Hack Your Dog: Dog Training, Communication When There is No Common Language

good afternoon welcome back to besides dfw my name is jason kohler and i'm giving your two o'clock slot on track one for a talk about hacking your dog basically some things i've learned with dog training and some parallels and ways to apply lessons and dog training to cyber and information security hope you all enjoy it so let's get kicked off this is a picture of gwendolyn my little corgi puppy um about me i grew up with dogs had dogs at home basically all my life growing up gwendolyn is my first dog since i've moved out of my parents and went to college and graduated all that so it's been a learning experience even more so back you know growing up

as a kid i didn't you know take care of the puppy and do all the puppy training that was kind of what my parents did so i've kind of had to learn and figure that all out on my own gwendolyn is a pembroke corgi she was born march 1st this year and she came home with me on may 2nd her mother's maiden name is foxy and dogs don't have social security numbers so you can't impersonate her or steal her identity uh let's go over what we're gonna be talking about today here's another wonderful picture of gwendolyn uh we're gonna talk about preparation what you do for bringing your dog home getting the house ready beforehand the

actual process of bringing your dog home we'll touch a little bit about how you travel with the dog safely we'll talk about dogs and their access to the house and how access applies in cyber security talk about building routines and why that's super important for dogs their training their socialization that is you know how they interact with the rest of the world and where to get help when you need it and something that's applicable to everyone's personal lives and information security disaster recovery and what you do with that so let's go and get started some key principles with dogs it's important to know that dogs are descendants of wolves basically um they are genetically wired for pack

life uh in the wilds and they're really not built for this kind of urban jungle pavement reality that we've built the world around us for and so because that you can't expect them to know how to function in the society we've created we have to teach them how things work not too dissimilar to human children human children don't naturally work well in the society we've built we have to train them and teach them how to be functional members one of the big things with dog training take into account is dogs don't speak english i s well i kind of speak english i can do a little bit of writing as well i don't speak other human languages and

neither do dogs and so because of that you can't just talk to them well you can but their understanding is going to be incredibly limited if you think about how long it takes for a human adult to learn a new language you know multiple years to be fluent you think about how long it takes a human child to learn their native language definitely multiple years and then extrapolate that to a dog that doesn't have the same kind of brain we do or the same biology and so they're not going to be able to understand what you're saying for a long time they'll pick up patterns and they can recognize simple words and phrases but you have to do a lot of

reinforcement with that and there's a lot of training to get just those words or phrases they're not going to understand any complex words or explanations you can't sit talk sit dog down and tell the dog you know i'm busy let me do this other thing and then we'll go do whatever it is the dog wants to do that they don't have that capacity for understanding and so it's important to take that into account when working with the dog the whole fundamental part of dog training is going to be building the relationship with the dog which can be a challenge with the language barrier but it can be done and many people have done it well in the

past and in the same way with cyber security you can't do it on your own you need to build relationships and get buy-in and get people to help you because you can't do it all yourself and the big thing about relationships is it's a two-way street right um you there's no way you can build a relationship with a dog just by getting it to do everything you want it to do and not do what the dog wants from time to time there's got to be that balance and you're going to have to find that balance with the in cyber security as well and that's where risk appetites and things like that come in you got to determine what the business

is comfortable with and what your willing to do to to get to where you want to go because there's no such thing as perfection and it's all about balance all right let's talk about some preparation before you get your dog you need to know what your training goals are and what your behavior goals are do you want the dog to walk perfectly on the leash all the time is that super important to you for me where i live and how i live not so much um i live in an apartment so barking is a big concern for me i'm working with training gwendolyn so that she doesn't bark all the time non-stop she's pretty good about it

we still have times where the amazon delivery driver comes up and there's a lot of barking there but we're working on it and so you have to decide what's really important and you'll find the same thing in cyber security as well some things just aren't as important to whatever organization or company you're working with and you need to find the balance of is it really important and they just don't know enough and you need to help educate them and convince them or is it just something that we can kind of this is how the culture is and this is the best we can do for now so deciding what you're okay with and what you're not

is uh super important and then also no plan you make is going to work 100 uh they say no plan survives first contact with the enemy so semper gumpy stay flexible all right when you bring your puppy home over stimulation can be a huge problem for them that includes smells sounds sights things to look at and all that so you want to limit the exposure initially when you go to pick up the puppy bring someone with you and that person is going to be your driver you'll be the one holding the dog and primarily the primary reason for that is is bonding when i went to pick up gwendolyn i had someone drive to oklahoma with me and drive us back

and so that five hours on the trip uh i had that contact with gwendolyn and that really helped with the bonding long term she took to me within hours of getting home and and the bonding that i was concerned would take several weeks to to occur was rapidly accelerated by that i believe and we were best friends in a day for a small puppy you're gonna most likely hold them for a larger dog or an adult dog it's best to have them in a crate or a seat belt harness and we'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide when we get into travel for puppy it's it's super important to make lots of stops

remember they're not potty trained yet and so every 45 minutes to an hour you're going to need to stop and let them out let them walk around and stretch car sickness can be a problem with a lot of dogs so make sure you take that into account and that's why i have the last bullet there bring lots of towels because a puppy may have accidents an adult may adult dog may have accidents just due to car sickness uncomfortableness fear can be an issue you're looking at uh most likely this is the first time you'll have met that dog or at the very least the first time you'll be one-on-one with them and so you're going to take that into account

with them as well so make sure you bring plenty of towels for for clean up and preventative cleanup so for travel it's really important that you secure your dog when you're traveling there are two two most common ways people die in a car accident is either be by becoming the projectile themselves uh when the car rapidly veers off course or changes direction or comes to a sudden stop or they are struck by a projectile and so in this case we don't want our dogs to become projectiles both for their safety and for ours and so it's important to have a way to secure your dog and there's several ways to do this seatbelts are designed for human

ergonomics so they're not going to work as well for a dog you can secure a crate in one of the back seats or the the cargo area of the vehicle and keep the dog in there what i've chosen to do is use a seat belt harness and my primary reason for that is so gwendolyn can ride up in the front with me she sits on my little passenger seat she's my little co-pilot and so she straps into her harness and the harness clips into the seat belt so she's nice and secure and that's helped a couple of times where i've had to stop very suddenly it helps keep her in her seat and keep her safe and then helps

keep me safe as a nice byproduct all right let's talk about access when you get your dog home you don't want to give them access to the whole house all at once and there's multiple reasons for that um chewing and potty training are the primary ones bonding and socialization are nice benefits essentially the dog for the first week or so you want to keep really close eye on your puppy to make sure they don't make a mess in the house that so they don't go you know poop or pee in your house the idea is you want to keep an eye on them constantly and so if they start to you pick them up and take

them outside right away and you can't do that if you're not watching them and you can't watch them if they're not in a confined space so start with a portion of a room not even the whole room but a portion of a room and that's their space that they get to occupy and you can do a lot of things to help prevent messes and that can be mats you can refine space with gates baby gates work fantastic for doorways there's also specialized play pens for dogs that you can get various retailers once you're comfortable with the dog is uh getting close to body trained you can expand to the entire room but definitely still keep an eye on them

and then you can slowly add new rooms or parts of new rooms as you and the dog become more comfortable with each other and this has worked really well for us so for gwendolyn we started off with a little playpen that took up a portion of my living room on top of a waterproof mat she stayed in there for a couple of days and then she got access to most of the living room then uh about a month or two later expanded to the whole living room in the last uh last month or two i gave her access to the dining room and she's been a huge fan of that because now she can watch me in the

kitchen while i'm cooking and getting her her food being a corgi a a herding dog she loves to know where everyone is at all times and so even if she's sleeping she likes to be in the same room where she can keep an eye on me so there's a lot of parallels there in cyber security we call this principle of least privilege and the idea is you only give users access to what they absolutely need to do their jobs they don't need very few people need local admin on their computers there are lots of tools these days that'll let users do the installations they need and the monitoring they need without having local admin even so far as system admins now we have

ways of separating those out and it's important to apply these principles to yourself as well because if you're not using a local admin or domain admin on a day-to-day basis you can't accidentally mess something up if you don't have the privileges to mess it up and if malware somehow gets on your machine the malware can't use your user privileges to do admin work if you don't have admin privileges so that's super important to keep those separated best practice these days is have a standard user for your day-to-day work and then you escalate your privileges as you need them when you need them so very similar to the dogs you don't give them access to everything because they

can't mess up things they don't have access to all right let's talk about routines building routines with your puppy is super important because they they thrive on that they they know what to expect and so gwendolyn and i have a routine we get up every morning between 5 and 5 30. we go for a walk for an hour she gets to smell around and check out the neighborhood make sure everything's safe that helps her calm down and be super chill during the day while i'm at work she gets breakfast as soon as we come back in from the walk we go for two more walks throughout the day usually between 10 and 11 and another one between two and three

and then between 4 30 or 5 is when we start going outside for another hour walk and that gives her time to get her exercise and get stretched out bedtime's at 9 30 and we start by turning the lights down and uh having dinner when we come in from that previous walk from there she knows that when the lights go down it's about time for bedtime and most nights all i have to do is look at her and say gwendolyn it's bedtime and she'll get up and she'll walk up to her crate and she'll lay down and go to sleep and that routine is pretty ingrained in her and it makes things a lot easier uh on the note

i highly recommend crate training your dogs having a place where you know that they are safe makes it a lot easier for you to focus on the human things that you have to do throughout the day that the dog doesn't understand gwendolyn doesn't understand that during the day while she's napping that i'm at work making money so we can pay rent and buy food that the concept means nothing to a dog and that goes back to the language barrier we were talking about before and so having these routines and training makes that easier for us humans to do our human things that are required for human life so the dog can just be a dog and

not have to worry about these things when you first get your dog one of the important routines in cycles that you want to look for is to get ready to get crate trained is when they're indoors for the most part they're in their crate and that may sound cruel but as a puppy they're sleeping most of the time anyway so it's really not that big a deal they'll just sleep in their crate and this is how we did it with how i did it with gwendolyn gwendolyn's in her crate she wakes up and it's time to go out so we put her harness on put her collar on and we go outside right away for the first

couple days she didn't even touch the carpet on the floor i picked her up by the crate we went outside my shoes were already on everything was ready to go we go outside 10 to 15 minutes depending on the age of the dog and then we come back inside for some supervised play time and that is active supervised play time as in i'm there with the toy playing with her and my attention is 100 focused on the dog and good rule of thumb estimate is five minutes per month of the age of the dog so when i got gwen she was about two months so it's been about 10 minutes playing we'll go outside one quick outside again

real quick make sure she's got everything taken care of and then we come inside go back in the crate and then she would pass out and go to sleep instantly for another couple hours and so we do that four to six times a day initially and she was a happy camper and got used to that and that's the quickest way to potty train them because when they're in the crate they have limited space and the dog knows not to not to potty in the crate because they don't want to sit in their own mess and so it's really important that you size your carry properly so they don't have enough room to make a mess and then

hang out on the other side we got a we got a um oh i don't even remember the technical term is it but it's a gate and it's got a removable wall inside it so when we started she only had access to the space that she needed for her size and as she grew we were able to move that wall so she had the right amount of space and this was great for potty training she had it down basically in a week um and we only had an accident every man every two to three four weeks after that and she was good to go in a month or two so this technique works really well

when it comes to routines and play time it's important to make sure your dog has enough exercise the mantra is a tired dog is a good dog and the idea is i can see a difference in gwen when i don't take her for that hour-long walk every morning misbehave i don't think is the right term but she doesn't she doesn't make it easy for me to do the human things i need to do it's a challenge for me to focus at work fortunate enough to be working at home still there's there's more barking there's more attempts to getting my attention but when we go for the full walk she's nice and tired she sleeps throughout the

day and we're good to go so it's important to make sure they get their exercise for that as well routines are important in cyber security as well most of us work in teams or with teams and it's important to communicate what you're doing and what your team is doing and so that translates to daily or weekly stand-ups depending on the size of your team and what you're working on and it's important to have a regular schedule for updating your higher-ups and that's going to vary from team to team and from supervisor to supervisor depending on what they need and what they want some supervisors are going to want daily updates some are going to want them

weekly or every other week or even once a month it really depends on the type of projects you're working on and the type of people you're working with and there's another parallel with dogs every dog is going to be different just like every person is going to be different and it's important to be flexible with that so that you can meet the needs of the ones you're working with annual re-certifications be it for access or your annual pen test those kind of things those are routine as well and then the annual cpes don't forget to do those don't lose your certifications um this counts as cps i think right isaac i don't know we'll find out later

all right let's talk a little bit about training for dog training it's important not to over train your dog they will burn out and so their good rule of thumb is ten minute minutes per month of age and so when i got gwendolyn she was two months we'd spend about 20 minutes a day during doing training and that can be broken up and spread out so you can do five minutes in the morning 10 minutes at lunch and then five minutes the evening but that's a good rule of thumb for the day let's see clickers okay clickers are fantastic you may have seen these on youtube or other dog shows but it's basically just a little device that's

got a button on it and you click it and it makes a very distinctive sound and what you do is basically you pavlov your dog you train the dog that every time the click happens food's coming and so for the first oh month or two i fed gwen by hand and every time she got a piece of kibble she we got a click and she got that associated really well and then what you can do is you can use that because the clicker's small enough and reusable so you can have it on your person at all times whereas treats you run out eventually if you're not restocking this gives the the dog the positive feedback they associate the clicker with

food and you can help get them trained faster that way the other mantra here is a hungry dog is an obedient dog this does not mean starve your dog this means plan your training time accordingly so you're going to feed your dog depending on your dog two to three times a day and so right before meal time is a great time to do training because that's when they're hungry they'll be super focused and super dialed in so the best way to do training is pick the thing you're gonna do break it down into your simplest steps you can and teach them one step at a time and so let's start with sit what you're gonna

do for sit is you're gonna take the treat and you put the treat on their nose okay that's a good start now give the dog a treat do that a couple times and then you're gonna push it back so the dog looks up right so the dog will follow the tree and look up give the dog a treat that's your next step do this for a while then you're going to do it a little further where the treat goes back over the nose until they can't look up anymore because their neck hits their back and then they're forced to sit and keep looking back up to get their treat and that's how you start with sit

you don't use the word sit you don't say anything all you do is the motion and the dog will follow the treat and you start with these these high value treats things that smell really good uh liver chicken things like that and over time you integrate the lower values treats and you do maybe three high value treats and low value treats and then you do two high value treats and two low value treats until you're just graduated the low value tree and then you can start incorporating the verbal and the hand signs once the dog is fully familiar with the the motion that they'll be doing and so you teach the motion for the the action you want them to do and you

follow that up with a verbal command to associate with after and that goes back to the dogs don't understand english or human language but they understand action and they understand motion they understand doing because that's what they do right they go out they run around they do things and so you can teach them that from there we take it a step further now that we're going to sit we can go to lay down and from there you put the treat between their feet until they put their head down and they go for it this can the challenge i faced with gwendolyn being a long corgi she also has a long neck and so because she's got

a long neck and short little stubby legs when we try to do down and lay down she just puts her neck down and her nose touches the floor while her while her legs are straight can you imagine that that's like way more flexible than i am i can you know barely touch my toes sometimes much less put my nose on the ground but it was second nature to her because she's super flexible and so what we came to doing was working with the trainer and um the trainer would basically hold the dog hold gwen's back hindquarters in place i would put the treat on the ground and then pull it out and so the idea is she couldn't move her

back half so she get drawn forward and into the down and you wait till those elbows touch the ground and then you give them the treat and you're good to go and now your dog knows down and you do that repeatedly and you build the motions and the action of the habit and then you start introducing the command down and then we and to the point where now i don't need a treat i just point at the ground she'll walk up to me she'll sit and then she'll lay down and look up at me and it's fantastic another great command is look i use the word focus with gwendolyn and i've incorporated the hand sign like

like this and so yeah and so the treat goes in my hand she's watching the treat and i put it here and i wait for the eye contact and then she gets the treat and we do that multiple times and then eventually incorporate the verbal and it's fantastic i can get her attention just about anywhere we're still working on some places uh but even at the dog park when she's playing with other dogs i can tell her gwendolyn focus and she'll sit down and zone right in on me it works fantastic training in cyber security um super important i'm obviously way more into my dog than i am with training i love training certifications are

fantastic conferences like this are fantastic great ways to get knowledge from other people but don't forget your tools and your platforms and systems use if you use service now in your organization and you use it a lot for your work it might be worth putting some time into getting some of their training and their certifications other tools like cyber arc or i'm blanking any kind of linux or windows cisco it's good to have that training and know the ins and outs of the devices and platforms you're working with it's also super important to not negate open source training and so that can be done in multiple ways blogs that other people have written recorded conference talks like this one

will be eventually and things like that i've had multiple situations where i get called into a client to build a thing that i you know i know what the thing is i've read about it but i'm not an expert well because of open source learning i can go read a bunch of articles real quick i can check out vendor documentation and i can watch recorded conference talks and i can become an expert on just about anything pretty quickly through that training if you happen to be in a leadership position don't forget to train for your team make sure there's budget for them get them going to training build your team i heard this fantastic quote once like

what if we spend all this money on training our people and they leave us and then the follow up was well what if we don't and they stay it's uh it's better to it's better to have your people trained and build the expertise within your team all right let's talk about socialization this is super important for dogs but there's a lot of conflicting opinions from experts out there socialization for your dog is important for many reasons primarily so they know how to behave in public we talked about earlier about how this world that us humans have created is not exactly nowhere near the same as the wild that this animal is genetically built to be a pack animal for

and so it's important to get them exposed to these things so they can get used to it in the same way that we do with humans right we want little humans to grow up to be well socialized and functional members of society and so little gwendolyn first thing i did when i got her we went to lunch at lazy dog and she got to experience being in a place with other humans with other dogs and learning to to um function and behave and be well-mannered and she is pretty well-mannered and that's mainly because i spent so much effort getting her socialized conflicting opinions from experts so all the dog trainers i talk to say get them out and socialized as soon

as possible take them to dog parks meet other dogs meet other people go to crowded places uh expose them to as many things as you can so they're not surprising later apparently there's something that something in their brains that i've been told clicks at about 14 weeks of age and it makes it harder for them to adapt to new things how true this is scientifically i don't know this is just what i've been told [Music] so but veterinarians will tell you don't take your dog out until they've had all their shots well that doesn't happen until after 14 weeks and so you've got two sets of conflicting advice one says get your dog socialized so they can behave because the number

one reason that dogs are surrounded surrendered to shelters is behavioral issues and socialization issues but then you've got the health experts saying not until you've had all your shots and so you've got to decide what you want to do i can't tell you what to do i'll tell you what i did i kind of compromised there and gwendolyn would only go out with me to places where i knew i could control the environment so she would only be socialized with other dogs who i knew had all their shots from owners that i trusted or we go to places where they're only people and that worked out pretty well i can't i'm not a dog expert i can only tell you

what i've learned this is what's worked for me um yeah so choose wisely this means a lot of things in cyber security so essentially building trust is what socialization is for within cyber and information security you've got you've got to be able to sell these ideas to people who don't already do them change is always hard and in cyber security and information security we're often asking people to change what they do and how they do it and that can be a challenge people are often set in their ways change is never easy but if you build that trust and build those relationships with those people that can make convincing them and working to get there

a lot easier empathy is going to get you further than any other skill that i can think of in that area being able to to connect with these people learn what's important to them and find how we can adapt security to work for them while still keeping organizations secure this also extends outside your organization i've had multiple situations where i needed a device advice on a specific topic that i wasn't quite connected internally enough at that point in time to say you know know who to go speak with but i've been able to speak with members of the community that were outside the organization to get advice of course don't violate your ndas you know find

good ways to communicate and not expose your not expose your assets like that all right let's talk about getting help um i did not come up with all this information myself i am not all-knowing uh i got a lot of help with training gwendolyn i listened to a lot of podcasts i watched a lot of youtube i read a lot of books on dog training and so that's how we get good at anything right is going outside of ourselves to get help to learn things find yourself a good veterinarian lean on them for advice we've got a fantastic one hit me up if you want to know who we're working with they've got gwen on a fantastic diet

that's worked really well they take good care of her get her all her shots and all her meds a lot of things i didn't even think about like heartworm and flea meds which i didn't realize puppies needed but they absolutely do i thought that was only an older dog thing so there's lots of things that you can get help with medically that way look into doggy daycare and boarding for your dogs preferably before you need it because that will make it a lot easier when the time comes to get your dog taken care of yeah get them used to friends get them socialized with that so that if you need friends and watch your dog you're good

to go so don't be afraid to ask for help especially for things you're not an expert on and this translates perfectly into cyber security and information security because the field is so broad no one can be an expert in everything i'd go so far as to argue that except for the smallest of niches people can't even be experts in their own speciality just because there's so much knowledge and information and experience to be gained there if you're in leadership build that build that knowledge and experience in your team you can do this through hiring back to the training we were talking about before um lean on external resources we can't do any of this by ourselves

and again be sure to look outside your organization as well because if one organization had all the answers no one would be in the news all right disaster recovery uh this is a infosec cyber term uh i'm applying it to dogs so this is kind of a situation where i'm taking what i know in cybersecurity and i'm applying it to my dog instead whereas most this other stuff was things with dogs that you can apply to cyber security and so you do some analysis right what disasters is your area prone to well here in texas um the the power outages in the summer and apparently winter now is not uncommon uh we are prone to tornadoes and things

of that nature so what would i need to do to take care of my dog if one of those hit my area so we've got hard copies of the veterinarian records so i have all her shot records if i need to take her somewhere and get her boarded we're good to go i've got a list of hotels that are pet friendly both locally in the area and you know a couple cities over tornadoes are typically very localized disasters so i don't have to worry about whole regional things like hurricane prone areas do or earthquake prone areas so depending on where you live you're going to need to take that into account while you're looking at hotels be sure

to look for breed and size restrictions a lot of places don't take pit bulls or other breeds that are unfortunately considered aggressive i personally disagree with that i've known a lot of pitbulls they've all been fantastic but maybe i've just been lucky what do i know right also look for size restrictions um some have a size limit no dogs over 40 pounds no dogs over 60 pounds it varies so know what those are before you go so you don't get surprised and build that relationship with your pet trainer and any border you might be using so that if an emergency happens both either a disaster family emergency could be anything and you need a place

for your dog to stay for a couple of days or a week even while you have to go take care of something if you already have that established relationship typically even if they're full and booked they will find a way to work you in they will find a way to take care of you

all right same principles in cyber information security uh what disaster is your area prone to is your company small enough that you only need to worry about localized disasters if you're a global company you need to make you may need to look at other failover scenarios make sure your data is backed up properly make sure you test your backup so that you know it's backed up properly can your team work remotely if they can't what have you been doing for the last 18 months test your vpns test your access make sure things work when you're not in the office i'm kind of hoping everyone at this point in the pandemic has got that part squared away

be sure you test your your your bus scenario if any individual on your team got hit by a bus could your team continue to function test this scenario make sure your your team is taking their time off right make sure you can function while they're on vacation maybe surprise somebody with a forced vacation just make sure your systems work all right so in conclusion we've talked about preparation for your dog how to bring your dog home we've gone over access and routines and training socialization why it's important and why you need to make your own decisions on that how and where to get some help with your dog and in cyber security and disaster recovery

so with that we'll move on to questions if you want to see more pictures of gwendolyn she's got an instagram because of course she does and if you want to talk to me well i'm on socials as well so however you want to roll with it let's see what we've got i'm not seeing anything you see anything nope all right quiet bunch of days everybody at lunch okay all right well that's fine with me because lunch just got here and i am hungry all right well that's all uh thank you for those of you that watch the stream and anyone who watched the recording afterwards hit me up with any questions you got more than happy to talk about dogs or

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