Leading Mobile Security Expert Spills The Secrets On Sim Hacks!

Discover:

• Why phone numbers are an overlooked source of costly data breaches
• Key things to consider when assessing personal data/security risks
• How to implement effective strategies to minimise hacking attacks
• Plus, the surprising activity to help you help you evaluate cultural fit with a potential employee or manager

This is a thought provoking episode you can't afford to miss!

Haseeb Awan is the CEO & Founder of Efani Secure Mobile.

Efani Secure Mobile works with ultra-high net worth individuals on their mobile Security and guarantees protection against SIM Swap, Eavesdropping & location tracking. He is a Telecom engineer & Y-Combinator Alumni. Previously he co-founded one of the largest Bitcoin ATM networks. He has been featured on NYT, Techcrunch, WSJ, Hulu, and several international media outlets.

Follow Jamal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmjahmed/

Follow Haseeb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haseebawan/

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Your cell phone will know more about you than your spouse and everything so that is our most private thing in our life. And now think of anyone can get access to that. Okay, here's an example. If you give me your house keys, you may not feel paranoid, but if I take your telephone for like an hour, you'll be like, oh, my God, what's happening? What's he going to find? But that's how things work out with privacy. We care about privacy, and that's the most private thing in our life. That's a good question. Would I rather give a stranger my house key for an hour or my phone password for an hour? I don't know. Most of them are making me squirm.

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Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast. My name is Jamilla, and I am your host. With me today is my co-host is Jamal Ahmed. He's a Fellow of Information Privacy and CEO at Kazient Privacy Experts. Jamal is an astute and influential privacy consultant, strategist, board advisor, and Fellow of Information Privacy. He's a charismatic leader, progressive thinker and innovator in the privacy sector who directs complex global privacy programs. He's a sought-after commentator, contributing to the BBC, ITV News, Euro News Talk Radio, the Independent and The Guardian, amongst others. Hi, Jamal.

Good morning, Jamilla. How are you today?

I'm all right, thanks. How are you?

I'm looking forward to the rest of the day. We've got an amazing podcast, and then we've got another amazing guest we'll be speaking to. And then I'm doing a webinar. So today is one of those days where I actually love what I do and do what I love and get paid for it. So I'm very happy today.

Busy day for you, but I'm also excited to speak to our guest on this podcast. So without further ado, our guest today is Haseeb Awan, and he's the founder and CEO of Efani. They offer a bulletproof mobile phone plan for important people such as executives, investors, and celebrities to protect them against SIM swaps, eavesdropping, or location tracking. So I'm excited to find out a lot more about it. Hi, Haseeb, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks Jamilla for having me on the podcast and looking forward to Jamal.

I'm looking forward to getting into your mind, Haseeb, because I remember not that long ago, actually, there was a lot of concerns about this software, about Pegasus and how it was invading people's phones. And I know that you've been really working on protecting people from their phones being invaded. So I'm really looking forward to getting into the nitty gritties of that.

I'm sure happy to share whatever I know and whatever I can share. Great.

So, as we always do on the Privacy Pros Academy podcast, we start off with an ice breaker question. So nothing to do with privacy. Haseeb, what's your favourite way to relax? And I could probably answer this now, knowing where you live.

Yeah, so my favourite way to relax will be just on a beach with my family.

Jamal, what about you? Is it the beach of the River Thames in London?

Oh, no, that's more like stress. You see how dirty it is, you see all the pollution and you imagine what's going on, what the impact is going in the environment. Definitely as far away from the River Thames as possible. My favourite way to relax, I like playing badminton. I find that quite relaxing.

What about you, Jamilla?

Being asleep.

Good answer. I should have done that one.

Yes.

Haseeb I'm curious, what first got you interested in privacy? How did you come across it? When made you go and say, yes, I want to spend my time, my energy and my money and go into this privacy domain.

So open line is always like fun, right? I wanted to buy a bank, so I woke up in the morning, I said, I want to buy a bank. And when I was buying bank, I realized my phone was getting hacked all the time because you have to go for regulation, signing up and people will target because you have to give your personal number and everything. So I got hacked four times on my cell phone. Four times? In the space of 18 months.

Wow. And how did you realize you were hacked?

So your phone stops working. That doesn't have any signal at all. So sometimes you don't realize immediately because you are using WiFi and everything, but your phone stopps working. When that happened, it was like very stressful for me. It caused a lot of stress for me and I couldn't function. So I said, okay man, I need to fix it. And I have built like a fortress or a fort around my own security, but it only protects it on people who come directly. But what about drones? They come in and they will screw you whatever your security is. So this is what happened with cyber security and privacy too. We think about a lot of things, but there's always the weakest link that will always screw up. And so I realize that that's a problem. So how to fix it? I can't fix it. I can't function because my cell phone is my life. So I started talking to people about important people like what do they force for security? And I realized they will go to same on HT mobile stores as we do. But rather than walking in, the only thing would be okay, can someone go on my behalf? Like asking someone to the difference between someone who is VIP and someone who's like not a VIP is that normal person will go and buy McDonald burger himself and someone else will buy McDonald burger on behalf of it. So that's the only difference.

Hold on a second Haseeb. If I've got what you're saying correct, the reason you got into the Efani or the reason you created a Efani is because your phone was hacked four times. And you realize that from getting hacked that many times, you needed a solution, and then you realize that other people need that solution as well. And the reason you're so concerned about phone number hacking and people hacking to your phone is because you realize as the bank, when you want to do a KYC check just from somebody's phone number, there is so much information that is revealed and available just by getting somebody's phone number. And therefore we need to keep that phone number private and the data associated to it. And therefore you decide to go and create Efani. Does that sound about right?

So I created Efani for security reasons because I was getting hacked. But I realized that telephone number is our biggest security threat. So I'll give you a simple example. If I have your telephone number, I can pretty much find any information on you. In the US we have Social Security number. If you give someone Social Security number, you can register a company on their behalf, you can take out loans, you can do a lot of stuff. But if in the UK, if you have like I don't know what happened in UK, so if I have your telephone number, I can find a lot of information about you, because every time I find another piece of information, it strengthens my case. If I have your email address, telephone number, I can find more information, then I can maybe find your LinkedIn profile so I can pull up where you live. Then I can find your address too on the database. Now I know where you live right through that I can find out who you live with you. So this all databases exist in the world and it starts with the telephone number. Now it can also start with the email address, too. But email address is something that you don't give out. Like, you don't go to a club and you say, hey man, take my email address, right? You don't meet with a friend and say, hey, take my email. You give them telephone number. If you meet someone, you go on Uber, you don't give them like, obviously you give them an email, but telephone number is the one thing that you give to everyone. You go for cash points, you walk into Harrods and you say, okay, we have a point system, I'll give you my telephone number. So these are the things that I personally believe. The telephone number is our identifier. That's our identity.

That's quite scary, isn't it? But I didn't realize people could find so much about me by just having my phone number. I think I'm going to have to go through my contacts a bit later on.

Yeah, but the funny part is it may be out of yours. So your doctor may get breached and the telephone number is out, right? Like, what do you do about it? You can file like in US we have this, which is every week, it may be involuntarily that you give your telephone number to someone because there's another option. Like you go to an airport and they ask your telephone number. You have no other option. You have to give your telephone number. Either you fly, you don't fly. It's like shot, right? You don't take it, you don't fly.

Yeah. And we've seen in the UK, British Airways, massive data breach. Phone number is included. So someone can hold a phone number, they know when you've flown, who you've flown with, when you were out of the country, when you came back, and like you said Haseeb using that and other information available related to that, it becomes a very big invasion into someone's actual personal life.

What's he going to find?

Think about this. Right? But that's how things work out with privacy. We care about privacy and that's the most private thing in our life.

That's a good question. Would I rather give a stranger my house key for an hour or my phone password for an hour? I don't know both of them are making me squirm

But if you have choice, like someone is holding a gun to her head, give me one thing. What would you give? The house key? Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying, right? You say, okay, think about it. House is expensive cell phone is probably a few hundred pounds, but at the same time, that has more information on that.

One reveals more about you intimately, yes absolutely.

What about you Jamal?

Take everything, my house key, everything. Take my phone, take everything. So how does your solution actually protect against all of that?

So not against everything, right? We say we are a doctor, right? But we're not doctor for everything. Privacy, I think, is very complicated in the world because the challenge, even with us, is that we have to rely on third party partners. You may need a package to deliver to FedEx. So I have to literally put in the mail and it has to go to you. So even if I don't get breached, FedEx may get breached. I use a merchant process for taking your card and maybe I don't get breached, but they get breached. So it's very difficult. What we say is that even if you get breached, we will secure you. So we just say no one can get into your phone without your permission, so no one can hack your number. So our main proposition was we are like T Mobile. T mobile exists in the UK, right? Correct.

We have EE which is the kind of brand of T Mobile in the UK.

Okay, so EE or three. I think three exist, right? Three or orange. Think about we are the first class for orange. That's the easiest way for it. We are basically like saying, so no one in the store can access that information. No one can make changes other than that anyone who is in store can make changes to your account. So if you're an orange customer, any person who works in the store can make any changes to your account. Like how terrifying this is.

Just for clarity, is Efani or the solution you speak about actually a network provider?

So we have something called virtual networks. We basically sit on top of this network. So even in the UK you may go to a store and you'll find thousands of brands of mobile services and they are just relabelled. So we sit on top of existing networks. So if you launch in UK, it will be maybe an orange or something. But we are on security. A very simple way about this is like if we bulletproof your car, so we sit on top of your existing car, like a Brabus or AMG, you would just add security on top.

So regardless of who the carrier is, you come in and you bolster that with the security. So you're adding like the bullet proofness to the vehicle?

Correct.

And if somebody wants to kind of bulletproof their phone or bulletproof their mobile plan with your services, how do they get in touch and is available? People on the US can, can people in the UK and other parts of the world access it? Who do you sell to?

The US is where our privacy market is like. You know, we do work with the UK. The problem is the UK is such a small market and cell phone plans are very cheap in the UK, so economics do not work for us. Like, you know, people buy it for like £10, £5 and it's very difficult for us. And then frankly, I'm also Canadian and I will say that, hey man, US is such a big country that you cover one state, you cover entire Europe. We do have plans for UK, but not yet. One day, hopefully. But right now we only focus on US. We have people who use our cell phone while living in the UK, but with a US number.

Got it. Does it work with any handset? So I can have an iPhone or Samsung and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Like in the US we have some devices which are not allowed, but they are like the device you will not use. Like in the US we don't have 3G anymore. The device has to be 4G compatible, and then we have some restrictions. Like Huawei phones are not allowed in the US. Some Chinese manufacturer phones are not allowed, but anything that under the sun, basically, which is allowed, like Samsung, any major brand, that all works for us.

Let me ask you a question. So you have lots of different companies, you've got this technology company, you've got the AT, network and on your teams you're hiring privacy engineers and privacy professionals. What three things do you look for when you're hiring privacy people into your organizations?

I think first of all, I built an ATM company, we sold it, so it's not mine anymore. It belongs to the new owner. So I work closely on this. So our decision in hiring is pretty much the same across anyone should hire and I'm constantly learning at a job I'm not perfect. They're two, attitude and skills, right? Like how much can I trust this person? And it has the ability to do so. It's very complicated. You may find a person is very sharp and privacy engineers are very complicated and goes with the security engineers as well. You don't know unless they screw up. So if I have a security guy, everything is fine. I don't know if it's because he's good or it's just because he never came across an incident.

When you're taking that risk of hiring somebody, how do you then understand the competencies and how do you also understand the attitude? So you say you look for attitudes and you look for skills. And I'm sure when it comes to skills, do you look for like certifications or things like that?

No certification at all. I will give you an example about what people are interested in. So GitHub is one of the easiest way to look at. So if you want to hire privacy engineer, I'll go to privacy meet up in a city because people who came to that meetup are basically who are interested in privacy beyond their job too. So that is something that they may and then find the people who are not working in privacy, but they're interested in privacy, that's the thing. So they want to do a career change. They are not happy with their current job, but they want to get in privacy and then follow up the people who are interested. And that's how I'll approach those people if I have to hire. People who work on the stuff even though they don't get paid, are the people who are the best one.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. And in terms of attitude, what do you look for specifically in someone's attitude?

I think it's pretty simple. They say every company culture, some companies are like sales culture, so they should focus on who can be very he can close deals a lot. Like in our companies, we don't have those kind of quota. So every company has different culture and there's nothing wrong and right, but in our case it's okay. Our goal should be to help our clients as much as possible. So attitude is, is this person able to talk to a customer for 3 hours without getting anything in return? And there's a very famous thing about someone set up a relationship. If you want to marry someone, get an Ikea table and try to fix it together and by the end of that day, you'll see if this person is the right fit for you or not.

Me and my housemate have done that and there's a massive hammer hole in the side of my TV unit.

Yeah. So you will see, right, like if you fix like a table of Ikea for like 2 hours, you'll figure out if this person can work with me or not.

That should be what you should do in all your job interviews. Now, Jamal, when you're hiring for the.

Team, I think we definitely should we should say, okay, come to the office. We're going to build this piece of furniture together.

And you'll figure out everything, like what's the leadership skill? How much can you pick up from the stuff? How would he approach the problem? So within 2 hours, you'll get a perfect put an ad on Craigslist or whatever. We accept fit people’s furniture.

Interesting. I think hiring managers should take that tip on board.

I like your attitude towards hiring. I say it doesn't matter what someone CV says. It doesn't matter what a certification they have. You want to find people who are actually doing it and whether they have a career, they're looking to do it. You look for the people who are actually hands on doing this stuff, want to do it. And therefore you find the people who are passionate and inspired. And what you look for from the attitude point of view is people who are actually willing to help your customers to fulfil your company vision. Does that sound about right?

100%. Also about like, I'll give example, like, I want to sing, but my voice is nowhere to go to and I don't want to put an effort to do that. You know, I want to have a guitar. I bought a guitar, but I may go to a guitar lesson, but I may not be interested in that. I just go to school. So a lot of times it's all about how consistent can you do over time? And that's why I said if you meet someone in privacy for like four weeks, chat about him. Don't tell me what you do, just tell him about the projects. Frankly, if you hire five or six people good in your company, that will build your entire company.

Yeah. Would you agree with that, Jamal?

Yeah. I mean, look at the team we have around us, right? We have a very small high powered team and we're achieving great things. Haseeb, It's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

Thank you Same Jamal and Jamilla.

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