Only one person can save you from a life-altering disaster

In the midst of all the furor over artificial intelligence and whether or not we'll wake up soon and have a Terminator standing over us, there's a specific part of the cybersecurity conversation that keeps nagging at me.

We are told, urged, reminded, nudged, shouted at, forced to, and even shamed to protect ourselves. It's the top inescapable communication demand of our era.

Use better passwords. Turn on two-factor authentication. Learn how to tell when a link is not what it seems to be. Don't click the bad link. Freeze your credit. Watch your bank account. Don't trust anyone with your information and stop answering the damn phone when it spits out the word "Unlisted".

OK. Fine. Good suggestions. Don't sit there picking and choosing. Do ALL of it. Right now.

I'll wait.

Now, here comes the hard part.

What happens when somebody else has your information?

Your employer has your Social Security number. The payroll company has your bank information. Your health insurer has all of your medical information back to the moment of conception. Your bank has your financial information. That credit bureau has a frighteningly detailed picture of your financial life.

Having to provide all this information to all these people in order to live an everyday existence, you do not get to say, “I'd rather you didn't have that.”

Oh no. Don't even think about it.

Because whether you like it or not, sometimes the choice is simple: Give us the information or don't get the job. You don't get a house, a car, a ticket on a commercial airliner, the money you earn on time, or even the ability to pay for that drive-thru coffee and cruller.

Medium size, two pumps of caramel and skim milk for me, please.

You? You'll get nothing and like it.

Now, put this into perspective with what happened recently.

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The FBI is investigating claims that hackers breached its jobs portal and obtained sensitive information involving employees and applicants. The FBI has not confirmed the full scope of the alleged breach, and the investigation is ongoing, but portions of the sample data released by the hackers have been independently verified.

It's already out there. The fear is more than just financial, it's that the bad actors will use what data they gain to put lives at risk. Perhaps even use it as revenge, or perhaps sell it to the highest bidders that see America, and her agents, as an enemy.

It's a frightening reality. However, it's only one small part of where your narrative, your reputation, your brand can go off the rails without you even knowing it.

Now we also have to deal with a runaway AI.

OpenAI has reportedly shelved the planned release of GPT-6.1 Astra after internal testing found problems involving deceptive behavior and the model's ability to stay within authorized boundaries. OpenAI itself has already acknowledged that its increasingly capable models can create serious cybersecurity risks.

Massive data breaches that neither the employer or the employee can control.

Equifax: about 147 million people affected.

Capital One: about 106 million.

Change Healthcare: approximately 192.7 million.

These aren't just abstract numbers. These are real people. Real lives being altered, perhaps forever. Personal and professional narratives that are potentially being destroyed. Information that isn't merely sitting in some hard drive anymore. It can become fuel for identity theft, fraud, targeted scams, impersonation and worse.

So what are YOU supposed to do? More to the point, what can you do?

You have to take charge of the situation. You have to become ruthless in protecting your life and livelihood. You must knuckle down, protect and control your narrative in every way you possible can.

Freeze your credit. Use multi-factor authentication (MFA). Stop using passwords that a 6-year old can figure out. Get on-line and use those dancing fingers to monitor your credit. Head for the IRS and Social Security websites and create an Identity Protection PIN. Stop ignoring those breach notifications piling up in your Inbox.

Be aggressive. Take it as a challenge, because no one else has as much at stake in you, than you.

Which drops us at a very uncomfortable truth: You cannot personally secure any of the information you provide to legitimate third-parties.

You can't audit its vendors, be certain that old records were deleted, or have any warning whether somebody has connected an AI system to information it shouldn't have.

That's why companies have to stop treating cybersecurity as an IT expense and start treating it as a responsibility to the human beings whose information they've collected. There are companies at the moment that have their team take a different cybersecurity course every single month, and it is graded. They, and anyone else who has even a sliver of your personal data in their servers, must make it a priority to protect every morsel.

Any lack of concern over the theft of your identity, your narrative, indicates a company, firm, association or group as small as a bowling team, doesn't give a damn about your success or failure, your present or your future.

The FTC tells businesses to collect only what they need, restrict access, protect the information and dispose of it securely. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) privacy and cybersecurity frameworks make the same basic points: minimize data, control access, protect it and know what you're doing with it.

Pay attention to the narrative of the company that could be jeopardized, and more important, the narrative that could make a permanent and perhaps unwanted narrative.

Sounds simple, but it's not. Neither is the alternative. Because once your information gets loose, you don't get to rewrite the story. Somebody else is holding pieces of your life.

That's when Control the Narrative becomes much bigger than a social-media lesson.

It's about asking: Who has my information? Why do they have it? Who else has access?

And what are they doing to protect me? Because they do have a responsibility to protect you.

If they can't answer those questions, maybe the next question shouldn't be about their technology.

Maybe it should be about their responsibility. If it still leaves you wondering if you can trust them to take the proper steps, then as noted earlier, maybe it's time to find a new gig, bank, loan company, whatever or whomever it might be, and move on.

Don't wait for the shocker to find your information is out there for the taking, because chances are, it already is.

And the bad actors are counting on you not being alarmed in the least.

Be dangerously intelligent. Control the Narrative™.