Tyler Rodgers Of Privin Network On Five Things Every Business Needs to Know About Storing and Protecting Their Customers’ Information

An Interview With David Leichner

Always continue to build upon your security plan. These plans will vary depending on the business you have, but always make sure to keep yourself informed on a regular basis.

It has been said that the currency of the modern world is not gold, but information. If that is true, then nearly every business is storing financial information, emails, and other private information that can be invaluable to cybercriminals or other nefarious actors. What is every business required to do to protect its customers’ and clients’ private information?

As a part of our series about “Five Things Every Business Needs To Know About Storing and Protecting Their Customers’ Information”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tyler Rodgers from Privin Network.

Hidden assets, person locates, online defamation, and cybercrimes are just some of the tasks that the private investigator, Tyler Rodgers is quite skilled at. With over 15 years of experience, Tyler Rodgers has catered to clients big and small around the world. He understands the mission, problem, and likely outcome, providing an advantage to case success.

Tyler served in the U.S. Navy for 12 years and is now an Army Officer. Prior to the creation of Privin Network. Tyler acquired his BS in Criminal Justice from the University of Phoenix and holds certificates in digital forensics and cybercrimes.

If Tyler is not at work, he is enjoying the beautiful outdoors, either camping in Northern Arizona or in the dunes while it’s in season.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

Certainly! I grew up in the small Iowa farm town of Indianola. Growing up outside the big city teaches you different life experiences. You are closer to nature and come to respect an honest day’s work. I was raised solely by my mother and moved around quite a bit. My childhood was different than others, but I was fortunate to have a few father figures in my life that taught me well.

I moved to Des Moines around the age of 14, but then went back to Indianola where I graduated high school at 18. From there I moved to Phoenix, AZ, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. I spent eight years on active duty; stationed in Everett, Washington, Sasebo, Japan, Manama Bahrain, and then my last tour of duty in Virginia Beach, VA. The military taught me the professional discipline needed to become the business owner I am today.

Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue your particular career path? We’d love to hear it.

I wouldn’t say there is one particular story. Growing up I sadly saw many of my near-distant friends and family becoming addicts. Upon graduating high school, I wanted to distance myself as much as possible from these negative influences, which is why I enlisted as a military police officer. At the time, I thought this was the best choice. When I got out of the service I applied to a few law enforcement agencies, but I ultimately landed a job as a private investigator. The original pay was nothing to boast about, but it let me finish my degree at the University of Phoenix. After working for someone for several years, I decided to create my own agency. Being a good private investigator makes you question everything. So, I decided to take a leap of faith and build my own firm.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

To protect client confidentiality, I must keep most of my stories vague. I’ve had cases across most countries of the world, and they all have a splash of “quite interesting” as you can imagine. We did have a case once in Madagascar that required us to obtain vanilla bean extract to test authenticity. Quite a few cartels are there, making it difficult to know your audience and ask questions.

I’ve also worked for many Fortune 500 CEOs and they all are extremely interesting. At the end of the day, people are people. They all have problems like we do, but sometimes just different means to tackle different problems.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I believe a great family support system is the backbone of any successful business owner. My wife inspired me to “just do it.” From the inception of Privin, I knew it had to succeed and it did.

I had a falling out with a previous business partner, as his success was primarily based on mine, so we decided to part ways. I had savings, and enough to build the Privin brand, so I began working 18-hour days, putting all my spare time to use. I began marketing in every location I knew I had contacts and went from there.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

Sure, I am currently working on a few projects. We have a cybersecurity project in the works, but with all great security, takes the time to develop strategic and safe processes. We also just recently launched our own SEO agency, to help business owners increase their ROI through organic methods.

What advice would you give to your colleagues to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

Take a breath once in a while. Step away from work and do something you love to do. It’s hard for me to follow my own advice sometimes, but it’s great to have friends notice how hard you work. As a business owner, you sometimes need to understand that you aren’t an expert in everything. Letting other people or employees work through your weaknesses creates jobs, and reduces stress.

Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Privacy regulation and rights have been changing across the world in recent years. Nearly every business collects some financial information, emails, etc, about their clients and customers. For the benefit of our readers, can you help articulate what the legal requirements are for a business to protect its customers’ and clients’ private information?

Being a private investigator means I receive a myriad of different case types, but when it comes to privacy, it takes rubber gloves and a scalpel. A prime example of privacy change in recent years would be the GDPR act in the EU. This makes it difficult, if not illegal to obtain information on someone without their consent. Financial information is also obtained by many using illegal services such as pretexting; which had been made illegal back in 1999 under the GLBA. In 2006 the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act outlawed pretexting as well.

Let me briefly explain what pretexting is for our readers. Pretexting is the use of deceptive methods such as pretending to be someone to obtain information. The impersonation of an alias to obtain private information. We call this social engineering.

This is still a huge issue today and, in many cases, private investigators may still use some sort of pretext to obtain information. Not being able to use some of these methods in some cases makes it much more difficult but that’s where being creative and sometimes a gumshoe approach works.

Our firm provides services such as: compliance audits, data breach investigations (using ethical hacking methods), and digital forensics. Finding vulnerabilities in most cases is what our clients seek. Many do not know that private investigators and cyber professionals work in tandem.

Beyond the legal requirements, is there a prudent ‘best practice’? Should customer information be destroyed at a certain point?

Training employees to use safe practices would be any business owner’s number one concern. From there just follow legal and ethical standards. Consult with your legal counsel to ensure you are doing so. Define your data retention policy, and in some cases depending on your industry, there are state guidelines for you to follow. We live in a cloud-based society now, and the indefinite retention of client information should be a concern. Many businesses are blinded by future potential recurring business and keep confidential records indefinitely. You can circumvent this by keeping in touch with them via email, but safeguard their sensitive data.

It could hurt a situation in the event you are not able to view historical data. With most of our clients, we tell them to safeguard their reports. Our firm has a retention policy of seven years, which is quite a while. The main point here is to ensure you are adhering to ethical and professional responsibilities as a business owner.

Has any particular legislation related to data privacy, data retention or the like, affected you in recent years? Is there any new or pending legislation that has you worrying about the future?

When the GDPR became effective, it limited the ability to obtain information overseas. The ability to obtain information in the EU was severely limited. The U.S. has a mix of laws which makes it difficult in specific states to obtain specific information. Each state is passing different acts all the time, meaning we must always stay informed.

In your opinion have tools matured to help manage data retention practices? Are there any that you’d recommend?

We have so many tools at our disposal, but choosing the right tool changes all the time. We use a wide range of OSINT tools such as Maltego and Recon-ng. Additionally, we use OpenVAS for vulnerability assessments and many others. New tools are being brought to our attention monthly. With AI at the forefront, it has exacerbated the coding space.

There have been some recent well-publicized cloud outages and major breaches. Have any of these tempered or affected the way you go about your operations or store information?

The recent MGM breach was quite the read. More important would be the negligence in responding to the ransom. Yes, it could have been viewed as spam, but vulnerability and penetration tests should be completed regularly. In recent days 23andMe had a breach as well, and information about 23andMe records had been listed on cyber forums on August 11th. Although these incidents haven’t impacted me directly, it goes to show how vulnerable major businesses are and that they need to take these things seriously.

Ok, thank you for all of that. Now let’s talk about how to put all of these ideas into practice. Can you please share “Five Things Every Business Needs To Know In Order Properly Store and Protect Their Customers’ Information?”

1 . Ensure that the information you are storing is relevant to your business. Don’t save information on a professional workspace that is irrelevant and not used for work.

2 . Understand what personal information that you have. Not only for yourself but the clients that you have. If you need, encrypt information that may contain sensitive information.

3 . Continue to build upon your security plan, whether that’s a cloud-hosted plan that uses some type of security or if you’re old school, keeping files in a locked place behind two secured paths of entry.

4 . Discard information regularly or when it is appropriate to do so. Make sure you are doing this when the time calls for it, so you are operating with only what is required.

5 . Always continue to build upon your security plan. These plans will vary depending on the business you have, but always make sure to keep yourself informed on a regular basis.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-) (Think, simple, fast, effective and something everyone can do!)

I would teach people in their 20s that financial freedom comes with just doing your homework. A prime example is buying your first home. There are so many incentives for first-time home buyers, that many purchase a home without knowing that they could have instead purchased a duplex, triplex, etc., and let their money work for them. Nobody makes their first home their forever home. Invest instead.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can follow me on my personal site, https://tyler-rodgers.com or on LinkedIn here. You can also learn more about our private investigation and consulting services by visiting https://privin.net.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.