Kristin Demoranville
speaker
976 appearances
11 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Kristin Demoranville’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Welcome to the Bites and Bites podcast. I'm your host, Kristen DeMoranville. And today we have something really awesome for you. I've teamed up with Aaron Crow, the Protect It All podcast host for this joint episode. Aaron and I chat about operational technology or OT, exploring how this critical area impacts industries from power to the food sector.
Whether you're a cybersecurity pro or a food professional or just curious about how these issues affect our daily lives, this episode has something for you. So grab a snack, enjoy your workout, plane ride or commute and get ready for an enlightening conversation. And hey, while you're here, don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode with your friends and colleagues.
If you haven't already, check out our website for more content, including this episode, blogs, and the merch shop. We've got some really awesome t-shirts, hats, aprons, and even a few other surprises. Let's get to it.
Okay, great. Thanks for having me on the show. I am Kristen DeMaranville. I am the host of Bites and Bites podcast. That's bites like you bite something and bites like computer bites, where I talk to cybersecurity and technology professionals and anybody else in the food and agricultural industry about cybersecurity and technology and what that means to our food supply. It's a really fun show.
So you can check us out. Also, we're kind of doing a joint episode here. Welcome to my listeners as well. But what I actually do, I am the CEO of Anson Sage, which is a cybersecurity firm that's focused on the food and ag industry, mainly risk management, OT related assessments, those kinds of things, trainings, lots of trainings.
I keep writing lots of trainings on what it means to be a cybersecurity professional in the food industry and how to be a better food professional with cybersecurity knowledge. So And then the other thing I am, I'm also CEO of Anzen OT, which is a OT resilience intelligence management platform.
Risk intelligence really features different things like cyber PHA assessment, scenario building, playbooks, lots of really cool intelligence things behind it. It is new on the market. We are a new startup. So come check us out there. I'm happy to talk about that all day long as well.
I think the biggest difference between IT and OT, and I'm maybe a little bit more blunt than you in this regard, but I always say, well, IT is more about data, right? And OT is about safeguarding lives. It could kill somebody. IT is not necessarily going to kill anybody, right? Yeah. So it's a different mindset altogether where you're focused more on the people process side and the tech and OT.
We want to make sure it just stays up and available. So, you know, someone doesn't fall into a vat, becomes part of the muffin mix, you know, or they don't get electrocuted or they don't drown or they don't do anything that's awful and horrible. And nobody ever wants to go through that. And IT isn't dealing with people's lives necessarily. Right. probably is a little crossover there somewhere.
But generally speaking, when I worked in IT, I was never worried about people's lives. I was more worried about my own life and being assaulted by an end user because they were upset. That was really probably my biggest thing there, right? OT, I was worried about me getting like catching on fire, watching somebody else get caught on fire and all these other things happening around it.
And I go back to those analogies because I think that's how it works a lot. We have to just keep talking that way to find that connection, that relatability. Oh, convergence. I cannot stand that term. Like it's right up there with like air gapped and a few other terms that we say a lot because it's just, it's silly. Like we got to stop putting terms on everything because it's not helping.
It's just becoming more of a problem where we just need to focus on we're trying to protect and safeguard lives along with making sure that all these services that we support stay up and running because we like running water. We like electricity. We like the food that's on our plates.
We like that we can just go to the grocery store and buy whatever we want, whenever we want, because there's no seasons in a grocery store now, those kind of things. And that's why I love working in the industry, because I feel like I'm having an impact. I'm sure everybody in OT can say this, and I see us, is we feel like we have an impact on the greater good.
And if you say greater good back, we're best friends, by the way. That's the response you do. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's how I feel about, especially the food industry, because it touches so many aspects. All the suppliers, the third parties, things you don't think about, the containers that food comes in. That has to be done in a food grade level in terms of manufacturing.
How we're interacting with the food, food safety aspects. all these different things. I just, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. I love it because it really expands your system thinking and you have to realize everything is in a holistic sphere.
And I think that's what we do as OT as well is we're like, Oh, if something goes wrong here, up here at like, you know, three o'clock is not going to be really messed up. If seven o'clock is messed up, obviously this is going to cause a problem with the whole is we all understand how production works because it's all the same, right? It doesn't matter what you do.
I mean, it's the same type of thing. Materials come in, they get mixed up and kicked out the other way, but that production, process in between the thing that's the most important and the biggest issue is the people in the process. Because technology is not going to cause the problem. It's people. And they'll circumvent everything we do to make sure it gets done because they don't care.
They just want to get their job and go home, right? Right.
End users are the best and the worst at the same time. They're the best line of defense and the worst. I once walked into a factory. I think it was a media factory. So made like DVDs and CDs and games for consoles and things like that, which still exists. Console games apparently still exist. I didn't realize they were still making them.
And their help desk that was on site actually had a sign that said, if you ask a dumb question, I will light you on fire. Yeah. I just, I died because I was like, wow, first of all, HR violations for days, but good for you. You set the pace of what's going to happen when someone walks in that room looking for help. So I can appreciate the end user comment.
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