 Hey, welcome to the Think Tech Hawaii Studios. This is Security Matters Hawaii. Thanks for joining us for another episode today. We've got Corey Rasmussen in here from Integrated Security Technologies and we're going to kind of talk about the state of the industry from the commercial industry perspective. Corey, thanks for coming in. Yep. I know you're a busy guy. Welcome. I like to always ask my guests, kind of from a security perspective, what keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night? I guess it would be all the knowledge that you learn in the industry and when you go out to places and you see all the vulnerabilities that they have and it just makes you think you can never go to a place and look at it the same once you start doing this kind of work. Yeah, I kind of had that problem as I grew up in the industry as well. You tend to look and you see sort of lack of protection and it makes you wonder for the kids and makes you kind of concerned for the people that are there that aren't always aware of security as you are. Wow. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about that education. You've been in the industry a few years now. How did you get started? I read, I did read on your company's website that you sort of transitioned from protecting your teammates and football to now protecting people and that you sort of enjoyed that transition. So tell us how it started for you. Sure. I finished playing football in 2016 at University of Hawaii and from there, yeah, GoBos won last week, from there I kind of took a small break, found integrated security technologies, started working there as a technician, got to learn the industry, spent about six months in the field really with the technicians learning the technology, how it works, what places you're going to install certain things and basically just getting a better grasp so that when I did make the jump into becoming an account manager, could kind of have a better idea of how things are going to work in places. And how was it? So you're bought ladders, got tool built on, like learning to pull wire and mount devices, okay. Yeah, it makes you think from when you move into the sale side of it, you know what your techs are going to go through when they do it so you just want to make sure you set it up as best as you can so that you don't put them in that predicament that you don't want to be in. Yeah, so having that perspective, you know, from the installation side, what do you think that the, or what did you find that customers sort of don't get about that or don't understand? I think they don't understand that it all has to run back someplace. There has to be a head in somewhere. Wires got to get certain places and sometimes we got to deviate from the plan, compromise with them. But we always do our best just to make sure they're safe, let them get what they want and make sure we have the confidence in ourselves that we're protecting them like they need to be. Yeah, I think they get stuck looking at the end points, you know, like looking at the cameras or looking at the card readers and they don't really, it's like magic to them, right? Yeah. The rest of all the real work that goes into getting a system up and running, they sort of miss all that. So you were out in the field and did you get, did you do access control, intrusion? What were you, what were you primarily? Yeah, I did a big mix of both, actually. I came in at a perfect time. We had a lot of work to do. Our lead texts basically took me under their wing and we were installing cameras, card readers, intrusion detection. So I got the whole plethora of everything from the get. It was hard to learn at first, but once you're doing a day in and day out, you kind of get the hang of it. Okay. And so did, and then when you moved into account management, how was your approach to the customers? You know, coming from having done that work, did you finally needed to explain that to them? Was that helpful to have that knowledge in your, sort of in your pocket? Yeah. I mean, when it came, when it comes to them asking me for certain things and as being a tech in just a short six months, I kind of learned that there's a lot of things that people want that can't be done. It's just physically not possible. Okay. But the main thing I did learn is that there's always a way that we'll get it close to what they want. Okay. There's always a way, a workaround, different equipment, technologies that we can use to get the job done. Yeah. It's interesting. Did you find a lot of customers have done like homework on their own? Like they think they know what to do. Basically, they've been on Google or whatever. And you know, they, or they've heard from someone else like that there's a way to do something and it's wrong. So you have to kind of correct that. Yeah. It's a mix of both. I mean, we have some customers who are just on it. They know pretty much exactly what they want, what they need. Then you've got other customers who've gone to a show, some kind of security show, seen the technology. They want it. Don't know the back end on it. Don't know the history, how it works. They think it looks cool. They want it. And that's the customers you kind of got to talk down to, okay, we'll put this into perspective and then from there, they kind of just trust us to lead the rest of the way. I see. And is in your, you know, that I know a lot of times they're the customers we don't understand a lot of the work that goes in. So do you find sometimes that they that they want more than they can sort of afford, like they haven't really budgeted properly? Oh, is that an issue? Oh, yeah. It, it, well, in my market, the commercial side, I can kind of work with them on cost. Okay. I can find different options. It's more open. Things aren't really hard spec as much. Okay. In my, in my market. Okay. So we, we find different ways to, to accommodate what they want and their budget and that price point. Yeah. Do you think they end up surrendering very much? Like I use that word surrender, you know, if they want to see the whole perimeter, you know, and then they, they can't really afford to see the whole perimeter. So do you, do you have to pull back sometimes the amount of coverage that they can do based on their budget? Yeah, we'll pull back or, or try to phase it out. We basically want to get in early so that they can budget for the following year. I see. It's rare you're going to get a company who wants to cover all of this space and they want it tomorrow. And do it, do it all at one time. No, no, no, a lot of people can, can swing that kind of, kind of deal. So either we'll phase it out or we'll get in early so that they know coming into it, how they have to budget to get the project done. And when you say phase it out, so there's, what, what do you like to start with? You know, if you're going to, if you're going to be bringing in, when you say phase, I'm presuming you mean like maybe some video and then some access control. Maybe then a lot of people forget to do intercom, right? On their doors, things like that. Is that, is that the type of phasing you mean? Or is it more like based on the area? Or we usually go with the most area of concern. First, talking to the customer, finding out what, what, what led them to believe that they need to cover this area and kind of work backwards from there. We can phase it out in different ways. We can do chunks at a time, like full packages in different places, or you can go all your video, all your access control, intercom and things like that. It, what it comes down to mainly is cost. I see. I think people don't realize that some of this stuff can get pricey, depending on what you want to cover. Yeah. But when it comes to the safety of it, in my eyes, it doesn't really matter. So they have to get there. Yeah. They have to do it all at some point. Eventually. One year, two year, three year program. Yeah. Good. That's amazing. So let's, let's kick it up a little bit. I know you've had quite a bit of time to visit a lot of different industries. You know, you're in the commercial sector now, which encompasses what I like to call like critical infrastructure, which is also our regulated industries. Let's, you know, kind of maybe compare and contrast a little bit what you've seen out there. I know you had, we have utilities that you work for. You work for the city and the city services and you work for water services, wastewater treatment facilities. So let's kind of walk through some of the regulated industries. What's your feeling for the, the sort of state of security in, let's just take, for example, our utilities, first of all, Hawaiian Electric in Hawaii. We've had Mike on the show. I think he's done a great job. What have you seen when you sort of tour those facilities? I'd say Hiko has it, has progressed the furthest. They did actually a good model for a lot of these kind of industries to base their systems off of. I see. He's done a great job in setting up all the different plants and stuff that he has across the islands. And I see the rest of the critical infrastructure businesses coming along. They know what they need. They know what they want. They just know that it's going to take time. The funds take time to build and they, they do it incrementally. Okay. They have some, they have systems. They're dated. They, they're, they see the new technology out there and what it can do and how it can help them as a business and when it comes to safety. So they're, they're, they're in the right, they're moving in the right way. They're moving forward. Just can't move as quick because of funding. You think budget is typically their, their biggest holdback and they're, they're large. I realize. So have you gotten a chance to get off of Oahu and look at like, like Maui Electric, for example, or Kauai Electric and can you compare and contrast any of that kind of stuff? I haven't been out to those sites. I've been to the outer islands, looking at bigger, just land masses that people want to cover. Okay. Not so that, that critical infrastructure side, but critical to those customers. I see. I see. Yeah. So there's, I'm always, I tend to look around, you know, when I travel around the islands and I see that it's, you know, you know, kind of what's happened here and you feel pretty comfortable, especially with what, you know, what Mike's done for Hawaiian Electric. And I've, some of the other places on the outer islands I see is quite a bit, not as robust of the layers that he's managed to build around a lot of this stuff here. So I was, hopefully those folks will get some of the funding and. Yeah, I think they will. I think, I think long term, it's just going to take time and in time, everything will progress. And I have, I have faith and I have hope that that's what's going to happen. Yeah. So let's talk about the city a little bit. The city's got, has had, you know, for many years had a lot of different types of deployments. There's a lot of video out there. I see access control on a lot of the different facilities. I know we have, you know, especially if you get downtown around like, like the HPD facilities, they tend to have pretty, pretty good robust infrastructure first from a security perspective. Do you think the city's doing a good job protecting, you know, they have a lot of patrons and, you know, people that come for services, you know, from cities at all their buildings. Have you had a chance to kind of get around to those facilities and the gates, like where they're at from a security perspective? Yeah, I think the city's doing a good job. They are, they're beefing up their security systems, upgrading a lot. You talk about HPD, they're constantly year after year innovating, adding and trying to, trying to see what's out there. Another city, a border water supply. They recently just did an upgrade. They're going to a more efficient system. Okay. And yeah, I think they're just doing a good job as to getting the work out there. And just progressing. And are you seeing modern implementations? You know, we've introduced a lot of new encryption schemas now to where we can encrypt end-to-end, like access control systems, which we couldn't do before. Are you seeing customers adopt those technologies? I'm seeing them have the want to, not necessarily completely adopting them just yet. We're in discussions about it. They know about it. What it comes down to is, again, getting the funding. Okay. They know they have a need for it in the world we live in today. Anything can really happen. And they know that threat is out there. And so they're doing what they can to try to get to that level. Good. So it sounds like our, at least from on a, you mentioned, you know, border water supply. And have you just looked at our waste water treatment? So Zach, I've always, we, years and years ago, some of the federal grant money that we got here, initially, we began to deploy some security measures on waste water treatment. Because I think that was considered a volatile target. Obviously, if you shut down the waste water facilities in a city from a terrorist attack or something, you can really cause that city to have a lot of trouble. Here we have, what, a million tourists here at any given time. If they can't flush their toilets, I think we'd have a problem pretty quickly. Have you gotten to take a look at those facilities or they, is that something that falls in your scope? Yeah, it falls in my scope. But what I've been seeing there is just a lot of bigger construction projects. OK. They, they have their existing security systems on their perimeters and things like that. But I think a lot of the focus, as of now, isn't on the security portion of it. It's just getting their systems and adding and adding and just doing a lot of construction work in those areas. And hopefully that'll lead to more, the need to more security and it'll make funds available when all the construction work is done there. And I know there's, they're building a new, the city's putting in a joint, a center downtown near Alipay. Is that something, you got some visibility on that project? Is there a, is that going to be a new center to aggregate services? Is it security? I know they call it a joint traffic management, but I didn't know if that's the end goal there or do you know? Yeah, I know a little bit about it. I think that they're, they're looking to move a lot of stuff in there. OK. But I just, I'm just waiting to see it get completed and then we will have a better idea of what exactly is going to move there. OK. What kind of infrastructure they're going to have. So I think they're still in the kind of planning for some of that. Everybody, I know everybody wants to move to a nice new office probably and also a lot of the city facilities are dated. Well, we're talking about commercial security here today with Corey Rasmussen. We're going to take a break, pay a few bills and we'll be back with security matters in about a minute. Hey, Aloha. Standard Energyman here on ThinkTech Hawaii where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy and transportation, energy and maritime, energy and aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii. This is my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Standard Energyman and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. Aloha. Hello, my name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of ThinkTech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer Series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomei Weigert. And we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on a Thursdays at 4 p.m. And we hope we'll see you next time. Hey, welcome back to Security Matters. We're in the ThinkTech Hawaii studios with Corey Rasmussen and we're talking about commercial security. So we I think we got a pretty comfortable feeling about the critical the state of critical infrastructure security in Hawaii. The next one that comes to mind because I know do you you don't do you work in the health care space? No, I don't work in the okay. So the other one that comes to mind for me is campus spaces, campus environments. You know, Hawaii, you know, when I when I have the facilities that I've visited are very open, which to me makes it very difficult to protect. And obviously we've had this whole, you know, a lot of unfortunately a lot of school shootings and there's a lot of focus on, you know, securing these students in schools. Money starting to flow from the Fed and there's also state grant money, not in Hawaii specifically, but there are congressmen and asking for funding now to get money to protect these students. Now we make them go to school. It seems like we should be we're bound to protect them when we're there. You know, we have an obligation to do that. What have you seen in the campus spaces that you've worked on and you've do some you do some K-12 and some college as well? Okay. I see them. They're improving. I think with the recent incidents that's been going on, the mood here in Hawaii is kind of shifting from that'll never happen here to one day. Who knows? And you see that happening not as fast as it should be. When it comes to to college, University of Hawaii, they're doing a decent job at getting their their security system back up to par where it should be. OK. And being an alumni of University of Hawaii, I'm glad and it's fun to work with them. OK, it's fun. Other other schools here have been increasing their their their security systems. They're doing a great job doing it. I just think that they need to think about it from the outside looking in more so as to they think they're safe when they're on their campus. But they they don't realize just how much can happen there when you talk about your access control. Simply how many schools you go to that they don't shut their door when they're in class. You look at that. I mean, there's there's different things that go into that, whether it be AC and it's hot or something like that. But who knows who knows what can happen? Yeah, so there's especially I know the DOE has struggled here for years with with funding, you know, for that. And a lot of our ours, I guess, state or they state school states all one county or state. So those, you know, hopefully we'll be able to find some funding for those. The private schools are a little different situation where they've got a little, you know, a higher tuition, you know, so there's more money there, I guess, per student to to to fund some of these types of systems. So you have you seen on the private schools. Is it is it better technologies that newers are just more of it? Or what are you finding there? I think that they're they're more open to trying different solutions. They'll they'll it's common to see a mix of different system on a campus. You won't really see just one standardized system there. I know there are schools here that want to move to that. OK, they want to bring all their systems on one centralized system so they can monitor it easily, get quick response from security. I think they're doing a good job because they want to be more proactive than reactive. Sure. They're they're trying not to wait anymore for something to happen. It's more of a question of when when an incident will occur and I can see them just wanting to be ready. Is that what do you think about the lockdown type scenarios? Have you seen folks looking as or is there have you seen anybody deploying like this sort of active shooter technology? You know, there's like shooter detection systems today and then you can lock all the doors down so these guys can't, you know, some perpetrator can't just walk door to door. And like you said, doors are open. Are you seeing that sort of stuff yet? Or is it is it more just surveillance and more surveillance? I mean, we've had discussions about that. OK, there's there's companies that can do that. They'll they'll lock down pretty much your whole campus if you're on one system. OK, there's been an interest and hopefully we can watch it progress and move forward to more and more places. Yeah, Hawaii has this. It's interesting here because the most of the campuses are what you would call horizontal. So there's just a whole lot of doors, you know, versus a bigger mainland schools tend to be built more vertically, right? And so there's less less doors to lock the place down with. Interesting, interesting. So outside of, you know, the campus environment, when we start to go look at like commercial business facilities, we've got property management companies, you've got other financial companies. What do you see in kind of technologies are they looking at? And how are things going in those spaces? The smaller the smaller commercial side, you see them moving a lot more towards cloud storage. Oh, OK, they're moving there. They don't have as much doors or as much cameras or video. So yeah, it's safer to. It's easier for them to store it in the clouds. They don't have this big, clunky storage unit at their at their facility. The bigger the bigger property management companies and things like that, you see them trying to get on one centralized system as well. The property management companies, they have so much land and properties and all the different islands. And on a while alone, some companies own multiple, multiple places. You can see them wanting to have a one centralized system at all their properties for the perimeter, at least, so that they can view incidents and it just makes it more easy for them when something does happen, they can review or if they just want to see something, they don't need to log into 10, 20 different apps to pull up video. They're looking at one system. So in is that is the technology that you're deploying in those cases? Is that do you think it has the features that they need? Does it work work pretty well? You mentioned some cloud based type systems as well. Yeah, for the small, like I said, for the smaller places, yeah, cloud based is easy. There's not there's things that the cameras can do to kind of compress that video. So you're you're not using up a ton of storage. But when you're talking 40, 50, the cameras, yeah, they have hard storage. OK, and I think that the systems that we're deploying out there is suiting their needs and doing what they're asking. They go out and see they go out and see all these other technologies. And yeah, the systems we have today, we can always add. That's the best part. Sure. You're not stuck with one system. You can always add to it. OK, awesome. Yeah, the there's a lot more flexibility today. Are you do you primarily find you're dealing with them like just like a project manager? Or is it a facility security? Or do you have it folks at the table when you're talking about these design, because most of this stuff's running on the network today. So what type of team, you know, from the customer side, do you tend to find yourself working with? You find yourself working with everybody. I mean, it's it's it's a team effort when it comes to that. OK, facilities have certain needs. Security knows what they want. But the most important guy is it because how are you going to get it there on their network? They hold the keys to that. OK, so they're incorporated into a lot of a lot of work that we do. And yeah, is that do you find that help or does it make it more difficult to try to satisfy the the different needs everyone has? Or do you have to find yourself having to address those different requirements or concerns from the different parties? I just make sure that I bring our correct network guy because when they start talking X's and O's, I have no idea what they're doing. OK, OK, but it's it's it's it's interesting conversation. And you're always able to learn from the different people you meet and how how they're trying to strategize. OK, and you see how they work together. And then you want to take that back. And you think about it when you're in your own situations with your own company. OK, so you're so you mentioned that you bring a network. So do you you have a team of folks that work so you're not just on your own. I see. So you get to bring a team that can talk to the different concerns that the client side may have. Yes. And how how's your team built? What do you what do we have leverage out of them? We have our engineers. We have two engineers and we have our two I.T. guys that work with us. I.T. engineers and it's basically you need to know who you're going to meet with. You need to know what their problems are. If we're designing a full system and the network guys there, I'm not just going to bring my engineer. I'm bringing our network guys so they can talk. OK, that way everybody remains on the same page. And I think it's great that our technicians are they they have so much certification and training and things like that that when when you talk those kind of things to them when the job is moving forward. It's just a smoother process. Awesome. Yeah, I do you do you think that the customers are are are pretty educated about security? Do you find you have to actually help them along with the with the what needs to be done or the best way to maybe apply? They may know what they want to accomplish, but they do they know how or does that something that you tend to have to put together for them? It's a case by case basis. I see we have some who've done a ton of research. They know their product or they've they've run a system before. OK, those are the customers. It's like, oh, you know what you want. I'm going to get that done for you. Then you have the other customers who who've just seen YouTube videos or red magazines and seen the other cool technology out there. And those are the customers. You kind of got to reel back in, bring them back down to earth and you just guide them on the right path. So there's a gap out there maybe in the marketing literature that they come across versus the reality of maybe what they can afford or what the way that they can apply it to the problem that they have. Yeah, correct. And customers are pretty cool about that when you reel them back in and you start chatting with them more and more than they they kind of they gain a trust for you. I see. And after you do the first couple of jobs for them, then they put basically put it in your hands and let you run with it. And that's when it gets really fun. Best kind of customer to have your one that trusts you, obviously, I mean, you're other security guys. So they do need to they need to have that trust is what do you find the kind of the most difficult thing to absorb, you know, about the industry? You know, what do you know there to me, there's a lot of change happening. You mentioned some cloud type stuff. What do you what do you what do you see on horizon? What's what's you know, what's tough to get your mind wrapped around? I think the only tough part is trying to keep up with it. Oh, there's so much technology coming out every day and you read about it in magazines, you get the emails, you see the new articles coming out. And it's like, OK, I just learned this one. And this is constantly being able to stay on top of it. Wow. How do you? How does your organization help you digest that? Do you these people come to you and show you or do you have to go hunt it down or is all in a cloud or what? No, I think we do a great job of bringing in our vendors to not only train the sales team, but they train the technicians as well. Okay. And it's we do a great job of everybody working together, whether it be our two engineers working with the sales team training us or installation manager helping out our text, training them especially when we bring new onboarding people when we're in the process of onboarding new people. And I think just having having vendors come down to us basically shows something that shows something about us that we are getting trained properly. Yeah, that manufacturer certification. Wow. Well, we've got about a minute left. You have what what's your tell you got some advice for anybody that might be thinking about getting in this industry? Yeah, I mean, it's fun, especially if you're young. I mean, there's a ton of stuff to learn. You walk a lot. But as long as you have an open mind, open mind, really, there's just so much stuff you can you can do in the industry. And yeah, from there, if you're interested, give us a call. Right on. There's a pitch for the workforce of your young and you want to get some technology, technology work. Give us a holler. All right. Well, thanks so much. This has been security matters Hawaii. Thanks for joining us in the think tech studios and look for us on the next episode because security matters.