On this week's Industrial Talk we're onsite at FABTECHin Atlanta, GA and talking to Mike Brattain, Account Executive with Systems X about "Manufacturers must secure their business to succeed". Get the answers to your "Cyber" questions along with Mike's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, conversation, companies, cybersecurity, industrial, cyber, manufacturers, Systems X, secure, mike, absolutely, security, find, people, industry, attack, digital transformation journey, put, manage, data
00:00
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means? insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have that insights into what is connected. Go to Armis.com Find out more, you will not be disappointed. Industrial Talk is brought to you by Arduino the original all in one IoT platform. That's right, go out to arduino.cc and you will find documentation you will find devices powerful boards to help you with your digital transformation journey. It's all there. Go out to arduino.cc Find out more see how you can connect with these professionals to help you along with your digital transformation journey arduino.cc.
01:07
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge Industry Focus innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hardhat grab your work boots, and let's go
01:25
Alright, what's good, thank you very much for joining industrial talk we are broadcasting here at FABTECH. Atlanta, Georgia, it is day three, and has been a man I'm telling it's been a barnburner of companies that have just innovated the heck out of their solutions and providing solutions to your problems. More importantly. And once again, we're just having a ball. So you got to put this one on your calendar big time you got to put this this event if you're not here this year, go next year, you will not be disappointed. You're going to be bigger and better. Most definitely. All right. We got a gentleman by the name of Mike, say your last name.
02:02
It's Brattain
02:04
Systems X. With the s on that Systems X. Let's get cracking. cybersecurity, right. Absolutely. And that's something you know, it's sort of an odd thing. One, that your job never gets old?
02:23
No, no, it's becoming more and more important. You know, we are managed security service provider just north of Detroit. And look, I'm amongst my people right now. These are these are manufacturers that are looking to take technology and gain a competitive edge with it. And so 60% of our our business base is manufacturing. So So these are my people hear
02:50
Yeah. And there's three huge conference halls of your people. Oh, yeah, here. It's massive. And it's everything's here. Yeah, everything. Yeah, let me ask you this, a lot of buzzy buzz out there. And I agree with it. 100%. But but one of the areas that everybody talks about, of course, I need to have that ability to connect my assets, I need to I have to have to start pulling that data, I have to start looking at that data, I've got to figure out how to make tactical decisions based off of the data of my assets. That's wrong. But every time they connect, it's an IoT device. The conversation rarely happens around cyber now. And if you want to be competitive, you've got to have that cyber conversation at the beginning. Is that true?
03:37
Absolutely. You know, we tell our customers, we are a cyber first company. And the reason is, Why manage your data. If you're not going to protect your data. This is no longer an option. It is a cost of doing business, you know, as as a leadership of your manufacturing company, your most valuable asset is your ability to do business. And the stats are out there. And these aren't scare tactics, but oh no, the downtime of a manufacturer is roughly $5,600 a minute. The average ransomware that the manufacturing industry.
04:15
I'm gonna stop you right there. Yeah. $5,600 a minute. Yeah, that's sort of average. That's sort of a big smile. It doesn't matter average. $5,600 a minute. Yeah, continue. I interrupted because I I'll just zone in on number. Yeah,
04:30
no, that's right. It's not feelings. It's it's facts. data, right. thing, but, but yeah, and then, you know, your average ransomware in the manufacturing industries got up to $2 million. Gosh, you know, and so, once you learn that ability, it will lose that ability to earn then then you lose your business. Yeah, I
04:53
this just popped into my head ever so fleeting. Are there insurance companies that are saying, Hey, I know ransom Where attacks are out there. They just don't just whether you like it or not, whether you hear my voice, they are out there. But to be able to sort of wrap it in an insurance policy, can they do that?
05:10
Yeah. So you're touching on a a crazy subject, it is the Wild West when it comes to cyber insurance right now. So companies looked at that as an opportunity, right? So when cyber-attacks really started to skyrocket, they were like, oh, an insurance companies never lose. Right. So now they're sitting there going, well, we're gonna have to start backtracking, what our coverages and start putting different things in our policy that we're not going to cover, like, let's say, a attack from a foreign country, you know, well, most of your cyber-attacks are from foreign men, and they are here. Yeah. So yeah, in the tough part is now most companies most most manufacturers, don't have the required cybersecurity measures in place to even qualify for proper cyber insurance. And so that is, it's a, it's a difficult situation right now.
06:03
But what I think you can mitigate it, if you connect with organizations like yours, and be able to have that conversation of fraud. Yep. And be able to know that, hey, here's where I want to go. How do we make sure that my data is secure, my business is secure, so that we can continue to do what we do best by that service? So, again, it's a cotton, it's a conversation, but if you find people not wanting to have that conversation?
06:32
Absolutely. And it's because they don't understand it, right? Some companies, a lot of times they hear look, we're too small, no, no. Right. And I always do the comparison of, you're looking at two houses and one doors locked and one door is not, I'm the bad guy, I'm going in the unlocked door, at least have some sort of security in place, because there's so much low hanging fruit there. But you know, being able to prove that you're secure, that's why I think a lot of the sea levels avoid that conversation. Because usually they have that IT person talking a different language, that doesn't make sense to transmit, you know, and so, yeah, that's, that's the conversation have more of a strategy behind behind the cybersecurity,
07:18
I find, it doesn't have to be, there's the buzz that says, hey, you're gonna lock me down, and I'm not going to be able to do anything, I'm not going to be able to do my business, you're gonna lock me down so tight, I won't be able to do anything. And that's, that's one faults, don't go down that road. But two, if you can create some, some firewall, some sort of way of preventing, or making it difficult for the various behavior to say, they're lazy just like me, they're going to just try to find that simple penetration point, and just, you know, exploit that. So they're going to go on to something else, at least make it a little bit more difficult.
07:58
Yeah, absolutely. Some ways that you can improve your cyber posture, because let's face it firewall and all that that's, that's kind of a thing of the past. They're, they're blown by that like nothing, looking at managed detection and response, but really putting a foundation in place 30% of that 60% manufacturers we work with are in the Defense Supply Chain, they have to meet very stringent, stringent standards now called NIST and cmmc. So we would go in and build that foundation around NIST, it's a set of controls, that now gets the whole company from the top down on the same goal, and making sure that it's not just software, a very small portion of your cybersecurity is going to be software, it is that strategy from from the top down and it becomes part of the DNA of your company. And in no way like you said, should it lock your company down? It has to make common sense for the business.
08:52
And it's not static. It's an ongoing, continuous continuous it because if you think you're it, things change. Now, businesses change. If you're plopping this out there, you're doing whatever is necessary or you're trying to make your business more efficient. That has to be also in light of your cyber and your security strategy. Oh, that business? Yeah.
09:16
Yeah. And like I said, the way you manage your it is very important, because that is all the system updates and the different settings you have throughout your organization. That's a large part of your your cybersecurity Foundation. And from there, you start getting more technical on what are some things we can do to really make sure we lock these guys out. But I tell you what, as as you're looking to find that help for cybersecurity, and how do you tackle that, that giant beasts, the weight in gold for organizations like Systems X x is not. It's not, you know, getting, stopping the attack. It's when you get attacked, what happens after that? How quick can we take the little spark that little fire and hurry up and jump in, put that out, and then put the incident response plan in place. You know, when I talked to when I talked to CEOs, they say, Well, how do I even know if I'm secure? Well, most of them are getting the reports and things they understand. But I just say, hey, ask your IT support, whoever that is to hand you have an incident response plan. And if they can't hand you one in 10 minutes, you have a major problem.
10:25
That sounds Yeah, so let's let's sort of do a little roleplay. Here. I'm a I'm a small manufacturer, let's keep it small. How would you approach my business? Just generally speaking, that hey, get on in here, check it out. Please tell me tell me what we need to do.
10:43
Yeah. Having a business conversation, talking maybe less about the IT and more about what are the goals for the organization? What are some things they're trying to do moving forward? We're always taking that business strategy approach. I'll let you in on a little secret. I knew nothing about it. Three years ago, I came to Systems X X and said, Hey, look, I know, I know, business. I know, C level, I understand how their minds work. Why don't you teach me a little bit about it. So we can start making that connection? Because they're just sick of hearing it jargon constantly brought to them. Yeah, but really that question of how do you manage it? Do I have an IT department come in very expensive? Do I outsource all of it, we're finding right now. Get yourself that mid-level IT person, you know, and then outsource the heavy lifting, outsource the 24/7 monitoring the cybersecurity all the things that it's hard for that one person to do. But it's important to have that one person in your organization being able to take all the quick light work that needs to happen. And companies would should help that IT person grow within the company and understand how to also, you know, work as a team to make sure they're secure.
11:59
Do you? Do you have the conversation with the it? Yeah, where it's saying, Hey, don't be so it ash? You be a little bit more human and less cyborg? Like,
12:11
it's not in their DNA? You know, it's not, it's not what they want to do. But look, that's a fun conversation when I have the person and the CEO there. And they look at each other like, Oh, hey, yeah, you.
12:25
And then it's all acronyms on both sides. Don't get me wrong. It's on both sides.
12:29
Well, when I asked the question of, Hey, how is it supporting sales today? And they look at me like what? And so those are the types of questions we got to start having? How do we gain that competitive edge for you, you know, I talked to companies all time, especially your sea level, and I say, Look, you put your bid in and another company puts their bid, and I would be touting my cybersecurity posture from the mountaintop. And the reason is, it's going to shadow and put doubt on the company you're going against. Because look, whether it's DoD or its commercial, this is coming companies are asking for your cybersecurity possible policy, they're looking for your system security plan, they want to know that. So
13:09
before they do business, I had a conversation with somebody else on this, and they do island hopping. So if you have vendors, and they're connected to your system, because they want connectivity, if I'ma if I want my vendors to be able to transmit information, I gotta have them connected. So what happens is that they Island hop these these nefarious characters, and they'll try to penetrate the bigger company through those. And again, to your point, you're gonna have to have that conversation, I want you to be secure, right? Well, that's exactly
13:39
what's happening in the defensive supply chain. There is it's no coincidence that our F 35. There's the same f 35 sitting in in China right now, what they do is they grab that small mom car manufacturer that made just make a tiny part. And they ride that all the way to the top. And that's why now the primes are looking down saying, Look, no more. In order for us to give you a contract, you gotta meet these standards. And the government is not joking around anymore. I mean, these manufacturers have to get there. But then the next year.
14:11
It's reasonable. No, I mean, it just it and it's so funny. I struggle with companies talking about cyber, just companies like hey, what do you do? Well, we manufacture widgets. Tell me about your cyber Nope. Not going to talk about it. Yeah. And that conversation, it just, I understand the reality that you don't want to just, you know, air your dirty laundry and be able to do that. But I think at a minimum you need to have trusted individuals that you can have conversation and lock it down.
14:39
Yeah, even when you're attacked, even after your attack. Yeah, absolutely. I was. I was so happy to see here on stage. I don't know. I think it was the first day. The gentleman that THAT'S IT manager for Wilson tool. That that was an amazing story that they told and put their name out there to say Yeah, we were attacked. This is how we handled it. And I Yeah, I know I want. I was like, wow. But I tell you what, that's the important thing is you're telling the community what happened. It only secures all of us together.
15:11
See? And that's, we're getting there. You're getting there. I mean, I love this conversation. No, yeah. I know people get a hold on.
15:19
Yeah. So they can go to Systems X dash x.com They can actually reach me directly at 586-500-1001. And, look, I love having these conversations all day long. It's just a conversation
15:35
is Come on. Let's put our adult pants on. Yeah, let's have this conversation. Here you go. It's gonna be painless. Mike would greatly appreciate it. I like this. Thank you. A better person because of you. There you go. All right. Once again, we're broadcasting from FABTECH here in Atlanta, Georgia. Again, great...
Transcripts
00:00
Industrial Talk is brought to you by Armis. Yes, you were in the digital transformation game. Yes, you need to find trusted companies, trusted individuals to help you along with that journey. The Armis platform delivers complete asset intelligence, you know what that means? insights into your connected assets, you're in the digital transformation game, you have to have that insights into what is connected. Go to Armis.com. Find out more, you will not be disappointed. Industrial Talk is brought to you by Arduino the original all in one IoT platform. That's right, go out to Arduino.cc. And you will find documentation you will find devices powerful boards to help you with your digital transformation journey. It's all there. Go out to Arduino.cc Find out more see how you can connect with these professionals to help you along with your digital transformation journey arduino.cc.
01:07
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots. And let's go
01:25
Oh, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe Sunny, backed up by data. So don't even go there. I'm not going to argue with you. It is all data being driven right here and we are broadcasting on site. And this is FABTECH. This is gonna go I was at another conference last week or a couple weeks ago. Oh my god, are we gonna blow that one? All right, this is FABTECH, Atlanta, Georgia. And it's
01:51
it's three huge
01:53
halls or whatever you want to call it, of just technology solutions provider. And you know what, they all have a common passion, passion to solve your problem in the best way possible. Sunny is in the hot seat. Fulcrum is the company. Let's again, correct? Yeah. Sunny, hang on. Let's look closer to the mic there,
02:18
Sunny Han will do.
02:20
He's the CEO. I am big thinker. So if you're if you're at the show, which I don't know, doesn't matter. If you were at the show, you would say, hey, Scott's booth is right there on the corner. And right to his right, is fulcrum. And you have a team of people who are
02:38
there working the heck out of that booth. Oh, yeah. They're great. They are very lucky.
02:43
Yeah. I was trying to, I was trying to coax a couple come over here. No, I wouldn't dare do that. Anyway. So you flew in today? I did. And we had a chance to sort of look around.
02:56
I have talked to a couple of people already. Other CEOs of other startups and some tech leaders at more established companies. And just good to connect and meet in person. And just to chitchat a little bit. So I've gone around or made my rounds already.
03:12
Did you go did you go all the way to see
03:14
I did go all the way to see did you change your time?
03:19
Yeah, I generally try to stay within one time zone. But
03:22
stuff, I have to move. It's definitely tough in this, this venue, because you realize how, how important manufacturing, how important technology, how important innovation is needed for just the economy. Just just business, it's so important to see it here. And, and, and what's really fascinating is just seeing the diversity of of stuff. There's a bench there that apparently is good to see it there. And it's got to be good. And anyway, it's just it's been a, it's been a real joy to be able to do that. All right. For the listeners before we get into talking about fulcrum, which is a great name, by the way. Fulcrum, sunny, give us a little background on who you are.
04:07
I'm just a nerd that stumbled into manufacturing. As a kid, I emigrated to the United States when I was really four years old. My mom was studying computer science in University Minnesota and move there and just hung out at her computer lab learn to code at a really young age.
04:28
I'm sorry for laughing. That is a that's an interesting so I learned to code at
04:32
a very young age. I did and just lucked into everything. Really. The Universe Minnesota had a program where elementary school kids would start taking math at the University of Minnesota and I was part of that I led the math team at my high school, which is through that I met one of our board members, SHAN Wong. He was the CEO of Reddit and one of the first engineers at PayPal and Facebook. Well, wow. And he's been an incredible mentor of mine and a great friend. A great person to have as a resource. Basically, my life is just a collection of random luck. That's led to what I do.
05:08
Right here right now, right
05:09
here right now, Georgia in November,
05:14
finally started cooling down a little bit. All right, tell us just a little bit about fulcrum, there's still a start there. Because people talk about ERPs. But it's out there, you could talk about the need to be able to, to track the business in a very effective way and data and all that because it gives us a little background is the
05:38
e there are still hundreds of:
07:30
is that really, is that a gap? I mean, when you say the internet not to manufacture I know there's a lot of mom and pop businesses out there. What do you mean by that?
07:40
s of:
08:38
See, this is interesting, because this is sort of this is not like a typical what I see as a typical
08:46
ERP.
08:48
Yeah, I think we're in ERP by
08:51
looking at your your display, and it said, ERP, so
08:54
that is that is what, but it's much more. Yeah, I think you need to build, I think we slowly realized as we tried to build AI schedulers first. And we realized we needed to plug into the ERP to get the data out. And then we realized the data in the ERP is trash. So we built a job tracker that allows the shop floor employee to have a really beautiful interface that has the drawings on there that it can enter all the all the checkpoints of measurements of the part on there that they can start and stop on there. And then we got better data. And then we realize, Oh, we got to understand when the materials coming from ERP Well, that's slow, because people are like, sending purchase orders are not entering that information back into the system. Well, that we built that and we never intended to build a full suite ERP. It was just each and every time we built something, we realized there was something else that we needed to make it better for our customers. And over time, we realized that there was a nonlinear exponential growth and value we deliver to the customers. Every time we built something else. When we knew what the purchase orders were. Our purchasing planning got that much better. We knew what the sales orders were our demand planning better. We knew The work centers were in what what, what the humans could do and and how many there were, the scheduling got better. And so, as we've continued to evolve, we've just, I wouldn't say reluctantly. But it certainly wasn't the grandiose plan to be an ERP system. We just wanted to help improve throughput for manufacturers, and it's grown into this thing.
10:19
That's interesting. If I was if, if I, if I was on the fulcrum platform, I'm a manufacturer, how does the how does the platform help facilitate my vendors, like I have ABCD, whatever the vendor name, and I want information about where they're at on there, I want to tighten things up. That means I've got to be able to have a line of communication. How does that how does that work and fulcrum
10:50
there, it's there's no publicly published features that do that we do have technology, that for some of our customers, we can tie their information together a purchase order, and is a sales order in another company's full. Now, the real blunt truth is that we're just not large enough, we have hundreds of customers, now we're tripling every single time we raise funding, which is either a year or year and a half, we've grown over 9x Over the last couple of years, three years. But we're not even anywhere near the size we need to be to create a real network. So for us, the strategy right now is, let's work with a broad set of manufacturers, let's work with rubber extruders, and let's work with aluminum, CNC shops, with sheet metal fabricators, with plastic injection, molders, let's make sure we can even service all of them really well. And then let's make the product increasingly awesome. So that everyone, it's just a no brainer that they're gonna switch to that I think are the those are the two ingredients that we need to make sure that we're compatible. And so we're experimenting selfishly behind the scenes writing software to connect these businesses together. And so if if you want it, you will opt in for it and you wanted to connect, we can make it so that when you placed a purchase order became a sales order in your vendor, we could we can pull from them if they wanted to share what their capacity is. And maybe the lead time for this quantity is is three weeks. But if you want 10 times the amount? Well, you're gonna have to wait 15 weeks, well, maybe I'm going to place five smaller orders for 1/10 the amount, get them exactly what I need them instead of buying a huge amount. And that way everybody's capacity starts to loosen, and we just get way more yield out of the situation.
12:32
I don't see how you can avoid that. I think that that's where it's going. Yeah, I know, if I was a just a manufacturer, I would I want to, I want to have as much visibility into my business into my vendors so that I'm as efficient as I possibly can be. I mean, just that would be the ideal situation. And then having that conversation, I want to buy my materials from you. Let's have this conversation about how we connect and how you send that information. I just don't see any other way of getting around.
13:07
Yeah, I think the industry is trending in that way. The it used to be that there were job shops that didn't only customer stuff. And there were long run manufacturers, well, the long run manufacturers, they're hearing from the auto companies, we're going to change this program every year now instead of every three years. And instead of having one lump sum in our warehouse, we want blanket orders where you deliver stuff to us every other week. Well now imagine how difficult it is to go from scheduling. I'm going to build this for three weeks. So I'm gonna build this four times over the course of three weeks, and schedule that all together, it went from a three by three Sudoku board to a 100 by 100 Sudoku board. And it's just getting almost impossible for these businesses to solve. And because these businesses are so richly diversified and distributed and decentralized, they're not hugely powerful. They're not 100 billion dollar companies that can afford to write software for themselves, they need somebody else to build this technology for them. So I think that's where the need comes from, for what our vision is
14:05
for the market. So with that said, as we venture into the future, I would imagine course poker wants to be bigger, stronger, faster, you want to apply the Steve Austin approach to your business. And where do you see fulcrum growing? Because you guys are growing rapidly, guys. Clearly, it's it's that way. Is it? What do you see yourself going? What do you want to go?
14:32
So I think we talked internally a lot about not comparing ourselves to competitors, we really want to continue to just service our customers as best as possible. So from a growth standpoint, we try as best as possible to see the sales growth and customer count growth as a natural byproduct of the product getting better, and really just invest as much of our energy into making the product better as possible. And it's hard. It's hard because you have a very volatile stock market environment. We have have really great venture capitalists that are backing Yes. But the value of your company is largely based on how much revenue you have. So it's really easy to fall into that trap of, well, I need to be at, you know, X number of million dollars in revenue, we really try to force that as the revenue is an outcome that's driven by better products by a better marketing plan, not the other way around. Because I think you can get into this really toxic mindset, it's like, well, we have to hit this thing, I'm going to say yes, to a customer that doesn't actually fit, we're going to build some stuff just to close them. And then your product gets muddy and cluttered and whatever it may be. So I think keeping the long term sanctity of this vision of a network of manufacturing alive is we want, we want the luxury to make that as the power to be in our hands as much as possible, so that we can continue to stick to that. So insofar as growth, we want to grow enough to be self-sustainable.
15:52
So one last question, before we wrap it up. Do you have sort of groups out there that you take suggestions like I, we have these working groups, and we we all use your your, your, your solution. And we think that it would be great to have this and this and then provide those insights into your organization? Yeah,
16:15
we have a we use a piece of software called tribe. And it's like a community platform and all of our customers, if they want to, can sign up and put ideas in there. And sometimes it's negative, and sometimes it's positive. And then actually, just before this, we did a live stream from FABTECH for our customers, and they asked a bunch of questions about is this feature coming? How do you think about this, so we, we try to have an incredibly open dialogue with our customers about it, some customers are just happy as is, they don't want to mess with that they want a stable of a product as possible. But a large portion of them want to tell us what their thoughts are, and have been really, really fun to work with. Because they understand that we can see so many manufacturers, we can deliver really great ideas that maybe they can't see, but they still want to share that. So I think for now, we're managing that feedback really well, we're getting a lot of ideas from them in in the in time, we're probably gonna have to formalize that and make some sort of customer Counsel of non-customers as well to try to collect the information in a balanced way.
17:12
So with that said,
17:15
one last short last question. I'm sorry about that.
17:18
So this particular this, this particular event is you are focused primarily if I was a manufacturer, and I'd say gosh, I like hearing what Sony has to say, I want to knock on the door, I want to be able to sort of begin that dialogue. What is your typical approach to a manufacturer saying I hear it? I want? How do you approach that manufacturing?
17:46
So if you just want to learn more, anyone can email me, SUNNY@fulcrumpro.com Sunny, like the weather, my inbox blows up all the time, I might not answer as fast as I used to. But I always answer everybody's emails. If you actually think that you could be a good fit our processes may be a little antithetical, we do as much as we can to push you out, we asked a bunch of questions to make sure that you fit. And once we believe you fit, we'll give you a price. We'll show you the software right away. There's no need to set up a demo. The product is cloud based. It's it's super intuitive. We don't need to do anything, you can see a demo right away. And then you can ask us questions be like, Okay, we handle things this way. How would we handle as a fulcrum? And either we have no answers for you. And then we would say you don't fit or all of our answers make sense. And then we would see what we need to do to implement as soon as painless. Well, there's a little bit of pain, but
18:36
I've been upgraded software. It can be painful. Sounds like you guys got it under control. Yeah, we already given me your contact information.
18:47
This is fulcrum. She's just fulcrum.com Pro.
18:52
I'm looking at your card right now. Both from pro.com. You are great. Sony.
18:57
Thank you. Thank you for doing all this. This is,
19:00
this is a lot of fun. All right, we're gonna have all the contact information for sunny out on industrial talk.com as well as fulcrum. I highly recommend just like, like I keep on saying you need to reach out you need to find individuals, you need to find those Sherpas that'll help you become a better business. I did Sunny and tiempo from fit that bill, reach out to them go out to industrial talk.com Alright, once again, we are broadcasting from fact. It is in Atlanta, Georgia. And it is a great, great event. Put this on your calendar for next year. So if you find yourself you gotta get out here. It could happen, Captain. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned, we will be right back.
19:38
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
19:44
00:00
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01:07
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge Industry Focus innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hardhat grab your work boots, and let's go
01:25
Alright, what's good, thank you very much for joining industrial talk we are broadcasting here at FABTECH. Atlanta, Georgia, it is day three, and has been a man I'm telling it's been a barnburner of companies that have just innovated the heck out of their solutions and providing solutions to your problems. More importantly. And once again, we're just having a ball. So you got to put this one on your calendar big time you got to put this this event if you're not here this year, go next year, you will not be disappointed. You're going to be bigger and better. Most definitely. All right. We got a gentleman by the name of Mike, say your last name.
02:02
It's Brattain
02:04
Systems X. With the s on that Systems X. Let's get cracking. cybersecurity, right. Absolutely. And that's something you know, it's sort of an odd thing. One, that your job never gets old?
02:23
No, no, it's becoming more and more important. You know, we are managed security service provider just north of Detroit. And look, I'm amongst my people right now. These are these are manufacturers that are looking to take technology and gain a competitive edge with it. And so 60% of our our business base is manufacturing. So So these are my people hear
02:50
Yeah. And there's three huge conference halls of your people. Oh, yeah, here. It's massive. And it's everything's here. Yeah, everything. Yeah, let me ask you this, a lot of buzzy buzz out there. And I agree with it. 100%. But but one of the areas that everybody talks about, of course, I need to have that ability to connect my assets, I need to I have to have to start pulling that data, I have to start looking at that data, I've got to figure out how to make tactical decisions based off of the data of my assets. That's wrong. But every time they connect, it's an IoT device. The conversation rarely happens around cyber now. And if you want to be competitive, you've got to have that cyber conversation at the beginning. Is that true?
03:37
Absolutely. You know, we tell our customers, we are a cyber first company. And the reason is, Why manage your data. If you're not going to protect your data. This is no longer an option. It is a cost of doing business, you know, as as a leadership of your manufacturing company, your most valuable asset is your ability to do business. And the stats are out there. And these aren't scare tactics, but oh no, the downtime of a manufacturer is roughly $5,600 a minute. The average ransomware that the manufacturing industry.
04:15
I'm gonna stop you right there. Yeah. $5,600 a minute. Yeah, that's sort of average. That's sort of a big smile. It doesn't matter average. $5,600 a minute. Yeah, continue. I interrupted because I I'll just zone in on number. Yeah,
04:30
no, that's right. It's not feelings. It's it's facts. data, right. thing, but, but yeah, and then, you know, your average ransomware in the manufacturing industries got up to $2 million. Gosh, you know, and so, once you learn that ability, it will lose that ability to earn then then you lose your business. Yeah, I
04:53
this just popped into my head ever so fleeting. Are there insurance companies that are saying, Hey, I know ransom Where attacks are out there. They just don't just whether you like it or not, whether you hear my voice, they are out there. But to be able to sort of wrap it in an insurance policy, can they do that?
05:10
Yeah. So you're touching on a a crazy subject, it is the Wild West when it comes to cyber insurance right now. So companies looked at that as an opportunity, right? So when cyber-attacks really started to skyrocket, they were like, oh, an insurance companies never lose. Right. So now they're sitting there going, well, we're gonna have to start backtracking, what our coverages and start putting different things in our policy that we're not going to cover, like, let's say, a attack from a foreign country, you know, well, most of your cyber-attacks are from foreign men, and they are here. Yeah. So yeah, in the tough part is now most companies most most manufacturers, don't have the required cybersecurity measures in place to even qualify for proper cyber insurance. And so that is, it's a, it's a difficult situation right now.
06:03
But what I think you can mitigate it, if you connect with organizations like yours, and be able to have that conversation of fraud. Yep. And be able to know that, hey, here's where I want to go. How do we make sure that my data is secure, my business is secure, so that we can continue to do what we do best by that service? So, again, it's a cotton, it's a conversation, but if you find people not wanting to have that conversation?
06:32
Absolutely. And it's because they don't understand it, right? Some companies, a lot of times they hear look, we're too small, no, no. Right. And I always do the comparison of, you're looking at two houses and one doors locked and one door is not, I'm the bad guy, I'm going in the unlocked door, at least have some sort of security in place, because there's so much low hanging fruit there. But you know, being able to prove that you're secure, that's why I think a lot of the sea levels avoid that conversation. Because usually they have that IT person talking a different language, that doesn't make sense to transmit, you know, and so, yeah, that's, that's the conversation have more of a strategy behind behind the cybersecurity,
07:18
I find, it doesn't have to be, there's the buzz that says, hey, you're gonna lock me down, and I'm not going to be able to do anything, I'm not going to be able to do my business, you're gonna lock me down so tight, I won't be able to do anything. And that's, that's one faults, don't go down that road. But two, if you can create some, some firewall, some sort of way of preventing, or making it difficult for the various behavior to say, they're lazy just like me, they're going to just try to find that simple penetration point, and just, you know, exploit that. So they're going to go on to something else, at least make it a little bit more difficult.
07:58
Yeah, absolutely. Some ways that you can improve your cyber posture, because let's face it firewall and all that that's, that's kind of a thing of the past. They're, they're blown by that like nothing, looking at managed detection and response, but really putting a foundation in place 30% of that 60% manufacturers we work with are in the Defense Supply Chain, they have to meet very stringent, stringent standards now called NIST and cmmc. So we would go in and build that foundation around NIST, it's a set of controls, that now gets the whole company from the top down on the same goal, and making sure that it's not just software, a very small portion of your cybersecurity is going to be software, it is that strategy from from the top down and it becomes part of the DNA of your company. And in no way like you said, should it lock your company down? It has to make common sense for the business.
08:52
And it's not static. It's an ongoing, continuous continuous it because if you think you're it, things change. Now, businesses change. If you're plopping this out there, you're doing whatever is necessary or you're trying to make your business more efficient. That has to be also in light of your cyber and your security strategy. Oh, that business? Yeah.
09:16
Yeah. And like I said, the way you manage your it is very important, because that is all the system updates and the different settings you have throughout your organization. That's a large part of your your cybersecurity Foundation. And from there, you start getting more technical on what are some things we can do to really make sure we lock these guys out. But I tell you what, as as you're looking to find that help for cybersecurity, and how do you tackle that, that giant beasts, the weight in gold for organizations like Systems X x is not. It's not, you know, getting, stopping the attack. It's when you get attacked, what happens after that? How quick can we take the little spark that little fire and hurry up and jump in, put that out, and then put the incident response plan in place. You know, when I talked to when I talked to CEOs, they say, Well, how do I even know if I'm secure? Well, most of them are getting the reports and things they understand. But I just say, hey, ask your IT support, whoever that is to hand you have an incident response plan. And if they can't hand you one in 10 minutes, you have a major problem.
10:25
That sounds Yeah, so let's let's sort of do a little roleplay. Here. I'm a I'm a small manufacturer, let's keep it small. How would you approach my business? Just generally speaking, that hey, get on in here, check it out. Please tell me tell me what we need to do.
10:43
Yeah. Having a business conversation, talking maybe less about the IT and more about what are the goals for the organization? What are some things they're trying to do moving forward? We're always taking that business strategy approach. I'll let you in on a little secret. I knew nothing about it. Three years ago, I came to Systems X X and said, Hey, look, I know, I know, business. I know, C level, I understand how their minds work. Why don't you teach me a little bit about it. So we can start making that connection? Because they're just sick of hearing it jargon constantly brought to them. Yeah, but really that question of how do you manage it? Do I have an IT department come in very expensive? Do I outsource all of it, we're finding right now. Get yourself that mid-level IT person, you know, and then outsource the heavy lifting, outsource the 24/7 monitoring the cybersecurity all the things that it's hard for that one person to do. But it's important to have that one person in your organization being able to take all the quick light work that needs to happen. And companies would should help that IT person grow within the company and understand how to also, you know, work as a team to make sure they're secure.
11:59
Do you? Do you have the conversation with the it? Yeah, where it's saying, Hey, don't be so it ash? You be a little bit more human and less cyborg? Like,
12:11
it's not in their DNA? You know, it's not, it's not what they want to do. But look, that's a fun conversation when I have the person and the CEO there. And they look at each other like, Oh, hey, yeah, you.
12:25
And then it's all acronyms on both sides. Don't get me wrong. It's on both sides.
12:29
Well, when I asked the question of, Hey, how is it supporting sales today? And they look at me like what? And so those are the types of questions we got to start having? How do we gain that competitive edge for you, you know, I talked to companies all time, especially your sea level, and I say, Look, you put your bid in and another company puts their bid, and I would be touting my cybersecurity posture from the mountaintop. And the reason is, it's going to shadow and put doubt on the company you're going against. Because look, whether it's DoD or its commercial, this is coming companies are asking for your cybersecurity possible policy, they're looking for your system security plan, they want to know that. So
13:09
before they do business, I had a conversation with somebody else on this, and they do island hopping. So if you have vendors, and they're connected to your system, because they want connectivity, if I'ma if I want my vendors to be able to transmit information, I gotta have them connected. So what happens is that they Island hop these these nefarious characters, and they'll try to penetrate the bigger company through those. And again, to your point, you're gonna have to have that conversation, I want you to be secure, right? Well, that's exactly
13:39
what's happening in the defensive supply chain. There is it's no coincidence that our F 35. There's the same f 35 sitting in in China right now, what they do is they grab that small mom car manufacturer that made just make a tiny part. And they ride that all the way to the top. And that's why now the primes are looking down saying, Look, no more. In order for us to give you a contract, you gotta meet these standards. And the government is not joking around anymore. I mean, these manufacturers have to get there. But then the next year.
14:11
It's reasonable. No, I mean, it just it and it's so funny. I struggle with companies talking about cyber, just companies like hey, what do you do? Well, we manufacture widgets. Tell me about your cyber Nope. Not going to talk about it. Yeah. And that conversation, it just, I understand the reality that you don't want to just, you know, air your dirty laundry and be able to do that. But I think at a minimum you need to have trusted individuals that you can have conversation and lock it down.
14:39
Yeah, even when you're attacked, even after your attack. Yeah, absolutely. I was. I was so happy to see here on stage. I don't know. I think it was the first day. The gentleman that THAT'S IT manager for Wilson tool. That that was an amazing story that they told and put their name out there to say Yeah, we were attacked. This is how we handled it. And I Yeah, I know I want. I was like, wow. But I tell you what, that's the important thing is you're telling the community what happened. It only secures all of us together.
15:11
See? And that's, we're getting there. You're getting there. I mean, I love this conversation. No, yeah. I know people get a hold on.
15:19
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15:35
is Come on. Let's put our adult pants on. Yeah, let's have this conversation. Here you go. It's gonna be painless. Mike would greatly appreciate it. I like this. Thank you. A better person because of you. There you go. All right. Once again, we're broadcasting from FABTECH here in Atlanta, Georgia. Again, great people like Mike solving problems, and willing to have a conversation, we're gonna have all the contact information for Mike and his company out on industrial talk. Just go there and find his his conversation boom, connect, you will not be disappointed because he's gonna want to check with you. No obligation, right? No obligation
16:14
whatsoever.
16:16
When when all around? Absolutely. All right. All right, we're gonna be right back. So stay tuned.
16:22
You're listening to the industrial talk, Podcast Network.
16:27
All right, thank you, again, for joining industrial talk for your support, and your support, have an ever expanding industrial ecosystem of problem solvers. Like Mike, you're gonna go out to industrial talk, you're going to reach out to Mike Mike will definitely set you in the right direction. We need to be about protecting if you're in the digital transformation world, which you should be. And if you're saying this is what this is how we create a business that is resilient, which it does. And you need, you need Sherpas, you need professionals that you can trust, which is Mike, you need a security, you need a security, you need to do that. And you need to do it upfront. And it just, you just have to, yeah, there's no other way of getting around it. And because we want you to succeed, this platform is all about your success, and delivering the solutions and delivering the information and educating as much as we possibly can on how you industry can succeed. Now, again, reach out to me go out to industrial talk, you want to be on the podcast, yes, make it happen. You're going to be out in the bent, like conference or some other thing that you're going to be out and you're saying, Scott, I want to have you there. You just got to let me know. I would love to be able to read minds, but that's just not going to be the case. And I would be more than honored to be able to help you in your efforts to create that resilient industrial business. Alright. Industrial talk.com People will be brave. They are greatly hanging out with people like Mike, you're going to change the world. Thank you very much. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from FABTECH shortly so do not go away.
