The Ontic Connected Intelligence Podcast

This inaugural episode launches a new development in Ontic’s podcast — The Center for Connected Intelligence (CCI) Debrief. Hosts Fred Burton, Chuck Randolph, and Dr. Marisa Randazzo unpack what they are hearing and seeing in the word of security. Enjoy an unfiltered conversation of their observations and invaluable insights from the past few weeks.

Key topics of this discussion include:

• Risk Fatigue from the Global Permacrisis — As the global permacrisis looms overhead, Burton shares the importance of focusing on your specific threat landscape and avoiding the harmful effects of risk fatigue. Randazzo adds how easy it is to miss signals or dismiss things that aren’t so immediate and how we need to support those on the front lines of the crisis.
• Threat of Disinformation and Misinformation — With the upcoming election cycle later in the year the threat of being misinformed through false headlines is imminent. Randolph shares insights from his recent discussion with Suzanne Kelly at the Cipher Brief on retraining our brains to dive deeper into what we read and always consider the source.
• Domestic Threat of Election Violence — Randazzo shares insights from her recent article on strategies to prepare organizations for presidential election disruption and Burton shares why evaluating the entire threat continuum is critical to identify individuals who may pose harm to a high profile figure or organization. Lately, this has resulted in an uptick in swatting incidents, and his conversation with Torchstone’s Scott Stewart dives more into this topic.
• Reevaluate Business Continuity Practices — The hosts stress the importance of thinking through business continuity, what practices are in place, and if they are updated for the current threat landscape. They also share how informing employees of the security measures they are taking goes a long way in creating a culture of trust.
• The Impact of CA Senate Bill 553 — The law requiring most California employers (and employers who have a presence in California) to take steps to prevent and respond to workplace violence will go into effect July 1, 2024. Randazzo shares how important tracking and quickly accessing relevant data is as this order takes effect. For more information on this topic, check out Ontic’s recent webinar: CA SB 553: What You Need to Know and How to Comply. She also discusses why companies must address the aftermath of incidents and the emotional strain on those impacted in light of her recent discussion with Wendy Bailey, Manager of Capital One’s Threat Management Team.

Stay tuned for the next CCI debrief and contact us at [email protected] if there are any questions or topics you would like the team to address.

Ross Hill, Founder of Insight Forward, returns to the podcast to discuss one of the more prominent crises in our threat landscape today: the attacks in the Red Sea. This conversation dives deeper into his previous discussion with host Chuck Randolph on What Today’s Permacrisis Means for Corporate Security Teams. The episode explores the implications of these attacks on business operations.

Key takeaways from their discussion include:

• How the Houthi rebels’ attack on cargo ships disrupts critical trade routes and raises concerns about regional stability and economic impact.
• The impact on economies and corporations in the regions where the attacks are taking place (and why multinational organizations are caught in the middle)
• Examples of second and third-order effects of the attacks on the economy and what companies should be looking for in the months ahead.

Ross Hill founded Insight Forward to help companies understand how global dynamics directly affect their business. He applies his background leading intelligence analysis for prominent risk management organizations such as AT-RISK International and Pinkerton. He has acquired an in-depth knowledge of core processes, program design, and management, fulfilling senior management positions in global security and risk consultancies, and gaining exposure to renowned multinationals and driving their intelligence needs. He began his career as a Forensic DNA Analyst and Intelligence Analyst for the Metropolitan Police.

Check out Insight Forward’s latest report: Top 10 Geopolitical Risks for Businesses in 2024 and the latest geopolitical news by subscribing to Pestle & Mortar

It’s no secret that relationships are a foundational element for other areas of the business to understand the value of security. However, to be effective as a function security needs to be connected on a multitude of levels, and relationships need to root deeper than watercooler conversations. Rachel Briggs, CEO and Founder of The Clarity Factory, returns to the podcast to discuss her latest research on what this level of connectedness truly entails and why it’s critical to preventing threats that can often slip through the cracks between functions.

Briggs is a leading expert on security and has advised governments and multinational corporations on security, resilience, terrorism, and responses to extremism. In this episode, she discusses the following topics with host Chuck Randolph:

• Why connectedness needs to happen on three distinct levels - within the risk function, within the organization, and between the organization and the outside world.
• The biggest takeaways (and surprises) from her latest research in collaboration with Ontic and what it means for security professionals.
• Advice for leaders on implementing organizational changes from the report into their team and why the ability to collaborate cannot be assumed. 

Check out the Clarity Factory’s latest report (in partnership with Ontic) here: Connected Corporate Security: How to Manage Threats and Risks with a Unified Model.

Briggs has also published reports on empowering diversity, equity, and inclusion in corporate security and the business value of security. (Report links included below)

Empowering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion In Corporate Security (ASIS)
The Business Value of Corporate Security

In today’s world, preparing for future crises is not just important, but unavoidable. Security teams bear the responsibility of ensuring business preparedness for unforeseen threats while preventing employee burnout from the continual talk of potential crises. As security leaders, it's crucial to equip organizational leaders with easily understandable data and information. Streamlining communication and avoiding jargon and lengthy explanations fosters a connection between security and business leaders. This partnership is indispensable for the company's success.

Dave Komendat is the founder and President of DSKomendat Risk Management Services. He knows the importance of this partnership from his previous role where he was the Vice President and Chief Security Officer of The Boeing Company. Komendat was responsible for the company’s global security and fire protection policy and procedures, site security, executive protection, supply chain and aviation security, and structural and aircraft fire protection, among many other responsibilities. He also holds board leadership roles with several non-profit organizations whose missions are to protect people globally, including Hostage U.S. and The Security Foundation. 

Key topics of Komendat’s discussion with host Chuck Randolph include:

• Why no one rewards the identifier of risk and how to position security as a team that not only protects the organization in crisis but prevents it from happening in the first place.
• The importance of building trust and credibility with business leaders ahead an event so you have their alignment in any gray areas when a decision is made.
• How being prepared for the nontraditional threats matters and understand how they impact the business.
• Advice for security professionals early in their career

Follow Dave on 

LinkedIn

 or reach out to him on his website: https://komendat.com/

The act of Swatting has been around for years (back in the early 2000s), but an increase in the frequency of calls that are happening and the proliferation of different targets has placed it under the spotlight in recent months. Swatting is the act of placing a hoax call to emergency services with the intention of triggering a swift and intense response. This malicious practice has been increasingly directed towards prominent figures such as politicians, judges, and celebrities. Scott Stewart, Vice President at TorchStone Global, sheds light on why we are seeing more of these events in the headlines and what protection teams can do to prevent them from happening. 

Stewart brings 35 years of analytical, investigative, and security experience, including being a member of Michael Dell's executive protection team and serving ten years as a special agent with the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service. Stewart is a popular speaker on security topics and is frequently interviewed by journalists from leading news outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and NPR.

Key topics of Stewart’s discussion with host Fred Burton include:

• How a swatting event can occur, and what the social media conundrum has to do with it. (hint: It doesn’t happen out of the blue.)
• Advice for protection teams on mitigating this type of threat and what to look for in terms of early warning signs.
• Why it’s critical to have strong relationships with authorities at all levels and have an open dialogue so authorities can put context around any calls coming in that target a VIP.

For more information, check out Torchstone Global’s article on the topic: Preparing for the Next Swatting Attack 

Key takeaways:

03:25: Scott Stewart: Having a good liaison at all levels - state, local, and federal level is critical because you want to have those connections ahead of an event. Obviously, it's much more difficult to make connections in the midst of ah you know of an emergency. So if you give them a little bit of advanced notice — we've got some aggrieved people that are focused on us, or they've doxed us, etc. — it can really help them place the call into context. 

10:33: Fred: So if you're that protection team out there with responsibility for the executive crew, you have to make sure that you have a good finger on the pulse.

10:42: Scott Stewart: I mean let's face you you need to have that no matter what threat actor we're talking about — unstable individuals, stalkers, activists, terrorists, criminals. You know we always need to remain alert to all these various threat actors and this is just one more to throw in the hopper. 

The good news is it is something that can be foreseen as we follow these grievances, and watch their communications. We see things like doxing denunciation. That allows us to see the progression along the Social Media Threat Continuum. We talk about things like the pathway to violence or the attack cycle, looking at the Social Media Threat Continuum then just gives us a guide that helps us understand where we were where we are in relation to these threat actors.

As a former CNN Intelligence Correspondent and Executive Producer, Suzanne Kelly knows better than to trust every headline that she reads online. However, with the rise of AI-generated images and disinformation, it’s critical to take an informed approach to what we read – taking into account where it comes from and why it’s being shared. 

The Cipher Brief addresses this threat by bringing together the expertise of the public and private sectors to provide stronger national security for all. Founded by Kelly in 2015, it is a national security-focused media organization that takes a firm stance on providing clear, accurate, and trusted information. Kelly is also the founder of The Cyber Initiatives Group and produces The Cipher Brief's Annual Threat Conference. 

Follow her on LinkedIn.

Key topics of Kelly’s discussion with host Chuck Randolph include:

• Why the private sector has shifted over time to take on a pivotal role in geopolitics, shape the way information is shared, and influence the speed of innovation.
• The rising threat of misinformation and disinformation and what security leaders can do to encourage sharing informed, accurate information and avoid chasing down false threats.
• Why Kelly is driven to bring insights to the forefront and help people solve geopolitical problems impacting their business.

Key takeaways:

03:43: Suzanne Kelly - I felt like the private sector was not only impacted by what was happening around the world but serves as the backbone of the US economy which is really a humongous component of national security. 

I've been really interested since February 2022 and the months preceding the Russian invasion of Ukraine — looking at the private sector's role there as well as the significant shift in how the world is dealing with geopolitical events like this war. Watching how the private sector came into that arena and started sharing technologies in ways that didn't always go through layers of government bureaucracy has spoken to the speed of innovation in the private sector.

09:56: Chuck - How should leaders think about misinformation and disinformation?  Our job is to enable decision-makers, so how do we critically look at the news that's coming to us today and make sure that our bosses aren't succumbing to bias or false information?

10:40: Suzanne Kelly - Disinformation and misinformation is an incredibly risky threat to the United States. Obviously, it spreads beyond the borders but just what we've seen with elections and rhetoric and emotion and how outside entities can take a single bit of truth from something and then weave a web of lies around it. And then drop that into social media feeds and other places where Americans are so conditioned to get information at their fingertips to make snap decisions to reshare things. We need to become a nation of critical thinkers that quickly discern where a source is coming from if it's a credible place and if the organization that they're reading from names sources or if they’re anonymous - why? I think having a country that is full of critical thinkers is going to be a lot better for our future than having a country of people inclined to believe a headline.

When companies investigate incidents and address threats posed to the business and its people, the aftermath of resolution is frequently overlooked. Recognizing this gap, Wendy Bailey established Capital One’s Care Team. Comprising of internal members, this team extends support to individuals who have suffered injuries or witnessed threat activity, supporting a comprehensive approach to recovery. In this episode, she shares how technology in the investigative research field has evolved and why the noisiest cases are not always the ones you prioritize.

Wendy Bailey is the Manager of Capital One’s Threat Management Team where she assesses and manages workplace violence, intimate partner violence, and suicide concerns. Before transitioning to the private sector, she spent 19 years in Law Enforcement and held various roles including 14 years as a Detective. 

Key topics of Bailey’s discussion with Dr. Marisa Randazzo include:

• How technology has evolved from landlines to social media and the speed of information available to investigate incidents.
• The importance of the initial interview for de-escalation, especially when the opportunity presents itself and the safety of the interviewer is ensured.
• The biggest challenges of her investigative work and how she manages a growing caseload and conducts long term monitoring.
• The benefit of diversity in experience for those wanting to enter the investigative field and the most important skill set needed.

This episode focused on the importance of having an integrated system so teams can view a complete, accurate, and up-to-date picture of their threat landscape. Ontic’s Integrated Research optimizes risk and threat management with identity, criminal activity, civil litigation, adverse media, and global public records coverage — all in one place. Reach out if you’d like to learn more. 

The ability to adapt and change course when unexpected challenges arise is a crucial skill in many professions, but particularly in supply chain security operations where leaders are managing a multimodal environment with layers of partnerships and vendors. Their core responsibility is to ensure that products are moving safely from one place to another, placing complete trust in the hands of truck drivers and other logistics professionals to certify that compliance standards are maintained. In a world where one freight exposure at a rest stop could cost a manufacturer millions of dollars, having visibility into the various stages of the supply chain allows companies to stay ahead of threats and steer clear of crime.

Overhaul is dedicated to providing that visibility in ‘one pane of glass’ and helps customers make sense of the chaos within their intricate network of vendors. Barry Conlon is the CEO and founder of Overhaul, the global leader in in-transit risk management and visibility solutions. Prior to founding Overhaul, Conlon was the founder and CEO of FreightWatch, where he played a key role in shaping the industry. His extensive background in security operations is rooted in his eleven-year tenure with the Irish Defense Forces, Irish Special Operations Unit, and Army Ranger Wing.

Key topics of Conlon’s discussion with host Fred Burton include

• How his time in the Irish Defense Forces influenced him to always be ready for the next curveball and adapt and change accordingly.
• What Overhaul is doing to help change the way manufacturers manage in-transit risk.
• Unique challenges faced by supply chain security operations and how most freight exposures occur.
• Trends and behavioral changes in supply chain security industry over the past few years and what is on the horizon.

Key takeaways:

06:34: Barry Conlon: What you’re really being asked to do as a supply chain professional is effectively manage chaos. You know there's so much to monitor and you can imagine in the multimodal environment where you're going from road to air and back to road again. There are so many different modes of transportation. There are a lot of stop starts and freight at rest is freight at risk. What we do at Overhaul is provide that connected visibility world to our customers where literally we connect all available technologies that already exist out there and we take the information that's freely available and mesh all that together into one pane of glass. 

13:10: Fred: You really have your finger on the pulse when it comes to trends and what are you seeing when it comes to trends in the security space for supply chains. You know what are the threats that you're seeing currently and perhaps what are some of the threats that you're looking at that are over the horizon that people aren't thinking about.

13:53: Barry Conlon: Fred I've never seen it as busy as it is now because supply chains are heavily impacted by COVID. Everybody's attitude to buying online shifted. Now even ingestible pharmaceuticals are purchased online, which you would never buy there unless you got them from a validated pharmacy and now people are regularly ordering these and criminals are quick to respond. 

14:48: Barry Conlon: You can walk into a truck stop. There might be 20 or 30 trucks parked there. You know I'd be shocked if less than 10 percent are less than 100,000 in value. A lot of them are multiple millions in value and they've got literally no protection. The trucks are running because drivers like to keep their cabs cool or warm depending on where they are and the time of year and it costs them money to turn off that tractor trader. I have never seen a truck alarm in my 30 years of experience in this industry - particularly in my last twenty three years in North America, and you're blessed if a truck driver actually locks the door.

It comes as no surprise that the standards and terminology in the security profession vary depending on where you are in the world. However, when you work for a company that operates in 74 countries, keeping track of these nuances is vital to efficiently addressing threats and quickly arriving at a solution.

Bruce Mills is the Chief Security Officer (CSO) of Hyatt Corporation. In his role, he oversees over 160,000 associates and nearly 1,400 hotels and resorts in 74 countries. Mills is responsible for all security and life safety programs and initiatives, including physical and technical security, emergency preparedness and crisis management, travel safety and internal investigations, and brand protection activities. Before moving to the private sector, he spent nearly 25 years with the Diplomatic Security Service, attaining the rank of Special Agent-in-Charge serving all over the world.

Key topics of Mills’ discussion with host Fred Burton include:

• The cultural differences in security — you can have global standards for a company's security program but there are always cultural nuances.
• How to manage a security presence when the doors are always open.
• Communicating with leadership when you have multiple bosses, and the importance of identifying risk and providing steps to mitigate it.
• The role of technology in the success of his role in the business and how standardization across locations is essential to staying ahead of threats.

Key takeaways:

04:50: Fred: How has your sector evolved from a security perspective over the last say five years or so?

04:58: Bruce Mills: In the hospitality sector it's a little bit different from the defense sector or even the government sector and even in certain commercial enterprises you you build a hardened presence. You build very strong concentric rings of security and you try to keep people out and to keep people safe. In hospitality think about it this way — we never close our doors or we certainly don't lock our doors. We are an open, welcoming environment. So it poses a whole series of concerns.

You'd be surprised at how we've incorporated some of the physical securities pieces into the hospitality industry. You might not see it but behind the scenes, you'll have X-ray machines and explosive itemizers and different environmental factors to control vehicles. You need to monitor delivery people and separate them from employees versus visitors and so on. So a lot of similar mitigations but doing so in a more of an open environment. It's a very difficult work environment because you just literally have to keep the front door open.

10:31: Fred: Bruce, how have you found success in proving the business value of your security program to your 1,600 bosses in this case or to your c-suite? 

10:46: Bruce Mills: I oftentimes will remind my leadership why I'm here. Our model at Hyatt is that we have safety and security at the forefront of our mission and so I remind our leadership that it's important to walk the walk not just talk to talk. I explain that these elements and actions can incrementally make our guests and colleagues safer and our properties more secure. It's in our best interest and safety and security have to be a core component of how we do business. 

Hyatt has had a longstanding culture in which safety is critically important and woven into the business. So I'm carrying that flag and continuing the effort.