 happy to be back in the studio. We've got a brand new studio, so interesting experience for us getting set up here today, but I've got an amazing guest. We drug Scott Schaefer away from his duties. I know he's trying to get busy with the new year. He is the chairman of the board for the Security Industry Association. I know many of you out there may know him and many of you may not, but Scott welcome to the studio and thank you so much for joining me today. Andrew, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, I'm happy to kick off the new year with a true industry professional. A lot of our viewers, many obviously do know you and I know you get around the country quite a bit, but many may not know you, so if you could just share to get us started some of your background, your history, how you landed at CMAB, take us as much as you care to tell. Okay, fine. So I joined the security industry 15 years ago. Before that, I had been involved in the IT industry with a couple of major companies there involved in personal computers and enterprise servers and data warehousing and networking and ERP applications. And Dave McDonald, who is the CEO of Pelco, brought me into the industry because they wanted to transform their company and be more ready for the digital age that was happening. So I'm kind of one of those first people that came in from the tech business. I'll have to say when convergence was happening, I was one of the pre-converged because I knew what this was all about. And so with Pelco, for us during that time, it was delivering enterprise class mission critical systems for airports, government, gaming that would record thousands of cameras all in one place, and then the emergence of IP cameras. Then I went on vision and we were the leaders in multi megapixel cameras having done the first two, three, five, ten and then multi imager products. So we were delivering high value images, able to capture bigger ranges so we could use fewer cameras and we provided a lot of great value. And I think had a lot to do with what the industry is doing today with high definition video. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. I mean, I think Pelco, everyone remembers when it was such an industry leader. And of course, I guess when it was sold, did you stay there till the sale? I stayed through the acquisition timeframe for a little over a year, making sure that we were doing the right things to get moving there. And then I left to do other things. And you know, during my Pelco time is when I joined the security industry association kind of drafted in by Sandy Jones and because she wanted, you know, the top people in the industry to be on it. And I was lucky enough to be in her, I guess, sites to do it. And then I served as the membership chair, was the secretary of the treasurer and now get to serve as the chairman of the board. That's awesome. Yeah, we all, we're all been blessed to be in Sandy's light at one time or another. That was a great dedication that you guys did the other night at the, in New York there at the, was that ISC East event, right? Yeah, well, I remember we not only gave a tribute to her, but we gave a tribute to you because for those of you that don't know, Andrew won the Jehan Excellence in Partnership Award for his great work that he does for the industry too. Yeah, that was fun. I do appreciate that. I was, I hadn't met Jay before and he was sitting right beside me. So that was really neat to be getting an award in his name and meet him at the same time. So for me, it was a little bit overwhelming, but it was an excellent night. You know, you guys see as such a broad supporter of so many different efforts in the industry. You know, ISC, the awards night being one of those events, but there are a lot of other things that have been happening all around the country. And it seems to me that that in the last few years SIA is like everywhere. So I mean, I was always, you know, accustomed to running to ISC, you know, running to see at ISC East at GSX. But there are a lot of other events that are happening and a lot of sponsorships for different elements of our industry that have needed representation. So I'd like to talk a little bit about those. The first one that comes to mind was the SIA Rise program, you know, helping out these young professionals. What was the, where did that idea come from and how's that been working out? You know, we have a lot of young professionals that are involved with the organization. And when we started to see the changes that they were bringing to the standards committee, the membership committee, the research and marketing committees, we said, Hey, you know what, these people probably need a way that they can congregate together and maybe develop even better answers for our future. So we started the Rise group. It was a small group of high achievers and market maker kinds of people, systems integrator types, manufacturing company people, and they got together. And, you know, the thing about it was they ran with it themselves. They were the ones who developed who would be involved and engage, what their charter would be, the kinds of deliverables they wanted to bring to market and how they wanted to work to develop it themselves. And so it was all on them. And now they're up to, they doubled the number of people that are in that group. And it's now close to 400 people that are doing great work every day to make our security industry better. Yeah, and I think it's so instructive to have them as a group, then we can come to them, we can learn from them, we can mentor them, we can make sure that they get the sort of on ramp that they need in the industry. Because a lot of times when you're new or you're young or you don't know who to know, having that sponsorship from C is going to help enable them to become mainstream in our industry, which is what we need. The old, you know, bald guys like me, we got to retire and get out of the way. Well, I don't know about that, but the thing is that we also need them to influence us too. So when we were doing our strategic framework discussion about what we wanted to be with SIA for the next, you know, five years or so, we had listed a couple of those people from the RISE group to come to Washington and we spent a day, kind of an around table discussion about what we all needed to be thinking about for the future. And I'll tell you what, they gave us great insight, great ideas and we took those and built those into our plans for the future. That is awesome leadership. The industry is going to benefit from it immensely, I'm sure. You also mentioned the standards body and I think a lot of folks maybe aren't aware of what's been going on. I wish there was greater awareness with what's been going on with standards development and SIA's pushing to some of that. I know, you know, Ray Colom has a group, I think he helps out with that, but SIA has helped with the funding. In fact, Sal's out here right now, we're going to do an OSDP class tomorrow in my office or the military folks out here. So let's talk a little bit about where that came from, because I'm aware of it from sort of OSDP forward. But there are some other things that have been happening there as well. Maybe you could give us some background on that. Yeah, sure. You know, the Standards Committee like all of the SIA committees is kind of championed in some ways by the SIA employees who are, you know, the staff people that kind of they make things happen for sure. But a lot of the real value and volume of ideas and work happen from members that are on those committees themselves. So over the last 15 years, we've seen a real change from what the standards used to do to what it does today. And to think that we would evolve to doing classes in Hawaii, just shows the amount of great work that's done by the committee members to not only figure out what the standards need to be and articulate those and drive maybe some efforts along industry lines to make those happen, but also to think, hey, we should be doing education to drive that besides just the white papers and things that normal standards bodies might do. So it has been a really great group of people. Steve Vantilla has run that for many years. And hey, this is a time to also say, hey, if you're interested in standards, if you're interested in trying to drive the next technical challenges and try to make them become a part of what we look at all the time here in our industry, join the standards committee, we'd love to have you. Yeah, there's definitely, I think there's going to be some challenges and maybe we'll get to some of that in the second part of our show, you know, around, you know, privacy, facial recognition, things like that. I know, because I mean, on VIF, did on VIF originated in CEA? Is that a standard that CEA helped? No, no, that was a separate group of companies that got together. And SIA members as well as staff people have been involved with on VIF and regularly attend and participate. So that's a part of what we do. But that one wasn't wasn't started by us. I didn't initiate everybody's support and support of it. And then I sat through a Dave Bonzell session with PLAI. Are you guys helping out with that one as well? I don't know about that one. His yeah, he's got a application that lets you move like biometric templates and move identity basically across platforms like from Linnell to software house, for example, you know, and it does it through Active Directory. So that one's pretty fun. I know there's a lot of manufacturers working with them. I'm sure the events during ISEs, so I figured CEA is probably involved with that one as well. It's good stuff. OSDP's been a breath of fresh air. I mean, we had some real problems that the industry wasn't talking about. And now we are, you know, problems with the cards, problems with that, that the transmission of information over Wagan, you know, was just wide open and insecure. And fixing that's been a breath of fresh air for the industry, in my opinion. Sure. And the whole momentum around that started with, you know, members that came forward that articulated the problem that you just said, and Joe Gittins and his team got together and they decided, hey, let's really put forth some, you know, a real program just around that. Same was true with cybersecurity. We started talking about that at board meetings maybe eight or nine years ago. It isn't really a new term, but in the security industry, you've got a lot more prevalent over the last, I would say five years probably. So we decided, hey, let's get a committee together. Let's figure out what the key issues are. And, you know, not only did we produce white papers and direction, but we provided certification classes now. We have an online service that you can call a tech. And if you have some questions, we can help you through with that. And as we were talking earlier, Andrew, we just relaunched the cybersecurity working group to add new members and drive some new intelligence towards that because, you know, even with cyber that has been, you know, at the forefront for the last five years, we need new thinking and better thinking all the time. And we've had great success with cyber secure forums and partnership with PSA on the outside as well. And, hey, you know, the only negative about it is there weren't enough as many people in the room as I'd hope. You know, several hundred people, but it could have been a lot more that could have gained a lot by, you know, party to those events that we put up. Yeah, I agree. I was definitely in attendance. And I know I'm going to be helping men out. Min Curianus is the chairman for the new CS Cyber Advisory Board. And so that's I'm looking forward, you know, she's she brings that DevSecOps perspective, which is something that we need, you know, we kind of, I think in the last few years, we've been able to work on our people and our processes. But as we start to look at products now, we're going to need a little more, a little more of a push and a little more guidance from that, that software development perspective and the PM perspective around that that I think she'll be able to help bring to the table, along with many of the others. It's definitely some new folks in the room, which is good. And they're from different aspects of the industry than we had previously. So I think that that leadership you're providing is awesome. Thanks. Let's, I tell you what, let's take a quick break. We got to pay some bills. So about one minute, we'll be back with Scott Shaper. Aloha. I'm Keisha King, host of At the Crossroads, where we have conversations that are real and relevant. We have spoken with community leaders from right here locally in Hawaii and all around the world. Won't you join us on thinktechhawaii.com or on YouTube on the Think Tech Hawaii channel. Our conversations are real, relevant and lots of fun. I'll see you at the Crossroads. Aloha. Hi guys. I'm your host, Lillian Cumick from Lillian's Vegan World. I come to you live every second Friday from three PM. And this is the show where I talk about the plant-based lifestyle and veganism. So we go through recipes, some upcoming events, information about health regarding your health, and just some ideas on how you can have a better lifestyle, eat healthier, and have fun at the same time. So do join me. I look forward to seeing you and Aloha. And welcome back to the studio. This is another, this is your 2020 initial episode of 2020 for security matters. I'm Andrew Lang, your host. We're talking with Scott Shaper, the chairman of the board of security industry association. Scott, thanks for hanging around for another 14 minutes or so with us. We've got, we mentioned Min Curianus and I want to go ahead and kick into the Women in Security Forum, another super success story that's happening that was needed and see a jump behind that. And we've had a couple of, I think a couple annual steering committee meetings now and where did see us backing for that or whose idea was that? Are these all your ideas? Or you're giving credit away to everyone else, but you know, I think you've been behind the scenes there. One of the things when I was appointed or elected to be the chairman of the board, one of my major things that I wanted to see done was more diversity in the security industry. And with CIA being in such a leadership position, I wanted to make sure it was more than just the CIA staff where we have great diversity of employees there. But I wanted to see diversity in companies that were participating with SIA start to look outside for companies that were not members already, but you know, had the technology platforms that we could use. We had a lot of members that were active at CIA events like ISC East and ISC West and maybe securing new ground and maybe the government summit that we're participating in committees and working groups. And I wanted to see that change. And one of the other things, not last certainly was the Women in Security Forum. So we decided that we wanted to get together a group of women who were interested in leading that activity done. Erickson and I sat down with them in their formation and charter meeting. But you know, like the RISE committee, you know, this is really all them. They get sponsorship and support from CIA and the board of directors, but we really wanted them to lead with that. And they have had several events and receptions and breakfasts at ISC East and ISC West and panel discussions. And you know, that group has grown to over 350 members too. And hey, I expect it to be 10x that in a short period of time. Yeah, it's amazing. I know that some of the larger companies, you know, converge and access a lot of them. And I don't know if this has come as a result of what CIA kicked off or if they had these previously, but internal to their organizations now, they're establishing women's groups, you know, that are staffed of their employees. Is that a trend that you're aware of? Have you seen this in a lot of other companies from our industry? I haven't seen it a lot of companies. I've seen it with the ones that you mentioned. And I think it's, you know, one of those items that all companies ought to be considering that if they really want to see a boost in productivity and diversity of ideas and directions. So of course, that means everybody ought to do it. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's been, it's been refreshing to have some of these discussions. You know, I know it wasn't maybe two years ago, I was talking with some guys who were, they didn't really want to get engaged with mentoring women. They were, they were concerned that, you know, there were, they would say something wrong or they'd be mistaken. And that to me is a sort of a backwards way of thinking. You know, if we can open up the dialogue to having trusted conversations and recognize, you know, our biases come with us, you know, we need to, we need to work on those perhaps, but you know, we shouldn't be afraid to have these conversations across gender boundaries or any kind of boundaries for that matter. Yeah, change isn't going to happen if you stay outside the fence and look to see what's going on inside. So I think that those are good words, Andrew, you're exactly right. Yeah, that's a great quote. I'm going to use that maybe if I get a chance, sir. So there was a, I know Cia also put out recently, it's megatrends for 2020. And Cider, which we sort of touched on, I think was sort of at the top of the list. And, you know, we've seen a lot of movement in government now. There's the, you know, they're coming right at the integrators with a maturity model certification. So that piece of the industry is getting ready to start to fix itself in my opinion, at least for the integrators that work on, you know, critical infrastructure and DoD, right? But beyond that there's a lot of other things and some that you mentioned. So let's talk a little about privacy. I know I think we have a group that works with Capitol Hill and things like that. What, what can you tell us about Cia sort of backing or the position or whatever with regard to privacy and the, you know, what our industry should be thinking about? Well, privacy even got more attention at our last executive conference, Secure New Ground in October than I thought it would get. It seemed like a number of the panels, even if that wasn't the topic, they were injecting their thoughts about the importance of privacy because it is a big issue or opportunity, whichever way that you look at it. And, you know, it kind of started in Europe about three or four years ago. The European Union was pushing on their requirements. There would be levies and fines and, you know, action taken for companies that didn't accommodate. So because Cia has members and Cia thinks globally, we were all over that to begin with and made sure that GDPR was one of those things that we would provide guidance to the SIA8 members on so that they would be equipped when they sold in Europe or manufactured in Europe. So that was one of the things that we did. Now, California stepping up their requirements on privacy. And so we're also very engaged in, you know, providing guidance on that to our members. So, you know, it isn't that we were thinking of it, you know, ahead of where these rules came. But when we saw them, we jumped all over them and made sure that our members were equipped to deal with them. Yeah, I think we capture a whole lot of information, you know, with our camera systems, with our biometric systems, with even if you think about IDS, just the fact that people moving around in the facilities that we protect. And, you know, I think for a long time it was just sort of like, okay, we grab this information, we own it. But we're going to have to sort of, I think, develop a bit of an awareness for how that information could be used against someone if we're to fall in the wrong hands and things like that, which I think brings, you know, encryption and some of these other ideas that our industry has begun to mature around. Do you, do you expect law to impact us? You think there will be legislation that sort of impacts the direction our industry goes in the future? Absolutely. When you see the activity that's happening in San Francisco and other cities, laws will happen. We can help to educate the politicians and lawmakers to drive a sense from the security industry about the way they ought to think about it, not just, hey, it's an invasion of privacy. But when you think about cameras at schools and airports and stadiums, they're not there to invade privacy. They're there to protect the people that are attending or active in providing useful service to those places. So in many ways, a lot of the new technologies that we're embracing from facial recognition and analytics and artificial intelligence, you know, think about that, Andrew, those are right now, top of mind, not only for the security industry, but for the tech industry, too. And who'd have thought 15 years ago that the security industry would be front and center with the tech issues and opportunities that are hitting us right now? I think it's really fabulous how far we've come from those days of coax cable and matrix switches to where we are today. And you know, with that comes a responsibility. And with that comes a need for SIA to do more to influence, if you want to use that word or at least educate lawmakers so that they're doing the right things and not just looking at the negative things that could happen from the use of technology. Is it difficult for us as an industry to inject a voice? You know, I know we're not like the automotive industry or the airline industry is what's the, what's the, I know it when you get around Capitol Hill or D.C. or lawmakers, what's their understanding of our industry? Always think they think we're just guards, you know, I don't know. Well, there's kind of a mixed bag. Some really know and some really don't know. And sometimes it depends on how much security is deployed in their, you know, in their hometowns where they're from, and that's where they, you know, gain some of their experiences. So if there were school activities that required an additional dose of security, maybe they know no more about that than policy makers that are in constituencies that don't have so much going on. So one of the things that SIA does, we do this great government summit. We've done meetings on safe schools right there in the Capitol, and I was able to attend one of those one time too, and that was two years ago, I think. So some of those lawmakers and government people attend those events. And then we've had a chance, I didn't take advantage of it for many years, but to go around on our Capitol Hill visits with the SIA staff and get to meet the lawmakers that are making things happen, we give awards to those that have done things like make monies available for more airport or safe city security, and get to talk to them about what's coming and what technology trends are going to be impacting the future of our country. Wow. I wasn't aware of that. Well, that's awesome. Our industry is definitely benefiting from the leadership that you're providing up there. And I'm glad there's a sort of a unified voice. You know, there seems to be, for me, often some separation between manufacturers and integrators and the clients. So I'm glad that at least governments got someone they can look at and talk to up there. It's helpful to know that the perspectives are being shared in a way that can benefit all of us. We're just about out of time, Scott. If you've got a closing thought there, something you'd like to share with our audience, and then we'll run it on off. Oh, sure. Well, you know, one of the things that I think is really important besides the mega trends, and we've touched on a number of those already today, but one of the big trends is the workforce and the workforce development of the future. And one of the big things that we're doing now is working to bring more people into the industry from colleges, universities, trade schools, high schools, the military. And with that comes kind of a responsibility or an opportunity to educate. So we're doing a lot with cybersecurity education. We're onboarding people. I think the, you know, the SIA program for project managers is really great and it gives a great background on the security industry itself. We're going to have to do even more. So we're driving more online classes. We're doing brief education items too that are available to members and non-members alike. And we're also driving education through our center of expertise or center of excellence manufacturers, the systems integrators, and consultants training programs. They can come to SIA for that, use our website and then get directed for the information that they're seeking. And so we can act as the hub for that and perhaps drive a great experience and maybe faster movement through the industry by doing that. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thanks everyone out there. We need help. We have a great industry. Join us if you can. And Scott, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. And we'll see you all next week on Security Matters. Aloha.