Ohio Chapter President Bradley Barkhurst (Brad): I’ll start with the first question; how did you get involved with HTCIA?

Art Bowker (Art): Let’s see, that was back in 1999. I’ve always been interested in cybercrime and I was working with the US probation office. We were seeing a big explosion of cybercrimes. So they sent me to training. We really didn’t have any connections. It was kind of like you go to this training and there was nothing after that. So, using the class list that I got at the training, I sent out a “Hey do all of you want to be a part of this group called HTCIA?” So, we were able to get together and be sanctioned in 2000. We got our starting money from the City of Akron Police Department. I became one of the founding officers too.

Brad: I know that you’ve seen a lot of cybercrime over the years, has there been any trend that’s been consistent over the years?

Art: Well, probably the biggest thing is the explosion in sex offense behavior. That was the big thing because child pornography images could be easily produced, saved, and stored. Before computers, child pornography was dying because they had to have a print shop. The computer really changed things and unfortunately made it grow.

Then you had the sex offenders using computers to communicate with the juveniles. It also changed counterfeiting and check fraud. Now with the scams that are out there, it is so much easier to rip people off. You have so many people using computers for bad things and they don’t need a lot of expertise to get started.

Brad: I know that your book is coming out, what’s the title?

Art: It’s called, Surviving a Cyberattack: Securing Social Media and Protecting Your Home co-written with Todd Shipley. It’s a long title but the big part is surviving a cyberattack. It’s for the general public and we pushed the surviving part because it’s really if anything, you’re going to be a victim of cybercrime one way or another. I mean both myself and my co-author have gotten notices that our data has been stolen. When the big OPM breach occurred years ago, people broke in and stole everybody’s data. So, you’re going to be a victim no matter what you do and no matter how secure your system is. Somebody else has your data and they’re going to screw up. It’s also more than just protecting yourself, you’ve got to survive an attack. You have to know what to do after something happens. You also have to protect your kids so we have a kid section. We both have elderly parents, so I’m like holy crap, we have to protect them too! So, we have a special chapter for that as well. Then it was, well what about people who go shopping online? You know they’re selling something on Facebook, they go and take it to a location and somebody rips them off. So, it’s what to do to prevent and minimize you from harm and what to do after you’ve been attacked. We are big advocates of you’ve got to report it. So that’s why we pushed the surviving part. You’ve got to be a Survivor and that’s what the book’s about. It’s not just prevention.

Brad: So who do you report the cybercrime to?

Art: It depends on the situation and at what point do you report it. You’ve got the Internet Crimes Reporting Center run by the FBI. If you are a victim, no matter how small it is, you know report it. If it’s a fraud, you know somebody’s took your credit card information. There are ways of reporting it. We have a whole list of different scenarios of who you report it to. The book is also international. So, we’ve got the lists of major countries of who to report it to. It depends on the situation. If it’s a life-or-death thing, your first thing to do is going to report it to your local authorities right away. They’re the ones that are going to be able to react.

Important Note: Art is presenting “Mitigating and Detecting Cyber-Risk for Minors and Vulnerable Adults” at the Ohio Chapter of HTCIA 3rd Quarter Training Event at Stark State College, Silk Auditorium, 6200 Frank Ave. NW, North Canton, OH 44720, Friday, October 4, 2024, which commences at 9:00 am.