Kristin Demoranville

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.

This is such a big question and I don't have the right answer. So I'm just going to kind of give you some train of thought on it.

Agriculture and the food industry as a whole wasn't added to the critical infrastructure number for CISA or Homeland Security until 2020. That wasn't that long ago. You know, that is disturbing, first of all. I think it's a kind of a twofold issue where people think that the food industry doesn't have any money, which is hysterical because, I mean, Mars just bought part of Kellogg's today. Right.

As of today. And that was a $300 million deal, I believe. Don't quote me. Sure. But it was something ridiculous. So tell me again, there's no money in the food industry. Right. Also, I believe the largest payout for ransomware to date that we're aware of, and I say that loosely because we don't know at all, was the food industry. Right. So there's money. So I don't buy that really very well.

I think the actual reason is because nobody's got a handle on what the actual supply chain for food looks like. Right. And that was shown very clearly when the ransomware for JBS hit the meat company. Right. Because it was awful and still is.