Webinar Replay: Sneakers & Security – Step into the New Year with Arctic Wolf & InterVision

Quick well let's go ahead and kick it off we we got it into it pretty quick here um so real quick uh I am EMC today um so my name is Aaron Brinkman I work on at intervision as a solution architect uh specifically focused around security um previously have worked at at some OEM vendors and some security vendors in the field but I have about 20 years experience in cyber security and I've been on both sides of the the house Whether it was sales or on the customer side and I've been through events on on

on both sides right so chasing down false positives as well as helping customers through some of these stressful events so that's something that Nathan and Al are going to dive into a little bit here today and we'll do some introductions with them today um but before we we kind of get going uh I just want to preface that uh what we're going to talk about today is the Incident response the state of the union with these incidents themselves how stressful they can be and kind of that Importance of Being prepared and having an IR plan

and then te team dedicated behind it as well as the importance of the solution itself and so this IR retainer and the um capabilities that article provides we partner with them uh specifically to make sure that we provide a complete package and and some of the solution itself the the naming Convention that we use in intervision is rpz but it is a full solution Suite to be able to protect you in events like this so uh before we dive a little bit too deep into it I'll hand over to uh Nathan and Al to do

some introductions sure hi Al Doan uh director here Channel alliances been with arctic wolf about three years I handle the incident response incident response jump start uh here at Arctic wealth and my colleague go ahead yeah I'm Nathan Little and and I lead the incident response Services team here at at Artic wolf so we respond to about a thousand major major cyber breaches at every year from ransomware to Major fraud nation state attacks uh International cyber Espionage can of you you name it um so and then Aon do you want to dri dive into the

threat landscape now do you want me to pull it up now I can't remember exactly what this the schedule was should we run with it yeah let's Dive into the threat landscape first and then we'll kind of see State of the Union and then from there we'll dive into Al's um focus points on how we're combating that with the IR retainer and cyber security sounds great okay one second I'll pull it up okay so what you obviously you've everybody's already met both of us in those brief introductions but um when kind of alen Aaron came

to me about this presentation I wanted to put together Kind of what I called the the real threat landscape data so this is like very great data real world scenarios about um what's happening in the Cyber attack world and it's it's been fairly consistent in terms of methods types of attacks for the last six years or or so um and and what we've seen in the last years is ransomware is probably the biggest threat to organizations Great and Small many of you probably saw in the news the the MGM Cyber attack um you know obviously

major Casino in Vegas totally shut down room access not even working but but interestingly like that was the black cat ransomware group I believe they're number third on this chart in terms of overall frequency this is volume of attacks in um the third quarter of of last year and and fourth quarter was very similar um but we've responded to black cat attacks for threers law firms and 50,000 people organizations and the Attack methods are very similar I think that's what's so interesting about the cyber world that the threat landscape doesn't discriminate every organization is is

a potential victim and I'll go through a few few examples um but just this morning I I was polishing up this deck and I found a very interesting because you'll see lockit the most prolific ransomware group of the past two years or or so uh including very very high-profile Victims um like this is a a public incident this is not sensitive client data or anything they attacked Boeing the airline manufacturer huge client tremendous damage um but B lock bit attacks all sorts of organizations but probably too prolific so prolific that they caught the attention of

law enforcement in a major way many of you probably saw it it was it was pretty newsworthy depending on which LinkedIn circles you you run in um The lockit group was quote unquote shut down by the FBI so here's a screenshot of their breach site now for those of you that don't know these ransomware groups when they steal data from organizations they threaten to publish it on the dark web but really it's just their their websites that they use to name and shame victims sometimes you'll hear these called the shame websites where not only did

they encrypt your data but they had stolen your data and If you don't pay a ransom they'll publish your data and try to release sensitive information to the world well this is their current leak site um joint law enforcement effort with the FBI uh europ pole and a bunch of other organizations I know you probably can't really see this in a ton of detail but they changed all of the victim postings which used to be these little red and green boxes to things that will help victims of lock bit like free Decryption because the law

enforcement stole the decryption tools so huge win I I thought when I went through kind of which threat groups have been most active I thought it was certainly worth mentioning uh this change in in the environment now also important to note and I'll try to explain it quickly lock is what's known as a ransomware as a service group so lock bit is an attack platform and technology that cyber crime groups all over the world from Individual people to more organized groups can join the lock bit platform and conduct attacks and use the lockit platform to

conduct those attacks so this is not law enforcement bringing hundreds and hundreds and even thousands of cyber criminals to Justice this is just law enforcement shutting down one provider of ransomware Technology still a huge win but unfortunately it doesn't really decrease the Cyber secur risks out there to the World um and kind of what why I threw this chart in there is the attack groups they will change in volume um two years ago it was a much different threat group than lock bit which was the most prevalent now um humans in the world whether they're

in Canada where a few people in in the recent last few years got actually found and arrested uh Russia other Eastern European countries um even some in the United States the the attack landscape doesn't change that much and if one group gets shut down um the attackers the actual human attackers behind it they'll just use a platform um but it may slow down the number of attacks that are occurring um but like I mentioned earlier these attacks and we're focusing on any type of attack here but it's primarily ransomware and even just simple business email

compromise leading to um wi fraud is is the most common Method in there with the beccs where that's somebody accesses an email box for an organization and they create some clever forwarding rules and conduct some way or fraud by intercepting invoice payments and changing banking details a super simple type of attack but still leads to billions of dollars of loss each year but the reason why I wanted to show this chart is although this changes month to month and even quarter to quarter many many organizations are are Victims of cyber attacks and long con are

the days where cyber attacks were mostly focused on healthc care and banking although those are still two of the top victim organizations because of the sensitivity we've seen every type of organization get hit by Major cyber crime um and when we are engaged by a client uh the article of incident response team we help with any component of responding to the incident from investigating the root cause of The Incident That's the next set of data I'll talk about um which is I think the most important part of Defending against incidents is knowing what the first

piece the root cause how the attacker originally got into the network is but we'll also help negotiate with cyber criminals which is a fascinating part of of the response and and and just incredibly impactful when when done well um to helping with restoration and working with our partners to help with Restoration so we kind of see the incidents from all lenses including incidents that impact every every industry so then this is one of my my favorite pieces of information and and when I said at the start like I kind of titled this presentation the real

threat landscape I think it's important in in a world where there's a ton of really helpful information but it's it's from all sorts of different lenses like depending on who produces the threat Landscape data you might get a much different picture that's going to not as accurately educate your cyber security and your response decisions um but this is just the the true breakdown of every incident that we've investigated uh what had caused it and I'll go into more in in the next two slides um but many of you have probably heard that most most cyber

attacks come through users doing accidental things opening emails downloading things visiting unsafe Websites it's certainly true that many attacks do come through that but that's just the orange section in these charts um The Accidental user actions or sometimes intentional user actions for a small segment of it um is typically averages around 30% of incidents we investigate um and and this is important because it helps educate cyber security decisions I think in the past like if you go to 10 years ago this was probably a little bit higher chunk and that's Before endpoint protection tools were

really powerful and people were doing a really good job at the endpoint uh preventing an incident now many organizations have great MDR services like wolf and others that are monitoring every single endpoint and this has gotten a lot better um even just running endpoint protection improves the the user piece of this um so as everybody has gotten better at protecting the end points attackers for many reasons and I'll go through some of them have switched to other methods of of attack and they love focusing on external exposure so what I mean by external exposure I

mean external network exposure so that's um vulner vable web servers vpns that's the most common one is vulnerable vpns or vpns without multiactor authentication um things where the attacker can go from the perimeter of the network scan your organization and Immediately gain access because of certain vulnerabilities or or issues um of course that's their favorite way to attack it's the easiest it works every time it's rinse and repeat so not surprising at all and and here's a a little bit more of the break down now this chart depending on what vulnerabilities exist and and really

what's going on in the world the breakdown here can change a little bit but currently attacker's favorite method To access networks for data theft for ransomware um for anything that they would do inside of the network but mostly ransomware and then sometimes only secret data theft where they don't ask for any Ransom payment is through external remote access 20 6% of that is through VPN now this could be vpns where they don't have MFA passwords are leaked attackers love to put their Linux attack box on the VPN because they're immediately on the network with every

Tool that they can imagine um so it's trivial to to conduct an attack after that but the the section that the attackers love the most and there's a little bit of crossover between these two sections and my real world case example that I'll work quickly to get to uh is related to that is the software exploits or external vulnerabilities so these are the Citrix bleed the fortigate vulnerability that leaked a bunch of VPN Passwords um exchange haum if you remember a few years back when pretty much every Exchange Server in the world got hit with

a webshell that allowed attackers to steal information those are attackers absolute favorite method of attack um because it's easy and it's repeatable and they know it's going to work and they know it's going to most of the time lead to making some sort of money from the Organization so then here are two of the most active ones we're seeing right now one is from the fall that's the Citrix bleed vulnerability I have a real world example of that in a little bit um but what makes cyber security so tough is every month every week every

day it seems these days there's a brand new vulnerability um fortigate being one of the most recent fortigate nothing particularly um wrong with them but they've had two pretty Nasty vulnerabilities in in recent memory that have led to cyber attacks but so is Citrix so is sonic wall everyone that has perimeter network devices especially vpns have had these types of instance and they can be incredibly damaging um so that's why security obviously isn't a point in time one time a year thing it's continuous monitoring it's continuous patching um but that's one of the reasons why

it's so important um and it's a really race Against the attackers if these attackers find the vulnerabilities and exploit them before patches are available then everybody's in big trouble that's kind of what happened with um the move it vulnerability that was a vulnerability in an FTP transfer program um that allowed attackers to just immediately steal data from the move it FTP software for very large organizations um and all they had to do was script it across the entire world And they stole data from from nearly every single organization not to say user actions don't lead

to incidents it's a fairly even breakdown overall but you'll see a lot of people think all fishing emails like most of this comes through email only 100 out of the nearly thousand incidents uh that we investigated this is kind of on a rolling year or this might actually be three quarters it is three quarters were from fishing emails Everything else was the broader threat landscape these other categories accidental downloads uh compromised web browsing social engineering phone calls it kind of runs the gr the gamut when you're trying to get users to let you into the

network and Ain and Al if there's anything you want me to focus more on as as we go through through feel free to jump in I'm trying to move quickly because there's a a lot to cover in a Short window but hopefully it's helpful now the only other thing I was gonna kind of add to is and you're kind of showing it here is just the the fact that because of AI and AI tools that are are starting to be exposed to the public and the adversaries themselves are starting to use these tools specifically to

Target anyone and everyone so it used to be let's go after the big money targets that's where the the real money is but now um if they can get a little Bit less money out of a a technology or a company they are focusing towards those those uh other verticals in the market uh specifically because it's cheaper for them to actually kick off these campaigns so uh Nathan I'm sure you're going to dive into it a little bit more but uh it's always a good conversation to have that uh once again having full visibility having

that 247 monitoring that that article provides and then having the capability to have Nathan's team behind it uh to be able to provide this expertise is is huge and critical y yeah like you you mentioned the impact that AI has AI has the same impact and benefit to cyber criminals as it does to everybody else it makes humans conducting whatever effort they're going after more efficient more easily able to create software and malicious emails and so so so that's what it's doing for the attackers like an attack that used to take a few weeks To

plan now can be done in one minute cuz you can write to malicious Ai and say hey I'm targeting people in the construction industry that are currently purchasing construction materials um write an email that would get them to click this link to view an invoice and it's written in perfect English or whatever country they're targeting um and it takes zero work for them and it's probably more believable than they could write on their own um so it definitely Although AI you know helps organizations like us included um better filter through massive amounts of data uh

it certainly benefits the attackers as well so it's just improving the speed of of both the good and the bad bad people um this slide I think it's important to focus on the idea of Ransom payments because many many organizations that fall victim to Ransom attacks regardless of if they have backups or not are still paying Ransoms to attackers uh it's changed a little bit over the years but the threat of needing to pay a ransom to a cyber cyber criminal is still very real um this middle paragraph here in situations where an organization does

not have backups of 100% of their data to recover operations 58% of those organizations need to pay a ransom um and the datea is a little bit nuanced I think you could certainly argue that it's higher than that I would say if if an organization Cannot continue business without paying a ransom because the attacker impacted backups they usually do uh I would say 100% of those organizations pay a ransom because they don't have a choice um now interestingly 42% of organizations even if they don't need the decryption program 42% of organizations are still choosing to

pay a ransom um to avoid or at least reduce the risk of their stolen data seeing the public um or ending up in the public ecosystem still a pretty Pretty big threat and these ransoms range from we've seen as as low as 100,000 is about the floor these days there's still some kind of offshoot threat groups that will have lower um but we've seen as high as $50 million for ransom demands from organization so it can get I like imagine your organization being ground to a halt not able to conduct business backups being impacted and

an attacker demanding $50 million Now for some organizations like some of the cinos that that were in the News That's not that much money for other organizations maybe they have cyber Insurance to help a little bit maybe they don't that can be a very daunting amount of money or an impossible amount of money in in some situations so it still is a disastrous threat so in the last few minutes here uh um and we probably won't have time for a ton of questions but I'm happy to Answer any followed questions you know through Aaron or

through whatever whatever mechanism um because I did try to pack a lot in here um but I touched on this a little bit like okay everybody talks about vulnerabilities being such a huge threat but I wanted to go very quickly through a a real world example so Citrix bleed we saw many many incidents caused by Citrix bleed um and so the Citrix bleed vulnerability just so everybody knows was a vulnerability That with a trivial simple web request to a citric server that's open to mostly the world and maybe limited to just one region uh the

attacker could immediately access all the current session tokens for all citric sessions so it doesn't matter if you have MFA any protections the attacker can just immediately access all of the sessions that are active and unless you're stopping a session from being used from A different IP address than one it was the one it was created with which most people don't do because it creates a lot of inconvenience as you're bouncing between networks the attackers can walk right in and what did they do when they walked right in and moved lat to some critical servers

they left a ransom note like this behind this is what a ransom note looks like for this type of attack this is a lock bit Ransom note that's edited To remove some sensitive information but this is the text file that appears all over the network says hey talk to this tour link and chat with us to figure out how much we're asking you to pay and here's an example of what that web request looks like to to exploit the vulnerability it is as simple as sending that highlighted part in this picture to the Citrix server

and then you get the full um session tokens with couple of other steps but there was publicly Released code to do it um and then they walk right in and they see this nice type of page for your organization where they can access email desktops anything many of you are probably familiar with Citrix and then they simply install another remote access tool that would probably go undetected by endpoint protection tools uh in these cases most of the attackers were choosing to use screen connect uh for this type of attack and that that's just so that

once You rotate the citric sessions they can still use screen connect to get back in um Aron I know I'm running out of time but I'll just cover a couple couple more things uh and then Al can dive into to anything else we have time for one really fun thing that once in a while the incident response team gets to do so we respond responded to this case it was obviously not a current MDR customer this was a customer that actually was referred to us um through our incident Response jumpstart retainer which is something we

can talk more about um but they didn't have our MDR service we were actually able to recover the attacker's credentials where they had stolen the client's data and stored it um and we were able through special legal channels to get permission we were able to actually go into the attacker server and delete this data for the client so they didn't have to pay a ransom we were able to steal the data back from the attacker That was still obviously fully owned um by our client and gave us permission to delete it um and we were

able to protect our customer a little bit so certainly a not ideal situation for the customer they still had some business Interruption time but they didn't have to pay a ransom and our team was able to secure the network get the attacker out of the network and then actually delete the stolen data from the attacker servers Um so so I will skip towards the end um and then you know obviously these are very similar to a lot of things you would see but defense in depth is so important these vulnerabilities and and all these attack

methods are still going to happen so monitoring everything monitoring for lateral movement preventing attackers from Gaining access to other systems when they do compromize that VPN um so important ransomware Volume don't pay atten attention to the news it's going to e and flow people are going to say wow it was a really slow year it was a really busy year um ransomware attacks whether they're the flavor of the day or not when attackers gain access to your network they're going to do something to monetize it now the really scary thing is ransomware is very noticeable

because they leave a ransom note there's plenty of ways that Attackers monetize access to your network that might go entirely undetected um and and that I think is where cyber security gets even more interesting um and then obviously monitoring every aspect of the environment to to avoid this type of incident um but but thanks for for letting me display some of this talk talk through some of this um happy to answer any questions in the future although I know we might not have time Now no no worries it looks like we do have one question

um any industry specific regulations or best practices for dealing with ransomware kind of to help minimize risk um a lot of times you're going to go into a lot of those regular or or compliance um recommendations or Frameworks uh you're going to look at nist and start to go down best practices of what nist has or cmmc and you're Going to start to help provide that guidance and start to close some of those gaps uh as well as leverage some of your Partnerships like intervision being able to uh do some manage services or Pro Services

when you don't have the Staffing for it so uh a lot of times you you'll start to see a lot more shift towards that to be able to um help identify and close those gaps along the way anything you guys want to provide on that yeah I think I think that's spoton And then the partners companies like us others in the industry usually the most efficient way to get these Security Solutions but you you have to start with the table Stakes like you you have to have MFA on everything but as we saw fairly easily

bypassed bypass more and more these days so then you have to be doing constant vulnerability scanning well what if the attackers know if about the vulnerability before it can be patched well then you need to be Monitoring the VPN for malicious use with Technologies like article FDR um well what if they get past that well you need to be monitoring every server for credential dumps and other things so I wish there was one Silver Bullet but if there was like a quick list of kind of like okay if you're not doing these things you will

certainly get hit um I would say full MDR manage monitoring every endpoint uh VPN all of those things uh doing internal risk scanning For internal and external vulnerabilities um having a backup disaster and disaster and Recovery plan that can't be impacted by the attackers when they're in the network that's obviously critically important uh MFA critically important and then when all else fails having an incident response plan incident response firm on retainer so that you know how you're going to respond and you can recover in a day best case scenario unfortunately Sometimes a few hours we've

had a few clients rather than weeks and weeks because there wasn't a plan there wasn't correct backup systems but that could be a six- hour presentation in and of itself no that's that's perfect and yeah perfect uh Subway into Al's conversation um absolutely on on how we can take those those approaches help close some of those gaps and then uh if you do have to just kind of shift the the where the the risk is at that's what Al's going to Kind of talk about a little bit more with the security and um IR plan

yeah and a lot of what Nathan shared was really what comes back to every organization understanding what happens and then really where things are at with if something happens now I kind of look at it as what is your Readiness Plan and do you have one a lot of the organizations we work with or that we speak with and and team up with Intervision on is a lot of organizations may have a Readiness Plan but really overall what does that mean and how often does it get reviewed how often do you do uh adding or

deleting of data that may or may not you know be needed um who do you call if something were to happen really one of the big things that I always look at is are you putting a plan in place so that you know who to call first or who are your first five to seven calls uh then what data is Needed so that you can mitigate or remediate a plan uh as quick as possible to get that data to whoever is going to help you um you know obviously arctic wolf uh coupled with intervision can

help you with the incident response side um it really the way I look at it is if you put this plan in place if you do the exercises such as tabletop simulations you know do other uh testing within the uh framework around a Readiness Plan that will help you with a foundation for Your security posture that will fit inside your security uh your security strategy and one of the big things that I always look at is from the the Readiness Plan a lot of organizations have a couple of people designated what we've um really come

up with over the last couple years uh since we purchased Tetra you know the Arctic W side and now they've evolved our group in terms of the incident response opened our eyes to really how it should be done The right way uh we're able to help organizations really with their readiness plan and then that helps to kind of move on to once they are ready for an incident how do you become proactive and that means you know adding to your M MFA EDR backup good hygiene with you know this manage detection response or you know

manage risk or education of the organization um a lot of organizations that I've found is they they educate the organization to a point But they don't always talk talk about fishing or smishing or physical or social uh and those are some of the areas as Nathan kind of alluded to that get hit a lot or ways that are entry points into the organization so what we do is we really you know try to make sure that you as an organization understand what that um in totality your your Readiness Plan is your proactive side you know

and then we've got other areas that we help you on on you know How do you pay for all these things because that's at the end of it you still have you know to pay for an incident but when you have a team around you and kind of this holistic approach you mitigate the risk a lot less so I'm going to you know kind of look at it from from the perspective of is your plan up to date who's got access to it and then do you know where to start and those are some of

the things that we always like to make sure you as an as an Organization are ready for so that's really my biggest things that I wanted to talk I can always dive deeper into what we do um I see there's a question um looks like uh what would Gap analysis with intervision look like um we are a state agency that went through a rather destructive breach that once remediate the contract agency through VA Corp our cyber insurance company who made a substantial in investment in Barracuda Through an intervision and have really improved our posture but

we are aware we can always do more so uh they they they're taking the right approach they're they're layering in the security appropriately um so just kind of looking at what that Gap analysis would be um and a lot of times we're we're partnering with um Artic wolf specifically to uh look at and help provide information in regards to um uh what that Gap analysis would be From an insurance perspective they have a lot of contacts in the insurance space especially with their IR plan they're on a lot of boards specifically for it uh as

well as our cyber security advisers can help provide some of that Gap analysis itself to make sure that we close any of those gaps to help strengthen your security posture along with that so once again help close all the gaps and then work with a team like Al and and make sure that we get the Best value out of your cyber security policy yep a lot of when you look at your security posture what your your goal is really to mitigate risk and so working with intervision arctic wolf and being able to put in place

these uh you know the the Readiness Plan the proactive side really the industry is moving to being able to show that an organization is in a better security posture so therefore from a cyber insurance standpoint Brokers and cyber Car cyber insurance carriers should be looking at you know giving a reward or a discount in terms of being able to look at the Cyber Insurance based on the investment you as an organization put in you know one of the things that I've always said is you know if you're looking at an incident response plan a one-hour

SLA helps it's it's very difficult for most organizations to do that's why you know the Arctic Wolf platform does what we do from our Incident response um you know make sure that when you're looking at it you've got the expertise from that incident response firm to be able to help uh that they've helped build IR te uh run books for you and you know one of the things that I love and Nathan laughs at me all the time but I love the fact that our uh Readiness Plan our incident response jump start is that single

source of truth it's a portal for you uh to be able to put everything in and have Multiple people have access so that's really my only like sales pitch if you would but um the biggest thing I would say is as an organization make sure that you have a Readiness Plan you understand your proactive side and then you know it's really good to be able to help to how do you pay for it when um something does happen so that's that's all I have for you today so thank you for your time perfect thanks Al

appreciate it Uh I'd might like to next introduce Cassidy she is our Sneakerhead she will help dive a little bit deeper into the um sneakers themselves and and kind of the offering here all right thank you so much I am so excited to be here with you all this afternoon my name is Cassidy Edwards I am reporting live from sunny Florida by way of Houston Texas which is my hometown and I work with lmh experiences I'm kind Of their resident sneaker head but you can think of me today as your culture engineer your culture architect

so as you're as you're thinking about customized Solutions through Arctic Wolf and partners I am going to take you through customizing a sneaker right so we're going to think about that and um before I get into who I am and what I do I would love to get to know my audience a little bit um it's the afternoon mindfulness break you can relax your Shoulders unclench your jaw kick your feet up have your favorite beverage on Deck um with me as we get into all things sneaker culture um so on a scale from 1 to

10 and you can just put your number in the chat um I would love to see your level of sneaker head so where do you think you rank on that one through 10 a one is someone who doesn't really care too much about Sneakers but we have feet so we have to wear shoes um and then all the way to a 10 is someone Who knows their brands knows their silos ettes probably has a nice rotation of sneakers maybe a collector you would say um I love that we have some one twos and threes uh

Joanna may have to come up here and co-host with me uh she's a 10 um so I love that and I think the ones twos and and threes kind of grab something from this conversation from sure so dear said where do you rank Crocs with socks I do it all the time yesterday I had some tie-dye Crocs on That didn't match any anything so I'm definitely a Crocs fan um I was late to the game but I am here and so this is a safe space everyone is a sneaker head here it's a judgment free

zone and if I'm being transparent because of that today I am wearing some offbrand just slides just house shoes it doesn't match anything either but I am going to show you some pretty classic and exclusive sneakers as we walk through this customization sneakers design so Definitely a huge Crocs and socks fan I'm a very big slides and socks fan as well and so I get three questions um usually when I come to these custom kicks and I've done over 120 of these conversations I love talking about sneakers right so who is this lady how many

sneakers does she have and why are sneakers even important like why are they even a thing um so I the director of people operations at a app a tech startup called trade block and what we Do is we create a digital experience around sneaker trading so in the sneaker world you have your Buy sell Marketplace and then you have your aftermarket so your aftermarket is like stockx right resale Market is what we call it then you also have goat which is another competitor to stockx and right in the middle you have eBay which is pretty

much a Marketplace for everything um so we create that old school barter system that digital experience around sneaker Trading upload your closet see people's closets and wish list and we just take it back to that old good feel right of trading sneakers I also create content through sneaker storytelling with some brands that you might know Nike Jordan Adidas New Balance um some retailers like Foot Locker uh JD Sports so we do a lot of sneaker storytelling uh with these Brands directly in marketing campaigns and last but not least I run a very unfiltered HR newsletter

called yo You're on mute which is play on words and we just try to enable you know high- performing teams through the lens of an HR lady so you can kind of think of me today as well as your HR lady and sneakers um so how many sneakers do I have I am going to see if I can upload a little picture um that gives you a an end to just kind of what it looks like in my sneaker let's say my sneaker organization I don't know if it's going to let me upload the picture

but it is Definitely quality over quantity at this point in my life I joined the 4040 club last year so you can kind of connect the dots there um but I've been collecting sneakers and loving them for over two decades been in HR for about 15 years just to sum it up and so I have about 150ish pairs of sneakers um they're all over the house they are very organized in these drop front boxes right here if you like them you can get them from Container Store um online as well and so It's it's I

there's no more playing sneaker Jenga sneaker Tetris um because that can get a little Troublesome right and so why sneakers why are they even a thing and so for me sneakers have been a universal language of creative expression and so your style is an extension of that creative expression right um and so they've you know created Community sneaker culture is about connection hence why I get to be with all you cool people today um it's Creating community and it's comfortable sneakers are comfortable you know if I'm just being honest um and so we're going to

dive into some of my goals for you is are really just to unlock some of your creative expression um to design your own custom pair and also take you on a trip down memory lane I live in a time capsule in the 90s and the 90s for me was really the Golden Era for everything um so you think of buzzwords and Tech we deal a lot with AI it's not new to the Game but it is big buzzword AI for me growing up in the 90s was literally just my friend behind me um Alan Iverson

the crossover King My First Crush um you know all of those things and so that has molded my love for sneaker culture so we're going to look at some sneakers I'm going to take you on a mini Master Class of some really cool sneakers um we're going to go through my journey first I'm going to take you over to some of the classics one of the biggest sneaker Trends that I'm seeing today and then we'll round it out with some best tips and tricks I may be able able to show you as well one of

my favorite sneakers which is very hard for a sneaker head um we love our kicks and we wear our sneakers so asking a sneaker head their favorite pair is equivalent or almost equivalent to asking a parent their favorite child and we don't have an answer for that or we shouldn't um and I have three kids so uh so let's get into Some of the sneakers I'm a visual learner so we're going to start with parts of the shoe and also kind of the personality of the shoe right and so one of my favites from the

9s I'm going to take you back to skate culture so when you think skateboarding in the 9s what were we wearing we were wearing thrifted clothes I was wearing jeno jeans I don't know if yall remember those but the legs were like this big um and I was wearing uh Converse Vans Nike Dunks I was Wearing airw walks a lot of Alien Workshop gear um I was skateboarder adjacent I would say I tried the thing couldn't do the thing very well but the soundtrack to my life at the time was also all the alternative so

Nirvana Green Day Smashing Pumpkins Pearl Jam Red Hot Chili Peppers all of the greates and as my music taste started to evolve into more rap um R&B and Houston hip-hop um my sneaker preferences also evolved and transformed to more Jordan so today Present day I'm a Jordan girl through and through um but I started with the Nike Dunks which are more my origin pair so one of my favorites is the Nike Dunk low and so this is considered a lifestyle shoe so a lifestyle shoe is something that you can leave by the door you can

take it to the store you can dress it up you can dress it down you can really wear it with anything so my first question that I'm going to ask you is how do you connect to sneakers and There's no right or wrong answer right so don't don't overthink it you know just think how do you connect to sneakers for me it's a lot of the storytelling and the Comfort right I need it to be comfortable comfortable pair um some people it's functionality so if you're a runner he said excuse to never wear dress shoes

again I agree with that um heels don't really have a great place in my closet right now and so the functionality you may connect to Sneakers through if you're a runner you may want a running shoe like Bart said um if you're a Hooper you may want a basketball shoe to customize right so Sean said functional functional versatility I love that that is chef's kiss um Sports and Casual comfort and walking style and so for me this shoe this is a Nike dunow it is a grade school size it's from about 20072 2008 a little

bit of an older pair um but I'm part of the small feet tribe so I can Wear kids sizes and um I connected to the sneaker really through the design on the upper so the upper is the top part of the shoe it is part of the Nike back to school pack so it looks very familiar it looks like a composition notebook right and so this was an extension of my personality of my identity because I'm a writer at heart and so wrote a lot of horror stories and scary stories when I was in elementary

school that's a whole another Zoom conversation on parenting But I had a ton of these composition notebooks stacked up so when I saw this pair was immediately like I need that pair it spoke to me I gravitated towards it because of the story and I'm a sucker for sneaker storytelling right so it has the the panels have that um kind of black and wide aesthetic that is synonymous to the composition notebooks the side panels have wide rolled notebook paper it's offset by a night uh the Nike Swoosh or the check and very Lightweight right and

so as you think about other ways that you connect to sneakers it may be a moment in time you know like I said I love I love horror stories so Halloween is one of my favorite holidays this pair is a Nike Dunk SB so skateboarding it was meant for the board the durability the thicker tongue and so this pair has kind of a monochromatic color palette it has that cream kind of very beige um upper that looks like a mummy it's called The Mummy It's a little more exclusive um dunk I would say it has

the mummy you know wrap coming out the back it has the graphic eyes on the heel tab um and it reminds me of Halloween so when I go out with my kids trick-or-treating I'm flexing on all the kids all the kids I'm the cool mom and so the midsole section which is this area right underneath the upper it actually glows in the dark right so it has cool details and details are really important when you're thinking about Customizing your shoe so we touched on um how you connect to the sneaker through maybe functionality maybe a

moment in time somebody said Jennifer said style so let's get into the style how do you connect through the sneaker through your own style so I would challenge you to answer this question in your mind or in the chat and um and how would you articulate your sty style like how do you literally describe it you know if someone if I said hey Melissa What is your style or Chad how would you describe your style to me um for me mine is very like tomboy Chic so it's like graphic t-shirts you know rugby t-shirts um

you know Blazers maybe a dress here and there but 99% of the time I am wearing some sneakers I'm comfortable straightforward like my old school monarchs monarchs are very like those'll sold a lot so that's one Chad said any with Travis Scott's name on it yeah definitely um I have like one or two Pairs of Travis Scotts and yeah the resell is is very high on those right and so this one is it looks very simple compared to the other ones it has a two-tone colorway it is a Nike Dunk high so it has that

high construction around the ankle collar um you really can't go wrong with a two-tone color way but the reason I connected to this sneaker through my style is the color I love orange orange is one of my favorite colors it's very versatile it's very Transitional through Seasons so think about maybe you know what colors do you like what colors do you wear often maybe it's colors that you want to get into right so it has a white leather base all the panels the swoosh the um shoelaces the outsole which is dirty because I wear my

sneakers it's all orange right so I can pair this color with a lot of different Browns uh greens blues and it would still look really good so Nike Dunks they weren't on Nike by you before But they are now on the customization platform so perfect timing for you all and this is a pair that you can actually choose and either buy it as is or you can customize it to your liking right so we're going to jump really quickly into some Classics you all may know these um but this is an Air Max One an

Air Force One and an Air Jordan one right and so the Air Max One is this was customized on Nike by you we worked with Nike directly to sell this color it's kind of An inspirational color way in 2020 and this is the uh the Air Max one is really the OG and the family tree of Air Maxes right it's kind of the originator and so it has a beautiful blue mudu guard it has a Gold Toe box um with mesh for breathability in Houston it's very hot and Florida it's hot too so think about

the materials that you're using you can customize depending on the shoe you can customize and use satin you can use canvas you can use leather um on Different parts of the shoe and like I said the small details on the back of this on the heel tab it says cr8 and that's that stands for create and so um we made this to be just out of creative expression just to say hey during 2020 it's kind of a weird time keep creating cre keep leaning into your art whatever that looks like even if you're not a

you know like a a traditional artist right you can create stories and you can create art through sneaker design And so uh this is one of my favorite Air Max ones very comfortable why don't they have a side zipper on the high tops some of them do actually some of the newer models do have kind of that side zipper it is easier I would say I'm I'm flat footed wide foot a little bit even though it's a small wide foot um sometimes it is easier to have that zipper versus getting into the high top so

a low top may be a way better option um had the original Jordan 1es really Wish I'd save them same I had the Chicago color weight wish I would have saved those um so let's get into an Air Force One Nelly wrote a song about it he told us to buy two pairs a white on white Air Force One you can never go wrong um but if you had a if you had a pair that was very very colorful you have your um this is actually a collaboration with undefeated so it has a lot of

color all over the shoe and if you wanted something that was bold and Colorful if you have that type of personality you can actually customize all these different parts of the shoe to infuse that you know and so you can also change the color of your out Sole and your midsole to be different colors they don't have to be white right and so very very classic pair and when I say classic pair that means it's timeless it has transcended all of the you know the trendy things over the decades and it's still a go-to sneaker

right so if you Like Air Force Ones I would always I would also say to go a size down um because they run half a size big and unless you have a wider foot and you just want some room right so that's kind of a fun fact and then lastly we have the Air Jordan one which I'm biased it's my favorite so designed in the 80s by Peter Mo you have this one it has a patent leather makeover on it um but in Air Jordan one it's had so many different variations you have the high

Top which is this one you have a low top you have um golf shoes that are also um Air Jordans now so if you want to be fly on the green I suggest you get some some Jordan golf shoes um but this is the OG patent bread so the bread is the black and red colorway just much like like this air Jord 11 black and red you know repres uh the Bulls basically is where that comes from and so um if you haven't seen the movie Air I would highly suggest that you stream that movie

it's Great and it talks about Michael Jordan coming over to the swoosh and so one of my favorite pairs of sneakers but you may also just want to do something fun with your shoe so before we get to the best like tips and tricks that I'll throw out there for you um you will be getting a Nike digital gift card it has a walkthrough of the site so you really don't have to memorize everything that I'm saying but the site the platform Nike byou is very userfriendly um so That will help you as you start

you know getting your designs together also if you want to connect and just ask my advice or talk more about sneakers cidy Ed Edwards on LinkedIn you can find me uh working at trade block but one of my favorite sneakers is an Air Jordan one it is customized so plot twist one of the biggest Trends I'm seeing in sneaker culture today is customization right so it's everything that you all will be contributing to and you're really Enhancing um that creative expression in a culture that we love right this a full circle moment for me because

I've been in sneakers for so long and so this is usually where the chat gets a little spicy little divisive cuz we talk about sports I think I saw Minnesota somewhere around here so um I may know who you who you rock with but a lot of people um in their small details uh the little text that you can put on the shoe they use initials they use area codes um special Dates but sometimes people just want to use colors that rep their team right and so for me I am from Houston Texas like I

said my dad is a Die Hard Dallas Cowboys fan I am not by any means we usually disown each other around football season and then we come back together after it's all done yes wise and so we're in the same conference though and that's why we butt heads but I wanted to show you all my favorite it is an Air Jordan 1 Philadelphia Eagles Edition um it kind Of Fades from like a dark green to a light green it says Fly Eagles Fly on the midsole uh it's more like cry Eagles cry right now um

the Chiefs beat us last year but it's okay we're going to come back um so it may be just simple as picking colors to customize based on things that you really love or that you like um and so a couple of best tips and tricks before we rounded out for you all today is number one have fun with it right so it it takes time sometimes to Um to customize a sneaker so take your time with it Rome wasn't built in a day neither was a fly sneaker that's number two and number three make sure

that you create a free Nike member account so I'll say that one more time create a free Nike member account because it does save all of your designs um and I would hate for you to lose your design um after you've been working on it for a long time but you know bring your friends into it have fun with it Bring your family in um and sneaker design is an art it's an art and a science um Eagles The credibility go I love that I usually get some booze in the chat but uh I I

embrace it all you know I love it so um hopefully Deery won't give us a bad rating but I am going to drop a quick survey in the chat let us know what what other shoes you want to hear more of we have a lot of different shoes to go through do you want to design a shoe together um happy To connect and I hope you learn something in this mini master class thank you for coming into my sneaker office today and I hope you have a great afternoon so I'm going to pass it back

um but always love talking about sneakers so thank you so much perfect thank you Cassidy appreciate it uh Nathan Al Haley and myself thanks for for everybody joining I do appreciate it and uh if you have any questions feel Free to reach out um Nathan Al or Haley do you have anything else you guys want to touch before we shut it down well thanks thanks everybody for coming and and Cassidy that was that was awesome that was that was awesome I can take no credit I was not part of the webinar designed by having cast

here was awesome that was very great to learn great to see thank you so much that was awesome thank you thanks everyone you hi everyone thanks guys