Transcript 0:00 I hope by now you recognize the likelihood of a cyber attack on your business is very high. No company is immune. As much as you think you are, you're not. The government's not immune. We all understand that. 0:12 So here are some ideas to protect your company and our cities. 0:17 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:35 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. As always, I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. This month, I'm talking all about rebuilding our smart cities. 0:45 If you joined us last week, you know I laid the foundation for what our cities will look like in the future with the help of technology. 0:53 I suggested they need to be resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and perhaps most importantly, secure. Today, let's talk about that last point a little bit more. 1:06 Let's look at what we need to do to protect our cities in a new digital world. I will touch on that here in the first segment, but before we get to that, let's talk about who our guests are going to be. 1:18 In the first segment, I'm going to be interviewing Remy Dessa, CEO of Pantonium, and then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Dale Seed, who's the principal engineer at InterDigital. So as always, we've got great guests. 1:32 So let's get started with our discussion. 1:34 Last week, I explained how we have been using digital-first sensor monitoring for things like air quality, asset tracking and tagging, lighting, HVAC, fire suppression, security, inventory management, and all of those really important things that you need in a building. 1:55 I talked a lot about how we need our buildings to be, for all of us, to be feeling that safe so that people can get back to work. 2:03 We wanna see them fill in those cubicles again and feeling really good, and we all know that technology and sensors can help with that. But we also need our cities to be secure. 2:15 You know, we're talking a lot about all the weird things that are happening and what's going on, which is an entirely separate discussion to that. 2:23 You know, cyber crimes have increased 300%, if you can believe that, since the pandemic, and some 95% of cybersecurity breaches are due to what? How many of you, raise your hand, you know the answer. Human error. 2:40 So CyberVista estimates the global cybersecurity workforce needs to expand by some 89%. Now, if you're listening to this show right now, I will bet you're sitting there going, "You need to do something about it." 2:55 We need to make sure that the bad guys can't hack our dams, our waterways, our utilities, and other critical infrastructure, or our cities will grind to a halt. You've heard me say this so many times. 3:08 You are probably going, "I'm tired of hearing her say this," but we saw what would happen to the Colonial Pipeline. 3:15 I've been saying it so often that it's just ridiculous to keep hearing me say it, but I have to keep preaching it. 3:22 I've been warning about what can happen, and this is just the beginning if we don't keep paying closer attention. 3:30 This is going to keep happening if we don't do something about it, and if we don't step up to the plate and focus on it. And I know we've got a lot of other things to focus on, but you know what? 3:40 The bad guys aren't gonna stop. So for this segment, let's tackle how to protect our cities and our infrastructure. Now, let's just talk about the negative, but let's talk about how we flip the switch on this, you know? 3:52 So I'm going to touch on two key ways we can protect our city in this new digital world, you know, this digital first. So first in, in finding the right talent culture for building the right infrastructure. 4:07 If we get this right, then we can all go back into our digital cities feeling good. So I've said on this show before how I believe people are our first defense in cyber. We need great people. We need to educate them. 4:23 We need to put them up, and they're the ones that are gonna be that line of defense that are gonna protect us. We need to teach them about good cyber hygiene. That's like the basic 101 of everything. 4:33 You know, just like we're all using hand sanitizer, but I think it goes a little bit deeper than that, and I think we need something even bigger. 4:42 We need to build a culture around that, and this is, this is a change in mindset. So I know it starts at the top, and I've said this before, and you've heard me say it. We know we need to be connected. 4:57 We need to be happy, and we need to be engaged employees, and I've explained about this on the show and how that's important. 5:04 But I want to dig into the how to do that for a couple of minutes because I think that's a critical part, and I wanna give you some real action items to walk away with from this show today. 5:17 So the Growth in this Institute recommends that building a culture needs to be deliberate. It does not just happen, you know, without it being designed. 5:28 You have to really design that culture, and you really need to think about it. So let's do that right now. Take those pens out. I want you to think about that. 5:38 You might be laughing when I say this, you know, or take your ta- your computer out and type these down. You might want to jot down some of these ideas so that you're... 5:47 You know, I'm, I'm one who keeps lists, so here's what I want you to think. So here's a few tangible action steps for building that deliberate culture around security as the Growth Institute calls it. 6:00 Consider doing a few of these things right now. Assign a culture champion to build this out.Give this person the resources and the freedom to build systems and processes that they know what they're doing. 6:16 These are the experts who have the knowledge. And I'm gonna say this, be okay with failure, because you know what? The bad guys are always changing. They're always moving. 6:27 You know, it's like tackling on a football field. They're constantly moving the ball around, so you gotta be prepared. It's not just failure. 6:34 It's kind of like, you know, as the ball's moving and the, the, the game's in play, that's what's happening. So whether it's failure or whether it's attacks, be prepared that champion your champion. I love this. 6:46 Let that company know when you support your champion's initiatives. Be behind that champion. 6:52 You know, give them the support they need, and always, always, always make your core values and priorities visible to everyone in the organization because that says, look, you're behind them. 7:05 I always like to quote Jack Welch when he had black belts. This is the black belt of cyber now. Make them the champion of this and make sure everybody's getting this right training so they understand it. 7:17 This is what you're doing. So if you're an executive leading this culture change, here are some action items for you to consider right now. 7:24 Send out an anonymous survey to find out, do your employees have trust in the leadership team? Now, this is interesting because if they don't, this sends a message right away. 7:35 Are your employees satisfied with what they know about the organization, its challenges, and where it's headed? You need to find this out, and you know what? 7:44 Our egos aren't so ba- big that we can't find out what people are thinking. Do your employees feel that they have a way to raise their own concerns and thoughts to the leadership? 7:55 I mean, this is what we find out right now, what's going on in society. Make it a priority to get together with your team and address any concerns that come up. 8:04 We all have to be in this together to do things together, you know, because those are the important things. All right, I just threw out a lot of tangible ideas at you for how to create a talent culture around security. 8:18 We need for people to do this work f- you know, we need people to do this work for us. We need the c- to cultivate that culture. We need people to feel supported. 8:30 Now let's dig into the second way we can serve our cities in this new digital world, because we need to protect against ransomware, ware, ware, right? Yeah. It's that good old security measures. 8:43 We all need to think about that. I hope by now you recognize the likelihood of a cyber attack on your business is very high. No company is immune. As much as you think you are, you're not. The government's not immune. 8:55 We all understand that. So here are some ideas to protect your company and our cities. Back up your computer. It's 101. We always say that. Store your backup separately so they're protected. 9:06 Update and patch your computer regularly. I know we get so busy we forget, but keep your personal information safe. Verify email senders. 9:16 You know, we forget that, and sometimes we, we, we do the simple mistakes that cripple us. And train those employees, as I stated at the start of this show, what I was saying. 9:27 If your company has been infected with ransomware, here's what you should do. Isolate the infected system. 9:34 Turn off all those other computers and devices, secure your backups, and immediately report we- ransomware incidents. Don't try to fix it yourself, you know, and change all those system passwords. You know, react. 9:48 Have a system in place so that you are not, you know, reacting out of panic, but reacting out of a plan. You know, we can't let our cities and our infrastructure be exposed to a breach. We understand that. 10:02 We rely on these systems for too much, and we discovered last year how essential this really is. We need to be able to adapt and change, and we just saw this year how lines start when we're not prepared. 10:17 We need to address standardization, and we need to focus on our concerns around privacy and security in our smart cities. We need our technology community to tackle this head-on. We need to work together, and we do. 10:31 We're getting better and better at this. 10:33 And we need to address it right now because when we all work together, we can overcome a lot, and we need to overcome all of this if we want to build that smart, resilient, sustainable, and equitable 10:49 infrastructure in cities of the future. Otherwise, we really are sitting ducks just waiting for the next disaster to strike, and, you know, we don't want that. We want to be proactive and not reactive. 11:04 We need to be aggressive. It's kind of like the old chair. We need to be aggressive, you know, before another breach happens. We need to pick up this mantle together. We need to be leaders. 11:17 We need our employees to be active. We need government to be active. 11:21 And technology companies all need to be part of it, even every citizen, because when we all work together, we all have a role to play here if we want our data to be secure. So here's my tip. 11:33 Create that talent culture around security and protect your information from ransomware. Do it now. I gave you several very tangible ways to approach both of them today. 11:47 Take a few of these ideas and implement them today. I don't want you to wait till tomorrow. 11:53 So if we're all in this together, change will happen, and if we wait, we could be waiting too long for somebody to strike and demand ransomware. 12:02 So I want to let you know that next week we're gonna go back and talk about rebuilding our smart cities specifically. 12:09 We have so much more to uncover, like the emerging facility manager and how sustainability fits into this discussion as well. 12:18 So that's all the time I have for this segment, so I'm kind of curious what you think about this. What are you doing to build up what you need to do? 12:27 So I'd love to hear your thoughts, so I want you to send me a tweet at ConnectedWMag, and I'd love to hear what you're doing and how you're building a secure environment in your cities, in your, in offices. 12:40 So those are most important. As I've said before, we've put up some new content on connectedworld.com site, and if you've missed some past shows, go over to thepeggysemedeshow.com. All right. 12:50 This is all the time we have for this segment, but as always, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. 13:01 We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. [upbeat music]
