Matt Lindsey’s mission is to ward off threats on the internet. As chief threat intelligence analyst, he leads a team of seven analysts who daily protect the computers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from millions of cyberthreats. They form the lab’s first line of defense against sneaky attacks on its supercomputers from all over the world.
But the team lead of ORNL’s Security Operations Center also volunteers his time telling members of the public how to protect their personal desktop and laptop computers, smartphones and tablets, as well as their savings, from attacks by cyber thieves.
Lindsey calls “cyber education” important because “we’re all in this together and we all need to keep each other safe.”
His whimsical talk titles include “Don’t Let Phishing Catch You!” and, especially for fans of Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” there is also “Stranger Pings: What to Do When the Internet Goes Bad.”
The latter was the title of the slide presentation he gave recently to members and guests of Altrusa International of Oak Ridge. His goal was to provide attendees with “the tools and knowledge needed to stay safe online,” according to the Altrusa news release.
Don’t panic at ‘pop-ups’
He warned the audience that hackers trying to help them part with their personal information and money aim at causing panic, getting them to engage in hasty thinking and to make careless decisions. One example are “pop-ups” on the computer screen that, he said, use a…
