Your kids are not safe online.
By Steve Schmidt | December 2024
"I've seen a child get abducted because of the internet. This is personal to me."
Kevin Huber said that on a phone call three weeks ago. We rescheduled our shoots to be at Kevin’s office in Brandon, SD just days later.
IT Outlet doesn't look like much from the outside. Big, Beautiful Structure. Trucks. Pallets. A quiet road in South Dakota. Then you walk inside—racks of servers, blinking lights, a wall of monitors showing cyberattacks hitting three continents in real time. Every 22 seconds, someone is attempting to breach a system somewhere in the world. Kevin watches it happen live.
He runs the kind of operation that provides IT infrastructure to places like Guam—enough firepower to light up an entire territory.
But that's not why we came.
The Thing Nobody Wants to Talk About
Let me be direct with you. This wasn’t an episode about firewalls and software updates. This is about what happens when we hand our children a device connected to the entire world and walk away. Kevin didn't bother sugarcoating it. "They want to molest your children. They want to traffic them. That's uncomfortable to say and uncomfortable to talk about. But there's a reason they find 3,000 kids stuffed in a box truck moving somewhere around the globe."
I asked him to explain how it happens.
It starts with a game. Roblox. Fortnite. YouTube Kids. Your child creates a profile. Maybe they say they're 13. Maybe they pick a name like "Alicia" and list their favorite games.
Within minutes, the messages start. "Where do you live?" “What school do you go to?" "I'm 14 too." These aren't other kids. These are predators. Lurking. Watching. Waiting.
"You can jump on Roblox right now and turn yourself into Alicia who's 13 and likes to play games. Instantly you'll start getting messages from people asking where you live. It's predators lurking on your children without you knowing it."Kevin Huber, CEO, IT Outlet
Kevin told us about a family he worked with. Their child was groomed online. Then abducted. "Everything turned out okay in the end," he said. "But the anguish. The anxiety. I can't imagine as a father what that would feel like." He paused, long gaze away, as if he felt the weight of the work he and his team were taking on. “That's why we do this."
What Your Router Isn't Telling You
Here's what most people don't understand about home internet security: that little box from your provider — the router that gives you Wi-Fi — has almost zero protection built into it. None.
Kevin broke it down for me. “At work, you're behind a hardened firewall. Insurance companies require it. IT departments manage it. There are policies, filters, layers of protection between you and the bad actors trying to get in.”
At home? Wide open?
“Hell yeah, that little modem, that little router — it's not blocking anything," Kevin said. "You're letting everything in right now. China. Russia. North Korea. Kim Jong-un doesn't need access to your home. But right now, he has it."
I thought about our house. We have a Ring doorbell to see who's dropping off packages. We lock our doors at night. We set the alarm. But our Wi-Fi? The thing connected to every device our kids touch? Completely unprotected.
DSU: One of Six in the Country
Here's a fact that shocked us. Dakota State University in Madison, South Dakota — about an hour from Sioux Falls — is one of only six institutions in the entire country certified to train CIA and NSA personnel in cybersecurity. That’s where Kevin got his start. "My tutelage came from DSU," he told me. "They carry three credentials for research, defense, and national security. Some of the top cyber minds in the world are taught at that institution."
So when Kevin talks about zero-day threats — the brand-new vulnerabilities that hackers discover and exploit before anyone knows they exist — he's not speculating. He's on the list. His company gets the alerts. The patches hit his systems before they hit yours.
"We partner with Fortinet to design this program," he said. "Nobody else is doing it like this. The manufacturer doesn't have another partner like us."
This is the guy filtering the internet for families in South Dakota. And Australia. And soon, Canada. Meanwhile, most of us are running on default settings from our local cable or internet provider, 100% unprotected.
"98% of homes on planet Earth don't have this protection. Most people don't know what a firewall is. They just know the internet works. That's exactly what makes them vulnerable."Kevin Huber, CEO, IT Outlet
The Dark Web's Hottest Commodity
We asked Kevin what's selling on the dark web right now. His answer: Social security numbers. "What do you need to get into the United States and prove you have some sort of identity? A social security number. What's the most precious item for sale on the dark web right now? Social security numbers."
There will be over 300,000 identity theft in 2026. Kevin said The Library Storythat that number like it was already written in stone. I asked him how I'd even know if someone was using my Social Security number. "Depends on what kind of protection you have. Most people don't have the means or the know-how to set up alerts. On the dark web, they're just creating IDs. Documents. Driver's licenses. CDLs. As long as you show proof, nobody's checking if that social is duplicated."
He's right. I've hired people. I collect an I-9. I don't verify if the social security number is already being used by someone else. None of us do.
The Library Story
Kevin told me a story that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Libraries are public institutions. Taxpayer-funded. They can't filter the internet because it's not theirs to restrict. Free speech. Open access. So what happens? "People go into the library, grab an iPad, head into the bathroom, turn on adult content, and take care of themselves. It happens all the time. If you look downtown at the library, you'll find a large portion of our homeless population. Not that they're bad people. But the internet's free. You can get anywhere. They'll sit outside and use the Wi-Fi."
I thought about our children’s school Chromebooks. The devices our kids bring home. The cameras on those devices.
"There are stories where kids take devices home from school, and they leave them open. The school has access to the camera. In their room."
Let that sink in.
What I Found on My Six-Year-Old's iPad
Melissa was in the car with our kids not too long ago. Our six-year-old was in the back watching YouTube Kids. Then she heard something. "That doesn't sound right. Let me see it."
He was embarrassed to hand it over. He knew something was wrong. He's six years old, and he already knew. When she looked at the screen, she turned to me and said, "Steve, this is what our kid is watching." It was on YouTube Kids.
This is why this episode matters to me personally. I've been the parent who gives the kid the iPad so I can have 30 minutes of peace. I've been the parent who assumes the apps are safe because they say "Kids" in the name.
They're not.
"If you put a coat on your kid when it's cold, if you make sure they have lunch in their backpack, you should make sure there's protection around whatever they're seeing on their device."Melissa Goodwin, Co-Host, SpotLight Sioux Falls
The Solution That Should Already Exist
Here's the thing that frustrated us most about this conversation. This protection exists. It's been protecting businesses for 20 years. Insurance companies require it. IT departments manage it. Every office in America has some version of a firewall filtering the internet before it reaches employee devices. But homes? Nothing.
Kevin is changing that. IT Outlet is launching a home data defense subscription. For $500 a year — about $42 a month, less than most streaming bundles — they'll install a firewall that filters your entire home network before anything reaches your devices.
Block Russia. Block China. Block North Korea. Block Roblox if you want.
Block adult content. Block gambling sites. One family Kevin works with has a son with a gambling problem — they turned off every gambling site in the house.
Set the internet to shut off at 10 pm for the kids. Turn it back on at 7 am.
Filter by device. Your teenager gets different access than your six-year-old.
And zero-day threats — the brand-new vulnerabilities that hackers exploit — get patched automatically. You don't have to think about it.
Web 3.0 Is Coming
Kevin painted a picture of where this is all headed. "Web 1.0 was the dawn of the internet. The dot-com bubble. Web 2.0 was social media — people interacting, doing business online, communicating. We're about to jump into Web 3.0." Quantum computing. AI. Blockchain.
"The dollar is going to turn into a digital item. The title for your car, the title for your home — it's all going on the blockchain. Digital contracts. You won't go to a title company anymore. It'll all be done digitally."
And if you're not protecting that information? "You're standing naked in front of Wembley Stadium at a Freddie Mercury show." The threats aren't going to slow down. They're going to accelerate. The question is whether you're going to act before something happens — or after.
The Worst Thing He's Ever Seen
I asked Kevin point-blank: What's the worst thing you've seen in your career? He gave me two answers. "I've seen hundreds of thousands of dollars drained in seconds from people's lives. Gut-wrenching."
He paused. "But more importantly, I've seen a kid be abducted. Kidnapped. Someone who didn't know how to protect their child on the internet fell victim to it."
He looked at me, deadpan. "As a father, I can't imagine what that would feel like. That's why we do this."
"Can you go without your money? Can you go without your child? Can you go without the hard work your parents put in and left you when they passed away? If you can go without it, then don't do anything. But if you want to be serious — act now."Kevin Huber, CEO, IT Outlet
What You Should Do Right Now
Kevin gave me three things every parent should check today:
1. Know what apps your kids are on. Check the search history. Go through their phones and tablets. Don't assume.
2. Run a credit check on yourself. Make sure nothing looks wrong.
3. Turn on two-factor authentication on everything. Use credit cards instead of debit cards online. And never — ever — do your banking on public Wi-Fi.
"You'd be better off asking your boss if you can do some personal banking at work," Kevin said. "At least you're behind their firewall."
That Starbucks Wi-Fi? You're asking for it.
The Offer
IT Outlet is launching their Home Data Defense service January 1st. The first 500 subscribers get locked in at $500/year for life. After that, it goes to $600. That's less than your cell phone bill. Less than your streaming subscriptions combined. Less than a cup of coffee a day. For that, you get enterprise-grade home cybersecurity protection. The same filtering that protects businesses, hospitals, and government facilities — now protecting your kids, your finances, and your peace of mind.
If you make $100,000 or more combined household income, Kevin says you're a prime target. They know you have assets. They know you bank online. They know your kids are on devices.
The question is: what are you going to do about it?
Steve Schmidt is a writer and the founder of SpotLight Sioux Falls. He checked his six-year-old's YouTube history after this interview. You should, too.
