Tara Haack:
The nice thing about getting the notification when they try to access something that's been blocked is it opens up an opportunity for you to have a conversation to figure out what they were trying to do. And I've really been shocked, my son will be like, 'Oh, I was just trying to find a cool pic of Darth Vader." Because he is really into Star Wars. And I'm like, "It's blocking this site because it says it's for nudity." That was startling to me.

Andrea Melton:
Welcome to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. Kosciusko Connect is a subsidiary of Kosciusko REMC. Since 2021, we have been providing lightning fast, reliable fiber to the home internet service to rural portions of northern Indiana. On Connected Conversations, we talk about fiber internet, technology, community and how to navigate the digital world in which we live. I'm your host, Andrea Melton. Thank you for connecting with us today.

Welcome to episode three of Connected Conversations. I'm Andrea Melton and thank you so much for listening today. We are very excited that in the studio we have Tara Haack, who is the Manager of Marketing and Communications here at Kosciusko Connect. Tara, how are you doing today?

Tara Haack:
I'm doing good, thank you.

Andrea Melton:
Thanks so much for joining us. And we've brought you in because today we want to talk about Guardian Protection. And Guardian Protection is something that we offer that is optional for our subscribers, many of whom have picked up, added to their plan, and they're finding wonderful value in Guardian Protection, what it offers your home, your network, your family. And we want to learn more about it. So thanks so much for being in here.

Tara Haack:
I'm excited to be here and talk about it.

Andrea Melton:
Let's get started. Can you just give our listeners an overview of what Guardian Protection is and how it enhances the internet experience for our subscribers?

Tara Haack:
Yes. So Guardian is an add-on for the Kosciusko Connect app and it's a combination of two really powerful tools. One is called ProtectIQ, which is advanced network security. And then ExperienceIQ, which is more of the enhanced parental controls. There are some more basic parental controls in just the Kosciusko Connect app, but the ExperienceIQ just really takes it to a whole nother level.

Andrea Melton:
Fantastic. So tell us more about the ExperienceIQ and that level it takes it to.

Tara Haack:
Yes. So really the difference is just the Kosciusko Connect app, you have the ability to turn the internet on and off for devices or for users, but ExperienceIQ actually has content restrictions in it. You can either apply content filters by age, and there's three different age groups. If you don't want to do it by the automatic age ranges that they have, you can also do it manually. And you can go in and basically turn on and off different categories that you want to restrict that person, or just in general on your network if you want to apply some content filters, if you don't want anyone on your network searching for certain things or accessing certain things on the internet.
So the content restrictions are really great, but wait, there's more. You can actually go in and restrict use of specific applications, literally when you say you can set the rules and we'll enforce them. We say that with Guardian a lot. And that's any kind of rules you have. If your children aren't allowed to use TikTok, you can block their access to that application within the Kosciusko Connect app if you have Guardian. The other really cool thing is say they do Minecraft or Roblox, and they would spend literally all day on that if you didn't step in and say, "Hey, you've been on that for a while." You can actually set a time limit for specific apps.

Andrea Melton:
Awesome.

Tara Haack:
Yes.

Andrea Melton:
That is a lot of control. I like that very much.

Tara Haack:
Yes, There's more though.

Andrea Melton:
Oh, tell us more.

Tara Haack:
So you can even block specific websites if you know the domain name, if you know there's certain websites that they're accessing that you really don't want them to, you can put those in and make sure they're not accessing those. And then they also have Safe Search, which this is really cool. It's basically providing additional filtering of inappropriate content when you're using major search engines like Google or Bing. So it blocks explicit images, videos and websites in the search results.

Andrea Melton:
Wonderful.

Tara Haack:
Yes. And I have more too. Really, when I said it's a powerful tool, people, I think when they're making their choice online and anytime you're looking at add-ons, you're like, "Do I really want to spend a little bit more?" But you really don't understand everything that Guardian has to offer until you really get to know it. And that's one of the reasons I think I was the one that came to talk about this today because I don't know it just from a product manager position. I also am a Kosciusko Connect customer, so I have Guardian at home and use it in our household too. So really feel the impact of that myself too.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. If you're looking for an app or something to help you control the content your children have access to in general, the parameters of their access to the internet, you have a lot of options out there. So I thought it was very important to have a thorough conversation about all of the features that come with Guardian and really dive into that. So there is more. Tell us more. What else does it do?

Tara Haack:
Yes. So there's also YouTube restrictions. So that works similar to what the Safe Search does, but within YouTube when they're searching for video content, it's going to filter out the more potentially mature videos.

Andrea Melton:
YouTube is so vast and I have a child at home and we can find wonderful content on YouTube for him to watch, great, educational, kid-friendly content. If you have that player going, if the YouTube is streaming and you walk away and another episode or another video pops up, it might not be at all related to the video that he was just watching. And I've been there and seen videos pop up, they come across the screen that he shouldn't be watching. I don't know why it popped up right after something that was very kid-friendly, so this seems to be a very good feature to have.

Tara Haack:
Yes. The nice thing about getting the notification when they try to access something that's been blocked is it opens up an opportunity for you to have a conversation to figure out what they were trying to do. And I've really been shocked, my son will be like, "Oh, I was just trying to find a cool pic of Darth Vader." Because he is really into Star Wars. And I'm like, "It's blocking this site because it says it's for nudity." That was startling to me. It also has another really cool feature called Device Prioritization. The way device prioritization works is it basically allows you to optimize your Wi-Fi for specific network use. So for example, if you're working at home, if you're gaming, if you're streaming video, you can set the priorities for your network. So in the app you would go to the my priorities section and it would give you a list of different categories, work, video and music, gaming, browsing, file transfers. These are all categories that are available.

Andrea Melton:
Oh, cool.

Tara Haack:
And then you can prioritize those categories from highest to lowest. So say you have video and music listed first. Basically, any devices that fall under that category, they're going to get more bandwidth.

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Tara Haack:
So that's what the device prioritization is. And you can actually set up three separate prioritization schedules. So here's an example I'll give you. Say you are a work from home person and you want to say Monday through Friday, between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM, I want it to follow a certain order of prioritization, and then after 5:00 it can go back to my default or to another scheduled prioritization. So you can set up to three different schedules, I guess you could say. And then you can assign five specific devices to each priority schedule.

Andrea Melton:
Wow, that's so detailed.

Tara Haack:
Yes.

Andrea Melton:
That's a lot of control to have over that bandwidth.

Tara Haack:
Yeah. So if you're trying to work from home and you have other family members at home and they're trying to stream video and play games and it's really sucking up that bandwidth, this is where it would really help out with giving your work devices more bandwidth.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. I could see that being a big asset for a lot of households, lots of people, lots of devices. So for people who maybe aren't as concerned with parental controls, they don't have young children in the house or aren't parents, Guardian offers more than parental controls. Can you talk about the types of cyber threats and attacks that Guardian helps to safeguard against?

Tara Haack:
Absolutely. And I do want to preface that by saying cyber attackers, they're very smart individuals and they're always coming up with new types of threats and ways to attack a network. But there are some general ones that our home networks are more prone to. One of those is malware. And that includes viruses, spyware, ransomware and worms. And usually malware, the intention of that is to install a harmful piece of software on your device or to covertly obtain information or to make it completely inoperable. That's usually the objective of malware. The other thing is password attacks. And I believe you just talked about one type of password attack on the blog for Kosciusko Connect and that's phishing.

Andrea Melton:
Yes.

Tara Haack:
Yes. So that's usually where the attacker's trying to obtain passwords or login information because that will give them access to a whole world of different things like bank accounts or-

Andrea Melton:
Yeah. It's frightening to think of what they could have access to.

Tara Haack:
Yes. So a type of the password attack I said is phishing. And that's where they're using a fake type of communication email was one that you mentioned in the blog, and they're trying to trick the recipient into opening it and then carrying out a certain type of instructions. And if the recipient follows those instructions, it's actually providing that attacker with login credentials.

Andrea Melton:
To expand on that just a moment, we've launched a series of blog articles, we started with phishing. We're going to examine the different types of scams and just explain them more and give people information that will help them spot them and avoid these scams. Because we have heard from other people in the building who talk with our customers on a regular basis. We do have local people who are being affected by these scams, who are being preyed upon, and they are turning over information and it's just such a stressful situation, invasion of privacy and just to be the victim of a cyber-criminal. So it is very important for us, I think, to draw awareness to how prevalent the scams are and equip people with information.

Tara Haack:
So another type of attack is called a staged lateral attack. And that's where a hacker breaks in through a device that's connected to your network to gain access to the router. Because if they can gain access to the router, then they can access any device on your network and they're usually going to go for the ones that have the most important information like login information or banking information, financial information. Because they're going to use that, it's going to open up a whole variety of different things they can do with that information. I wanted to mention too, one of the first alerts I got about a intrusion being blocked on my network, it was actually through my husband's smartwatch. And I remember I was just completely blown away by the fact, I'm like, "Why would a hacker want to break in through his smartwatch?"

Andrea Melton:
Right. That wouldn't even cross my mind as a device to be concerned about. It just wouldn't.

Tara Haack:
Yeah. And we've also gotten alerts on our, we have a Wi-Fi thermostat for our home, which those are great for energy efficiency, but it's another device connected to your network. So yeah, it's just all the attacker trying to gain access to the router.

Andrea Melton:
Wow. It really brings to light to just how connected our homes are. And we have more and more technology that we are bringing into our homes that assist us in our everyday lives, but also can leave us vulnerable if we don't get it on lockdown.

Tara Haack:
The other one, man-in-the-middle attacks. This is where an attacker basically sits between you and the internet and they track your activities. For example, you might think you're logging into your email account, it looks almost identical to what the typical login looks like for your email account, but the attacker has secretly directed you to a fake login page so they can steal your credentials.

Andrea Melton:
Wow.

Tara Haack:
The other thing that they can do in a man-in-the-middle attack, and this is really disturbing, is they can gain control of video cameras on your network. If you have Wi-Fi cameras or your computer's webcam and they can actually watch you or family members and just get a feel for household activity. One really scary thing that was in the news, there was actually an attacker that was talking, I think it was a young child, a little girl on a Wi-Fi camera.

Andrea Melton:
That is absolutely terrifying that that would even be possible. With Guardian Protection, it makes it impossible for those types of things to happen.

Tara Haack:
Exactly. So on that note too, in talking about people's homes becoming more connected with all these smart devices, a lot of other internet service providers, they give you access to the internet, and they don't really care about what you're doing with that connection. With Kosciusko Connect, it's extremely fast, in most cases, a lot faster than any kind of connection anyone's had before. So when you have that fast connection, it makes you start thinking about adding more devices to your network. So we want to be able to provide these tools and education around security just to help people be able to feel safe as they're using that connection and as they're adding devices. Because these devices, they do a lot of great things for your home, for your family, and you shouldn't feel scared to be able to use those things.

Andrea Melton:
So there are a lot of choices on the market when it comes to an app or a software that protects your network. What really sets Guardian Protection apart from other similar services on the internet.

Tara Haack:
So I would say one thing is that it protects at that network level. We say if it's connected, it's protected. A lot of other types of network security, or actually not network security, but just virus protection or security protection, it has to be installed on individual devices. So this is protecting all of the devices that are connected to your router. That's one of the things that sets it apart. The other thing, I don't know if you had the old virus protection that was installed on your computer or your laptop?

Andrea Melton:
Yes.

Tara Haack:
I was always terrible, when it would come up and tell me I needed to update something, I would be doing something else and I would just ignore it

Andrea Melton:
Yeah. Snooze, wait until later, I'll do that later.

Tara Haack:
Exactly. In the meantime, you're getting viruses on your computer. With Guardian, it automatically updates to ensure that you're constantly protected against that growing list of cyber threats. Because I said earlier, it's always changing, it's getting more sophisticated, the attackers trying to access networks. So it's automatically updating, you don't have to manually update it. And the other thing, I touched on it before, just the fact that the Kosciusko Connect app combined with Guardian has so many features in a single application, you're not having to jump to three different applications to achieve the same kind of thing.

Andrea Melton:
That's great. Nobody has time for that.

Tara Haack:
Yes.

Andrea Melton:
You can imagine.

Tara Haack:
And if you're not impressed with that, the other really cool thing, ProtectIQ, which is the network security portion of a Guardian, it received the 2022 Cyber Defense Magazine Award for best in anti-phishing, network security, and management.

Andrea Melton:
Wow. That is great. So it's doing its job.

Tara Haack:
Yes, it's definitely-

Andrea Melton:
It's a good product.

Tara Haack:
Yes, definitely a good product.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. And you touched on this briefly a little bit ago, but for our subscribers who are interested in expanding their devices, they've subscribed to our fast fiber internet now, and they do have more options than they used to, but maybe they're not technically inclined. Some of us are more technically inclined than others. Could you explain maybe how easy it is for our subscribers to set up and customize that Guardian Protection if they're interested in what they're hearing, but they're like, "Well, am I even going to be able to use it?" Or maybe cover some of that with us for the less technically inclined.

Tara Haack:
So in order to add Guardian to your account, you would just have to call the office here and that number is 574-269-0327, or you can send an email to connect@kosciuskoconnect.com. The cost of Guardian, it's only $12.95 a month, which is really a great value when you're thinking about keeping you and your family protected. The amount of money that you could lose by not having this is just significant. If someone were to obtain access to your bank accounts or to your credit cards or if there was identity theft involved, those are all very costly things. It's not just about... I mean, I think the hard thing is it's about feeling violated, but it's also that financial theft too.

Andrea Melton:
Absolutely. There are cases where people have lost tremendous sums of money, thousands of dollars to these types of attacks.

Tara Haack:
When you think about it's really like having insurance. You pay for it and you forget about it and then when something happens, you're really glad that you have it. And I think this is really similar to that. So if you have Guardian or if you want to check, you're not sure if you subscribe to it or not, you can go in the Kosciusko Connect app and when you purchase Guardian, it's automatically activated in your Kosciusko Connect app.

Andrea Melton:
Okay.

Tara Haack:
So where you would see that is on the main home screen, you would tap on my network and then you would tap on services and you would see ProtectIQ and ExperienceIQ listed. And they would both say enabled if you have Guardian on your account.

Andrea Melton:
Okay. That seems simple enough.

Tara Haack:
Yes. Very easy.

Andrea Melton:
And then it gets to work-

Tara Haack:
Yes.

Andrea Melton:
... for you?

Tara Haack:
Yes.

Andrea Melton:
Very cool. If somebody is interested in trying it out, it wouldn't be difficult for them to set it up. And then if they were to decide they wanted to take it off their subscription, their service, they could-

Tara Haack:
Absolutely.

Andrea Melton:
... do away with it without any commitment or contract there. I would encourage anyone to give it a try for $12.95 a month.

Tara Haack:
Yes.

Andrea Melton:
Okay. So let's remind those listening. If they want more information or they still have some questions, something that we didn't cover, how can they get those questions answered before deciding to add Guardian to their internet plan?

Tara Haack:
They just need to reach out to us. They can do that by phone or by emailing connect@kosciuskoconnect.com. We have a lot of great people who are just waiting to answer questions and love talking to our customers. So they would be happy to help you with that.

Andrea Melton:
They really would. We have some fantastic people in this building. Very knowledgeable, helping our customers. So thank you so much, I feel enlightened, educated. I mean, I knew a lot about Guardian, I did, but I've definitely learned some things today, so I know everybody listening did as well. Thank you so much for coming in and talking with us today, Tara. We really appreciate it.

Tara Haack:
Thank you.

Andrea Melton:
Have a great rest of your day.

Tara Haack:
You too.

Andrea Melton:
You've been listening to Connected Conversations, the official podcast of Kosciusko Connect. From all of us at Kosciusko Connect, thank you for connecting with us today.