Speaker 0 | 00:06.537
Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’m here with Bob Keebler, director of IT at The Gund Company. Hey, Bob, how’s it going?
Speaker 1 | 00:16.960
It’s going well, Michael. How about you?
Speaker 0 | 00:18.981
Very good. I hope I got your name right. It sounds like the Keebler elves, right? Did I get that right?
Speaker 1 | 00:28.968
That is correct. I was asked many times if my family lives in a hollow tree. We do not. So, yeah, you got it.
Speaker 0 | 00:37.053
They make some great cookies. So, listen, glad to have you on. We always start this podcast with our icebreaker segment. It’s called Random Access Memories. I ask a question and then you respond with the answer that just comes to your head first. So the first question I’m going to give you is what’s the most common?
Speaker 1 | 00:58.984
or frequent
Speaker 0 | 01:00.264
IT-related question that you wish everyone knew the answer to?
Speaker 1 | 01:07.786
I would say the best thing that comes to mind is, and people hate this, but whatever your question is, whatever’s wrong with your computer, restart it. It’s kind of a joke that people hate. The help desk saying, did you restart? But it really does fix everything. I’ve had to restart my car just because the computer wasn’t working right.
Speaker 0 | 01:29.176
I use it for things that like I had went to the like a coffee machine and it wasn’t working. And I went in the back and just unplugged it and plugged it back in. And so I even apply and it started working again. I even apply that same methodology to my morning coffee.
Speaker 1 | 01:47.543
So absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 01:51.005
All right. What is the most surprising or shocking IT related news or event? that you’ve ever heard or witnessed?
Speaker 1 | 02:01.261
I attended a webinar probably a month ago or so, and it was a demonstration of AI writing code to help itself then generate passwords and crack into accounts. So they were just demonstrating how AI has reached a point where it can make helping programs so it can be more efficient. I knew that was probably coming someday, but to see it actually in action was a little terrifying.
Speaker 0 | 02:28.484
It is terrifying. It’s the coming age of IT just taking over these processes and making them so much easier. I think when hacking kind of first… I mean, hacking has been around for a long, long time. But when it first started, people were doing it very manually. And then the kind of next evolution of that was automating hacking, right? and then making it more available out to people that could just, anyone could do it. Now the fact that it can actually be automated and then auto-improve itself, that doesn’t make me feel it doesn’t sit well, right? Doesn’t make me feel good.
Speaker 1 | 03:21.487
No. And I’ve joked a few times that I worry about AI, and then I watch my Roomba run into the same wall six times. I feel a little bit better, but yeah, it’s coming.
Speaker 0 | 03:32.169
But, you know, I can’t remember what article it was that I was reading, but I saw that they trained an AI. They said, hey, we want you to try to break into this password. But there was a captcha there. And so the AI was like, no problem. It turned around and convinced a human. It showed it images and was like, hey, what do you think this is? Hey, what do you think this is? Hey, what do you think this is? And it said that it was basically unable to see the images because it was also a human, but didn’t have good eyesight. And the human did it. It convinced the human to do the capture for him. Swore it. Right. And then there you go.
Speaker 1 | 04:22.118
I guess it can’t check the I am not a robot. So it got around that.
Speaker 0 | 04:26.264
So it got around it by just convincing a human to do it. So, oh man, we’re headed in a good path.
Speaker 1 | 04:36.290
Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 04:38.632
If you could design or customize any IT-related product or service, what would it be and why?
Speaker 1 | 04:47.897
This might sound a little odd, but I would make printers that work. every single time you try to print to them and never jam.
Speaker 0 | 04:55.422
You would be a millionaire.
Speaker 1 | 04:57.323
I would.
Speaker 0 | 04:58.124
Billionaire.
Speaker 1 | 05:01.770
Yeah, I guess I might be showing my age a little bit, but I have had just too many complaints about printers in my lifetime. And I hate printers. A good friend of mine sells printers, and I have told her many times I hate printers.
Speaker 0 | 05:16.574
I don’t own a printer simply because I don’t want to troubleshoot it. I will go out of my way not to print things. And if I have to print things, I’m going to a copy store and they can print it because I don’t.
Speaker 1 | 05:30.378
I don’t like printing. It reminds me of the office space where they take the printer out in the field and beat it with the bat. I completely understand where they came from.
Speaker 0 | 05:40.700
Yes. PC load letter?
Speaker 1 | 05:43.781
Yes.
Speaker 0 | 05:44.261
Yeah. Well, listen, I’m happy to have you on here. Tell us a little bit about what Gun Company does. Let’s start there because I think that’s probably a great place to start.
Speaker 1 | 05:59.445
Sure. Well, in case you were wondering, we do not make teddy bears because apparently there is a company called the gun company and they make teddy bears. And I don’t do that.
Speaker 0 | 06:08.832
I should probably point out that it’s G.U.N.D. Gun. So so that way we know for sure what we’re all talking about. So it’s not teddy bears and it’s not and it’s not guns. It’s it is the gun company. And what is the gun company do?
Speaker 1 | 06:27.026
Yeah, I do exactly what you just did. When I tell someone, I enunciate that D on the end. We’re a manufacturing company. We make parts for oil and gas exploration, frack plugs, for example, power generation, installation for transformers, aerospace, medical, basically parts that go into something else that you’ve never even thought of. It’s pretty amazing some of the things we can fabricate.
Speaker 0 | 06:56.786
Well, so, I mean, right off the bat, I’m just thinking in my head, what’s the name of that? Is it CMMC?
Speaker 1 | 07:09.212
Yes, CMMC. Yes.
Speaker 0 | 07:10.973
So you probably had to go through that, right?
Speaker 1 | 07:14.755
We have. And we are working on CMMC level two whenever the final requirements actually are published. Did they get published?
Speaker 0 | 07:25.722
know about that it’s that’s interesting because i know cmc uh one uh even was delayed for a while right i i joined the organization three years ago and they said when this is ready we want to be ready and we’re still waiting it was right around the corner three years ago i mean that’s just it’s remarkable that they because you have so many um different frameworks out there that you can borrow from so And I understand things are kind of in flux right at the moment, but there’s great frameworks out there that protect healthcare information, that protect credit card and finance information, PCI and EPA, right? So it’s amazing to me that they’re taking this long on getting the requirements out.
Speaker 1 | 08:21.377
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. At first, it really looked like it was going to be NIST 800-171 plus a little bit. And yeah, borrow some things from HIPAA, some things from PCI. But honestly, I don’t even know at this point if they know what they’re doing. They could be on level three or four by now. It’s frustrating to keep telling people. When I do an update for the organization, I will say we’re working on CMMC level two. You told us that two years ago. Well, we’re still waiting. We’re still waiting for what it’s going to be. Right, exactly. So it’s a challenge. And in IT and in our organization specifically, we try to be efficient. And it’s just frustrating waiting for years for these regulations to come down.
Speaker 0 | 09:11.807
I would imagine, though, if you took NIST 800-171, if you took some HIPAA… framework and you also took a PCI framework and you combine that all together with a strong privacy framework as well, I’m pretty sure you get really close to whatever the finality is going to be.
Speaker 1 | 09:36.357
Yeah. And that’s pretty much the approach we’ve taken. We’ve done exactly that. We don’t deal with healthcare, but we still have some HIPAA-ish type things to deal with. So we’ve basically taken that exact approach. So that’s why I tell people we’re working towards it when it’s ready.
Speaker 2 | 09:53.936
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Speaker 0 | 12:14.670
And I think that’s a great move. It kind of sets you on a path to get, you know, probably, you know, 95% the way there. I’m sure they’ll come up with some little requirements here and there that’ll be a little bit different. But yeah, I mean, they all, you know, they all kind of center around a very similar frame, very similar frameworks. And they’ve changed a bit. and adapted and they’re going to need to adapt now a little bit more. But I mean, the frameworks themselves have been pretty well defined. The folks that have implemented them and actually stick to them, actually treat them like it’s not just a checkmark that they need to do, but they actually need to work on them. I think those companies do very well and are very strict. at maintaining that. So, you know, obviously, the weak point is always humans. That’s always the problem. As I pointed out earlier with the AI going in and trying to trick the human. I think that’s, you know, social engineering is probably the biggest piece of that. How are you tackling social engineering?
Speaker 1 | 13:34.571
We do a significant amount of security awareness training. Uh, and we’ve done a few, I haven’t done it at this organization, but in the past I’ve actually done social engineering tests. Uh, one organization, I had someone show up in an AT&T t-shirts, just a t-shirt and said, I’m supposed to come check your server room. And they let them in, they opened the door up for them.
Speaker 0 | 13:56.429
Uh,
Speaker 1 | 13:57.970
so it’s a little bit different now. Uh, but just as much as you can, you just have to keep reminding folks. The partner we work with, they use a line, things that make you say, hmm, like the old Arsenio Hall bit. So anytime something seems just a little bit off, stop what you’re doing and report it. And our folks are really good at that to the point where they report a whole lot of things that are absolutely benign. But that’s fine with me. I’d much rather them report some marketing email that just looks a little off as opposed to after the fact. pointing something out and saying, whoops, sorry, I gave someone this information a few days ago. Was I supposed to do that? So there’s always a challenge. And security frameworks and there’s this balance there where you have to protect the data. You have to protect your organization. you have to protect your users and train them also just to protect themselves at home. But at the same time, you can’t make things so locked down and so challenging to get through that they’re frustrated at their job. So there’s a balancing act there between being secure and actually being able to use systems. I’ve told folks many times, I could make the system absolutely 100% secure, but we wouldn’t get any done. So there’s that balancing act there. There are those really challenging at times, but it’s also kind of exciting to try and thread that needle.
Speaker 0 | 15:29.093
I think that’s a great way to say that. I bring up the challenge with social engineering because that has been, I guess, the bane of a lot of really, really big companies’ problems now, since a lot of them have locked themselves down. and done all the technical things that they need to do. I’m not saying that everyone’s done it, but a good portion of the bigger businesses have. You’re starting to see a lot of ransomware attacks happen. You’re trying to see the social engineering basically take the ransomware attacks now. That’s the method that they’re exploiting.
Speaker 1 | 16:10.357
Yeah, absolutely. I read a story last week, week before, about a gentleman at a bank that had a conference call with the CFO. It was just… there was no video it was just audio uh and was told they were starting some new project had to wire millions of dollars into this account and he did it because he’d been talking to his cfo only to find out it was generated by ai and some sort of voice synthesis and it was social engineering to the nth degree wow and it was kind of terrifying so i’ve told folks if you can’t see the person don’t trust it and it’s not too long until you can’t even say Unless you can touch the person, don’t trust it.
Speaker 0 | 16:53.594
You got the point, man. It’s like AI spear phishing, right? I mean, that’s the fear I had. And you’re right. The voice now is pretty well done. And now you see where they’re literally taking pictures and moving them into video. And they look real. Yeah, it’s scary. The deep fakes. they’ve gotten really good and and so now i i agree with you it’s almost to the point where you have to be able to actually physically touch the person and be like are you a hologram like or you can i maybe all right you’re you’re you’re there so um yeah we have a little time before the holograms are real enough i don’t know how long but a little time yeah but how bad do you want one when when uh when they come out right i mean everybody uh everybody sits there and goes, I want a little hologram on my desk and have people just show up like the little wavy Star Wars type.
Speaker 1 | 18:00.575
Right, yeah. I could use some guidance from Obi-Wan. Absolutely.
Speaker 0 | 18:04.799
Help me, Obi-Wan. You’re my only hope. Reboot your computer. That will be the future chatbot. Exactly. No, that’s great. Well, that’s amazing that that’s where we’re at right now with ransomware. Well, that kind of brings us to, you know, we talk about all the frameworks and stuff. We talk about the security. Let’s talk about disaster recovery, business continuity, disaster recovery. Because I think that a lot of times security gets a huge piece of this. But we kind of gloss over BCDR. And to me, that’s such a vital piece of IT because essentially you have your data, which is the gold of your organization. All of your intellectual property is sitting there. And if you don’t have the backups, you can let that data just die. and go away. All of the information, all of the stuff for your company just disappears. And it’s also vital to… Backups are one of the vital ways to protect against ransomware. Let’s talk about disaster recovery. Let’s talk about how to properly set that up. And I want to do this in two ways. I want to attack… two different pieces. How to set it up from a big company, which is where it can get complex, and then how to use that methodology but apply it to smaller companies. so that the audience here that have maybe smaller organizations know what to do.
Speaker 1 | 20:02.921
Sure. I’ve been involved in IT for 25 years, give or take. So I’ve seen the evolution of where it was strictly called disaster recovery, where it was, we have a backup server, we have disaster recovery. To the current state where a backup is the absolute… first step. So I think the methodology is probably almost identical for a small organization or a large organization. It’s the scale. And there are some things, of course, that larger organizations will have the budget for. But as you said, the first step is having a good backup and testing that your backup works. But even that’s not enough now. You need to make sure that you have air gap. backups so that if you do have some sort of ransomware attack where there’s lateral movement, they may trash your production server. But if they can laterally then move to your backups, they will do that. And actually, it’s quite common if there’s been an intrusion and it’s an undetected intrusion and they’re able to poke around, they actually go after your backups first. They lock those down so that you don’t have anything to recover from so that when they then encrypt your… production servers, you’re out of luck. You’re paying the ransom or you’re going out of business. That’s about the extent of your choices. So from a DR technical standpoint, you have to have air-gapped backups. And then you also, what we do and what I recommend is we have air-gapped backups on site, but then we also have those replicated to the cloud so that we have two completely, I’m air quoting that you can’t see, protected backups. in two different environments.
Speaker 0 | 21:54.019
I appreciate the pointing out the air quotes that I can’t see. No, I mean, I think that’s right, though. I think having air-gapped slash immutable backups that are not going to change, that are on a separate network other than your own, I think that’s a huge deal. And having the ability to have those… version down or so to speak so you can uh so you can go back to different uh different times and hold a hold a retention that’ll that’ll fit that because we’ve all had an issue where we went to go restore a backup and it was you know and we needed it and also it’s like it’s not working for some reason or the other and then you’re like um well i hope the other backups that i took work right oh my going back a few hours but let’s how hope How much longer can I go back? Which kind of brings me to another point, too. And it’s funny. I’ve talked to a bunch of companies that haven’t set RPO and RTO yet. Sure. And it’s such a first step in defining everything because your cost for your DR at that point is based on. uh these numbers right and i think people sometimes set um set these numbers thinking i want i want the most uh uh you know and well i guess we’ll back up right rto and rpo right recovery point objective and recovery time objective for the folks uh that are not familiar um the amount of time basically you can go back rpo to a point in time and and recover from and be okay and then uh recovery time objective is uh the amount of time you can um uh you can go you can go without being well coming back up right right amount of time you can you can stomach being on paper or or or so to speak um so so i guess the um these two uh these two items are super important but they’re but they’re a business decision this is not even IT. This is the business decision that needs to be made. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 1 | 24:16.346
Absolutely, 100%. It’s absolutely critical to look at those two first, like you said, because without those, you don’t want to leave it up to IT. We’ll just, this is what we have. This is what we can do. That’s what we have. I’ve had this conversation many, many, many times. Again, I’m old. And everybody wants their data. Well, we need it restored from a few minutes ago, and we need to back up immediately. And what I’ve done many times again. is I will basically just create a matrix. If your RPO is, you can go, you could live with losing a days of data, a day of data, then that’s one thing. But if you can only lose 30 minutes of data, here’s what it’s going to cost. And you need it to come back in a day. Okay, that’s what this is going to cost. You need to be backed up and running in 30 minutes. Here’s what that’s going to cost. And it becomes pretty easy after that, usually, when you start talking about the actual dollars and cents. As soon as you can turn IT into business actionable items, then it makes a whole lot more sense. We can talk about the black box and the magic that happens behind the scenes. But if you can’t turn it into business speak, you’re lost. You’re not going to get what you’re trying to accomplish.
Speaker 0 | 25:43.412
I mean, you put it so well. And that’s a huge piece that needs to be done. Really, IT leaders now need to make sure that they do that, which is understand the needs of the business and be able to communicate the needs of IT through the language of business.
Speaker 1 | 26:03.873
Yeah, what I refer to that as you have to do the geek speak to business speak and back and forth. You have to be able to be that translator.
Speaker 0 | 26:12.099
Hey, that makes sense. Since we’re on the dissecting popular IT nerds, we can say the nerd speak here. Mike Kelly always has fun between geek versus nerd so if you ever come back on the show and book with Mike Kelly you can have that conversation so
Speaker 1 | 26:35.456
I was a nerd before it was cool so
Speaker 0 | 26:37.977
I’m fine with that there you go you know it’s actually I think we’re almost very similar in the amount of time uh that we’ve had with it because i’m in i i think i’m at about 23 years now uh for it experience uh in the field so we’re we’re about the same we’re very close um i love the fact that you talked about um being able to have that conversation and translate it into the business speak because those two numbers it’s not just those numbers because there’s so much about disaster recovery that has to be decided about the business um the location of where people are at, you know, whether or not people take their laptops home, if they if they’re issued a laptop, you know, every once in a while you you come across different companies that are like, oh, I you know, I I didn’t take the laptop home. It’s like, OK, well, what if the building goes down? There’s all of these logistical matters. that appear. And that is more of a business perspective. But this is where the handholding, I think, needs to come in place, right? Because IT can help point out those logistical items and have those conversations. IT can help guide those RPO, RTO discussions and explain what they mean from a dollar perspective and what they mean from an effort. perspective and how many human hours it’s going to take to implement something like that and what the cost of the business is going to be. These are all pieces and conversations that need to happen. But let’s start, if you’re just, let’s say you’re entering a business and you’re an IT director and you’re trying to have a conversation with the executives at the business.
Speaker 1 | 28:46.198
about this what’s the best way to start that conversation uh it depends on I guess your audience if you want to terrify them you could open with hundreds of examples of companies that were hit with some sort of disaster and the horrible percentage of them that were still in business six months later uh it’s it’s terrifying uh but I I don’t typically go to the doom and gloom. I just start by asking, okay, what happens if you’re not able to access email for a day? What happens if our… It depends on the business, of course, but what happens if our phone system goes down? What happens… And just start them thinking. Don’t necessarily just jump into… I think we need to do a backup site across the country in a different time zone, different… tectonic plate in case of earthquakes. I don’t start huge. I just start the conversation with getting them thinking about what would happen. if different aspects of the organization were affected? What happens if there is a pandemic and everyone’s forced to work from home for a year? I remember when bird flu was a real risk and everyone thought it was crazy. I think after 2020, nothing’s off the table at this point.
Speaker 0 | 30:12.004
Absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1 | 30:13.684
So just start the conversation. Just start the conversation with what happens if.
Speaker 0 | 30:18.462
I like that. I like that scenario-based piece. I actually thought you were going to go a little different on this because if I did my research correctly, I think you host a trivia show, right?
Speaker 1 | 30:31.631
I do. It’s a weekly trivia show at a local bar to St. Louis. It’s Cheers. I’ll give them a little plug. Everybody knows your name there. And it’s a lot of fun.
Speaker 0 | 30:42.958
This is fantastic that you do this. So I thought… You being a trivia buff, right, might just come at them with like a little trivia show and just say, hey, guys, let’s play a little trivia game and then be like, how many companies are, you know, just one at a time. The trivia, trivia cards until they’re just like, stop. We get it. We give in. What do you need?
Speaker 1 | 31:09.371
OK, you gave me a great idea for my next update meeting. Yeah, I would do Jeopardy and have them come up with the questions.
Speaker 0 | 31:17.858
There you go, right? I think you got a good method. No, that’s going to be fantastic. What is your favorite, to take a little quick sidebar here, what’s your favorite trivia category?
Speaker 1 | 31:31.265
Sports, without a doubt. Sports. I do the weekly show and I’m actually hosting for a local non-profit this weekend. I created all of the questions and a friend of mine said, oh great, we’re going to have 10 rounds of baseball questions. It’s not. I didn’t do that, but I absolutely could. It’s only nine runs. Enjoy sports. Yeah, right. Nine and a half.
Speaker 0 | 31:59.618
When it comes to sports, I’m absolutely horrible at all sport-related questions. I barely follow football. Uh, that’s about the only, if I had to pick one that I would be up, I’d be up on, it would be football. And I barely can follow that. Um, uh, I, I do love watching sports. I just, I just don’t watch them enough. You have to watch them a lot. You have to be doing the fantasy leagues and in the stuff to be able to actually, uh, um, keep up with it in my, in my opinion. Otherwise you’re, you’re lost.
Speaker 1 | 32:35.850
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I’m much better with sports from like 1980 to 2010. because my life got a lot busier after that. So I don’t watch it as much, but I watch it enough.
Speaker 0 | 32:47.607
And can I ask you, what’s up with baseball? How come there’s like 400 teams in baseball right there? And they’re always on. There’s no like downtime. It’s just there’s always a baseball game.
Speaker 1 | 32:58.036
You say that like it’s a bad thing. It’s a different environment. I, again, I’m dating myself. I remember when I was excited that every Saturday I got to watch one game. Now you’re right. It’s 15 games. All 30 teams are playing just about every day. And you can watch every game if you want. I think it’s great.
Speaker 0 | 33:17.932
I think about football. I barely… When football season is on, I catch maybe five games at the most through the whole season. And it’s always parts of the game. It’s always the end of the game. Because you can literally watch a football game in the last five minutes and get all of the excitement you need for the day. But like, I just, when you look at football, it’s a set season and you know, it’s going to be from here to here. And, and it seems like there’s a reasonable amount of teams. But when I look at baseball, there are so many, and there’s so many statistics that come out of it. And it’s just, it’s almost like you’re having to learn a whole, a whole nother language to, to just understand the sport.
Speaker 1 | 34:06.133
Well, being in IT. we love our acronyms. We like statistics as well. So to me, it just lends itself. And there’s actually more football teams than baseball teams.
Speaker 0 | 34:15.421
It’s amazing you picked up on that transition that I was doing. Thank you very much. So that’s exactly where I was going to go with it. It is. You have a different language in baseball. You have a different language in IT. Lots of acronyms and lots of stuff. And it keeps growing, right?
Speaker 1 | 34:32.196
Yeah, absolutely. An acronym I learned a long time ago in IT is AFA, another flippant acronym. And it’s amazing. And I do my best when I’m doing presentations or talking to someone who’s not a geek or a nerd to try not to use those acronyms. or if I do, at least explain what it is the first time if I’m going to be using it over and over and over. I did a presentation years ago about SD-WAN and I probably talked about it for 45 minutes without telling anybody what the heck SD-WAN meant. I explained it to them, but at the very end, someone said, okay, what does SD-WAN actually even mean? And that was when I realized that I had made a huge issue because I was wondering how many of these folks were just thinking the whole time, what the heck is SD-WAN? instead of actually listening to the message.
Speaker 0 | 35:22.291
Good point. And I mean, if you had said software-defined WAN, instead of FTSD, they still would have probably said, what does that mean, right? So even pulling out the acronym might not have helped in that situation.
Speaker 1 | 35:40.162
Right, but I could have spent a minute or two giving him a high-level explanation of what it meant. before talking about how amazing it was and how transformational it was going to be.
Speaker 0 | 35:52.116
Yeah, I think it’s a great point. And it kind of lends itself into this same kind of topic that keeps popping up when we’re discussing things, which is this ability to have a conversation out of our geek mode, out of our nerd mode, and into our business speak. Uh, and that’s a good, let’s, let’s explore that for a minute because every day we’re talking, we’re, we’re coming up, we’re talking about acronyms. We’re so much so that if people, if you try to go out and explain it to somebody else real quick, what you did in a day, people are gonna be like, huh, what? You know? And, and so what do you think is the best way to train yourself to start speaking? uh well to be able to basically flip the switch and speak in a business mode versus uh speaking a um an it moment uh i i don’t know that i have a really great answer to how you flip the switch i
Speaker 1 | 37:00.763
can explain how i did it uh and really it was attending business meetings uh non-it meetings just with the business leaders and really just listening to them talk to each other and picking up on their jargon, what was important to them. And then when I would start talking about IT, there was a very conscious, that SD-WAN was a perfect example of why, but there was a very conscious decision to not geek this up, to explain it in terms that they were understanding. I try to be careful when I talk about something like that because I don’t want to say, like, something they’ll be able to understand. If someone comes to me with accounting terms, I’d be like, what are you talking about? So it’s not that they can’t understand, it’s just they haven’t been exposed to it. So I’m very careful consciously at first to make sure I’m speaking their language. I’ve been doing it so long now, though, that it’s just kind of second nature to me at this point. And I’ve been in so many different types of businesses and so many… board level and executive meetings that I’m just used to it now. It’s sometimes if I’m around just a group of friends, the team that I play trivia with, it’s four IT guys. So we will absolutely geek out and just talk about all kinds of technical stuff. And if anyone stumbles upon our table, they’ll probably think we’re speaking an entirely different language. But it’s at first, yes, it’s challenging. You have to make that conscious effort. But after a while, again, it’s like you’re… bilingual. So you just can flip back and forth between the two languages without even really thinking about it.
Speaker 0 | 38:47.584
I think that’s a good way to say it. So I think probably if there are folks listening that are not getting that exposure in their organization, what they might want to do is flip open some books and tune into some media that has that jargon and start getting into that mode where they start learning about it. I mean, I’m, I’m certain there’s lots of stuff out there now that, that you can do that. Start studying, start studying the acronyms of the business world, right. And being, and be able to understand those. And I think that
Speaker 1 | 39:29.410
As soon as there’s YouTube videos out there, they can help you understand that too. I’ve never looked for them, but learned how to fix a washing machine on YouTube. So I’m sure I can learn business speak there.
Speaker 0 | 39:38.357
Yeah. Continue listening to this podcast and you will pick up business speak. Let’s let’s talk about something. I also think is. highly related to the business, which I think, again, we’re around a theme here, which is how to take tech and bring it to the business world. And one thing that tech is really good at doing is strategic changes, right? So there’s some planning that needs to go into it, but I think that… If you can understand the business and understand the business goals and the business strategies, you can apply that to IT or you can apply IT to it. And you can really make a difference in a company. And this has been shown before, and I’ve spoken to it, which is IT is not a cost center. And it shouldn’t be treated as such. It should be treated as a strategic form of the company and used as such. What is your thoughts on strategic planning utilizing IT?
Speaker 1 | 40:56.240
Well, I think you put it perfectly. I remember the days when IT was viewed as a utility. It was right there with keeping our lights on, keep our email working, and we’re happy. That has definitely changed over the years. And today, you’re absolutely right. It has to be a strategic partner. And really, before you even try to understand… how IT can fix things. You have to understand what you’re trying to fix. So before I put any sort of strategic planning, IT-focused strategic planning together, I have to understand what is the business trying to do? Are we trying to go into new markets? Are we planning to do mergers and acquisitions? Are we trying to move towards a digital transformation where we’re going to have a much bigger presence on the web? What is important to these folks? And then… Only after that and after you have those conversations and you understand their strategic plans, can you then start to turn that into, okay, well, here’s how IT can support that. Whether it’s hardware, software, people, utilizing things we already have that folks weren’t fully utilizing. You can’t fix it first and then figure out where it fits in the business. You have to understand the pain points. IT strategic planning, in my opinion, should be the very last step in the overall organizational strategic plan. Sure, there are things that IT knows we need to do. Security. That is not something the business is not going to tell you. We need to start using multi-factor authentication. Obviously, they won’t. So there are some things that are…
Speaker 0 | 42:40.192
That’s not strategic. That’s just needed at this point, right?
Speaker 1 | 42:45.033
Right. Absolutely. So you can’t…
Speaker 0 | 42:47.390
do it first you have to understand the business very well first and then here’s how it can support that i i agree with that i think you put it perfectly i agree with that wholeheartedly uh um frequently tell people that um that lead with technology first i said don’t technology is only the means that we’re using to to move data around and uh you know and and more efficiently so I mean, information comes first in information technology. It’s not technology information, right? So that information is the key. And the processes and people around that information are key first. And then you use the proper technology once you know that stuff. So I think you put it so eloquently and correct that technology is the last port. portion of something that needs to be applied.
Speaker 1 | 43:46.375
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve seen examples where, hey, this new technology, rush out and get it and it becomes shelfware. When virtualization first started becoming popular, I thought that’s really cool. Let’s do that without understanding, is there actually even a need for this at this organization? There wasn’t. But at my next organization, there was. And since I’ve been keeping up with technology and understood it, I immediately had a solution for a problem they really didn’t understand they even had yet. So you actually have to keep up with technology as well. We talked about AI quickly, but understanding if that’s even a thing that your organization needs to use, I would say it probably is. But understanding what business problems it’s going to fix as opposed to, this is cool, let’s get it, and now let’s figure out what to do with it. If you don’t understand the business side of it, IT is just the black hole of spending. That was a quote from a CFO in my past.
Speaker 0 | 44:48.474
Nice. I love it. You know, I think… It’s amazing that you kind of got me thinking here because you have a lot of folks that understand business. But when you have IT folks that truly understand business and you put that together, what you have are really, really good problem solvers.
Speaker 1 | 45:17.758
I couldn’t agree with you more. And that’s been my… strength. That’s been something I’ve absolutely always loved from when I was a child, putting puzzles together, taking apart, sorry, mom, home appliances, just to see how they worked. That’s something I’ve always enjoyed. And when I started my technology career, I have a computer science degree. And then I realized I don’t really understand the business side all that well. So I went back to school and got an MBA. And then I realized, okay, I have an MBA. So I have it. idea around business, but I don’t really understand the finance that well. So then I went back to school. Thank you, Webster University. I’m doing plugs all over. And I got a master’s degree in finance. So I tried to accelerate my career growth. I had the technical knowledge, I had that aptitude, but then I wanted the knowledge as well. And then I’ve done what I can to try and apply that knowledge so that I actually can grow in that knowledge. And And you’re absolutely right. Understanding the business and being able to talk to them and a lot of times really being able to pull out what their real problems are. They may not be able to articulate it. They may not really understand what the true problem is. It’s just it’s taking too long for this to happen. And then digging into that and not giving up and understanding that. And then, again, applying technology where it makes sense. It might not be a technical issue. It might be a training or a process. whatever the problem might be but i’ve always it drives my wife crazy if there’s something i come across that i don’t understand i start reading about it it doesn’t matter what it is if someone asks me a question and i say i don’t know i’m okay saying i don’t know but then i need to know it so i will stop what i’m doing and go look it up and i think that might be why i enjoy trivia because i tend to retain all these random useless things all over the place well i think you
Speaker 0 | 47:20.020
It’s great. So I think that’s a really good way to explain that piece. And as I was thinking or listening along, I’m like, finance, right? I’m so glad you went back and got finance because that’s another great point. It’s another great kind of thing. And I think I’ve touched on this before on other podcasts, but I always made a point. in my organizations to go to the finance team, speak with the CFO, get really comfy and go, okay, let’s go through all the costs in all the organizations or all the departments that we have. Because IT has something that’s great. We understand all the different possible synergies that can happen to reduce cost. You know, that’s why IT’s… Not a cost center. Not only can it be strategic, but it can actually save you money if you utilize it correctly. We understand all of these different solutions and go, why are there five different project management tools being used? Right? Why do you have two different CRMs? Why are you so segmented and have different pockets of… different shadow IT going on all over these places. When you can combine this together, you can make this data seamless and put it in the one spot and be able to report on it, you know, and then also reduce your costs. So there’s a lot there from a finance perspective that a good IT director that understands finance can do. So I applaud you for going back and getting that.
Speaker 1 | 49:13.732
What I’ve found also one of the greatest benefits is the ability to be able to talk again to the CFO in their language. You understand total cost of ownership, return on investment, payback period. You understand those terms and use those and put together a demonstration of what this solution is going to truly cost us and what it’s going to gain. It is amazing how much more quickly you can get the buy-in. And maybe they still say no. But at least they understand that you know what you’re talking about. So if nothing else, you build up some goodwill for the future. uh sorry lost my train of thought the dog just walked by um and so you just build that up for the future uh i’m i’m having this conversation sitting on my front porch because my house has several children and many animals running around oh i you know i appreciate that uh um the uh you
Speaker 0 | 50:10.466
know i wish i was on uh my front porch then we you know this would be but i’m in i’m in an office right at the moment so the but you know you know what’s interesting is and remarkable is that, and you said it, right? You’re talking about this, you know, being able to speak their language and this recurring theme for this podcast, apparently. But there are so many, there’s so many good pieces that like, I would always love to go and be like, give me the budget, at least for IT, right? And let me see what’s, let me submit it to you. I will fix it. I will submit it. I will reduce your cost. and get what I want. And they were always like, yeah, here you go. Right. You know, I’m like, give me both the OPEX budget. Give me the CAPEX budget. I’ll take both and I will come back to you and you’ll be happier and I’ll get what I want. So, you know,
Speaker 1 | 51:06.511
everyone wins.
Speaker 0 | 51:07.632
Everyone wins. Right. I mean, if you’re an IT director and you don’t have your hands on the IT budget, you are missing opportunities. Right. Because there’s stuff hiding in there. You know how many times I’ve found stuff from other departments hiding in the IT budget?
Speaker 1 | 51:26.004
Many, many, many times, I’m sure. Yeah, I find that all the time as well. And you mentioned…
Speaker 0 | 51:30.966
Expensing their stuff to me.
Speaker 1 | 51:33.728
Right, right. And you mentioned quickly CapEx and OpEx. That’s a very basic term or basic distinction. But unfortunately, I still think there’s a lot of IT leaders that don’t understand the difference there. So many different projects, you can go either direction. So again, talking to your CFO, your financial leader, whoever that is, and understanding what their preference is. I’ve worked with organizations that because of their structure and if they were owned by private equity or a family, they wanted CapEx, they wanted OpEx. So understanding it makes it that much easier to get what you want and what you know the organization needs.
Speaker 0 | 52:14.570
Absolutely. And you can speak to the people, you know, the different vendors that are trying to sell you things. You can speak to them, be like, you need to restructure this deal to be OPEX heavy or CapEx heavy. Right. And they will do that. And, you know, and they’ll actually do they’ll do crazy things to sell the deals. But, you know. And there’s so many options in which ways you can capitalize things now if you need to go that route. Or if you’re like, no, I want to throw my stuff into OpEx and I want to have a low CapEx. You know, I don’t I don’t have much cash on me. There there’s so many different ways you can you can cut up deals and and get the solutions that you need if you understand finance. So, like I said, I think this is it’s a big piece where if you don’t understand finance. and you’re looking to be an IT director, you should dive into that world because there are so many different ways that you can jump into it and make a difference.
Speaker 1 | 53:19.669
Yeah, absolutely. And it even makes just running your IT department better when you truly do understand the finance. And if you can look at the budget, and like you said, find all those hidden things that somebody’s hitting your GL with. What is this? Yeah, that happens a lot.
Speaker 2 | 53:37.274
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Speaker 0 | 55:56.863
So we’re going to move up to our last segment, which is IT Crystal Ball. This is the… section where we like to discuss the future of IT. We have touched on a lot of subjects today, from strategic planning to disaster recovery to ransomware problem solving, and even some trivia. I think we’ve been all over the place, but I’m going to leave this open to you to kind of think about In the next five years, right, where are we going from an IT perspective? Where do you think we’re headed? You know, a lot of times, and it’s fair to bring up AI because it’s the now. It’s actually happening. And over the next five years, you’re going to have a very, very, you’re going to have expansion of AI. And so that’s. That’s definitely an item to do it. But we have to identify what is that going to mean? What is that going to look like in the future? And what is that going to do to the technological landscape? And for folks that have been in it 20 plus years and seen all the different ups and downs and sometimes circles where we’ve gone back to the same point we were at, it’s an interesting thing to go, hey, what do you think? And where do you think we’re going to be in five years from now?
Speaker 1 | 57:33.894
That’s a very difficult question to answer, especially in IT. Cat GPT, that just came out in the last couple of years. So five years ago, AI existed five years ago, but no one would have predicted. Someone probably did. But I wouldn’t think somebody would predict where AI specifically went over those five years. So five years from now, I… don’t even know. I know that AI will be prevalent. You’re absolutely right. It’s going to make significant leaps and bounds. So that immediately also then leads me into security and how we are going to secure systems and people. I’ve read recently around people being careful getting their picture taken with waving because they can now get your fingerprint from a picture. And then create that with a 3D printer. And so, yeah. So, yeah. Or just keep your hands closed, I guess. I don’t get pictures on braid floats very often, so I’m probably safe. But it’s just things like that that you would never think of. Self-driving cars. AI is the future, I think. But with that, we have to understand and protect ourselves. I mentioned the deepfake call. Uh, and that’s, that’s now five years from now, it’s going to be an exponential jump. I don’t think we’ll have the hologram OB on our desk, but you never know. Um, but you’re absolutely right. IT is circular.
Speaker 0 | 59:10.407
Don’t, uh, um, don’t make my dreams go away.
Speaker 1 | 59:15.091
Maybe we will. And lightsabers will actually be a real thing. I don’t know. I’m sure people are working on it. Uh, but I, I think this is an incredibly. interesting, slightly terrifying, but really exciting time in technology. Technology just moves so incredibly fast. And it’s accelerating and building upon itself that I am really excited to see where it is in five years. I probably will still be working in IT, so I’ll get to see it myself. But you’re right when you said IT is circular. We had on-prem servers and everybody had to go to the cloud. Now we’re back down from the cloud. So it’s going to be exciting. That’s about all I can say about the next five years in IT that I have any real conviction around.
Speaker 0 | 60:04.410
It’s going to be a ride, right? And that’s when is IT never exciting? It always continues to get more and more exciting. That’s the great thing about picking the career that we did.
Speaker 1 | 60:23.200
Yeah, I never know what is going to be waiting for me when I walk into the office.
Speaker 0 | 60:26.662
All right. So listen, usually I don’t have any other segments, but I’m going to ask you a trivia question before we go.
Speaker 1 | 60:37.717
Oh, all right.
Speaker 0 | 60:39.679
On February 11th, and it didn’t put a year, but it’s February 11th, somewhere in the 90s, right? In Tokyo, which virtually unknown fighter knocked out the heavily favored Mike Tyson in the 10th round?
Speaker 1 | 60:59.736
That was Buster Douglas.
Speaker 0 | 61:01.434
Yeah, there you go. See, look it. Bob is living up to his trivia name. Good job on that. And thank you, AI, for generating that trivia question for me, because I know nothing about sports. Nerds, it’s been Michael Moore. I’ve been hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. I’ve been here with Bob Keebler, director of IT at The Gun Company. Bob, thank you so much for coming on. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 | 61:30.010
Absolutely, Michael. It was my pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 0 | 61:32.277
Thank you.
