Hello everyone and welcome to the third lesson of the teens cornerstone connections This is brought to you by the teens the teens class of the Nairobi central seventh-day Adventist Church and To the title of today's lesson is roads to the soul Our panelists include Ashley Sid and salmon and our wonderful teen teachers teacher Bridget and teacher John and and we're also going to be having some wonderful music from Amy So I hope that you're all going to enjoy and that you feel at the feet of Jesus. Thank you Happy happy Sabbath We are really glad to have you back here once again with us for our cornerstone connection lesson Today we're going to study lesson three which is entitled the roads to the soul now with me here I have Four panelists and I'd like each one of them to introduce themselves starting from my immediate right My name is said and I'll be taking you through into the story My name is Salmon and I'll be taking you through. What do you think and out of the story? My name is Ashley and I'll be taking you through the patriarchs and prophets and the flashlight. I Am joining I'll be guiding through the lesson And my name is Bridget and I'll also be among those participating today So I'd like to invite Salmon to start us off with an opening prayer Let's pray Our kind and loving father. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for helping us to have a good week Help us to study the lesson well in Jesus name friend. Believe. Amen. Amen Amen So our lesson today Which as I've said earlier is entitled roads to the soul Now one thing that we usually say in this life is that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach Now today, we're going to learn. What is the way to a human's soul? And so today's lesson as we'll be studying will we're going to see how Sin is the nature of sin and how seductive it is and what are the consequences of sin Not only during the times of the Israelites But the consequences that it had it has even on us today and it's a very very touchy topic I know we're going to touch on a couple of things that affect us in this day and age And so I'd like us to get right into the lesson to charge on All right. Thanks so much. She breeze it. So we'll dive straight into the lesson. But before we get there Let us to turn of bibles the book of James James chapter 4 verse 8 to 10. I'll just read it James 4 verse 8 to 10 it says Come close to God and God will come close to you. Wash your hands you sinners Purify your hearts for your loyalty is divided between God and the world verse 9 Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy will stand Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up in honor That's a very common verse. We've been hearing ever since with children No, come close to God and he'll come close to you humble yourself before God and lift you up Now someone take us through the what do you think section will have further insight as to what those two verses talk about? What do you think? Okay, so on what on the what do you think part? We're supposed to rank some items According to what course is major destruction to our relationship with God? So first is the most destructive and five is the least so the first one For me is media movies and music of worldly nature On this day and age movies are quite common Music artists visit schools all around and It's become More of the God we are worshipping because God expects us to spend time alone with him, but most of the times you're watching a movie You're listening to music All right, and what do you think will be the list? The list cost of destruction to relationship with God, which will you rank as a five out of those listed there? The example of key leaders who fall and are exposed to as hypocrites Okay, I'd say that the media movies and music of a worldly nature in pure entertainment Apathy and boredom the absence of good input can be clustered into one Because boredom leads to me looking for something to get me active or hyper. What would I do? I've got the media watch movies or listening to music and then Impure entertainment, that's why it comes in what's genre of music music do I listen to watch movies? Do I watch so this because they engage the mind first off they shut down the mind and therefore you have Stud information that you did not process So you make a disease you make decisions without processing information So because they're dealing with their mind and we worship God with our minds Then now there's nothing to worship God with yeah Yeah, I mean I have a testimony myself When I was in high school there was this pressure of reading what pad I don't know if you guys have heard of what pad Yeah, what pad used to be the in thing those days because you'd get easy access to books and Those books to be honest the content that was in them It's not something that would glorify God So you'd find yourself going to read because your friends are talking about a story and you're just floating So you want to be part of them? And so I ended up being among the people who you know got addicted to what pad and it was so serious To the extent that you know I started realizing that even the time I spend reading the word of God is just dwindling And even when I read the word of God, it just started becoming so boring It's not as addictive because you know in what part it leaves you in one chapter And then you you just want to read the next and then next and before you know it You've been there for five hours. You finished a whole book and you're like, oh my god I finished this book and in chemistry. I can't even finish one topic in 40 minutes so I think for me it really took a lot of you know prayer and a lot of Listening to the testimonies of others because you know even in our church community We had in school church community We had people who had gone through similar circumstances and you know, they slowly helped us, you know detoxify from all that However, the effects of that still remain Unfortunately because the brain is a very powerful tool. Yeah All right, thanks for being it and that begs the question Do you think that all this media and all these things that take our attention from the world from God? They make us start getting numb to sin Sid, what do you think? Does media and movies and music does it make us start seeing seen as a good thing? I I'd say yes because I don't I don't know if A lot of you feel this but when you watch a movie Then you're like, oh, I wanna do this. This looks cool You know you want to be that guy Yeah, you imitate them looking for maybe the popularity or the joy that you think they have by doing what they're doing and most of the time it takes They you out of yourself and you now become another totally different person whom you're not true And still on that Sid you can probably read for us. They did you know section? You see what the Bible says about all these moral values that we get from other media and stuff sit Did you know the Bible predicts warning? Moral values just before the coming of Christ Peryllus or dangerous times the dust Disintegration of the family unit lovers of money lovers of pleasure without self-control our world What pictures describing life in the 21st century? Sure, thank you for that So the Bible actually predicted how much Before the coming of Christ morality is going to you know deteriorate people are going to start Seeing seen is a good thing. You know, we've lost all sense of consciousness All right, and in our belief number 22 of the Adventist Church belief is Christian behavior and I'll just read it as it is what it says You know, we are called to be a godly people who think Feel and act in harmony with biblical principles in all aspects of personal and social life Now as Adventists, I tend to think we're like experts in double-leaving All right, we have this personality and with other Adventists and other personality other people and they know you So it comes to a point where if your friends at school or at work Meet with your friends at church and they start talking about you They're like, are you sure we're talking about the same person? But in our beliefs it actually calls for us to leave a Christian behavior and it actually recognizes that we have different cultures Let me just read that quote This means that our amusement and entertainment should meet the highest standards of Christian taste and beauty While recognizing cultural differences our dress is to be simple modest and neat Be fitting those whose true beauty does not consist of outward adornment But in the imperishable ornament of a gentle and quiet spirit Now there's always this excuse when someone does something in the world.  They were different culture and all that But by accepting Jesus Christ you forsake your culture You have all one culture now that is a Christian faith So we need to act and walk and talk and every single thing we do should be according to the Christian way of life Amen, and even as we continue Today as we're studying about sin and its effects the lesson actually compares Sin to leprosy. Yeah, and they say that when you look at someone who has just acquired leprosy It starts out very subtly. Yeah, maybe they just have headaches. Maybe some dizziness But as the months continue and progress then now you start having some, you know Lamps on the skin which will eventually erupt and then they start having now eventually at the The the severe most symptoms were now even you you're not able to feel like you become numb You're not able to sense pain so you can easily enjoy yourself And at least the common symptom that we know is that you know, they like their fingers fall off and such things And that's it is comparable to sin because sin starts out very subtly. Just you know, just one avenue was open They see then sin just came in slowly it came in one thing then slowly by slowly we become numb to its effect It's effect. Sorry. And then eventually we wonder how we got into that beat that we dug ourselves into Speaking of which I was reading Ellen right in Patrick's and prophets Think chapter 41 and she says that you know by the time a Christian comes to the point of committing crime He did not start that day The Christians slowly degenerated in thought and habit and in mind to the point of committing that sin And I just tried to think about it Think about as a child when you eat sugar in your mother's kitchen Do you do just to wake up and then run to the kitchen and eat sugar?  I'm how am I going to leave it the way I left it? And it's innocent. You're just a child but For your mother to detect maybe she'll see someone fetched it off the Bowl or she'll see one or two crumbs left on the surface But she's really need to look very carefully for how to see it how comes in you just a child How comes do you know to sin and to cover your chases? Yes, true. I mean We've covered it a lot in the previous lessons as well You know the aspect where we just let a single seed of darkness grow in you It's going to faster like leprosy. It's just explained and the symptoms are going to show up But by that time it's ready to too late in most cases And and that's why you realize that how God would deal with sin if there was anything that had been Shown or sown within that community. He would quickly wipe them out for most of them Although for others there was still room for repentance. So it's yeah true and actually speaking of God wiping out sin in a whole community the into the story and go into the story You can for those with the lesson the into the story section and it comes from the book of Numbers chapter 25 I was one to 18. I'll ask salmon to just summarize for us. What? Happens in this story today? Or you can just read a bit of it into the story. Let us know what what is happening here.  They would eat meals And then like The Lord's anger had burned against them So the Lord told Moses to take all the leaders of the people of the more bites and Kill them and expose them in broad daylight The Israelite man brought into the camp a million night woman right before the eyes of Moses and The whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting When Phineas the son of Elzea the son of Aaron the priest saw this He left the assembly. He took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent Then he killed both the man. He killed the man and the Midnight woman Then the God the Lord said to Moses Phineas The Son of Elzea the son of Aaron the priest has turned his anger away from the Israelite and since he was zealous for his honor among them as As I am I did not put an end to them in my zeal. Therefore I Therefore tell him I am making my covenant of peace with him He and his descendants will have a covenant of lasting priesthood Because he was zealous for the honor of his God and made atonement for the Israelite True. Thank you for that said In this story, I have picked two different aspects here, right? The way to digital talked about the Lord can destroy a whole community because of sin That is one and then again towards the end We see the Lord making a covenant with Phineas and blessing his whole generation through one person again Right now still on that scene actually read for us James chapter 4 verse 4 James 4 4 says Adaltras and adulteresses do you know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy with God What do you guys think about that? You want to become a friend of God if you become a friend of the world the Lord just distances himself from you Yeah, so I did some which is such on entertainment So entertainment Can be grouped as what we saw from the what do you think section all impurities? really entertainment is for Something you do like for laser something So entertainment the word tain enter is Quite clear your and and tain from some old Latin Means slavery So you are entering slavery so the devil is He's really a good Conning. Yeah, he's cunning so You think by watching a movie you're learning something, but then he's just friending you Putting you in slavery so that you're away from God so I Think we should be very careful with what we watch in essence. We would say that as much as yes, it's entering a yoke of bondage but It is pushing his agenda through media because that's where we learn about dress fashion how to behave and all these things we learn from and Recently I saw The game subway surface and I noticed that There'll be two colors are all over and you'd wonder why I'd wake up one morning and I'll support them, but Through the game I was playing or whatever it is. I was doing Yes, and so now it is in my brain. It is normal or rather comedy and you see a man dressed in our Dress and you think it's funny and you laugh tomorrow. You'll see a man on the street Working with Headscarf and address and you'll find and you think it's normal because you've been seeing it all this While so basically the devil is just trying to get us to rationalize sin and if you remember What happened so that the Israelites fell into this sexual immorality in the previous chapters in numbers In lesson two we talked about Balaam Right and how he lost on the great riches it been promised by King Balak because if you he was To cast his right did not refuse. He was unable to cast the Israelites. So later on what happened is Balam went back to the king and he told him that we cannot cast the Israelites But what I have realized is as long as the Israelites obey God and they're close to God He's always going to support them But what I can suggest we do is let us try and put the Israelites away from the Lord That's how the Lord will separate himself from them and we'll be able to conquer them And so Balam gave the idea that they should introduce this Midianite morbid women into the Israelite camp and that is what happened now If the Israelite leaders had guarded the avenues of their minds, do you think they would have fallen to this temptation? No No Yeah, so that is basically the main lesson you're picking from our lesson today Like we need to guard the avenues of our minds and what are the avenues of our minds? Someone can name some of them Said our minds basically you're watching movies and stuff even what we eat what we eat also here It actually affects a lot. Basically our five senses, you know, they're made to help us live life a better life You know, we enjoy life to the fullest as God wanted it to be but the devil is using the same five senses To just bring sin into our bodies Remember to a kids that these songs used to sing. Oh be careful. They'll feed where you go Or be careful little hands what you touch eyes what you see is what you hear This are the same five senses God gave us the same senses the devil is using to just bring sin into our bodies and into our lives And one thing I'm afraid of actually is that you know, the devil has been at work for so many years So he's quite experienced and because he's worked with so many human beings on this earth He knows each one's weak point. So he knows maybe like for Ashley for how it food So for John and eat something else So it's very scary to know that but at the same time we know that we have hope in Christ Jesus Because he's the one who can help us overcome and it reminds me of an incident that one of us was sharing just recently When we were discussing the lesson and they said that you know these days the devil even has avenues You're just looking through your phone and then pop an advertisement comes that you know, you're like, oh my God It's very embarrassing you in church and oh my God. What's happening? So the devil has his very subtle ways of you know getting to us But as we've said, we need to be very careful We need to have very high walls and guard all the avenues to our soul true. Thank you for that Now moving on said you can read for us the key text Our key text that is from first John chapter 2 bus. Oh question. Sorry numbers 25 us 10 to 12 It says the Lord said to Moses He knows the Son of Elzea the son of Aaron the priest has turned my anger away from the Israelites since he was a zealots from my honor among them as I am I did not put an end to them in my zeal Therefore tell him I am making my covenant Of peace with him Thank for that. Now still on that we can read fast John 2 verse 15 17 This is something I want to tie us to fast John 2 verse 15 17 It says do not love the world or anything in the world if anyone loves the world Love for the father is not in them for everything in the world The last of the flesh the last of the ice and the pride of life comes not from the father But from the world the world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever Amen. Amen.  Okay, I'm not advocating for killing people doing wrong But the aspect of zealousness, right? there There've been so many characters in the Bible who have shown zeal for God Despite what other people around them are saying Right. What are some of the characters you guys remember who have shown so much zeal for the Lord despite any Consequences or despite what other people around them are doing job job is one of them, right? I mean his family his wife himself try to tempt him to cast God and die But he was like, no, I have to do the right thing. Thank for that another person Joshua remember when the Israelites had turned to other gods. He said as for me and my house Yeah, we will continue to serve the Lord. True. Uh-huh. One last person someone who was actually your age There's a name of Daniel. Yes Daniel was in a foreign land where everyone is doing the wrong thing including his fellow Israelites Yeah, who would told they are going to eat the king's food and the eight by him and his three of the friends are like No, we are not doing this. That is a kind of zeal that John is calling for, you know We should not love the world all the things of the world And that's why we're told again in James if we love the world We're drifting father and father away from God because the world does not do what God wants Okay, let us move on Ashley the flashlight The flashlight and I will read yet We have our work to do to resist temptation those who would not fall approach to certain devices must gal wed God well the avenues of the soul They must avoid reading seeing or hearing that will with that which will suggest in pure thoughts The mind should not be left to one that random upon every subject of the adversary of souls may suggest and you know She doesn't say that which will cause in pure thoughts. She says that which will suggest it is a suggestion and The things we think about us crosses our mind is a choice You can say well, it just popped into my mind and said I talked about it. You decided that's a thing so We should control That train of thoughts and choose what we want to think Philippians chapter 4 verse 8 Philippines for 8 It's right in the punch lines and have salmon reader trust Finally brothers and sisters Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely whatever is admirable If anything is excellent or please worthy think about such things Philippians 4 8 So I think from that Is a person who said you don't Drown by falling into a river you drown by being submerged in the river Temptations are temptations do come. Yeah, but we got we need to guard our minds If if you're watching movies, what do you expect you expect a temptation? So when you're being tempted you fall you get submerged into the temptation and you see because invited Exactly, you know something that just crosses my mind now is that we are not tempted for things that are totally out of our way We are tempted after our own loss And you know I'll be sitting here and I'll not be tempted to start smoking It's it's unknown. No, it can never happen If you've not exposed yourself to yes, but I can be sitting here and I'll be tempted. It's on Sabbath and There's a movie. I was watching a series and this it's coming out at 2 and I'm in church Yeah, where's my mind? It's already gone to the movies. It's coming out at 2 I want to go home, but where am I supposed to be in church tempted after the things that I like So our stars our idols the people we follow the poor you want to be around the poor we wish to meet in real life Those are our last and that is what we attempted after Thank you for that Now it brings me a question. Let me just ask we have talked mostly about how Media and entertainment and you know our leisure time can mostly be spent doing the wrong things that the devil wants But what are some of the right ways we can spend our leisure time? What do you think are the ways you can replace some of these things with should bridge it and then you can come to someone? Yeah Even what we are doing now in and of itself is a good way of Spending time with God. Yeah So making friends who will encourage you to spend time with God that you can speak about godly things That is definitely a plus for a young person There are two men you'll enjoy books There is no way you can say I Have nothing to do. Let me watch a movie This book sell to build our minds. My dad recently has been on my back I The books in the house. You have no trade There are some books. I was gifted after my baptism some had no trade since I was baptized in 2021 some were in the house sitting in the shelf had no trade so my dad is very Concerned is concerned was most of the time if he's not at work if he's sitting in the house and Not working He's reading the Bible Hey, he's sitting there.  You play now By the end of the week, he gave me pastrex and prophets And some books about health So I am sure there is no way I think opposed to entertainment. We should focus more on recreation We can go swimming we can go playing basketball rugby and These things will use the energy that we would cause us to do things that are not right We could create hobbies. You could build a bad house. You could paint you could garden you could Landscape you could arrange flowers There's so many things that God created that we can actually do other than just sit before a cinema and There's a lot going on the media industry that is not good, but I think we need to understand that God is The creator and making us in his image. He makes man to love to create we can flood the Movie industry with godly things We don't always have to depend on holy wood and the other industries and block poster and all these things we can create sources of Recreation for Adventists who want something to watch and do not have anything to watch and that way we would spread the message of God Thank you for that Ashley and so the parts the part of the problem of Why we get tempted or why you fall into temptation is because we do not put our mind to work All right Common problem an idle mind the devil's workshop now the devil when he finds your mind is idle He's going to try to fill it Nature aboes vacuum nature hates a vacuum any empty space in nature has to be filled Now if your mind is empty and you're not feeling it with godly stuff Or you've not been feeling it with godly stuff and the devil comes to its first. What is it going to do? Fill it with his own things and that's exactly why most people are sure for temptation It's because you have not engaged your mind in godly things to be specific You can engage yourself in other things. Yes, but the devil can find you there But when you're engaged in godly stuff Draw close to God and it'll draw nearer to you like that. That is what we get now May make a comment yes to bring it Just as you've said It seems from even the start of this chapter of numbers 25 That the Israelites had just gained victory over the people of Bashan and so they were in such a good mood They were just relaxed in a fertile land and no they were like, okay You know, then the mob by two men just started creeping in slowly And now the point I want to make here is the fact that they thought the women Should be their objects of them falling into this idolatry And you know, it's even something that happens in this day and age You're advertising a car. There has to be a woman. You're advertising. I don't know books There has to be a woman in the newspapers It's a woman and even if you look at the Bible look at people like David Look at King Solomon, you know Women have been the downfall of a couple of people in the in times past and even in this day and age And in fact, we are told that it's the leaders who actually engaged in this immorality with these women And if you read Proverbs chapter five Let's just get Proverbs chapter five verse three and four King Solomon himself who was who also fell prey to women says this For the lips of a strange woman Drop as an honeycomb and her mouth is smoother than oil Vos forces but her end is bitter as one would sharp as a two-edged sword And so it is calling us out. We need to be careful and especially even to the men, right Women can come and they can be the source of your downfall But we need as we have said we need to guard the avenues of our heart And and trust that God will help us overcome Amen, amen and same the same Solomon again tells us in Proverbs 4 23 You know above all else guard your heart for everything you do flows from it Now in the olden times they thought they knew that the heart is what makes your decisions, but you know, it's the brain, right So when they refer to the heart they refer mostly to the emotional part of you right Guard your emotions guard what goes into your mind your mind controls your whole body what you see what you smell Whatever single thing you do now once your mind is guarded Everything every part of you is God and that is what we are called to do all right, um We can just move on John 3 16 this is a very common verse John 3 16 and 17 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that who so ever believed in him should not perish But however lasting life It's lost Verse 17 says For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world But that the world through him might be saved true true amen for that and that is Actually, I think one of the most important verses in the bible and it portrays the whole plan of salvation Into that one phrase Now ellen white says in projects and prophets page 460 The heart must be renewed by divine grace or it will be in vain to seek for creative life He who attempts to build up a noble virtuous character independent of the grace of christ He's building his house upon the shifting sand Nothing can strengthen our relationship with god Than understanding his plan for our divine his divine love and mercy For us and that was shown through jesus christ giving himself up to die for our sins in calvary The moment we understand The pain that god felt in giving up his son the pain christ felt when he was dying on that cross The effort it took to just offer himself up to take up every single burden that we are going to face right now The moment we just understand The toll of sin on our lives It's going to be very hard for us to fall into it again And it's god's grace that saves us you learned in the previous verse in the previous lessons again We're not saved by works It's grace the grace of god covers all our sins Now if we try to do all these good things independent of christ It becomes harder for us. That's that's what illinois says. It's like building a house on sand But by relying on god all these temptations that face us every single day in our lives They're going to be easy to conquer Those of us in james that says that god will keep us from falling And first peter one five says that we are kept by the power of god through faith You know We think that because we are in the church will not fall Or that we are holy or that we work according to the statutes here in First corinthians 10 11 to 12 says let him that thinketh He stands take heed lest he falls It's also impossible that the slave of passion will be able to realize the sacred obligation each of us has to the love of god If we are slaves to our passion and we do that which we incline to alone We will never realize the obligation we have to the love of god Yeah, so We choose our passions and if we become a slave to it look at it this way If you watched our Netflix show the entire sabbath night and you come to church Are you able to listen? You're sleepy. Yeah, even if you're not sleepy your mind is still your mind is still there You're thinking about you know that part you're still replaying it and all that stuff It happens to me happens to so many people And we are slaves to our passion because well, I wanted to watch that season and it's friday And I didn't have time during the week So I just have to do it tonight because tomorrow I'll be in church and then I'll come back home and sleep early, you know because and and Because now I'm a slave to my passion I forget that it is sabbath You disregard the laws of god. Yeah, so All right Is we almost coming to close? Father inside it like said We haven't had you for a bit It was the father inside I'll get the closing comments So now it is by leading the followers of christ to associate with the ungodly and unite In the amusements that satan is most successful in allowing them into sin We cannot be too decided in shunning the company of those who exert an influence to draw us away from god Hmm that is basically bad company corrupts good morals Yeah, the devil when he says he cannot tempt you by your own self He's going to lead you to people who do not do godly things All right Closing comments now as we finish So as we close I'd like to remind you that god has created us in ahiraki It's the mind then the hearts then the appetites And similarly we ought to use them in that order So you you think first with your mind and then everything else follows. So in closing some 119 verse 9 to 11 It's a common verse that um We usually read and I'll just read it in your hearing sums 119 Verse 9 to 11 And it says where with all shall a young man cleanse his way And the answer given is by taking heed there too According to thy word verse 10 with my whole heart have I sought thee all let me not wonder from their commandments And finally verse 11 Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin Against thee and so we're given one of the strongest Fortitudes for us to guard our hearts And even as someone told us you need to have read from the start of the bible to the end And there's so many lng white books read all that rather than spending your time in things that will not help you And with that I think I would like to invite Ashley to give us a closing prayer Just before we pray I'd like to Say two things one if gods people faithfully follow His word there will always be a clear distinction from the world It cannot be otherwise And the other one for those who feel like they've wandered away from god Let this be our prayer creating mere clean heart o god engineer right spirit within me That sums 51 10 Let's pray Father in heaven we come before your throne of mercy your grace is our sufficient and we bow and we seek it At this time of need you know every youth every teenager out there Somewhere those who hear this voice In you know each one of us with our struggles each of us have our flaws and our struggles and the things That beset us the things that cloud our minds the things that Hold us back from following you and giving our lives fully Lord this journey you said is narrow and the people are few Many a times we are drawn to the majority yet. We forget that you have called us To your mother last light we ask lord that you give us strength to walk And you give us strength to keep walking straight because we may walk and fall That you hold us you keep us from backsliding keep us from falling And that we will love you and that the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of your glory and grace be with us now and forever more for these are humble strangers name Amen


Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering RSA Conference 2020 San Francisco, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the RSA 2020 show here in Moscone in San Francisco. It's Thursday, we've been going wall to wall. We're really excited for our next guest. We've been talking about some kind of interesting topics getting a little bit into the weeds, not on the technology, but some of the philosophical things that are happening in this industry that you should be thinking about. And we're excited to welcome Lawrence Pitt. He is the cybersecurity strategist at Juniper Networks. Lawrence, great to meet you. Thank you very much. Hi. Yeah, so before we turn the cameras off, we've been talking about all kinds of fun things. So let's just jump into it. One of the topics that gets a lot of news is deep fakes and there's a lot of cute, funny things out there of people's voices and things that they're saying, not necessarily being what you expect them to be, but there's a real threat here and a real kind of scary situation that's just barely beginning to scratch the surface. I wonder if you could share some of your thoughts on deep fakes. I mean, I think you made a good point at the start. There's a lot of cute and funny stuff out there. There's a lot of fake political stuff you see. So it's seen as being humorous and people are sharing it a lot. But there is a darker side that's going to happen to deep fakes because a lot of the things that you see today that go out on video, the reason that it is, what it is, is because you're very familiar with the person that you're seeing in that video. It's a famous politician, it's a movie star and they're saying something that's out of character or funny and that's it. But what if that was actually the chief financial officer of a major company where the company appears to have launched a video very close to the bell ringing on the stock market that makes some kind of announcement about a product or a delay or something to do with their quarterly figures or something like that. That one minute video could do a huge amount of damage to that organization. It could be that somebody's looking to take advantage of a dip at that point, video goes out, their stock's going to dip, buy it up, they make a profit, but it all could also be much darker. It could be somebody who's trying to do that to actually damage their business. So would you define a very good text-based fishing, spear-fishing as a deep fake where they've got enough data where the relevance of the topic is so spot on, the names that are involved in the text are so spot on because they've done their homework and the transactions that they're suggesting are really spot on and consistent with the behavior of the things that their target does each and every day. So I'm not sure I'd define that as a deep fake yet. Obviously you've got two types of a fish. You've got a spearfish, which is the perfected version. The work has gone into target you as a specific high value individual for some reason in the organization. But what we are seeing is in the same way that deep fakes are leveraging technology to be able to manipulate somebody, things like the fact that we're all on Instagram, we're all on Facebook, we're all on Twitter, means that social manipulation is a lot easier for the bad guys to be able to create. Fishing campaigns that appear to be very much more targeted, they can create emails because they know you've got a dog, they know roughly where you live because this information's coming up in pictures and it's in Metro on the internet. And so they can generate automated messaging and emails and things that are going to go out that will appear to be from whomever you expect to receive it from using words that you think that only they would know about to make that appear to be more realistic. So that's actually something, we've sort of seen the start of that, but still the thing to spot is that the grammar is very often not very good in these. They haven't perfected the language side of it. But that's coming, right, but that's coming. We use an automated transcription service to do all the transcription on these videos. And it's funny, you can pay for the machine or you can pay for the human, we do both, but it's amazing, even only in the last six months to see the Delta shrink between the machine generated and the person generated. And this is even in pretty technical stuff that we get in, very specific kind of vocabulary around the tech conferences that we cover. The machines are catching up very, very fast. They very much are, but then if you think about, this is not new, what's happened, it's been happening in the background for a while, things like quite a lot of legal work is done. If you look at estate agency, for example, and conveyancing, it's not uncommon for the conveyancing to be done using machine learning and using computer generated documentation because it's within a framework. But of course, the more it does that, the more it learns and then that software can more easily be applied to other areas to be able to do that accurately. Right, so another big topic that gets a lot of conversation is passwords. You know, it's been going on forever, now we're starting to get into two-factor authentication, you know, the new Apple phones, you can look at it and it identifies you, so now you have kind of biometrics, but that can all be hacked too, right? It's just a slightly different method, but even though the biometric is not at all, well, that's secure. I think the thing is, you see, when you're logging into something, there's two pieces of information you need.  A lot of people confuse biometrics, thinking the biometric authentication is their password, where actually the biometric is the them, and so you still should back things with strong passwords, you still should have that behind it because if somebody does get through the biometric, that shouldn't automatically just give them access to absolutely everything. You know, these are technologies that are provided to make things easier to make it so that you can have less strong passwords so that you do know where you're storing information, but people tend to rely on them too much. It is still very, very important to use strong passwords to think about the process for how you want to do that. Taking statements and then turning those statements into strange sentences that only you understand, maybe having your own code to do that conversion so that you have a very strong password that nobody's ever going to pick up. You know, we know the common passwords, unfortunately, are still one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and password. It's horrific. I saw some article that you were quoted in and it had the worst 25 passwords from 2018 and 2019. It's basically just pick a string. But you know, but it's interesting because, you know, having a hard, you know, it's easy to make, take the time and go ahead and create that strong password. But then, you know, three months later, Salesforce keeps making me do a new one or the bank keeps making me do a new one. What's your opinion of some of these kind of password managers? Because to me, it seems like, okay, well, that might be doing a great job creating some crazy passwords for the specific accounts, but what if I get hacked onto that thing, right? Now they have everything in a single place. Yeah, so this is where things like two-factor authentication become really, really important. So I use password manager and I've been, I'm very, very careful with how my passwords are created and what goes in there so that I know where certain passwords are created for certain types of account and certain complexities, but I also turn on two-factor. And if somebody does try to go into my online password account, I will get an alert to say that they've tried to do that. A single failed authentication and I will get an alert to say that they've done it. An authentication that happens where I'm not, then I will get a note, so I've done that. So this is where that second factor actually becomes really important. If you have something that gives you the option to use two-factor authentication, use it. Use it. It is a pain when you're trying to do something with your credit card and you have to do the one-time text, but it'd be more of a pain if you didn't and somebody else was to use it and to fill it up nicely for you, wouldn't it? Right. It's funny, part of the keynote from Rohit was talking about, as a profession, spending way too much time thinking about the most kind of crazy, bizarre, sophisticated attacks at the fault of not necessarily paying attention to the basics and the basics is where still a lot of the damage is done, right? Well, this is the thing and there's a few things in our industry, so exactly what you just said. Everybody seems to believe that they're going to be the target of the next really big, complex, major attack. The reality is they aren't and the reality is that they're being hit by the basics, like ransomware, phishing, spear phishing, credential stuffing, all these attacks are hitting them all the time and so they need to have those foundational elements in place against those, understanding what those are and not worry about the big stuff because the reality is if your organization is going to be hit by a nation-state level complex attack or you can just fight against it, it's going to happen and that's the thing with a lot of the buzzwords that we see in Cybertoday, isn't it? And with smaller companies, SMBs, I mean is really their only solution to go with, you know, cloud providers and other types of organizations that are the resources to get the people and the systems and the processes to really protect them because you can't expect, you know, Jeff's flowers down on Forestry to have any type of sophistication needed but as soon as you plug that server and with the website, you're instantly going to get attacked, right? The thing is you can't expect that guy to be an expert. He's not going to be an expert in cybersecurity and the cost of him hiring someone is going to outweigh the value he's getting back. My recommendation in that case is to look for organizations that can actually help you to become more cyber resilient so an organization that I work with that's actually UK and US based is the Global Cyber Alliance. They actually produce a small business toolkit so it's a set of tools which are not chargeable, it's put together and some of it might be a white paper, a set of recommendations, it might actually be a vendor developed tool that they can use to download to check for vulnerabilities or something like that but what it does is it provides it in a framework for them so that they can go through and say, okay, yeah, I get this, this is English, simple language and it helps to protect me as a small business owner, not a massive enterprise where actually none of those solutions fit to what I want to do. So that's my recommendation for small businesses, look for these types of organization, work with someone like that, this is what they're doing and learn cyber from them. Yeah, that's a good tip. I want to kind of double click on that so that makes sense when it's easy to measure your ROI on a small business, I just can't afford the security pros. For bigger companies when they're doing their budgeting for security, to me it's always a really interesting it's insurance, at some point wouldn't it be great if I could insure 100% coverage but we can't and there's other needs in the business beyond just investing in cybersecurity. How should people think about the budgets relative to, as you just said, the value that they're trying to protect? How do you help people think about their cybersecurity budgets and allocations? So then there needs to be, and this is happening, a change in how the conversation works between the security team and the board who own those budgets. What tends to happen today is that there's a, the cyber team wants to provide the right information to the board that's going to make them see how good what they're doing is and how successful they are and justifies the spend that they've made and also justifies the future investments that they're going to need to make. But very often that falls back on reporting on big number statistics. We blocked billions of threats, we turned away millions of pieces of malware. Actually that conversation needs to narrow down and the team should be saying, okay, so in the last two months we had five attacks that came in. We actually dealt with them by doing this. This is the changes that we've made. This is what we've learned. However, if we had had this additional or this switched on then we would have been more successful or we'd have been faster or we could have turned down the time on doing that. Having that risk and compliance type conversation is actually adding value to the security solutions that they've got and the board understand it. They get that conversation and they're going to be happier to engage. This is happening. This is something that is happening and it's going to get better and better but that's where things need to go. Right, because the other hard thing is it's kind of like, we've joked earlier, it's kind of like an offensive lineman. They do a great job for 69 plays and on the 70th play they get a holding call. That's all anybody sees. And you know, there's, again, that was part of Rohit's keynote that we can't necessarily brag about all the DDO taxes that we stopped because we can't let the bad guys kind of know where we're being successful. So it's a little bit of a challenge in trying to show the ROI, show the value when you can't necessarily raise your hand and say, hey, we stopped the 87 tax because it's only the 88th that really is the one that showed up in the Wall Street Journal. I think the thing with that is when organizations are looking at security solutions specifically, we're very aware of that. Organizations struggle to get customer references. You'll see a lot of the references are major financial or large manufacturing organization because companies don't want to step up and say, I implemented security and it did this because the reverse of that is she didn't have it before then. Right, right. Or we'll go in that door, not that door. And so, but there are a lot of good testing organizations out there that actually do take the security solutions and run them through very, very stringent tests and then report back on the success of those tests. So, you know, we work closely with NSS Labs, for example, we've had some very good reports that have come out from that where they do a drill down into how fast, how much, how many. And then that's the kind of thing you can then take to the board. That's the kind of thing that you can publicize to say, the reason that we're using Juniper SRX firewalls is because in this report this is what it said. This is how good that product was. And then you're not admitting a weakness. You're actually saying we're strong because we did this work and this research up front. Very different kind of different approach. Yeah, yeah. Well, Lawrence really enjoyed the conversation. We'll have to leave it here, but I think you have no shortage of job security even though we will know everything in 2020 with the benefit of hindsight. Really? Yeah, thank you very much for that. All right, thanks a lot. All right, he's Lawrence. I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at RSA 2020 in Moscone. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.


So the Galaxy Note 9 has always been one that's brought new innovation year after year, moving with each different note. And of course the S Pen has been the constant across the board. Now the S21 Ultra is in the Note, but it supports an S Pen as well as a Z Fold 3. But fear not, the Galaxy S22 Ultra is right here. Now this device basically is a Galaxy Note. There's a reason why I'm making that mistake because it embodies everything the Note has from the design to feel. But I can tell you what I use this device for from a day to day basis. I use it to take notes, capture content, watch content, and play games. Which means I'm doing a lot of work constantly on this device. So let's start off with of course taking notes and capturing content. That's one of the things that I really love about the Galaxy S22 Ultra. It's got the S Pen. Now the S Pen is a simple and effective tool. Yes, I can take notes and trust me I have a ton of notes on this device. What is just writing simple phone numbers, you know, quick notes, or even taking notes down while I'm at a meeting or a Webex call with a client. It does the job and I can also type it out. It may sound like something that you can do on any device, but trust me having the pen that's this precise to showcase my terrible handwriting does the job fantastically. But the other aspect also is when I am creating content, right? So we went out into the city, grabbed some coffee, looked at some content for a little bit, and decided to just walk around and take some photos within the city. Now the cameras are solid and I don't want to get too much into the cameras but honestly check out my camera comparisons with, you know, the iPhone as well as also the Exynos version. There's so much camera samples there in those videos. But capturing content around the city was really unique because I could use my S Pen as a remote clicker. That's something a lot of people don't necessarily know about it, but I think it's truly amazing. You don't have to wave your hand, you don't have to ask anyone if you're by yourself and you don't want to disturb anyone. You place your phone down, position, and start snapping and take poses. Now, I apologize, most of my images look kind of crooked but that's just my fault, but you get the idea there that you can actually do that here. And of course you've got tons of different camera modes. One of them of course is, you know, portrait video. Now this time we're using ColorPoint which came out spectacularly well here but it's got a downside to it, right? I'm recording outside, Daniel's helping me record and you can't really hear what I'm saying because there's so much wind and noise. Now imagine if the S Pen had a built-in microphone in there, that will actually be pretty cool because I can clip it or put it in my shirt and you get better audio. Now that's not just my idea. This was my friend Jonathan Casey. He brought this up, so a big shout out to him. Go check out his channel, it's got some good stuff. But that is something that can add more flexibility to this device and that's why I'm really excited about it because there's more that can be done with the S Pen and already it's hit a great peak that I truly like, right? So capturing content, I can do that quite well with this device and it does a really good job. The cameras are solid enough for daytime photos, nighttime photos, capturing videos, creating TikToks, all that kind of fun stuff with this on a regular basis. But now of course, what about consuming content? Consuming content is something we all do and I do that quite a lot myself. Now you're wondering, okay fine, does this make the S22 Ultra special? Yes and no. Well, you've got a larger display, but not just a larger. It is a bright, vibrant display, right? Allowing you to watch those TikTok videos to fullest capacity and you watch them, tons of them, or you know, watching Instagram reels, even if you're doing more than just watching and multitasking. Yes, I said multitasking because that's the feature that Samsung spearheaded years ago and I'm not talking about just going from one app to the other. I'm talking about having a multitask split screen, being able to have Twitter on top and maybe YouTube below, being able to do more with the device and having such a bright sharp display if I'm doing this outdoors, these at home, or just looking at the images that I just took make a lot of sense. Now, there's more to consuming content than just the display. There's also the speakers and yeah, look, Samsung has done a really good job in the past with your speakers. Having Dolby Atmos is a great thing, but I will have to say though, especially when I did my speaker test, I felt a little bit let down by the quality of audio I was getting from the Galaxy S22 Ultra this year in comparison to what I've had in the past and that also goes to with Bluetooth audio, but before I go ahead and some of you might think, maybe Thunder Ease does trip in. Let's take a quick listen here to audio of the device. Okay, it's not bad. It's good, but it could be better and you guys have seen my speaker comparison. If you haven't, go watch it, but this brings us to our sponsor of this video, Qualcomm with Snapdragon Sound. The reason I like Snapdragon Sound, and I think it's very important, it's not just because they are sponsoring the video. Look, yes, that's really cool, but it's because I like good audio. Guys, I've got a headphone wall. I would rather have a wired audio experience, but we've moved away from that and having quality audio through Bluetooth connectivity is really important. And that's what Snapdragon Sound brings to the table, brings premium audio, brings lossless audio, which means I can have the same quality as those headphones over there, and also brings instability in terms of stability of connections and all the different codecs you expect like Aptex, Aptex HD, and also stability when you're also gaming and listening to audio off your gaming headset. So whether you're using, you know, these like Snapdragon Sound headphones or any compatible headphones, it would be great to see that technology in the Galaxy S22 Ultra. And honestly, Samsung, I'm asking you to do this because I think this will make the experience better. It will bolster what we actually are doing with Dolby Atmos. And we'll make the listening experience one that you can definitely sit down and enjoy, and of course, just drink some coffee with it. So I want to see Snapdragon Sound with this device. But look, besides that, right? The audio experience is good, but how does that relate to one of the best things that I do like to do on any device, which is gaming. All right. So gaming is something that's really important to me, and a lot of people who have smartphones that of course, at this caliber. Now, the gaming experience here is of two folds. And I mentioned two folds because there's an Exynos variant. And look, I've covered a lot of that in my Exynos versus Snapdragon. Definitely go check out that video. But the one thing I will say is that a lot of games just need updates. So I will give it that space for updates to happen. But definitely go check out those videos. Now, what about my own gaming experience the last two months using the S22 Ultra Snapdragon variant? Well, it's been absolutely solid. I mean, across the board has been solid. Every game has functioned well. I even just played Genshin Impact recently just to see if there's been a better improvement because you know how that game can be just tasking on a lot of systems. And it's gone a little bit better. I start off in the first 15 minutes, it's running at 60 frames per second. Then after that, it kind of drops down to about 5051. So that's kind of the range I've been with gaming on this device.  Well, I'll put this this way. I am a power user. I'll put it that way. I use this by heavily on a day to day basis. And I took a look at my screen on time. Granted, I don't like the start of screen on time. And my average came down to roughly six hours. You can check. It was like four hours, 52 here, six, six, you get the idea. So six hours of battery life, six hours of screen on time with this device is quite interesting. I will say that my device lasts from nine to around five PM. If I have it at QHD and then it lasts about nine PM. If I have it at 1080p. So take it whichever way you will. But I use this device quite a bit. I will just say that I would like to see better improvements with the way Samsung handles its battery management. So I can actually use this device for longer periods of time. And honestly, 45 more charging Samsung. Come on. You guys started this. People have 120. Please. But anyway, look, that's beside the point. The S22 Ultra as a device is one that I am very happy for. I am a note user. I started with the very first Galaxy Note when people thought a device with a five inch display was massive. I think 5.5. I could be wrong with the exact numbers. I remember the articles then and now everyone has a big phone. The difference is this phone with its size has a lot of functionality built into it. And note users are happy. And if you're asking me the question, should I make that switch from my previous note, whichever version you have? The answer is yes. Yes, there are things they need to improve. But honestly, Samsung has brought the Galaxy Note line into the S22 line or the S line in general. And it's made it something worth picking up.  He made me record this five more times. Yeah, exactly. Right. Just to get it right. But anyway, thank you very much guys and enjoy your entertainment and catch us on the next video.