenly the onus to be, oh my God, we need to do something about cybersecurity. And then all
of a sudden it boomed. But prior to that, no one cared about cybersecurity. What kept me passionate
and invested in cybersecurity was the fact that I was doing what I was in. I believe genuinely
cybersecurity and technology was stitched into my DNA by the person who created me.
So I'm just doing what's natural. And that's what you hear in my voice. That's what you hear in the
passion. When I answer questions, you go, I tell my employees, coworkers, people that work for me,
whatever, all the time. You wake me up at three in the morning, bro. I'll answer questions.
I love it. I love it. I love it. Hey, Gregory, let's transition to AI because I don't want to
say I'm going to talk about something and we don't talk about it. I think that'll frustrate our
listeners. AI, what concerns you about
AI when it comes to security concerns and privacy? Because we just left over here,
AI is being thrown into everybody's conversation. Everybody knows the two letters, AI,
artificial intelligence, but it is security concerns. It is privacy concerns. What do you
think? There are definitely security and privacy. As a matter of fact, is it okay if I give your
listeners a way for them to reach me? Can I just quickly plug a website? Absolutely. Do your thing
for them so that people know how to reach you? Exactly. Anyone that wants to reach me, connect,
LinkedIn, social media, all of it, buy my book, whatever, all of it. Every way to get in touch
with me is at www, my name, Gregory, G-R-E-G-O-R-Y, Richardson, R-I-C-H-A-R-D-S-O-N.AI, GregoryRichardson.AI.
You can get me there, get everything there. I answer messages. So that's out of the way. Let's
talk about the security concerns. Are there security concerns with AI? 100%. But it's more
than that. And candidly, I think the opportunity is bigger than the concerns in AI. I often use the
analog of the Gutenberg printing press, 1400, 1500, somewhere around the 15th century. Gutenberg
invented, he was a jeweler, worked with gold stuff. And working with the fine things in gold,
he created this thing called the printing press. And the first thing they started printing was
descriptions of, let's call them lurid tales. So basically written out pornography. That was the
first thing the press was used for, because even then they knew if I print something salacious,
people are going to gobble it up. If I say a woman found in bed with a cow, they're going to
buy that newspaper. So the church in particular was very concerned. Oh my God, this thing is evil.
And lots of industries were very, this thing is not good. We shouldn't be doing this.
Then suddenly, now keep in mind,
if you look at a historical timeline, Europe and most of the world right now is smack dab in the
middle of the dark ages. Black plague is killing millions of people across Europe. That's when this
happened. Fast forward, finally, some monk somewhere says, you know what I think I'm going
to use the printing press for? These Bible books that we've been writing out by hand and it takes
us 20 years, we're going to print some. Fast forward, 50, five, zero years later, the world
has been in the dark ages for more than a thousand years. And we're going to print some.
Fast forward, 50 years later, the printing press and the publication of Bibles, which to this day
is still the top selling book, single handedly pulled the entire globe out of the dark ages
because someone leaned into the new technology, the printing press, and used it for something good.
That's what AI is today. Yes. Can it do bad things? A hundred percent. Could it potentially,
you know, yes, all of the risks are true,
but I think the reward and the potential and the upside is exponentially better.
I focus on nonprofits because of my Christian worldview, but I also help, as I've said already,
large, large, large businesses and organizations and businesses from small to large right now
are starting to leverage. And that's what my book is about. The six technology levers,
how to find the million dollar problem in your business and make a million dollar solution.
using AI, that's what it's about.
Businesses are leveraging
AI today and we are in what I call the age of the ephemeral app. You're going to be able to
build an app now without a hundred thousand dollars of investment. You're going to be able
to go to an AI and say, Hey, I need an app that helps my son. And I literally did this with my
daughter that helps my daughter prepare for this semester of advanced mathematics. She's 16 years
old. It generated, I gave it all of the documents, the syllabus, the course materials from her math
class. It generated weekly quizzes for me in an app form that I can give to my daughter or anyone
else and say, Hey, get to crack in. This is how you're going to prepare. So as a business person,
when you start looking or as an entrepreneur, you got an idea rummaging around in your head,
you no longer need to go and find a coder. You can simply jump on these AI tools. And that's what
my book walks you through and say, Hey, this is the idea I have. I've helped doctors. I've helped
lawyers. I've helped florists. I've helped accountants build custom apps in days that have
completely changed the landscape of their business. Give you a, if I may give you a simple,
simple example. Um, uh, a business had a car rental fleet of cars, 40 cars, deep girl going
great. But they started saying this car rental thing might not be for me. I looked at their
business. I said, you know what, what, what you're missing, you're losing a lot of money on tolls in
this. Every time you touch the roads here, they're charging you tolls. So if you have a car rental
fleet, you're not tracking the tolls properly. You use it. I helped them build an app that tracks
the tolls and then build the customer for it directly. They ended up taking that app that
they built for their car and they sold it, leased it to 25, 30, $40 a month to every other car rental
agency in the area. That app ended up making them a bigger income stream than the car rental agency
itself.
Wow.
That's the age we're in today. Your idea that's bubbling around in your head
might very well be a bigger income stream than the thing that you're doing. You might be a baker,
but the idea you have for tracking recipes for all your cookies and distributing someone might
pay you 15, $20 a month to access your database of recipes, but they might not buy $20 of cookies
every month. That's the age we are in today. So when you, when I look at it in that scope,
AI is significant.
I think AI is significantly a bigger opportunity than it is a risk. Now, are there risks? Cybersecurity
risks, privacy risks, data leakage risks. Could China be spying or anywhere else be spying on us
and trying to reap private information about us through AI? A hundred percent. The sad part of
that though is Facebook's doing it too. Google is doing it too. You kind of can't avoid it.
Right. I'll tell you what, Gregory, very entertaining. I'm
a big fan of Facebook. I know that I want to get more into the AI, especially in the nonprofit,
especially in the church and spreading the gospel conversation. Uh, can I invite you back on the show?
Of course. I would be honored. Honored. I'll add this. The reason I personally focus on churches,
because where churches and nonprofits, they usually don't have the budgets of
the big banks and the businesses. So they need the efficiency that AI can bring even more so.
Give them the website. Give me a website before we go. Give me a website because they need to reach out to you.
www.GregoryRichardson.ai. GregoryRichardson.ai. We appreciate this opportunity to be here and talk
to your, your, um, audience, man. This has been a ton of fun. You're you're awesome. You're awesome.
And Gregory, we will talk soon. I appreciate you, man. And thank you for filling out that be a guest
form because that's how he, he submitted the information. I contacted him. He's on the show.
And guess what? The information he's provided on my show has been amazing. Thank you for coming on
Money Making Conversations Masterclass. Thank you for listening to this episode. Now I need for you
to do me a favor right now to follow or subscribe to Money Making Conversations. It's free and you
can find it on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Please
do me that favor. Follow or subscribe Money Making Conversations. Keep winning.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
Gregory Richardson is a cybersecurity professional, ethical hacker, and AI expert based in Dallas, Texas, with over 40 years of experience.
He argues against multitasking, stating that humans are designed for single-purpose tasks, and context switching reduces efficiency.
Cybersecurity threats have surged dramatically, with billions of attacks per hour, driven by criminal organizations that now earn more from cybercrime than global drug sales.
Strong password practices include using unique passphrases, password vaults from reputable companies, and two-factor authentication for added security.
Scams exploit urgency and fear; individuals should verify email sources and avoid sharing personal identifiable information (PII) like birthdates or Social Security numbers.
Richardson’s passion for technology began at age 12, and he encourages following one’s passion for long-term success, despite industry challenges.
AI presents both risks and opportunities; he compares it to the printing press, emphasizing its potential to solve problems, especially for churches and nonprofits with limited budgets.
He helps businesses build custom AI apps (e.g., toll-tracking for car rentals) that can create new revenue streams.
His website is GregoryRichardson.ai, where audiences can connect with him or access his book, "The Six Technology Levers."
Summary:
In this episode of Money-Making Conversations Masterclass, host Rashawn McDonald interviews Gregory Richardson, a cybersecurity expert and AI consultant. Richardson begins by challenging multitasking, asserting that humans perform best when focused on single tasks. He shares his extensive background in cybersecurity, noting that threats have escalated to billions per hour, prompting the use of AI for threat prediction and classification. He advises listeners on practical security measures, including using unique passphrases, password vaults, and two-factor authentication, while warning against scams that create false urgency to steal personal information.
Richardson recounts his journey from studying civil engineering to embracing his true passion for technology, influenced by a friend’s observation. He emphasizes that doing what you love sustains effectiveness through adversity. Transitioning to AI, he acknowledges security and privacy concerns but frames AI as a transformative opportunity, akin to the printing press pulling Europe out of the Dark Ages. He highlights how AI enables anyone to build custom apps without large investments, citing a toll-tracking app for car rentals that became more profitable than the rental business itself. Richardson focuses on helping churches and nonprofits leverage AI to spread the gospel efficiently, given their limited budgets. He concludes by inviting listeners to connect via GregoryRichardson.ai, and McDonald encourages the audience to subscribe to the podcast for more insights.
FAQs
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Gregory Richardson is a cybersecurity expert and ethical hacker with about 40 years of experience, and he also works as a serial entrepreneur. He focuses on helping large organizations like banks and governments, and he uses AI to enhance cybersecurity and assist nonprofits and churches.
He believes humans are designed to single-purpose task, and that multitasking leads to context switching, making you less efficient. He says doing two separate tasks at once means neither is done really well.
He recommends using passphrases instead of short passwords, such as a scripture quote with spaces, commas, and capital letters. He also advises using a password vault from a reputable company and changing passwords constantly.
Two-factor authentication adds a second factor, like a code sent to your cell phone, in addition to something you know (like a password) or something you are (like a fingerprint). It's recommended because even if someone guesses your password, the second factor stops them from getting in.
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