Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace?

Well, let's find out right now.

Jim: You know, we're on the internet all the time. Since the internet became widely available to everyone around 1994, the internet has invaded every corner of our lives, literally. Every corner of our lives, we can literally automate our thermostat, our draperies, our garage door opener, the lights inside our house.

And when we get, when we get woken up and the list can go on and on and on. So I guess that's the alarm clock thing I was talking about. This is all possible because of the internet. The internet has brought so many incredible resources, the fingertips of every day people across the globe. It makes it easier for us to do our jobs and it makes it easier for us to be able to communicate with people around the world.

Frankly, I find it amazing about how easy it makes it so that we can do research and study on scripture when I'm preparing for a speech or a sermon. But with all that good comes a lot of bad too. How do we protect those we love at home and those we work with from the dangers of the Internet? Well, Brad Hawkins joins us today to share his Jesus story and how the Lord has led him to launch a company to help protect us all from the Internet and from the creepy people on the Internet.

Brad Hawkins, welcome to iWork4Him.

Brad Hawkins: Thank you so much, Jim and Martha. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you guys having us on and being such a, such a supporter for SaferNet and just being a good friend. I really, really have appreciated the two of you. Thank you.

Jim: You're very welcome. And I'll send that 20 in the mail tomorrow.

All right. So Brad, before we get talking about SaferNet, before we get talking about the responsibility we have as believers to really protect ourselves when we're on the internet, I want to hear your Jesus story.

Brad Hawkins: Oh, you know my Jesus story has no start to it, which is really interesting. I cannot remember the day that I turned my life over to the Lord.

I just can't remember. My parents said I was really young and, and we just, we just lived a Jesus life from the beginning of my life. And you know, I, I've had people tell me that maybe I'm not a believer if I can't remember, but I've. I've been living a very foolish life. If that is the case.

I Love the Lord. I love following him. I love studying and learning about his scripture. I went to a Christian high school, went from there to a theology, got a theology degree, and then I went from there and got a business and finance degree, all listening to the Lord, hearing what he had to say and walking in that way.

Now I can't tell you that I've done it perfectly. I've had a lot of trips and fell on my nose multiple times. And, but that's the beauty of his grace and his forgiveness is that he just walks us through that and picks us up and puts us on the right path. But yeah, my Jesus story is let's just walk with him and learn more about him every day and realize looking back how foolish I was back in my beginning days of thinking I knew what God wanted me to be doing and how God, but that's just that, that's the way He grows us and teaches us and, and helps us become closer to Him as we walk.

Martha: Right. And much like your personal life with your spiritual life having ups and downs, your career has also had some serious ups and downs. What has God led you through?

Brad Hawkins: Oh my goodness. You know I started out in the investment world. I, I started an investment company and that company grew to be, uh, about the third largest investment company statewide. Not one of the national Browns by any means, but statewide in our area here.

And it just grew to the place where, I really didn't have to, I didn't have to work a lot. I had a lot of really good employees that did what they were doing. And and but I, I loved the challenge and the experience of growing a business.

So I, I had hired one of my high school friends to to, to work for my company so I put him in a place where he was overseeing the day to day and, and I started up several other companies. So I started a medical wellness company and put some people in charge of running that. And I started a oxygen delivery company and I put some people in charge of running that.

And then I started a really fun, big company and that was a LED light manufacturing company based out of Hong Kong. And we built a factory in Shenzhen, China and had distributions in six countries and we're working on an agreement with Phillips to, to sell our lights and it was, it was just a growing experience.

And so you know, the Lord had blessed us with just great favor great relationships lots of money. And I was sitting in my office one day at our investment company and my one of one of my assistants came in and said, we can't access any of our accounts. And I thought, Well, that's weird.

Talk to the guy that's in charge. And he said, Well, we can't get a hold of him. I thought, Well, that's doesn't make any sense. So I tried and couldn't get a hold of anybody. And and make a long story short uh, the guy that I knew since childhood was running a small Ponzi company for a, for a separate company, not even our, the company he was running for me. For a separate company that he had.

He was running a Ponzi scheme and the government felt like since he was also running my company, it was probably bad too. So they seized all of my assets and basically froze all the companies that I was overseeing and running and owning.

And, and so we went from having all the money in the world to do whatever we needed to do and grow businesses and hire people and influence people. And and to the point where I ended up working at a body shop. So it was a quite devastating process. But basically what happened was is that they put everything through what they call a 10 year audit, which means doesn't mean that they took 10 years, but it means they audited my last 10 years of activity.

Couldn't find anything that that they were concerned with. But they ended up putting my business associate in jail for 28 years for what he did and they dropped everything. They dropped the freeze on everything which took them two years, which basically put all our businesses into failure.

So we had to start all over and that was a devastating process. But the Lord took care of us the whole way. He, he walked us through. I was very, very frustrated, very, very angry. And it was, it was quite a journey to go through for me and my family.

Jim: So, I mean, I mean, that's just it. You had, you had a business loss. There's pain there. You had betrayal. And there's pain there. How did you keep your faith strong? Because a lot of people, when they get to that kind of end of the rope, sometimes they just end their lives. Sometimes they just, I mean, literally they don't know what to do because it is such a swing.

How did you keep - you and your bride? How did you keep your face strong and your kids used to probably a kid staying at home when that all was going on? How, how did you do it? What did you do?

Brad Hawkins: You know, that's a great question. And the answer probably is truthful to say that I didn't. There was times where I was just so, I looked at God and said, what are you doing?

I, I. I didn't do something to deserve this. Why, why am I in this spot? Do you, do you hate me? Do you, do you think that I'm I'm horrible? Why, why would you cause this to happen? I, I know that my wife felt the same way and, and you know, we kept trying to explain things to our kids and some of our kids are still struggling in trying to comprehend and understand all the details behind it.

But really I was coming home from a meeting. This is about three years after it started and I had one asset left that I was trying to sell so that I could start a different business and I could use that money to start it. And I went to the closing. Everything was closing on it. Everything was fine.

And driving back they, they said that the CEO of the company that was buying the asset decided not to do it and they're not closing. And. I just fell apart. I just broke down. I pulled my car off the highway and I was crying and and I said, you know, I God, you can do everything you can to destroy me.

I don't care. I will end up in heaven. You may not want me there. You may do everything you can to get me out of there. But I know what your Bible says. I know what the rules are. I am going to believe in you. I'm going to trust you. I'm going to live that life that you say will get me into heaven.

I'm gonna do it. And I'm gonna be at the pearly gates and you'll have to be the I'll have to be the only one that you send out if even if I do follow all your guidelines and rules. And and I just kind of fell apart and I started driving again after about a half hour of explaining how angry I was and I just started laughing and I said, you know.

I can't have any control over this. I can't do anything about this. All I can do is just keep walking. There's nothing more I can do. And I'm, I'm still walking. And God's still blessing us. I don't have any answers on why it all happened. I, I still don't comprehend it all. But I completely believe that God works everything together for good.

Now, what's interesting is he showed me. He doesn't work every everything together for good for everybody. He works for everything together for good that love Him. And if, if I understand that, that I, I love Him, well, God says if I love Him, I'll keep His commandments. And I will, and, and ask Him for forgiveness when I fail at that.

And I will continue to keep His commandments. I'll continue to ask for forgiveness when I goof that up. And I'll continue to walk in His path. And trust that he has everything else under control. Not the easiest task in the world, but that's what I'll do.

Martha: No, it isn't. So one of the things we love to talk about, and thank you for sharing all of that, because it I believe that we have listeners, their story won't look the same as yours, but they've had betrayal and hardship, and Have felt like they are at the end of their rope.

One of the things we love to talk about, and I'd love for you to just touch on briefly is how about your marriage? How through all of this, did you you know, what did you do to protect your marriage as you went through such a hard time?

Brad Hawkins: Oh, that's such a great question. And if my wife was here, she probably would have a different answer than I would.

But what I can say is what I tried to do and what she can say is what she noticed that I did. So those are two separate conversations. But you know, I I tried to keep my wife up to date on everything. I tried to explain everything to her. And, and what was interesting is in the very beginning, it probably could have been very easy for her to question me, to question, gosh, you know, nobody comes after you like this unless you've done something.

And she never did. She knew me. She understood who I was. She knew that it wasn't anything that I had done. And having her have that faith in me was was life giving to me. It was. If I had to fight that front, I don't know how I would have done that.

And God probably kept me from that. But you know, truthfully, my wife was warned about this in a dream. And what's interesting is the biggest loss that we had, we lost millions of dollars. We lost businesses. We lost all kinds of stuff. The biggest loss that we had was our reputation and our friends.

And we believe that we had friends everywhere. But what we learned is we didn't really have friends. We had a lot of people that wanted things from us. And when my wife had a dream and I won't get into the details of it, but it was basically a dream that was showed her before all this started that there's going to be a huge collision and we're going to be crying out for help from people that are our friends that are right there in front of us and they're going to turn their back and walk away.

And she didn't know what that was. It freaked her out. I remember when she had that dream at the time and she mentioned it to me. I thought, well, that's weird and just kind of went on with my day. But but God prepared her heart to at least understand that really, our friends are going to walk away from us.

And friends and family in some cases, And so I, I think that she was able to lean on that to know that, that God knew and God understood and he was going to be there with us through that process. But the truth is we both went through our different versions of depression and there was times where we didn't talk a whole lot, that we just kind of existed.

But I always did my best to be able to hear what she had to say. Where I went wrong a lot as I kept telling her what she was supposed to be doing and believing and having confidence in and not listening. But I learned as we went and, and became a little more attentive to her feelings of lack as opposed to trying to fix it in the process.

Right. But as God did it, we, he brought us to a place of, of joy through the process.

Jim: I love the setup because all of this led you to starting SaferNet. Why? Why did you start a company dedicated to a safer and more secure internet experience? I mean, you could have started anything because you had all kinds of experience in lots of different fields. Why this company? Why SaferNet. com?

Brad Hawkins: You know I can't say that I came up with the idea all by myself. What had happened was, is I, I started doing consulting for some businesses. And the company name at the time was White Fight. And they were trying to do some work on routers and they asked me to do some consulting and I said, well, in the consulting review, I looked at it said, this makes no sense.

It won't work. There's not a multiple multiplying factor to it. And I gave them a plan that they could move forward on in a business model. And they, they said, would you mind coming on and doing this for a contract and, and helping us do this? And I looked at it and said, gosh, this excites me. Your business model it doesn't excite me, but this excites me because I can see that we can put a plan together to really help people.

And one of the things that I proposed is that, you know, in any business it's always a good idea to be able to have something to give away. And I said, what if we gave away part of our security as a free pornography blocker for those people that want to block pornography and, and conquer that addiction that they might have?

And the board at the time agreed to that and said, yeah, let's do that. And that really fired me up because I, I know several people that are just dying to try to get out of this continued addiction that they have. And that's really what motivated me is to be able to say, gosh as we'll talk about it, I have this this thing that I know when I go to heaven for the first day for the first time that I see God for the first time, we're gonna go through a period of judgment. I don't know what the timing on that is, but we're gonna go through a period of judgment and I want him to be able to say some things that I've done that is well done.

And I and I fully believe that he gave us the idea to be able to give people a tool to be able to block pornography out of their world and help them be able to use this amazing tool that we have in the internet and not be afraid of being sucked into these addictions that the enemy would like to destroy people's mind with.

Martha: Yeah. So that's such a great segue because I love that you saw a business model that could give something to people that has kingdom principles that is saying, I want to help protect you from evil. So let's, let's go into that a little bit deeper and just talk about overall, what is SaferNet all about?

So we've kind of, kind of glossed over it a little bit. So tell our listeners what SaferNet Is and why we're so excited to be talking about it on iWork4Him.

Brad Hawkins: Yes. SaferNet is an app that goes on any endpoint device and an endpoint device is a laptop or a cell phone or a tablet or anything at the end of the internet that you, that access the internet.

So it's an app that goes on any endpoint device and it puts that endpoint device and puts that phone or computer into a encrypted tunnel to go through the internet. And as it goes through that encrypted tunnel, we're able to scramble everything so that if somebody gets to your stuff, they can't, they can't know what you're doing.

And number two we put in this, uh, this virus protection inside the tunnel so that if you get to a place that has bad stuff that would like to put it on your device or on your network, we block it before it gets there. So it's a, it's a VPN, it's a virus protection, and then we have 200 internet controls to allow an administrator to manage all of the devices connected to their SaferNet account.

What that means is that you can turn on and off the internet. You can turn it on and off portions of the internet, meaning pornography or, or there's 84 other filters you can put on there. You can see all the traffic, see where everybody's going and, and agree or disagree that this is okay. You can see all the, what we call entourage of all these external things trying to get to your, your devices to try to steal information off of it.

Not only do we block all that, but you can see all that happening in real time. There's, so what we're doing is we're making it very simple, including the three most important parts of cybersecurity into one app, and giving it to individuals at a very low cost.

Martha: I love the fact that you explained that so clearly for us to understand because this is something that is very critical in our homes and in our workplace and to be able to have that view where somebody as an administrator can look and say, this is happening and we are seeing it being able to protect people from places that they shouldn't go or the attack that they could be having and that you did such a great job of explaining that.

Jim: And we know how important it is to protect ourselves from the enemy and from the internet. I mean ever since it came around. Because Satan said, you know, he's there to prowl around like a... Jesus said Satan's here to steal, kill, and destroy. And that's what the internet is there to do. But safernet. com Has I mean we've been working with this now Brad you have become a ministry partner of iWork4Him. And so I've been using this heavily and It's amazing how easy it was to put on all of our devices, how to be able to track all of our devices.

And I tested all the controls to see, okay, if I try to go here, what will it do? And it just, it says, no, you're not going there unless you put in the password to get past it. And then it's going to be notated that you put the password in to get past it. But I love the console because everybody on the team, you can see what everybody's doing, where everybody's going.

And it's, it's such a great tool. And we just want to encourage all of our listeners to go out there and check out SaferNet. com, SaferNet. com. It is a powerful tool that is inexpensive, reasonably priced for every business, for lots of different computers and phones and tablets on your business, but also for at home.

So Brad, how does SaferNet help create a safe and controlled internet experience at work? And then I want to ask at home before we run out of time today. So what are you doing to help make internet safe for everybody in my office?

Brad Hawkins: But really our, our goal is to work with small to medium sized businesses because truly most small to medium sized businesses do not have any idea what they're doing cybersecurity wise.

So now we're not necessarily the end all, there's other cybersecurity tools and devices that maybe medium sized businesses would need. But what we would do is we'd put a a an app on every endpoint device. So every computer in the office, every cell phone that goes out of the office, every computer that goes out of the office and keep them all safe all the time.

Now, one of the things I didn't mention, and I'm pretty excited about is that we have a 24 always on policy. So what happens is, is that if you turn off your device and turn it back on SaferNet turns on with you. So you're not running the risk to say, Oh gosh, I forgot to turn on my VPN when you walk into Starbucks and, and decide you want to sit down and watch something.

Or there's

Jim: also something. You're saying that I can go and I'm not a Starbucks guy, but let's just say I go to McDonald's and I want to use their free Wefie because it says free Wefie right at the front door. If I go in there and use it with safe for now on my computer, does that mean I'm actually safe when I'm surfing at McDonald's?

Brad Hawkins: You're safe when you're surfing at McDonald's. Absolutely. You know, what's interesting is that I was actually in a hotel doing payroll with my computer. Now in times in past I would never do that except for behind a firewall because I'm accessing my bank accounts or whatever. Now I'm completely safe because I'm operating within an encrypted tunnel that nobody can see or access even using somebody's Wi Fi.

Jim: Let's talk about home.

Martha: Yeah. So tell us about home then. So I understand you see it with lots of computers and all the employees and stuff, but what particularly is the focus in our homes that is set there for us?

Jim: I think this is really powerful. I love it.

Brad Hawkins: It is. And it works exactly the same way as a business.

So in a business, you've got an administrator that wants to oversee and make sure that everybody using the Internet is safe. Same thing with a mom or a dad that wants to oversee their their kids. They want to make sure that their kids are not going to places that that are going to mess with their brains and help them think about things incorrectly and that kind of things.

And so what happens is, is that the administrator can go in there. They can put an app on every device, you can narrow the usage down to two or three websites if you want to. You can narrow it down to very specific filters of things. You know, it's interesting, there was a lady that came up to me one time telling me that I saved their daughter's life.

And I thought, well, that's an exaggeration, but I'd love to hear the story. . Mm-Hmm. . But she explained that she was struggling with bulimia and that she, whenever she got on the internet, all she saw was beautiful, thin, perfect girls. And it had formed a look, a picture in her head of what she was supposed to look like.

And she was doing everything she could to number one, get there. And number two, destroy her life in the process by filtering out beauty and all the different pieces that she was seeing, her mom was able to go in there and control all those pieces and block specific areas. It gave her the ability to do her homework for high school and not get attacked with images that were not necessary for her future. And it's really amazing how you can control that.

Jim: What I love is that feature where you could have that teenager that's driving you crazy and, and they're just hold off in their bedroom. You can shut off the internet on their devices and just say. No internet for you right now.

Your phone can dial out. That's it. I mean, that's a powerful feature for a rebellious teenager to me.

Brad Hawkins: Exactly. It's time for dinner. Guess what? The internet goes off. That's pretty quick and easy. Just press the button. Bloop.

Martha: I love it. It's powerful. You know, I'm going to just take a minute here and talk to the listeners.

Because a lot of times when we talk about things related to a business only, people kind of turn their, turn it off. Because they're like, I don't have decision making power. I don't have the ability to bring this to my company. But everyone has the ability to bring it in their home. And I, I think starting there for some people, that could be a good first step and say, see it for yourself.

A lot of people, we are, we'd like to live in denial that, that bad things could happen to us, but the reality is there's people working really hard to make bad things happen. And this is one. way to protect ourselves from things we may never know. It's that, you know, that Amy Grant song, you know, where the, the, you know, we didn't know if a car, you know, went out of control.

I don't remember all the words, but you know, we never know what we've been protected from. And I think that for the listeners, give this a try in your home, but If you have the ability to take it to your work, then you've got that experience.

Jim: Really, all you need to do is contact SaferNet.com, have a chat and let them do a demo for your business.

It will blow your mind, because I know the way these things are packaged together, you'll spend way more for each individual pieces, and again, elsewhere. You mean elsewhere If they bought five different pe, if they bought web filters and a porn filter and they bought A VPN and they, and they did the malware, the, the antivirus stuff.

You'd spend more money and this is all packaged together and it works. It really works. And these guys are kingdom. This is a kingdom business focused on the king growing the kingdom. It's a great ministry partner of iWork4Him. We would love for you to check out SaferNet. com Brad before we're done We've had some fun with this because there's so many naughty people on the internet.

We've decided to launch a separate podcast Just to focus on the cyber criminals of the world, and we called it the Digital Desperados Podcast. We launched it just a few weeks ago. Digital Desperados is the name of the podcast. When we're covering the stories and how SaferNet might be able to save the day in those situations.

That's been, that was your first podcast experience, wasn't it Brad?

Brad Hawkins: That was, and it's actually been a lot of fun. It's been really interesting doing the research on all these cyber criminals and talking about them. It's really fascinating to see how it all comes about. And I'm really surprised at what country keeps hiring all these cyber criminals and keeping them out of jail.

Jim: Huh, that country may be located on a large continent.

Martha: Well, maybe they need to listen. With a six letter word, yeah. Maybe they need to listen to the show to find out.

Jim: Digital Desperados. And you can check it out. We've listed, we've put it out there. Did we really put it out there?

Martha: No, what I, no, I just, I, there is.

Digital Desperados. We'll have it right in the link. We'll put it in the link in the notes. And you know, I just think it's, it's a great way to get some exposure to understanding what's really happening. You know, some of us live very much with our blinders on. And so Digital Desperados is just a great podcast to help show people what's really going on and why it's important to have digital protection.

Jim: Guaranteed you will enjoy the conversation because one of our co hosts, Patrick McMurphy. He's got this phenomenal Irish accent and it just adds a whole nother flavor as he tells the story of these criminals It's been a lot of fun. I mean, you know, we're highlighting the life of criminals We're talking about how you know, you know, I always ask It's like these are serious people Brad.

Can you stop this guy? Cuz this is some pretty creepy stuff All right. Final question. We got to go. We're way over.

Martha: Well, I just want to know you know, you have an audience that has been riveted by your story We, we, our audience has been, so are there any final words of advice for those that are listening in living out their faith in their work?

As God has maybe taught you a lesson.

Brad Hawkins: Oh, you know, I could probably talk for hours on that one topic.

Jim: You got 30 seconds, so you go ahead.

Brad Hawkins: But, but you know, I, I would say the, the one thing that has brought me through and redeveloped life inside of me. Is realizing how much God wants to tell me and communicate with me and guide me through his scripture.

And if, if I just leave my nose in the book and listen to what he has to say and ask him whenever I can, what I need to be doing next. He will walk me through whatever difficult things that are laid out there. If I'm dredging through difficult things and I, and I believe and trust him he's going to take my hand and walk me right through step by step and I don't have to be afraid.

Jim: Those are some great words. You know, Martha, the digital desperadoes podcast, digital desperadoes podcast, as I mentioned before, is such a great podcast to help our listeners learn more about the importance of digital protection, but finding good podcasts, talking about faith and work, that can be tough.

We have a solution for that. The Awaken Podcast Network, we have put together over 150 podcasts centered around the conversation of faith connected to work. We invite all of you guys to check out online, AwakenPodcastNetwork. com, AwakenPodcastNetwork. com. We put new titles on there almost every week that we find about that discussion.

And maybe you, our listeners, know of one that you want to mention to us. Just send me an email. Jim@iWork4Him.com . Jim@iWork4Him.com. We love inviting you out there to the AwakendPodcastNetwork. com. Brad Hawkins from SaferNet . com. Thanks for being on. iWork4Him today.

Brad Hawkins: Thank you so much guys.

Jim: You've listened to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.