Speaker 0 | 00:05.778

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore, hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Alex Marzano, CIO at NextGen Power Systems. Hi, Alex. How are you doing?

Speaker 1 | 00:16.363

Wonderful, Michael. Pleasure to be with you.

Speaker 0 | 00:19.304

Same here. We’re going to jump right in. We’re going to start with our icebreaker segment. It’s called Random Access Memories. I ask a question and then you respond to the answer that comes to your head first.

Speaker 1 | 00:32.524

All right.

Speaker 0 | 00:33.605

So your first question is, if you could travel to any IT related location or destination, what would it be and why?

Speaker 1 | 00:45.300

You know, I watched the movie Hidden Figures a couple of years back with the family. I’d love to be able to go back to that point in time. I mean, can you just imagine these empowered young ladies trying to get into information technology at its infancy and making that breakthrough?

Speaker 0 | 01:02.307

It’s such a powerful movie, too. What a great movie. I could watch that one over and over again. That’s a great spot. And what a way to kind of… kind of start that is just to get back to that spot and they were doing math like they they were doing math by hand amazing things i mean i can’t even do math by hand anymore right um all right well uh what is the most fun or interesting it related hobby or activity that you have or maybe you want to try hmm

Speaker 1 | 01:44.552

You know, I love tinkering. I love upgrading. So my big passions are around building PCs, building little computers. I do a lot of this with my son, who’s an avid PC gamer. And it’s always fun just to go out there and see what that next build might look like. Taking a look at that new GPU that’s coming out and how we might be able to put it into some sort of a caseless computer or gaming laptop or gaming. a gaming computer. So that’s, that’s probably, yeah, I think that’s probably my most fun.

Speaker 0 | 02:19.323

I love that answer because, um, when I was a kid, I used to, uh, uh, I, I used to do that with my father. Right. And, uh, and back in those days they had the, um, uh, they actually had the computer fairs where you would go, uh, you know, and, and you could scout out equipment there, you know, now you just order it online, but you know, anyone. uh, uh, anyone old enough will remember when you actually had to go to a fair and be able to get it.

Speaker 1 | 02:45.660

Yeah. We’re wandering through a Fry’s electronics. I mean, how many hours did we spend in those kinds of places?

Speaker 0 | 02:53.526

It’s a hundred percent. Yeah. Um, I remember, I remember putting together like, Hey, listen, I can, I, you can get me a new computer or I can build one for half the cost and I know how to do it.

Speaker 1 | 03:04.295

Twice as good. Right.

Speaker 0 | 03:05.596

Twice as good. Right. Exactly. Oh, that was good. Good. That’s a good one. What’s the weirdest coping mechanism you have seen people do to combat IT-related stress or frustration?

Speaker 1 | 03:20.012

I had one individual that I used to work with on the team, and he was just like super fit. I used to look at this guy and go, wow, that’s just amazing. Look how fit they are. And it turns out that while we were doing those Zoom calls and having those awkward conversations and whatnot, they had their camera off, they were on the floor, and they were doing push-ups. So this kind of had one of those awkward conversations. He’d just jump on the ground and start doing push-ups, sit-ups, whatever. So that exercise was his coping mechanism while the rest of us were wringing our hands and pulling out our hair. And he was just getting more and more fit.

Speaker 0 | 03:57.594

Oh my gosh, that’s great. So push-ups. And I love the fact just getting more fit. That’s actually fantastic.

Speaker 1 | 04:08.668

No, as opposed to the rest of us that are, you know, just kind of more during COVID. I mean, we’re all so sedentary and look, this guy’s actually taking advantage and the rest of us were quite honestly just putting on a couple of pounds. So no,

Speaker 0 | 04:23.094

that’s, that’s great. Um, that, that’s the, uh, that’s the way to do it. I guess I got to change my routine now and, uh, and start, start working out more while I, uh, while I work through my day.

Speaker 1 | 04:35.799

Yep.

Speaker 0 | 04:37.080

I’m going to put the computer on the floor at that point and just, you know, push up, mouse click, push up, keyboard.

Speaker 1 | 04:44.023

There you go. There you go.

Speaker 0 | 04:45.164

All right. Well, it’s a pleasure to have you on. And it’s really, really interesting because you kind of look, you know, with a ton of different experience here. You know. similar to me in this kind of over 20 years of it experience and and you know where it’s uh um where it’s taken us uh over over the over the course and stuff like that of our career um you’ve got so many different interesting things uh um i’m looking at this too because um uh pwc right you did uh it m&a integrations leader which we’re going to talk about there’s got to be a lot of interesting things for that um And then a CIO over at Omium. Am I saying that right?

Speaker 1 | 05:36.578

Green Hydrogen.

Speaker 0 | 05:37.838

Yep. Green Hydrogen generation. That’s really awesome. And then now CIO over at NextGen Power Systems. So give us, if you can, a little overview of NextGen and what they do.

Speaker 1 | 05:53.062

Sure. We’re kind of in that renewable energy space. you know green energy so we we make a gallium arsenic nitride um device or semiconductor um as you know most semiconductors are silicon based ours is gan based so what does that mean runs on higher voltages higher switching frequencies we’re targeting the ev market right now they were working on a deal with general motors to to be the uh the architecture of the platform for the next generation inverters in gn ev cars net net all that means is because it runs at a higher voltage um the cars can charge faster. So what’s their big barrier to adoption for EVs is, you know, how long does it take to charge? If you can cut that time in half or, or possibly even by two thirds, um, it’s certainly the way to go. So that’s, that’s what next gen does.

Speaker 0 | 06:39.663

It’s always the batteries, right? That are the limit on things. I mean, I got, I got a phone over here and the phone works great. Uh, and it’s been like, you know, I think it’s been over three years now for this phone and I don’t want to replace it, but the battery lasts like, you know, Hey. not even a quarter of the day right yes constantly being charged right and i know that i’m like all right it’s on its outs and you can’t like replace the battery like you know like usual so um because they’ve locked these phones down so tight um so yeah it’s always the battery that’s the uh that’s the limit uh to these things um and so that sounds if you can so it looks like now you’re you’re increasing that uh capability to charge quicker yes sir Does that harm the life of the battery?

Speaker 1 | 07:26.573

It doesn’t harm the life of the battery. The harsh reality, as you alluded to in your example, is batteries always degrade over time. There’s a finite number of charge cycles in a battery. So if you can charge it quicker and more efficiently so that you can maybe go a little longer between charges and you’re not topping off all the time, that actually extends the life of the battery. So it’s really sort of a… kind of a big plus.

Speaker 0 | 07:55.793

Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s actually really cool. And that makes sense too because I know what I’m doing to my phone right now, plugging it in every 10 seconds. It’s just making it worse. I’m going to need a new phone. I’m wrapping my head around that. Oh. So, how were Omium and NextGen? It seems like a very similar. type concept?

Speaker 1 | 08:25.213

Yeah, no, absolutely. They’re sort of in the same place, that same, you know, green energy, renewable energy space. And it’s kind of interesting because, you know, one of the things that at NextGen is we’re making technology to charge electric cars quicker. But what Omium was doing is kind of taking maybe just a different stance on that renewable energy. So instead of these huge battery arrays, you know, right now we… We’re pushing very heavy for solar power, for wind power. But what happens when the sun’s not shining and the wind’s not blowing? We store that energy in huge batteries. And let’s be honest, there’s nothing in a battery that’s good for you. Nobody wants to eat next to a battery. You don’t want to have anything spilling out of a battery into your yard or garage. However, with hydrogen, what you can now do is take that solar power, take that wind power, use that DC power directly to power one of Omium’s hydrogen electrolyzers. And on one side, they’re pouring water in. And out the other side, you get hydrogen, oxygen, and water. So there’s nothing that comes out of that electrolyzer that anyone’s really worried about. I mean, nobody minds having a little water spill on the ground or a little bit more oxygen go out into the air. And then you can store that hydrogen so that when the sun isn’t shining or the wind’s not blowing, you use the hydrogen to create electricity. And in that process where you’re burning hydrogen, again, your only byproducts are water, oxygen, and maybe a little hydrogen.

Speaker 0 | 10:04.856

Wow. That sounds like a really good, that sounds really good for the environment, right? Also, the ability to reuse some of that while you’re doing that is fantastic.

Speaker 2 | 10:17.147

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Speaker 0 | 12:25.768

popular it.net and say i want help managing all of my internet garbage please make my life easier and we’ll get right on it for you have a wonderful day the you know what you know as far as looking at your your volunteering too this kind of tracks with your volunteering as well right um uh i i i myself i volunteer at um uh at the uh you know over here it’s make your you know city beautiful that they they they enter in whatever your city is right and so we go pick up um you know garbage at parks and stuff like that um what i see here is a couple things right so you’ve got uh um adventure guides uh naturalist guides right and then you got a leader at the boy scouts of america yes

Speaker 1 | 13:13.519

yes actually uh big into scouting i mean since i was a kid i was big into scouting and and then uh had the opportunity to run through that with my son you Guides is actually a program that’s sponsored by the YMCA, and they have numerous father-son and father-daughter groups. So if anyone’s out there thinking about what they’re going to do with their son and daughter, I highly recommend these programs. Go out, spend the time, engage with your kids. Usually it’s a once-a-week kind of deal. We have some sort of an art or a craft, and then maybe once a month we go and have a little camping trip. When I was promoting Adventure Guides, one of the big pitches, you know, you would think that you would be talking to the dads. But really, I went and talked to the moms. And the pitch was something along the lines of this. How would you like to have your husband and the kids out of the house at least once a week and go out at least one weekend a month so you can have the whole house by yourself? And lo and behold, pretty much every dad got signed up. Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 14:15.496

yeah. That was Darryl’s side eye. You’re going, No, that’s great. Actually, that’s a it’s a very good and it’s and it’s great, too, because you’re getting them out of the house, you get them into nature. They get that appreciation of it up front. And it just tracks so well with what you’re doing, too, when you’re lined up with work.

Speaker 1 | 14:39.213

Yeah,

Speaker 0 | 14:39.973

this is great. I miss I’m a big proponent of this because it’s this is some of the items that we really need to be looking at moving forward. uh, using technology, right. To push forward, um, uh, you know, uh, stuff that’s going to help our environment. Right. That makes complete sense.

Speaker 1 | 14:59.569

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and, you know, when, when we, when we look at these technologies, we, we have to. I always kid with some of my colleagues, and I go, look, there’s two ways to do this. We can do things like stop using plastic bags. Okay, yes, absolutely. Plastic bags are the bane of our landfills, and we certainly should move away from them. But one approach is to outlaw them. And then you end up walking out of the grocery store carrying a can of beans and a can of corn and your hamburger meat. The other is, why not go to technology? You know, we have biodegradable banks. The technology is out there. So rather than outlaw something, why don’t we just replace it with something that is a little bit more eco-friendly?

Speaker 0 | 15:45.511

Let’s make the technology work for us. I mean, that’s what we do for a living anyway, right? So let’s make the technology work for us and actually improve it. I love it.

Speaker 1 | 15:54.497

I love that. And not fight these adoption issues, right? So I think often we… We try to find things out there, and then there’s this big battle for adoption. But if we just think a little bit smarter about that technology, we can close a lot of those barriers. Even with EVs right now, the big concern is charging and range. So if we just focus a little bit more on the technology, I think a lot of those barriers go away, and we end up with a better environment.

Speaker 0 | 16:24.280

I love when my guests actually do the transition for me, and I really appreciate you transitioning us to business process systems transformation, right? And because we can talk about getting rid of barriers to adoption right there.

Speaker 1 | 16:41.410

Sure, sure.

Speaker 0 | 16:43.651

So, no, I appreciate it. What a great transition. Let’s talk about business process systems transformation because we all know that one of the biggest… issues that we have in this is adoption, is getting people to get on board and getting that transformation kicking. Let’s talk about your experience in this.

Speaker 1 | 17:02.545

Sure. I’ll call out one experience in particular. I worked for a company, Cisco Systems, here in the Bay Area. We had a leader there, Rebecca Jacoby, the COO, just an amazing woman. And I just learned so much working for her. And one of the lessons that we learned is these business processes. Actually, several things about them. So number one is we went through and transformed all of our primary processes, quote, to cash, procure to pay, incentive resolution. And then when we went through that whole process, we immediately started back at the beginning again. Because what we found is by the time you got through that cycle, you’ve either introduced new products, you’ve entered new markets. your customers’ requirements have changed. So take a look at those opportunities to streamline, make sure you’re meeting demand. Is it something that you’re currently doing in three steps that we can do in two steps? Is it something where the customer has to jump through an extra hoop in order to get what they’re looking for? Or can we do something in the process to better define it and make it a little bit more streamlined? So that’s something that she really pushed. And I was fortunate enough to learn that lesson. May not have seemed like a lesson at the time and was more a lot of work, but it’s something that later I’ve been able to take away and say, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The other thing that she did that I thought was just so amazing, and I’ve taken it to heart and this is what I do today, is that we blur the lines between IT and the business. A lot of times, you go into a meeting and the… business comes and they have a requirement and you can see on one side of the room, you’ve got the business people saying, here’s what we do. And this is the way the process should look. And then you look at the other side of the table and you’ve got a Java programmer, a Python programmer, C++ guy, and they’re talking bits and bytes and release this and release that. But what we really need to do to be better partners is you really need the business person on both sides of the table. That person in IT should understand what the business is doing as well, possibly even better than the business does. And I think that’s something that I kind of promote as sort of that modern CIO or modern IT role, is that we really speak the business in business terms. We are a true business partner. When we go into a conversation, it’s not about, hey, we need a new CRM system. It’s more, what is it that you’re expecting? What are our goals for this system? What specifically does this process look like? What are the steps? Map it all out. How do we measure success? And actually put those tools in place to measure and monitor so that once we go live, if we see that we’re not getting the results that we want. we’re flexible enough to change and switch gears.

Speaker 0 | 20:08.591

I think it’s accurate. And the amount of people that I’ve had come into my office sometimes and say, hey, I want to do this and start talking tech. And I just said, stop, hold on a second, right? How about you just tell me what your current process is and why it’s not working, right? Let’s just start there and see if we can… fix the process, and then see how technology folds on top of that afterwards.

Speaker 1 | 20:35.075

Yeah. And then, Michael, one thing that we really have an advantage in IT is that when you work in any modern organization, what you start to notice is that, unfortunately, there are silos. The finance person doesn’t really know what the marketing team is thinking or the sales team or the engineering team or the manufacturing team. But what they do all have in common are the IT teams. So we have a view of the business and I like to promote it as a connected view of the business. We can see what the initiatives are, the pain points, when resources are available for different groups. And as opposed to back in the day where the business would come with some initiative, we’re actually in a position to propose when’s the best time to implement that new CRM. Quarter three, it looks like this guy is going to be doing this and that group’s going to have that available. That’s when we should do this and make those proposals. So it’s kind of a little bit of a different paradigm. You know, a lot of IT groups want to measure themselves on, you know, how long did it take me to close out that trouble ticket or this or that, which of course is all important. But I think in our new business climate and atmosphere, IT, CIOs, and especially CIOs, they need to be able to drive initiatives that directly impact. that bottom line and kind of take IT from that G&A cost center into perhaps a revenue generating, or at least assisting in revenue generation for the enterprise.

Speaker 0 | 22:09.216

It’s interesting because IT, as you know, IT formed out from the financial part of the business, right? So I always thought that that was integral to doing this. Not… And, you know, and I before I was telling you kind of before we got started here that I was on this podcast before, before I was doing hosting the podcast, right, as a co host. And one of the things I did was talking about making making it not the cost center, right? It isn’t a cost center, it shouldn’t be viewed as that. All right. But it’s an enabler of I mean, you can you can use IT, leverage IT, not just for strategic reasons, but you can really understand the business and do that cost reduction. If you want, IT knows a lot about where all the costs are being, you know, where the costs can be reduced significantly.

Speaker 1 | 23:13.379

Right. No, absolutely. And then, you know, we take our roadmaps, you know, and I remember sitting with a large payment company talking to their CFO and… And he was kind of complaining, look, you know, the IT budget for this company is $25 million a year or something like that. And look, there’s four reports that I’ve been trying to get for whenever or however long. And now I have to go out and, you know, farm this out to someone else. And I don’t know what the heck IT’s delivering. And when I went back to the CIO and said, guys, look at our roadmap. It says release this, upgrade to version that. Nothing on this roadmap. That ties back to a business capability, a business competitive advantage, a business goal or initiative. And everything we do should tie back to one of those three things. Give the CFO that transparency. This is what you’re paying for. This is what IT is delivering for the organization.

Speaker 0 | 24:11.283

Yeah, no, agreed. I think that’s a huge piece to it. And I think sometimes, you know, when you talk about the silos that you had mentioned, Um, the, the problem with the silos is that sometimes they create their own, uh, views of importance of what things, uh, are important versus other things. Um, and, uh, and so we do end up with these, these silos of people that think they’re doing the right thing, but, but are not doing what, uh, what they’re supposed to be doing, uh, as opposed to what the, um, the executive team is, as, as, as leading them towards. And so you can run that risk. Also, if we want to talk about silos, let’s talk about M&A integration a bit, right? Because M&A integration creates some of the biggest silos that can happen.

Speaker 1 | 25:06.382

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think some of those silos happens through just people not being transparent. So what’s the goal of this transaction? Why are we acquiring this company? Is this an IP play? Are we trying to integrate their product into our product line? Are we trying to keep them as a halo performer, a halo product and run unique? so when when i was at cisco um i i worked on their first 13 acquisitions from number one crescendo i think all the way through it was either stratacom or granite bay i’m not not sure exactly which one was the the last one um and and you know not all of them were were out of the ballpark i mean uh crescendo was an amazing acquisition for cisco stratacom of course um but but we had some weird ones like we we did a flip camera so i don’t know if anyone remembers what the flip camera is but And it’s literally, it’s a little digital camera.

Speaker 0 | 26:04.914

I remember it.

Speaker 1 | 26:05.695

Yeah. And Cisco bought them. And at the time I was thinking, why? Is there a network card in here? Is it wireless? I didn’t really get it. But I think those are the cases where we need to be very clear as to what’s the goal of the acquisition and then let people know. One of my greatest joys in doing M&A was working with people who had just been acquired and And you can see the whole cycle, you know, when they’re in jubilation and then, you know, a month later, maybe they’re down in the depths of despair. Oh, my gosh, you know, I didn’t sign up to work for this company. I really wanted that environment. Now everything’s going to be different. And then finally you can see them coming back up and thinking, wow, look, this is opening up huge new opportunities. So great, great time, you know, great excitement. I’ll tell you, I just. just very briefly i i worked for um an mna not not that long ago with pwc for a large hospitality company um back in uh the east coast um and i i won’t name the name of the company but but i worked with this individual and his name was michael hilton um no let me let me tell you oh i’m sorry you probably don’t know who he is that’s paris’s uncle oh gosh but it was just like oh my gosh you know this is uh you’re going into meetings and there’s an individual that’s in that meeting every day, you know, asking the hard questions about, you know, an FP&A software or M&A transaction or some integration issue. And yeah, it’s just an amazing time and amazing company. So they just give them a little.

Speaker 0 | 27:49.414

You know why it’s interesting, but it does happen. And it’s amazing to see sometimes where you’re like, oh, well, let’s. Hey, they’re understanding the business. Personally, I think that’s one of the best things is when you see somebody whose maybe core work is not IT, but they understand the value of understanding the technical pieces of it to a degree of how it affects their business. That’s a huge deal. And you can really see the maturity level of the business person by measuring how much they want to understand. how that tech affects them or how that process, that technical affects their process. Um, and, or I know how you can, uh, make it better. You know, um, it’s a, it’s a really interesting, uh, the M&As were cool because, um, you go in and do your due diligence upfront, which is just a massive data gathering of everything that’s going on. And then you sit down and go, okay, um, uh, first of all, if I don’t even integrate it, what are the problems that I have, uh, right off the bat, you know? let’s look at compliance. Let’s look at all these things that are going to be just an issue in general. And then you say, okay, now if I was going to go in and implement it, you know, how would I do it in my dream of implementation? Right. And then you go, okay, now that I have the dream. Now let’s look at the requirements. Oh, they want a zero day cutover. Okay.

Speaker 1 | 29:18.168

All right.

Speaker 0 | 29:19.289

Oh, we’re going to, you know, we’re not going to keep this part of the business, but we’re going to keep this one. So I can’t, so I’m not going to get those, that equipment. I’m going to get this equipment. You know, I’m not going to get the budget that I want. So I have to skimp in some areas, lots of different challenges there. Right?

Speaker 1 | 29:37.480

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, one of the things that But as long as we define those goals up front, and like you say, is it zero days or whatever? At Cisco, we had a goal of 30 days. So 30 days after deal close, we’re fulfilling product through Cisco’s order entry systems.

Speaker 0 | 29:53.390

Still pretty aggressive.

Speaker 1 | 29:54.931

Very aggressive. And usually we even beat that by some amount of time. It doesn’t mean it was all pretty on the back end, but nonetheless, it was happening. And usually the goals for a lot of these M&A transactions are, you know, The company’s got a great product, but look, it’s a little company. Now you have a big company. So whereas they’re buying in quantities of maybe thousands, you’re buying in quantities of hundreds of thousands. And how do we bring those economies of scale to bear, bring that product into our manufacturing infrastructure and build it for less and sell a gazillion more to our sales force? So we have to move quickly. It’s got to happen rapidly, but you need to make these decisions up front.

Speaker 0 | 30:38.884

Yeah, I’m glad you actually brought that up because, you know, they create these programs and they know and have the amount that they’re going to hit these financials. Right. So they know. So they’re relying on the IT department for a lot of this to be able to hit these goals and these numbers. So it makes sense. And it’s, you know, during an M&A, it’s extremely stressful. But pulling one off is the best feeling in IT. You know, like, I mean, it’s actually getting it done and hitting all the milestones and the business turning around and being like, thank you, is a great uplift for the entire team.

Speaker 1 | 31:26.736

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 31:28.918

Wow, that’s fantastic. It’s exciting work. It’s grueling, but exciting work in M&A. It really is. Did you ever get into the legal portions of it and have to work with the legal team?

Speaker 1 | 31:44.547

No, absolutely. Yes. We started from doing the due diligence all the way through the final cutovers, terminating agreements, terminating leases, moving people out of buildings, getting staff integrated into the new company, into new roles. Yeah, so the full gamut.

Speaker 0 | 32:02.975

The full gamut. It is a lot. It is a lot. But I tell you, if you get good at, and this is for our audience, if you get good at M&A integration, there is nothing you can’t implement going forward.

Speaker 1 | 32:15.999

Yeah, no, Michael, it’s so true because you really have to understand the organization and the business functions and, you know, not just a cursory understanding. And of course, this is where IT has the benefit is that, you know, we do understand these processes down to the nuts and bolts.

Speaker 0 | 32:31.003

Yep, that’s actually right. You have to understand not only your business, but the new business that you’re looking at and be able to quickly understand what’s happening there and how it’ll affect the processes that go forward. M&A is such a great training tool for regular business integrations and stuff and systems that will occur naturally. So that was actually probably some amazing skill set and you picked up through that process.

Speaker 1 | 33:03.464

No, absolutely. Thank you.

Speaker 0 | 33:04.884

Yeah. So and I can’t imagine now I did that. I mean, cybersecurity wasn’t it was still big, but it wasn’t anywhere near it is what it is now. And especially the I mean, compliance was big. Mine was in health care. So compliance was a massive in that. And then later on it it was a you know, I had a parent from over in Europe. So, you know. additional compliance on top of compliance right so um but uh cyber security in that uh um was a big and it was big back then but now it’s such it’s such huge and prevalent and with everything that’s going on uh i can’t imagine trying to do m&a integration or business process systems transformation with also making sure you’re putting in that cybersecurity as well, if it’s not already there to begin with.

Speaker 1 | 34:04.719

Yeah. So let me put my CISO hat on. But basically, we don’t have a dedicated CISO, so I’m responsible. But cyber is really the thing that keeps me up, I guess, the most at night out of all of these problems. It’s really cybersecurity. And I kind of break the threats into two categories. So… So one is IP related. So anything that drains our intellectual property, whether it be a foreign actor or a competitor, I mean, these are door shuttering events, right? So that’s got to be number one. It’s paramount. Everything that we do, it’s got to have that protect our IP focus.

Speaker 0 | 34:49.727

Yep.

Speaker 1 | 34:50.716

The second part of it is more financial implications. So either a loss to the company, someone spoofing an invoice, or maybe somebody’s committing fraud against one of our employees or one of our customers. So again, very important. But you can always try to make more money, very difficult to make more IP. So I kind of break it into those two categories. And I think in thinking about it that way, the thing that we also have to consider is that a cyber event or a cyber breach, it’s a when, it’s not an if. It is going to happen. It doesn’t, I go to a lot of security conferences, I listen to a lot of vendors with the shiny new tool. It doesn’t matter if you buy every tool that’s out there, whether you spend a million dollars, $10 million, $100 million, something is going to happen,

Speaker 0 | 35:48.842

right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 35:51.204

So I think I take a little bit of a different approach on some of the financial implications. You know, of course, we do all the basics. You know, we have endpoint security. We’ve got multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, firewalls. you know, various antivirus. Of course, we do all of those things. But where we really focus on is the response. So when something happens, do I have my backups? Do I have my, you know, three, two, one, three copies, two medias or three medias, one immutable? Do I have it? Can I recover from a ransomware, which we see constantly? You know, and the answer is yes. Do I rehearse it? Do we actually try to recover from that backup? Do we have our response policies that define, do we have third-party console? Do I have them on our speed dial? Do we have our cyber insurance carrier on speed dial? Do I have a third-party IT forensic team that’s going to come in and look at what happened and make a determination what the issue is? Because I don’t want my people doing it. Because I don’t want any hint that maybe there was someone involved. So we bring in third parties to say, yeah, here’s what happened. So I think from that standpoint, you know, a lot of us, we really need to look at that response. And then finally, when I was at Cisco, I was in the security engineering group. And one of the things that we kind of concluded was something like 85 plus percent of breaches was just a phishing attempt. Somebody using a password that they’d been using on Facebook for the last 20 years or something like that. So we also… focus very heavily on awareness and, and, um, training. And, and I, I distinguish the two. Um, I was recently at a CISO talk and, you know, people were talking about training and education and I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, when you, when you go to these various enterprise companies, you know, once a year or possibly twice a year, you’ll get a little, uh, uh, training requirement that says, you know, you need to go through this and make sure you change your passwords and don’t do this and walk out for phishing and whatever. And what I was trying to stress with those folks is that that’s training. That’s not awareness. Awareness is something you do instinctively. When I get that email, I think twice before I click on it. When I see that question, I think twice. That is awareness. You can’t do that once a year or twice a year. You have to reinforce it constantly.

Speaker 0 | 38:28.152

You’re 100% accurate. It’s funny. Let’s go back to what you said about… about the compliance piece because what ends up happening, and the running joke I think in the compliance of anyone that does compliance, right, is that listen, yeah, I wrote it all down. It’s on my, you know, I can have an auditor walk in here. They’ll read it all. It all looks pretty. I can show them the evidence. Here you go. Move on. All right, go on. Great. That you can pass an audit, right? But can you pass an attack, right? That’s a whole other… ball ball game right i mean an audit’s just going to tell you that you’re doing everything the way you should be doing it the um you know by the books right um but the but i love what you’re talking about about actually testing it and doing the response and stuff like that’s the piece that really matters that’s the because that’s what’s going to happen when when you’re when you’re uh ready to go and and i was uh at a i was at a different company and leading the uh their security and privacy program and i said uh to them i said i listen i need I need people from the business and you can select who you want, but we’re going to do a walkthrough. Right. And we did a scenario walkthrough. And OK, what would you do now? What would you do now? They got done. And I think the response from one of the executives was, well, thank you, Michael. I’m not going to sleep tonight. I’m like, then I did my job. Then I did my job. Right. So that was the that was the whole point. I’m like, yeah, you need to think about these things. Right. And not all of them are IT. A lot of them are people, you know.

Speaker 1 | 40:01.540

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that’s, you know, so recently I was at a company and actually somebody from another company, maybe a sister company, was calling and they had an event and they asked about it. And, you know, it’s like, well, we need a single sign-on, we need multi-factor, and I said, no, no, guys, you know, here’s fundamentally what happened. An email was sent to your accounting group. Your accounting group paid that invoice that was attached to that email. Yes, that email got to you because of an IT issue. And if we did these things, that would take care of it. But fundamentally, look at our business process. We paid an invoice that did not have a PO associated with it. There was no confirmation of any receipt of the goods and services associated with that invoice, and it got paid. And it was not a trivial amount. This was not a one or two or three or $10,000 kind of thing. hundreds of thousands of dollars how does that happen so business processes we have to go back to those fundamentals those controls have to be in place and you know i the analogy i gave him i said hey what if i sent that invoice in well

Speaker 0 | 41:14.888

that’s why you and this is great because that’s that’s why now you’re starting to see um things like oh you have to have a wire transfer policy oh you have to have a you know it you know they have these policies that are more business you oriented and business related, not just technical, right? And you’re 100% right. You’ve got to have the technical pieces. You’ve got to have all those items. But more importantly, you need to have the business related processes put in there to make sure.

Speaker 1 | 41:49.741

And that goes back to that awareness. When you get that invoice, you should be questioning it just off the bat. You know what? How do I know this is really legit, right? So So that’s the awareness piece that we have to drive. And awareness doesn’t always mean passwords and logins, right? So sometimes it just means business acumen. And does that really make sense? Do I really think the CEO just called me and asked me to send him some gift cards? I need to think down to that level and question every one of those interactions.

Speaker 0 | 42:22.070

Especially because of the now that we’re in. How well… uh um some technologies are mimicking uh you know are mimicking things and people and stuff like that and it’s just going to get even more uh uh you know already right now you know it’s it’s hard to detect and

Speaker 2 | 42:43.422

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Speaker 0 | 45:07.626

I’d like to, if we can, jump into our IT crystal ball segment where I go over. Basically, I ask you about the future of IT in this spot. You know, AI always comes up in this, but AI is the now. Like, that’s not future, right? The question really with AI and other pieces is, what will that look like five to ten years out, right? You know, go five years out, what is AI going to be doing? That’s the question that nobody can seem to put their finger on, right? We all know that AI is the thing, right? We all know that, you know, it’s going to be something big, but we don’t know where it’s leading us. And there’s lots of questions and lots of pieces there. Um, but, uh, um, and I, you know, when I first started doing this crystal crystal ball, it was always AI, AI, AI. That was the answer. Um, and, uh, um, now, now what we need to start thinking is, uh, what will AI be doing to M and a, what will AI be doing to business process systems transformation? What will AI be doing with the role of the CIO? What will AI be doing with cybersecurity? I that’s, that’s where I think. this next thought process needs to head. What are your thoughts on this?

Speaker 1 | 46:31.687

Yeah, no, absolutely. So let’s level set and let’s talk about what AI is doing to us today. So today, in the current, whereas before I’m dealing with nefarious actors and rogue states in handfuls or maybe thousands or tens of thousands, now we’re dealing with AI deep fakes in hundreds or millions. right it it’s nothing for them to to generate these so so how are we going to come back from a cyber security standpoint all of these these uh potential breaches and incursions um and then that’s where we have to go and start looking at the new tools out there um to to filter through these threats and and figure out you know what’s valid what’s not valid everyone’s going to get alert fatigue if we’re having to filter through millions of threats so so that’s something today we’re we’re dealing with it today and and i and i think maybe it’s not five years, it’s probably more like five months, that I’m certain that we’re going to start, at least in enterprise, seeing more voicemails and possibly even videos or Zoom calls or presentations where it’s like, no, that’s not really that person.

Speaker 0 | 47:40.881

This is really me, by the way. I’m really on this side. This is actually, it’s not an AI. I’m actually me.

Speaker 1 | 47:46.604

I’m going to check your blockchain credentials afterwards to make sure that this has been authenticated. But at that- is really going to be kind of a scary time for us. And I think we’re sort of in it right now. But if we were to fast forward for five years or two years or whatnot, I see huge benefits from the incorporation of AI. You know, AI is great at aggregating and consolidating and drawing conclusions. But where it really, and this kind of goes back to our cyber, maybe, you know, some CISO roles. Again, I was at a panel and, you know, we were talking about data and, you know, data security and all the CISOs were talking, oh, well, you know, we’re going to put it in this folder and only these people can get there and you only can get there if you have this security clearance and da, da, da. I said, no, no, no. You see, AI is going to change the way we look at data and certainly change the way I think the CISO looks at data. Whereas before, we’re only concerned with protecting data or hiding it or keeping it secure or not letting access. Now, that data, that’s what trains our AI. We’re feeding our AI that data. And we need to be aware of what data we’re feeding AI, what biases that data contains. If we were to look at conflict in the Middle East, and we look on the web here in the United States, it gives us one picture of that conflict. If we were to go in the Middle East and look at that on the web over there, it gives us a different picture. So we need to understand the bias that data presents. And when we consume this data and we, you know, this data is basically the textbooks that we’re using to educate our AI. We need to include that. Is it regional? Is it cultural? Is it, you know, gender? Is it whatever it happens to be? We now need to ensure that those attributes are taken into account. And when we feed the AI, we understand. what, what it’s directed at. And we may, we, we, we may want to use one set of data for this group and another set of data for a different group. And that, I think, that’s going to be a challenge for us because it’s not something that we’re used to thinking about. We all have a mindset that, well, you know, if I read it, of course it’s right. And, you know, it’s no longer about being right. It’s more about your context and your perspective. And I think we’re going to have to start realizing that with the data. And, yeah, it’s going to be an interesting time. It’s certainly going to be an interesting time teaching.

Speaker 0 | 50:28.154

teaching AI. It’s such an interesting perspective to take on that. And especially since if you start to think about right now, most people are using Microsoft’s AI or they’re using Google’s AI. And that is just a giant model that’s been fed a ton of data. And yes, it’s got more data than the other. than a model that you would have sitting here, you know, running out of your house, right?

Speaker 1 | 51:03.980

But it’s being fed a ton of data from the internet. The internet. This is going to be a shocker. Not everything on the internet is true.

Speaker 0 | 51:12.264

Exactly. How many times have you fed, asked a question, gotten back data and then been like, that’s not right. That’s not accurate.

Speaker 1 | 51:20.607

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it’s not a bunch of, you know, Boolean logic, you know, and if-thens. These are black boxes. So we be really careful about what we feed it and understand in order to understand what the conclusions it starts to draw from this data happen to be.

Speaker 0 | 51:38.897

Absolutely. And when taking your thought process about having different viewpoints, having different ideologies and stuff like that feeding into it. makes a difference. And then the question is, is how are they going to allocate for that? You know, having one big model, I mean, maybe their models need to change and they need to start segmenting out the models a bit to be able to be able to do that. And, you know, it actually changes to a degree because, you know, even with Microsoft’s co-pilot, right? So I, you know, I’ve, I, these people have, has tons of people and asking for it. And I’ve said, hold on a second. Remember, it’s going to take all your data and then it’s going to allow everyone else to see that data. And, and so if you’re, if you don’t have like valid permissions on your data, right. And then you turn around and you just say, yeah, let’s do that. Payroll data could be handed out to the rest of the team and, and all this stuff. It’s scary. And then, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 | 52:48.707

Does it keep it,

Speaker 0 | 52:50.128

uh, does it keep it like. uh segmented towards your business i mean we think so right we hope microsoft is doing that but what we know you know from previous things is not just microsoft and google and stuff like that they do their best but they’re not always 100 accurate on that so if you’re feeding company data into that there’s a chance that that data could be leaking out into the bigger model and and then you could have issues so so you and then the question is if you’re only using your model that you’re sitting there uh working with Right. How much are you slanting and skewing that model?

Speaker 1 | 53:25.368

And I think, you know, you’re absolutely right. So Microsoft, you know, I mean, our big concern, especially if something IP related is where’s the data stored? How’s the data shared? You know, we’re very, very hesitant to. I shouldn’t say very hesitant. I should say we just don’t. We don’t put anything IP related into any of the AIs that are out there, whether they’re private LLMs or public LLMs. But there’s huge opportunities for things that are driven more towards customer satisfaction. Or, you know, sales, marketing, trying to analyze, you know, the hits to our website or something like that. You know, huge opportunities trying to get a customer to the right person to answer a question, right? Huge hits to productivity and customer satisfaction. That can all be done. You know, that’s all out there. I will say, you know, to Microsoft’s credit, you know, they’re doing a lot of work and offering some of these, you know, as an Azure service. AI as an Azure service. And I think they are addressing some of that. Where’s the data stored and how’s it shared? So I think there’s some great things around the corner and starting to answer some of these infancy concerns that we have. And hopefully in the next year or two years, we’ll start seeing the benefits. But then the last thing on the data that I kind of harp on is that… When we look at an organization or a company, you know, and they say, well, where’s your data archived? And they show you all of this data, right? So now the other element that we have to start considering with AI is that data has an exploration. So we think everything is forever, right? So maybe this data is only good for the next six months or a year or two years or till the next product. And now, again, there’s all of these attributes that we now need to assign to this data, but we don’t have that mindset before. Like I said, the CISO, their mindset is I need to protect it and make sure it’s secure. But we really need to now go back to our data governance policies. So every set of data that I have, I need to know who owns it. And then I need to make them responsible for all of these other attributes. So it’s going to be a very challenging time. And I think that role belongs to the CISOs and making sure that it’s enforced. And I think that’s going to be a kind of a big paradigm shift. So we’ll see how that plays out.

Speaker 0 | 55:53.661

I love it. The future, what I got from this is the future of AI here. is messy. It’s just messy. And it needs people to help throw standards around it. And that’s the role of the CIO to help spearhead that for the organization. Because we understand the business process. And we’re able to take that messy and make sense of it for each individual business that we’re working for.

Speaker 1 | 56:27.472

Or at least bring some controlled chaos to it.

Speaker 0 | 56:30.714

Controlled chaos. I like that better. Nerds, I’m Michael Moore. I’ve been hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’ve been here with Alex Marzano, CIO at NextGen Power Systems. Thank you so much, Alex. I appreciate you jumping on the podcast.

Speaker 1 | 56:48.428

Michael, thank you so much for a wonderful conversation.

Speaker 0 | 56:51.110

Absolutely.