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Design007-July2020

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30 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I JULY 2020 All our laptop USB drives are disabled for the most part. The USB readers are disabled. If you stick anything in there, it will reformat it. You can't read anything. These measures were already in place before COVID-19, but it has forced us to sharpen our cybersecurity tem- plate that was always there. Barry Matties: What about your internet con- nection? At home, are you on a VPN? Chavez: That's correct. I'm on a VPN. We've always had our VPN when working remotely. That was never an issue. Now, with COVID-19, everyone is working remotely all the time. For those of us on the West Coast, by the time we would log in, it would be either late morning or afternoon for the East Coast. It was difficult due to network overload. We were lucky to get in at all and on time. But the company quickly established another option for VPN. We adapt- ed and created another VPN network, so now we have multiple options to get on. Now, it's a non-issue. Matties: What advice about cybersecurity would you have for designers who have just started working remotely? Chavez: Like anything else, when you're work- ing from your home network, you need to make sure your home network is secure. Who- ever your network provider is, and whatever hardware you have at home, you need to make sure that it's rock-solid so that you can per- form at your maximum. I use my local provid- er, which is Cox Cable in Arizona. I have my personal network set up as a private network. It's encrypted so that I don't have it wide open, which prevents any exposure of my data to the world. That's one thing that I would high- ly recommend. Also, be mindful of the emails you come across. If it's something you don't recognize, or you don't recognize the individ- ual sending it to you, don't open it. There's a big issue with phishing. Getting a lot of phish- ing emails is a constant issue. Dan Feinberg: You're running a VPN on Cox, and I am as well. I've also been teaching cyber- security for the Cyber Café in San Clemente for 10 years. What do you notice with your VPN? When you're running your own personal com- puter stuff, do you run a different device or use the company device for both? Chavez: I use my own personal computer for my own personal use, and then I use my Col- lins laptop for Collins business, all on the same Cox VPN to access the internet. The difference is that my work laptop has so many additional cybersecurity measures on top of my person- al security measures with my Cox VPN. There are times when it's blended. If I'm off on a lunch break, or I do something quickly—such as answer a personal email sent to my Collins email address—then I'll respond on my com- pany laptop. Right now, I'm on my Collins laptop VPN because I was doing work earlier before this meeting. I'm on this laptop most of the time while working from home, but typically, I have my own personal laptop along with my oth- er family members with their own laptops in the house. My work laptop is always running through a VPN on the Collins network, while its connection to the internet is compounded with my private VPN network through Cox. It's basically a VPN on top of a VPN with whatever additional security Cox provides. The biggest hurdle that comes at me ev- ery now and then regarding network activity would be the amount of data that I'm upload-

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