Meet the Team: Nathan Hooker

Early bird or night owl?

Night owl.

Favorite movie?

Fight Club. I think I have seen it more than any other movie.

What bands are on your playlist right now?

Miniature Tigers, Iron Tom, Unwritten Law, and Queens of the Stone.

Favorite local restaurant?

Town Square Pub and Grill in Lake St. Louis. The fried pork tenderloin sandwich is pretty good.

If you could invite anyone to dinner there with you, who would it be?

My grandpa. He lives down in Arkansas, so I don’t see him much, but we make a decent duo.

Any hobbies?

Fishing, typically for bass and trout. Video games—right now it’s all Baldur’s Gate. I like Elder Scrolls and Fallout too.

What do you feel like you personally bring to the NOC team?

Planning, auditing, and clean-up skills. I take care of a lot of technical administrative tasks and try to keep things clean and well-documented. That’s where I spend a lot of my time.

Favorite IT tech tip or hack?

Ctrl-Shift-T will bring back a tab that you accidentally closed.

Favorite productivity software or extensions?

Bitwarden works really well for password management. It’s cross platform, so you can save passwords for your work and home computers as well as your phone. I only have to worry about one account for all of my sign-ins.

What current cybersecurity threats concern you the most for NOC’s clients?

Social engineering. There are some pretty good phishing attempts, but the ones that call in advance about a “business transaction” to make an email seem legitimate can be really effective. That voice in your head make attempt seem more reputable.

How do you feel about recent AI language models like ChatGPT and Bard?

They are super-useful and hilarious at the same time. I use them quite a bit to clean up what I write, but if you’re a little too loose with the prompts, the output can be pretty comical. The results might not be what you intended.

If you could give NOC Clients one piece of advice to improve their relationship with the technology that they use, what would it be?

Give it a break every now and then. Turning it off and back on helps it out.