I’m Ethan Morrison. I live in Austin, Texas, with my wife Sarah, our two kids, and a golden retriever named Ranger who treats every Amazon driver like an old friend.
I didn’t come to digital safety through cybersecurity certifications or a career in IT. I came to it the same way most parents do—by dealing with real problems in a normal household and realizing the available advice was either too technical, too alarmist, or too focused on selling the next subscription.
Education & Early Work
My formal path looked like this:
B.S. in Civil Engineering (structural focus)
Learned to evaluate systems under load, identify weak points, and design for long-term performance rather than short-term appearance.Master’s in Construction Management / Cost Control
Shifted from pure design into the practical side of projects: estimating, risk assessment, lifecycle cost, and the gap between what a plan promises and what actually happens in the field.Field Engineer & Estimator roles
Spent years on job sites and in estimating offices tracking hidden costs, schedule risk, and the difference between products that looked good in a brochure and ones that held up under daily use.
That background trained a specific habit: look past the marketing claim, ask what the real ongoing cost will be, and judge tools by whether ordinary people can keep them working without constant expert help.
How the Focus Shifted
The digital safety questions started at home. A free game download that left unwanted software on a shared family laptop. A realistic-looking popup that nearly convinced an older relative to hand over remote access. Security software that worked fine the first year and then quietly renewed at a much higher price. None of these required advanced technical knowledge to solve. They required clearer information and fewer assumptions.
I began keeping notes the same way I once tracked project costs—first-year pricing versus renewal, feature lists versus what a non-technical adult will actually use, and whether a product stays understandable when someone is tired, distracted, or simply not an expert. The same questions kept surfacing: Can a parent finish setup without calling for help? Will a grandparent understand the status screen? Does the long-term cost match what the checkout page implied?
Family Context
Sarah teaches high-school math in a public school. Our son Liam is 17 and our daughter Ella is 13. Between school devices, shared tablets, phones, and the occasional laptop that needs to serve more than one generation, we live inside the exact environment this site writes about. The advice here is tested against that reality, not against an idealized enterprise network.
Outside of work and family I still spend time on the things that reset my attention: backyard BBQ, simple woodworking projects, and the occasional early-morning fly-fishing trip when the schedule allows.
About the Site
householdcyber.com exists to give American families practical digital-safety guidance that matches real life. The focus is family device protection, kid-safe internet habits, senior scam defense, privacy without unnecessary complexity, and straightforward safety checklists. Reviews and comparisons start from usability and long-term cost, not from the longest feature list or the loudest marketing claim.
The standard I apply is simple:
If a product is too confusing for a tired parent or an aging grandparent, it is not as safe as it claims to be.
That line guides every piece of writing on this site.