Kristin Demoranville: [00:00:00] So you have all this like Stuff. And just from a little cyber attack that tweaked a little bit here, or could tweak a little bit there. I think that's the thing that scares me the most, and when I talk to the food protection professionals, they agree, it's those little subtle changes that are the scariest.
It's not just like the big disruption of the halt because a ransomware came through and ripped. through systems. It's those little subtle changes that they don't have enough information about or can't see because technology goes down to a degree that the human eye can't see or taste or tell.
Kyle King: Welcome back to another episode of the Crisis Lab podcast. I'm your host, Kyle. And today we're glad to have Kristen DeMaranville, an expert in food security and cybersecurity as our guest. And this episode is part two of our series on food security, which is a continuation of a really interesting discussion that we started on Kristen's podcast.
Bites and bites. That's b y t e s and [00:01:00] bites as in taking a bite of food. So in part one, we talked about the complex world of food security from both a military and a civilian perspective and understanding the effects of geopolitical events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and we discussed the interconnected nature of global crises, emphasizing the need for Let's say a more holistic approach to resilience.
And then we also test upon the role of technology and food production, the challenges in adopting these new technologies, and the ways in which food insecurity can drive really topical issues such as mass migration. So as we move forward in part two of this series, we want to discuss really the actions and showcase the practical aspects of ensuring resilient food systems.
We'll be focusing on community level implementations and providing actionable steps for local stakeholders and discussing the crucial role of cybersecurity in food security overall. And we're going to focus really and try and focus on three main areas, which is really looking first at how communities can build resilience and foster local food production, what you can do personally, and then also as a community.
And this includes practical ways of developing resilience plans, or even the crucial [00:02:00] role of community involvement and sustainability efforts. But then next we'll explore the intersection of technology and cybersecurity and food systems. We'll discuss how technology can boost food security. and the importance of cybersecurity and safeguarding our food production distribution.
And then lastly, we'll touch on the role of collaboration among food security experts, cybersecurity professionals, and local stakeholders, especially across that public and private partnership divide in building resilient food systems. So Kristen, welcome to the show.
Kristin Demoranville: Thanks, Kyle. It's great to be back online here with you.
Kyle King: So just for those who weren't coming over from your podcast, maybe just a quick background to let people know who you are and your perspective on food security.
Kristin Demoranville: You definitely should stop this and go connect to the first one. That would probably give you a better clue. That's what we're going to talk about.
However, my name is Kristen Emmeranville. I am the host of Bites and Bites. I also am the CEO of Ants and Sage. Which is a cyber security firm that focused directly on the food industry. That does include all aspects of the food industry. [00:03:00] And I also own another company that is an operational technology software that helps with the type of risk management and compliance aspects in the OT environment.
So it's still bolts in very nicely to the food industry. It's a lot of that obviously is industrial. Yeah. I think the big thing that I have the biggest gripe about, and Kyle knows, What I'm probably about to say is the fact that food and agriculture has been left out of a lot of conversations as a critical infrastructure.
The United States just added it to their 15 at the time now, 16 back in 2020, and also we still keep forgetting to talk about water and critical infrastructures. It's frustrating because those are really the 2 primary things that everybody should be most concerned about. And as we stated on the first podcast, part one obviously that is what people are going towards now when it comes to, Nation state attacks, because it can really disrupt a nation big time.
Do you know where your food comes from, literally? Unless you're growing it or raising it, you're just going to say the grocery store, right? What does that actually mean? [00:04:00] In terms of why cybersecurity interacts with food, it's because everything's gone digital. We connect everything via sensors to monitor chicken health.
We have sensors that can monitor when a cow is about to give birth. We have sensors that detect how far a You drill into the ground for seeding a field, we can do it to the point where the seeds are spread out just to the level where their shade will cover up enough that they won't have weeds, which is pretty incredible if you think about it.
We also have all kinds of different tech that runs in the farms, drones that spray pesticides. Or herbicides or any of that stuff. I also couldn't do fire detection sensors. Obviously, that's huge importance for places that have fire safety concerns. Via the summer months, and we all know the world heating up.
That's a big problem. There's plenty of different other technologies I could tell you, and some of them are really cool, but there's robots in the field. There's literally robots in the field autonomous tractors are becoming quite popular as well. Think about the [00:05:00] labor shortage in the agricultural space.
That's going to fill some gaps. AI has been running rampant through the food industry for years before it became a trendy thing, because now it's trendy. And I think that we've forgotten that we've got to protect that. We focus so much on the financial side and healthcare, which there's nothing wrong with that.
Not at all. But in order to survive as a species. And this, and anything else in this planet, we need food and water. So if we are protecting those from a cybersecurity front, we're doing ourselves a disservice and we're not being resilient as either countries or individuals and certainly not as an industry, we are getting better.
I don't want anybody to think this is all gloom and doom. We're learning as we go. Unfortunately, cyber attacks are teaching us as we go. I'm sure you can Google if you want any type of fluted attack, any types of Ransomware or cyber attack or anything like that in the industry. The concern with a cyber attack in the industry, besides the [00:06:00] fact that it's very disruptive and concerning in general for a business.
But it can also cause food safety issues, both on the aspect of the quality of the food, but also in distribution. So it does affect food security in that regard. If you have a product that has been tampered with, via food fraud or something like that, That can mean that people aren't getting food. That also can mean that they have to halt and recall so people could get sick.
So foodborne illness is a huge concern. There's a lot of factors in this and I am absolutely honored to be part of this industry every day. I think that I have the greatest job because I get to help people stay healthy and celebrate their birthdays. And there are other milestones and say goodbye to their loved ones and be part of their cultural experience in whatever place they're in, because everybody ties food to a country.
We could sit here and name that all day.
Kyle King: That's a great overview. And I think it really tees up the discussion for us today because we carry on from the discussion we had previously about how international organizations [00:07:00] such as NATO, such as many others are starting to take a really. How could I say, maybe a deeper look at things like food security and water security as a component of national security.
And as you mentioned, the U. S. is designating that as part of our critical infrastructure as well. And so it's really about how can we translate all these policies, these ideas down into our communities and into community resilience. And before we hit record on the podcast, we were talking about some really specific examples.
And I think the first thing I'd want to explore with you is the idea that this doesn't really happen within the food industry. So there's, and when you mentioned like, where does our food come from? And I think a lot of people in our communities are basically saying it just comes from the grocery store, like you talked about, but where is really the food supply chain, where is that coming from and how do we have secure food supplies and sources along that sort of chain of thought, I'd like to explore that with you and then maybe if you could give us a few examples of where.
The system is actually broken, like things have actually happened, and then yes, it is a reality we have to deal with.
Kristin Demoranville: Sure. The simple answer is it [00:08:00] starts seed, and there's probably a plot in there, absolutely. But ultimately, it starts where it begins, and the amount of technology that's around a farm, whether it's actual, I don't know, plants versus animal, same thing, right?
These places aren't necessarily small, and they also aren't necessarily large. So you have your big farm. And then you have your little small farms. I think the thing that scares me the most is the smaller farms because obviously finances are difficult at times and you pray to break even and make some money.
The bigger farms, the factory farms, they're automated to high hell. So that's a concern there too. You have two different almost situations to manage in a way. The real issue becomes is, and I think we touched on this in the first as well, is the needs assessment. Do you need to have all this tech? Don't be wrong.
It's cool. I think it's cool. But the problem is, do you actually need to have it in your [00:09:00] environment? Can you live without it? If you add it to your environment, and I think this is the biggest thing that people miss, especially at the beginning of this whole conversation of food. If you add things like that to your environment, do you have a way of disaster recovery, a business continuity plan?
If that technology fails, can you roll back to paper and manual? And unfortunately, the answer a lot of times is no. We learned this recently from, and I realize this is not a cyber related incident, but it still plays into the example with the GPS that got knocked out because of the solar flares in Canada during their planting season at the beginning of this, this planting season.
They couldn't plant because the way the GPS system works is it actually tells you exactly where to drill these holes that you put the seed in order to create that distance that keeps the weeds away and also for optimal watering. And optimal control for pests and other things, fertilizer, spray, the whole thing without that GPS system, you're running on a, [00:10:00] I think this is what it will be possibly.
I know there's a lot more metrics and things that go into it, but it's not a quote exact science because that GPS is an exact science, right? The more data that's put into these fields and more data that we can understand and analyze, the more successful those crops will be. The more successful and resistant they can be towards climate change, heat, various different other things that happen and affect the farm itself, that whole loss of that GPS, those farmers didn't know what to do.
And because they didn't have that legacy knowledge of how they would go to a more of a manual process. There was a bit of a scramble. Thankfully, they still planted. It wasn't probably as precise or with precision as it normally was, but they did plant. But they had to roll back their thinking to, I don't know, olden times, if you will.
Not that it was olden times, but just a different way of doing it in order to get that into the field. So that's why I say it really starts at the beginning, where the food is. I know some people would argue with me that maybe it starts [00:11:00] when you're creating genetically modified. Sure, that's done with science.
There's a lot of tech involved with that. If you had a cyber attack there that affected the genetic modification, yeah, that could be a problem as well. But that's getting, that's really granular. That's really granular. And there are plenty of people who are working on that bio cybersecurity aspect, if you will.
There's a whole new niche that's running that way, which is, I think, great. And then you have to talk about it from, okay, so you had a successful harvest, everything went well, it's now being picked up by a truck or a lorry, and it's being taken to, let's say, the mill to be made into flour. So now you have, you had to store it, you had to, first of all, you had to, creation happened, it was in the ground, it grew, you harvest it, you took care of it, it was a kid, and then you cut it, and it's great, and it went into your barn, and then it got picked up, and now it's gone to become what its product is.
Think about all the stuff that could go wrong during that time frame. You get some weird flower mites. I'm making stuff up. There are things called [00:12:00] flower mites. I don't know if they actually infected before. You can have a transportation issue, a fire. If there was a fire and that smoke got onto that product, you could have a smoke taint issue.
I know these are extreme, but they work. And then you got the transport. What happens if that transport gets into a car accident? Gone. That's gone. And then once it gets to the mill, it actually gets checked for quality. If your quality is not up to snuff, you're not going to make any money, or it's going to be a different type of flour, either pasta or it may be bread, we'll see what happens.
And then it goes to the bakery company or whatever's going to happen with that flour. And then you go to a whole other set of processes and technology that are around that you have the baking equipment, you have the lines, the process production lines, you have all the people that are surrounded by it.
And I used to work in a bakery company, so that's probably why I picked a bakery. It's scenario, however, there are things called flower mites that they do have to bomb once a year for these factories. I would never know that if I worked at a. And unless I work there, do you know anything about flower mites?
Is that like a thing that comes up [00:13:00] in conversation? That has to be taken care of. And then you have to have pest control for other things because critters live and you can't have them in these places. And then you obviously have to add this flour in the right amounts at the right time and make sure that if it's gluten free or gluten, you don't mix because that becomes a whole issue of food contamination.
And honestly, if an employee was disgruntled, they could go between those lines. And then that could be a messed up situation. I've seen that happen in, in peanut areas, unfortunately. To me, that's a physical security issue now. And throughout these whole processes, because this is an industrial situation, physical security is super important.
It leads it to cyber physical in a way. Then you have all these machines that are running all this stuff. You have all these people that are looking at the quality of the product from the first beginning of walking into that factory all the way to the finished product. But it could be tampered with in little sections, right?
So that little tampering could. Not only tamper the product, but also show that it's fine. They're like little green light stays [00:14:00] on. There's no red light. It's all good. We can let it go through. That's why there's constant checks and balances in these places, because they don't, they always have to double check their work.
But what if it misses? What if it goes out? What if you have an entire line of gluten bread that goes out as gluten free bread, and then somebody buys it off the shelf and gets sick? Or something happens, that brand of that particular bread is now up for debate in the public's eye. They're obviously shady, and I can't believe they did this.
We've also got a food situation, a food illness situation, technically it's classed as fraud because it's the wrong labeling. And then you have a bunch of other issues that come out from that. What are you going to do with that bread that's been now collected? That is gluten bread, but gluten free bags.
What do you do with that? Do you destroy it? Do you give it away? Do you? We've now got an issue with a surplus of food. That becomes a problem and you can't put it into the food banks or the any distribution center because it's mislabeled. And yes, the answer in your head is, oh, [00:15:00] well, just relabel it. Do you have a thousand labels to put on these bread, like these new bread bags?
It's really complicated. And then someone might be like, we'll feed the birds. You shouldn't feed wildlife anyways. And that's a whole other conversation for another time, Kyle. But there's that problem. So you have all this, like, Stuff. And just from a little cyber attack that tweaked a little bit here or could tweak a little bit there.
I think that's the thing that scares me the most. And when I talk to the food protection professionals, they agree it's those little subtle changes that are the scariest. It's not just like the big disruption of the halt because a ransomware came through and ripped through the systems. It's those little subtle changes that they don't have enough information about or can't see because technology goes down to a degree that the human eye can't see or taste or tell.
That's the scary bit. Long and the short of it, I just touched on multiple industries. I didn't even say the word water or electricity in there, but there's so many critical factors that flow into this. It's intense. But that whole supply chain, it's not just [00:16:00] I go to the grocery store, I pick up bread.
You have thousands of people that got you that bread. You have people who are blood, sweat, and tears to create this product, whether it's the actual bread itself that you put in your mouth or the ingredients that went into it. So it's really taking a look at the whole system rather than just, oh, I went and got my bread today because I didn't have any.
Kyle King: Hey there, just a quick pause in our show for a second. Did you know that most of our guests on the crisis lab podcast have courses inside of crisis lab? And so if you're finding value in these conversations, or they pique your interest and want to dive deeper into the topic, just head over to crisis lab.
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Now let's get back to the show. Yeah, I think that's pretty powerful. When you're, I was just listening to you explain that and every step along the way is just thinking about how highly automated our society is. All right. And so from planting, like I was not even aware of the issue in Canada. And so that, that's amazing for me as well.
And the fact that weather can impact our ability to plant crops is amazing. And I have a couple of thoughts about that. So the first one being that our systems are entirely interdependent and they are highly automated and we don't even recognize our vulnerabilities to a certain extent, especially if you're just a normal sort of member of your community.
Like this is not something you think about on a daily basis. If you're a business owner. You should be thinking about it, but also you have a lot of dependencies upon all these other systems, like you're talking about. So power systems, water supplies, sewage, all these other sort of systems that exist as well.
And so there's these huge [00:18:00] amount of dependencies. And at the same time, it also reminds me of a conversation I had. It was a couple of years ago at a NATO resilience symposium, and we were discussing an environmental aspects and the use of military technology. So can the military use green technology?
And it was as a response when the panelists quite frankly stated that we're using technology that we've had for the last 30 years and we're not changing for the next 30 years because it is tried and true and it's tested and it's reliable and we know that it works and under extreme stress and duress situation.
And it reminds me of the conversation about the being able to seed the crops with Canada, which is we have to go back to our former knowledge of like how to do these things without the implementation of technology. And what are the systems that we have that sort of form that foundation of knowledge and capability to, to carry on in case a cyber attack happens or in spite of a cyber attack.
And that little tweak that you mentioned, I don't, that's not even on many people's radar. When we talk [00:19:00] about it from an assessment or resilience perspective, we're looking at risk assessments. Are you planning? Are you training? Are you exercising? Are you looking at the foreign direct investment? Are you looking at your supply chains?
Are you reviewing all these things? But it's very, it's centrally focused and not necessarily connected to all the other systems that are in place as well. And so I just wanted to hear your thoughts about that, but then also, what does this mean for people when they hear us talk about this? And they say, dude, the first part of the podcast was like, very broad, right?
So in terms of international and national security and the impact of food security. Now we're talking about systems, and I'm sure CJ, a colleague of ours, would love to hear this conversation. We're talking about systems now, and then what does that mean for people in their communities? And my last add on to that, before I let you speak, is really that I ask sometimes emergency managers, like, how often do you think about food security or water security?
And it's just not in our normal domain of work. It's preparedness, a response, a recovery. And rebuilding from disasters, but they, [00:20:00] I think, rarely think about it because they're rarely integrated into these conversations. What are your thoughts about that?
Kristin Demoranville: I think that we need to move away from this recovery mindset and start working towards a resilience mindset.
Now the cybersecurity industry is, we know cyber attacks going to happen. I don't care what you have in place. I don't care what tools and things, it will happen to you at some point. It may not be today. It could be 10 years from now, who knows, but it will happen. The idea is to stay resilient. With your production or whatever your business is and still be okay.
Meaning you don't want to get slammed with a 10 million ransomware. Are you going to pay that out? Do you understand how to use Bitcoin? That's those are the questions, right? The idea is to still be able to function. It keeps critical systems up. You can't back up cows. You can't back up chickens, right?
You have to still be able to keep them healthy and monitor and keep your production running so you can pay your bills and make sure that other people stay safe because that's the priority in this industry is keeping people safe, [00:21:00] whether it's through food or any concepts around food. The idea is to make sure that they have the availability for the food.
So that availability portion of being resilient is super important. That's priority number one. And I think it's where a lot of people get confused. It's because they think, oh, we've got to keep things. They think when they think cyber security, the confidentiality, and they think that kind of aspect and data integrity.
There's nothing wrong with those, but ultimately it's availability that we have to keep going. I think in terms of community, and we can take this from a couple different aspects. So let's start with just being human beings existing in a community. I think understanding your ecosystem that you live in, your environment, is super important.
Now people are going to be like, oh, this is going to sound really hippie. It's not, I swear. It's not. Roughly where you live in the world, what kind of trees you have, you roughly know what kind of wildlife you're going to have, what kind of insects you're going to probably run into, that kind of thing. How do you, as a human being, help that environment?
Do you do anything? I [00:22:00] put out water and feed for squirrels and other little small rodents. I know other people are like, that's weird. It's not. Actually, it's really helpful for the environment in this area, because we have a lot of trees where I live. And that keeps the trees healthy, which keeps the soil healthy, which keeps erosion from being a problem.
It just all goes into a big cycle. If you can, plant flowers that attract pollinators. Now, if you're scared of bees, I'm sorry. But pollinators are also butterflies, right? You can go from that row. Those particular species are so important on the food chain aspect for resilience with fruit trees and other type of trees that are out there that we need to keep healthy.
We will not have almonds, avocados, cherries, any type of fruit, peaches, beyond, if we don't have pollinators. In fact, I don't know if this is common knowledge for a lot of people. I was pretty shocked when I learned about this. I also have a degree in environmental management, so this is part of the reason why I can speak about it.
We chuck bees across the United States. We have bees that come from Florida, they go to California to do the almond trees, for example. We [00:23:00] also have bees that are being shipped in from a global capacity. I think we get bees that are from Australia or New Zealand. I don't remember where exactly we get our bees, but we probably get it from all over the place now because we have a colony Colopsisora that's taking out our bees.
So we've already got something that's affecting our food. That we don't, we see a bee, we want to squish it, right? Cause we're scared of it because it could sting us. Ultimately there's like only three to have the bees that sting you in the U S really that you got to piss them off in order for them to come for you.
Unless they're a hornet. Those guys are just jerks. But they're important. So if you can start doing little small things in your life that are, even if you feel like they're not contributing at all, they really are though, they really make a difference. Also grow your own fruits and vegetables, right? And even if you live in an apartment, you can have a balcony if you can go even one step further.
I have two IOT indoor planters that I grow herbs in, right? It's a form of biohacking technically, I guess is what they call it these days, but [00:24:00] it teaches you to understand the cycle and the process of your own food because you can't always have mint right when you want it. You know what I mean?
You have to wait the six weeks for the mint to grow or whatever ridiculous amount of time it takes. Yeah. I think that's super important. I grew up with a garden. My grandfather was a huge gardener. I still can smell those tomatoes on the vine. It creates this beautiful memory. And also who doesn't love like tomatoes on a vine or like summer tomatoes, like those big heirloom tomatoes, like I'm going to start drooling in a second because that's actually sounds really good.
All of that is interconnected. So you can start just as a human being just doing these little things right now as a community. Do you have a community garden? Do you even know where your natural areas are in your area? Let's say just your city or your town that you live in or your village. Do you know where those are?
Do you know if the water streams and lakes, reservoirs, ponds, do you know where that water comes from? Is that a man made situation? Are there fish? Are there animals? What's going on? And I ask [00:25:00] this because, and you should think about this, because it shows that it's a healthy ecosystem if you have all these, They're predominantly there and it's thriving.
You can tell it's thriving. Now, I'm not telling you to go throw fish into a pond that's nearby you or start to do other things, but it's, it starts to make you wonder if you have a healthy area and that's something that's super important, especially if you want to raise a family, you need to know if your soil is healthy, if your air is healthy, if you're at the trees in the area, you're healthy, the community garden, super important because you can start growing your vegetables and teaching people or people can teach you how to grow vegetables, which is super important.
And again, I know that people are like, Oh, I don't have time for this. You don't need a lot of time. Trust me. Nature takes care of itself. It really does. But I think that type of engagement education leads to having conversations with stakeholders. People actually make these decisions about public works and environmental and other policy decisions in the area.
Doesn't mean that you become political and you have to march in a town hall and have those conversations you can if you want to. But this is like the, literally the [00:26:00] grassroots, to use a pun there, I'm sure, that puts it forward and see, and gets you really involved. And then you can just help create some incentives.
Maybe there's a farmer's market that can come in. Maybe you can get to work with some of the local farmers and start to understand that. It becomes all of these like little intertwined communities, which is beautiful if you think about it, because then you have some kind of stake in understanding where your food supply is coming for, from, and also that local aspect.
And that drives a lot more too. If you have a co op go in for it, a crop share, a CSA, but you can do something like that. I actually think that's awesome. Cause you get really cool vegetables that it's like adventure cooking, cause you don't, you're getting every week, necessarily. Local eggs. I have friends that have chickens.
They're in urban areas. They have chickens. They have bee bees in local areas that are also in urban environments. I think this is a new world we have. And I would also like to say, Kyle, that this is something that I know any, a particular individual probably. Americans are going to get a little huffy about what I'm about to say.
But why do you need a [00:27:00] front lawn? You probably get the most sun on your front lawn, right? Why do you actually need it? Why can't you just grow some vegetables on that lawn? Don't get me wrong. It could be an HOA situation. Totally get that. If you can't rip up your front lawn. But think about it. You wouldn't have to mow it.
And then you have this amazing vegetable garden that you can just walk out and you can trade with neighbors and things like that. Why haven't we normalized that? Because it's not like curb appeal, quite sure you could make a vegetable garden look really nice in your front yard. And I feel like there's a need for that.
Even that aspect of community, how do we do that? Because that's about sharing, that's about connection. And that's what food is, right? Sharing and connection. I think that we start with those things, just as a basic human, and then move to that community aspect. We'd have a better understanding of our food supply, and then we'd have a little bit of resilience too, right?
Because if things fail out, we've got food that's around us. It's like vertical farming, or the container farming that's happening in cities now. These [00:28:00] greenhouses that have come up, that are all, they're all technology run, they're all IoT, it's pretty cool actually, the way they work. If anybody's had the privilege of going through Disney World, they have that little raft ride that you can ride in, and it shows you all the vertical farming, it's in concept.
And I think that is something that we should be introducing. More of, I think that we should be teaching people more about how their food is grown and understand what that means. I don't necessarily believe that you need to go out and slaughter an animal. That's not necessarily something you need to do.
Those of us who have seen, it's not a pleasant moment, but it makes you respect where the meat is coming from. And it makes you understand the value of that creature. Because one cow can feed quite a few people.
Kyle King: Yeah, I'm, I'm glad we gave you the time and space to explain all that because I think it hit a lot of really important points, which is there's these varying levels of responsibility.
There's a, your personal responsibility, there's a community level to this. And one of the things that we noticed coming from our perspective on sort of the crisis and conflict space [00:29:00] and what does that mean for resilience is these really more connected tighter knit communities are far more resilient under real extreme duress.
Thank you. than to others that are not. And I've seen that throughout the western Balkans, but then also in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and other countries that, that the communities are actually functioning and working together, that they are going to be more resilient. And food is a huge component of that.
And so these co ops or these individual community programs to increase that sort of agricultural aspect in the community is going to be very beneficial, not only for self sustainability, but also in terms of just that social cohesion. And the ability to be resilient when let's say all the power goes down for a week, right?
Or something like that. And so this is where we have seen in really what I call post conflict operational environments, like after a conflict and we're rebuilding. That there's communities that are really cohesive and that when the power goes out, they don't mind. They just go outside and talk to their neighbor and it's no stress whatsoever.
And so that's not how it operates today in the United States for the most part, but those are [00:30:00] very unique perspectives to have. And so there's this great component of the personal level of interest on where your food is coming from for your own. Personal resilience. And there's this community aspect of community resilience of what can we do collectively together, just improve our own food security.
I can already hear the conversations of that's not okay. I get the part about grocery stores and growing my own tomatoes and whatever. Okay. But really who is responsible for this? And this is where they'll generally there's conversations and it's a question I would have too, but really in terms of what is the role of government?
In this aspect, because you've talked also about the business side of it. So this entire sort of chain from seed to production, to bread and everything else. And that is in that private sector space. That's an aspect of business production, supply chain and business continuity. But where does it, the government fit in terms of overall food security.
And then also, obviously there's regulatory aspect, but, and [00:31:00] then specifically what you're talking about, the aspects of cyber, because even at a. community level, bringing that down really to a community level. It's interesting because it's who is responsible and where is this sort of regulation coming from?
Kristin Demoranville: Because we'll just talk about the U S for a moment because it's a little easier. The food industry as a whole is privately owned for the most part. I think it's 98 percent privately owned and the other 2 percent or whatnot is probably just federal areas that are experimenting on various different things.
Agriculture and beyond the government can influence, it can suggest, it can encourage, but it can't actually force arms to change unless you're going to put a financial bind on things. I do think that the president put out the critical infrastructure memorandum and food and agriculture were obviously called out very heavily in that and they wanted to have a full assessment done of the industry.
And that really made me [00:32:00] stand up and take notice because I was like, wow, that's great that they want to get a really full understanding of everything about our food supply chain. But it's probably owned. They're going to have to ask permission for this. They're going to have to find ways to get people to interact and work together.
And as we know, the food industry is highly competitive. We have how many different types of cereal on the shelf? I don't even want to know, like actually at this point, do you really think everybody's going to get together and start sharing information with each other? Probably not. Like They might talk in big perspectives about it and whatnot, but they're not going to be like, this is where we're struggling.
Cyber security wise in our resilience. This is where we're struggling with our I. T. This is where we're struggling with brand. They're not going to have those conversations. So the government's only going to get this very small snapshot. So it's about partnership really more than anything else. It's about the government partnering with the food industry to provide support when things happen.
So example would be say you are a small cereal company and you got hit [00:33:00] with a ransomware attack. You obviously are going to alert the FBI, and if you aren't going to alert the FBI, please alert the FBI, if you're in the United States, because they need to know, so they can go after these criminals, right?
It's not your job to chase criminals, you need to give it to the people who do chase the criminals. And they're also not there to shame you. They're just there to collect the information and get on with it so they can go get the bad guy or gal. I think that's where the government really comes into is the enforcement of the law.
Obviously cybercrime is illegal. We do not do that. How do we go after these people? How do we punish them and prosecute them? That's going to be more of the government side. We are moving into a space where it's more about guidance and partnership and here's our best case scenarios and here's your top 10, everything you need to know to make sure you're resilient.
Those are great, those little top 10, but how do you actually use those in your environment? That's the big question, everybody throws their hands up, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm not a cyber security expert, I'm just a winemaker. Like, why do I need to know this? That's the breakdown, and I think we need [00:34:00] to find some glue, Kyle?
Of how we're going to bridge this partnership a little bit more, whether that's education or incentives, or I don't know, regulations, we have the farm and food cybersecurity act of 2024, that's a proposed bill right now, which talks more about the simulated exercises. And those needs to be done regularly.
I am all for that. I think that tabletop simulations, whatever you want to call them are a great way to get people into the mindset of not really what attacks look like. But what their role is when something happens, it's that resilience training, if you will. I think that's really brilliant. The problem is that it's done every two years.
So the bill will require it every two years. Is that enough? I don't know. To me, you should be doing these once a quarter. And if you're like, whoa, I don't have time for that, it's literally four hours of your life and you sit around a table and you literally play adult Dungeons and Dragons. That's basically what it is.
You are role playing a situation and it could be really extreme or really subtle and [00:35:00] they work because it gets people to think and gets them outside of their own role and their own head, if you will. To realize, oh, we do have a lot of work. We haven't, we thought we had a playbook. We don't have a playbook.
We don't have a working disaster recovery or business continuity. We don't understand what we have in asset inventory. We don't know what's critical or we thought that was critical, but that's clearly not critical. This is critical. So I think that type of community inside of these businesses and then taking it to that larger level of understanding how you could partner with the government is probably the most important bit.
I do think that they are trying. We do have the critical national infrastructure group. We have the department of Homeland security. That's very cautious of this and understanding it. Yeah. Um, we have obviously the FDA, the USDA, all of them, they understand that cybersecurity is important in every bit of aspect in terms of resilience for the food supply.
But the problem becomes of, I don't know what to do with that. They throw their hands up. I'm not sure. [00:36:00] What if we did it the wrong way? What if we didn't do it right? What if someone gets sick? And there is too much on the line, I think, that gets people hung up. And that's why these workshops and stimuli exercises are super important, because it It gives you an environmental plan that's safe, that's not life threatening, that it's happening right then and there.
Because ultimately, at the end of the day, it's about protecting lives, right? Safeguarding people, not just data or arbitrary virtual things up in the space, if you will. It's about really people here. So people get really nervous, and then, and I always say this, that cybersecurity is about mitigating shame.
You gotta move past the shame of, we're not doing enough we did enough, but we thought we didn't, everything's wrong, I don't understand, we have to spend more money, we didn't budget correctly, all these things. Honestly, as a cyber security professional, I feel for you, sure, this is all horrible stuff that you have to work through, but at the same time, it doesn't really matter, because you're still not resilient, so let's get there.
Let's figure it out, we can work on a budget, we can work on all these things, [00:37:00] we can get there. We have to be willing to be flexible. And I think that's also the thing between the private and the government sector is they have to be flexible with each other. We have to understand that there's too many interdependencies and too many different agencies that cover over like USDA and FDA cover different things, but they also cover them at the same time in certain sections.
It's very confusing. And then you have the Department of Homeland Security oversees all of it in a way, but it's in a regulatory body. So that's confusing. The government can get very confusing and I think we have to find a way to find that glue that makes it less daunting because really what a farmer think to call the FBI if something bad happens?
No, they're probably going to call their Farm Bureau, right? Hopefully the Farm Bureau calls the FBI, but. There needs to be these trusted moments inside these communities in order to do this and that trusted advisor, not to use that term, but there is super important to have in these life threatening situations.
Because if you don't have that trust, [00:38:00] okay, I'm here for you and I'm going to help you through this and also on top of that, we're all going to come together. It's that kind of that old age saying of, are we going to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps or are we going to be like wolves on a carcass?
It's like one of those things. Yeah. And that's questionable based on the finances, right? Because these larger organizations, they're just about the money and the smaller grassroots organizations may not be necessarily so much. They might be about the betterment of the planet or human health or something like that.
So how do you get different mindsets all work together? It's the same as a two party system. How do we get people to work together? And a way that is a positive, despite the struggle. So that's a very long winded way to answer you, Kyle. But ultimately we're missing that glue, in my opinion.
Kyle King: Hey there, just a quick pause in our show for a second.
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Yeah. Thanks for that. I think one of the things you've been, you've mentioned it, Kristen, but I think one of the things is really is how do we build those relationships? Because I think as we talked, at least in some of our previous discussions, the work that we do at an international or national policy level, that there's this gap at a city level.
So it takes, let's just say five to seven years for some guidance to come out, legislation developed to be implemented before you actually [00:40:00] see it because before it becomes a regulation. built into a practice and then trickles down to the cities, especially smaller cities. And so in that case, there's got to be an incentive.
There's got to be an incentive for people to want to participate in this discussion, to get involved in their community, to want to understand food security. And they need to, this gap has to be So in my perspective, it filled pretty quickly because as we're heading on this course of greater integration of technology and you mentioned AI all these sort of things that are coming up and really stretching our supply chains.
And really getting pretty fragile in my opinion the impact is at the community level when all of a sudden you don't have food supplies anymore. And so this, to me, like this city level needs to take a proactive step, whether that's like the city managers or the elected officials or whatever the case is, or the different bodies, or even just the individual emergency manager needs to get involved in the discussion.
If they're not already and say, just open the door to the private sector and say, what are we doing about this? [00:41:00] Because this is obviously an issue for us in case something happens. And maybe it's based on one of your preexisting hazards of earthquake or floods or whatever the case is, but these things exist.
And so they need to be dealt with accordingly. And it has to be done before that five to seven years of policy makes it down to a local level. But one of the things as we consider the implications of technology, there's, as we mentioned, there's a lot of work that has to be done in terms of at least bridging that gap and having a more thoughtful discussion and what we can do both personally, but at a community level and the integration of public and private partnerships into sort of enhancing food security.
But where is the future going in terms of the implementation of technology? What does it look like for you in the next sort of five to 10 years with the way the world is changing, how fast it's changing? And where are we going in terms of food security and technology?
Kristin Demoranville: I think we're going to accelerate our use of technology even more.
I think we're going to automate even more than we do now. [00:42:00] And I say this because, again, we talked about interdependencies, right? We have a labor shortage in the industry for agriculture specifically, and also probably for food production as well. And no disrespect as I say this, but nobody wakes up in the morning and wants to go work in a factory.
That's not necessarily something that people sign up for when they're children. So these people are there because they need to be there, which means they're going to be very hard workers. But the problem is that we don't treat them as well as we probably should. And I'm not, again, going to get on this political bandwagon of we should be raising wages.
We should be doing all these things. But what I will say is that technology will start helping with some of this labor shortage, especially when it comes to picking food in the field, because we just don't have enough hands to do it. It is rather automated, but there are a lot of very hand You have to do some things very much by hand.
Strawberries is an example. You can't rip a machine through there. You crush them, you know, but nobody wants to go and pick strawberries. Even if you volunteer [00:43:00] to go pick them, you have to have an incentive where, Oh, pick your own strawberries for 5 a pint. That's. That becomes like a kid activity, which still gets the farmers to get the strawberries off the field.
But at the same time, you have to incentivize like it's that kind of thing. Like you said, the other aspect about technologies, the world is literally run by data. Data is the new gold. I don't care if you don't believe it. It is. And of course, when people think data, they think cookies. They think algorithms.
They think their personal data. Yes, it's all that too. But the more data we have inside of the agricultural environments, the food production areas, the faster we can produce food, the more efficiently we can produce food, and the higher volumes we can put out, whether it's crop or product. And the more data we get with the more we can understand how it's interacting with the global climate change issues, how it's interacting with certain species, we can modify, we could genetically modify even further down, if you will.
We can also make [00:44:00] more resistant strains to various different things. In fact, I believe there's cattle that's been genetically modified to be able to stand out in a field at 125 degrees Fahrenheit or something ridiculous like now, I think it's called a slip gene, but I could be wrong about that. So please don't come for me if I'm incorrect.
I'm not a cattle expert, but that's the type of thing that we are doing. We are modifying things around us. And how do we do that? Data research, we have to have that information. So we're going to become even more of a data driven industry. Also on this side as well, we haven't really touched on this too much, Kyle, but the distribution aspects, the supply chain, the physical transport of products will be done more autonomously.
They're already testing autonomous 18 wheelers or lorries. They'll still be a driver present, but the vehicle will go by itself. Think about the fact that your refrigerated foods coming that way your products are coming that way. You could have pharmaceuticals being delivered that way, starts to get a little daunting, right?
A little nervous. There's no regulations around that necessarily. How do I feel about that? Those are the questions you should start [00:45:00] asking and even in your local community, but beyond. This is one of the things I should have said in the community aspect. I think we forgot to stay curious and ask questions.
I think that we should be asking questions of where does our food get delivered from? How did it get here? Do you remember when they put out the seafood safe list? The seafood that was safely harvested in order for us to be able to consume it without feeling guilty, I guess is the best way to put it, but also be better for the environment.
That list actually is came out of curiosity. It was born from how was my fish being caught? Was it long line? Was it trolled? Was it, is it caught from a sanctuary? Non sanctuary? How did I get this? Is it wild? Is it farmed? I think the more people can be educated in where their food's coming from, they can make better decisions for nutrition and health.
Because the new frontier that we're going to be fighting soon enough, is going to be overindulgence of sugar, which is basically being viewed almost as a narcotic now because it's so bad. And the amount of, we should be banning some of this food. I'm sorry. That's how I feel about it. There's no reason why someone needs to be eating all of that.[00:46:00]
And if you, I understand getting an ice cream now and again or something like that, but not to the point where these kids are ingesting enough caffeine and sugar for an entire month's in one sitting, that's just not, that's not good. It's also going to cause all these other issues health wise for us.
I think having that curiosity and having that understanding is super important. Also we talked about this before we started hitting record, education! Where's that? I had a conversation recently with some people that are not in cyber security and they actually said I have no cyber security knowledge at all.
And I said, really, do you understand what two factor authentication is in a password? They were like, yeah, I get a text when I have to log into the site. But okay, then you know enough that you need to know to be safe, if you will. And the interesting thing about that was that I learned just recently, if you're going to get a master's in business, You don't even need to have a cybersecurity requirement in it.
How can you run a business if you don't understand cybersecurity? It's data is [00:47:00] gold. I just said that data is gold and data is everything moving forward, especially in these industries that are generating all of this information all the time. Example would be, and a lot of people don't know this, but fisheries are highly digital, highly digital.
Think about how they find fish. GPS, satellites, all that stuff. And they also flash freeze the fish on board. What if that freezer goes off and that fish warms up? I'm sure this has happened multiple times. What if that hits on a cyber attack level and all of those ships or vessels get hit? You're gone.
You've lost your harvest for that whole season probably. Because sometimes these are seasons. They take these boats out for weeks to grab this. And I'm sure some of us have sat and watched all those TV shows, like Deadliest Catch and things like that. It's not exactly a job you, like, want to really do.
It's hard work. But the tech is important. Because all that data is helps keep them safe as well as keep our food safe. I think people need to start looking at it as not necessarily the sensationalism, Kyle, but more of the [00:48:00] practicality. Do I need to know all the data of exactly where my soybean was grown, like as a consumer?
No, not really, unless I need to know because it's an area that's constantly has issues with salmonella, listeria or something like that. But otherwise I don't care. It's a soybean. I'm going to eat. It's fine. But we're going to have that kind of like granular data as consumers at some point that of course the marketing world will probably do really interesting things with.
Because the marketing world has done such a great job of showing us that we don't even know where our food comes from anymore, and we have no seasons in the grocery store. And if we do have seasons, they're marketed seasons precisely when they're supposed to be, or everything is a holiday celebration.
Literally every holiday you want is always on available pretty much within a grocery store, right? And that, that's crazy to think about that we've gotten this far as a species that now we've disassociated ourselves so much from where food comes from, how it gets to us. What's in it? Because [00:49:00] that's always going to be a question.
Labeling is a question, of course. That's obviously a very hot button issue. And then, is the food safe to handle? And how do you handle it safely? Such as, do you wash your chicken? Don't wash your chicken. You're going to spread salmonella all over your kitchen. Don't do it. Just deal with one pan situation, cut it up, and then that's it.
Don't wash it. Those like little things. Or do you know how long you have to wash your knives after you cut chicken? Do you know how long you have to wash your pans? Do you know how to wash them to keep the spread of these viruses down? Do you clean out your refrigerator regularly? Like these questions, right?
We've learned that you can leave baking soda in the refrigerator to cover up the smell of like gross produce and stuff, but why don't you just clean your refrigerator out? I have so many questions. These are like the little things. And when it comes to cybersecurity, as we put more tech in, smart refrigerators, where it knows what's in there, it can tell you that it's expired.
It will automatically order you more groceries. That's going to be more prevalent. So, I think on a consumer level, [00:50:00] we're going to start having more services delivered to us automatically because of either weight dropping on a scale inside the refrigerator or just a barcode scan as it goes in. I think it's again, very cool.
Does everybody need it? No. Do we actually need it? Probably not. But it could come in handy for people who are elderly. That they have groceries that will be delivered, or a meal will be brought to them. It could come in handy in certain types of medical situations. If you are unable to be mobile, that could be really helpful, that kind of thing.
This tech isn't necessarily evil, all of it. It just has to be used in the best context possible. Do I think that robots in food production are helpful? Yes, because they keep people safe. I would rather have a robot chopping up chicken and other meat than a human, because the meat industry is the most dangerous industry, food wise.
People lose limbs all the time and it's terrifying. So if we can have robots that are doing the heavy lifting in terms of the chopping and [00:51:00] things like that would be brilliant. So people can get on and start developing better ways to keep food safe. and keep themselves safe rather than having to be on the line cutting.
And again, the resilience in that obviously means that if the robots fail, we've got to put people on line to cut. So we have to consistently have that safety training over and over again. It's the same thing that goes back to fire safety training, Kyle. We have had that berated into us as children. Stop, drop, and roll.
Whatever language you speak, stop, drop, and roll is air. That is something that I will always keep within me. I come from a firefighter family. So for me it's a different conversation. I actually have a fire brought out of my house. Every house I've ever lived in. Most people can't say that. They're like, I don't know what I would do if there was a fire.
Jump out the window. I You can only jump out of three stories without actually breaking your whole body, basically, depending on how you land. Hopefully, you have a fire safety plan. After listening to me tell you, please have a fire safety plan. But, you have those in these buildings. You have these in different places, right?
Everybody understands there's a fire route. Why aren't we doing that when it comes to [00:52:00] cybersecurity? Simple, little, don't panic. These are the three things you're going to do immediately if you feel like you've been compromised. You're gonna take a deep breath. You're gonna unplug the internet. You're gonna tell somebody.
Leave the computer on so the forensic data can keep running, because remember, data is king. It won't infect the rest of your system if you unplug the internet. And then tell somebody, say something, see something, say something. If you say, if that's really what it comes down to. A lot of this time people don't report right away because they're ashamed of what happened.
Or they panic and shut it off. But they don't realize that as soon as they turn it back on, it's just going to infect further. So it's a lot of these little things that string on over time, that keep affecting the system as a whole. I'm a big believer in cycles, the water cycle, the air cycle, food cycles, the same, the way systems work within computers, the same, it's all one big cycle.
And I really wish that people understood it. If something goes wrong in one section, that upper two o'clock area, it's going to go back seven o'clock and vice versa. And I think if people start thinking [00:53:00] like that, instead of not realizing that everything's interconnected and we're really part of this larger community.
I think it would really make a big difference when it comes to resiliency. It's a mind shift. It's we're moving away from recovery and we're thinking about being resilient. And that is, it's a lot of, you're going to have to wait on return on investment. Hopefully you don't have to, but you probably will like any other insurance type situation.
But also thinking ahead of what do we want to look like in five years with all this tech, we're going to have more tech, probably. There's too much really cool stuff coming out on the markets. They're coming up with some brilliant ideas to keep people safe, both in terms of the food and employee safety.
But how do we do that safely and securely? Because none of this is secure by design, Kyle. No manufacturer of any type of products like these are making this with security in mind. They just try to get it out and then security can be an afterthought. And that is something I'm hoping will change over the next five years.
Product security people, please hear me. So I'm hoping that's what we'll get is [00:54:00] more security around these devices up front at design. And obviously that means making sure we have the right chips that are on the boards and they're not from nefarious nation state actors that want to cause harm to all of us, or that they are done in a way that you can bolt in security easily without interrupting the process of the device.
Kyle King: Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there in terms of the way ahead, and I think it's really, it's really about just incremental steps, right? So if we can produce and manufacture products that have security in mind, if we can increase our personal sort of awareness of our own domain, our environment, our communities, our neighborhoods.
And if we can really get people involved in public private partnership and just look at this topic of food security, I learn more about it every day and it just, it's really complex when you start looking at it, not even just locally, but broader spectrum in terms of just all the integrations and all the sort of systems that are relying upon each other and just also how shockingly inefficient the system is.
So that's something that is also quite interesting as well that we touched on in the previous [00:55:00] podcast. But if somebody finds this topic to be overwhelming, or if you want to find out more information about food security and specifically with cybersecurity and the role of cybersecurity and food production and everything else, Kristen, where can people find you?
How can they get in touch with you?
Kristin Demoranville: Easiest way probably is LinkedIn. Just Kristen Emmeramville. It's I'm think I'm the, one of the only Kristen Emmeramville. So it makes it easier. You can also check out the Bites and Bites podcast. It's Bites like you bite something and Bites like computer bites with a Y.
And there's also a website with a blog there as well. It's just bitesandbitespodcast. com. It's not very difficult. Also I am dabbling on TikTok. So good luck with that if you find it and, and various other things like that. But it's really, I want people to continue the conversation. This is one of those things that you could talk about at the dinner table.
You could talk about it with your friends and family. You don't have to be a cybersecurity expert. You're a person, you're, you eat, you should care. I talk about it with my family all the time now, and we're eating and we reminisce about different food for different places and different moments. But I always talk about how [00:56:00] quality food has changed here, or we can't get it as regular as we could before.
Or we can't even get it anymore because it's now extinct, if you will. I think that having those kind of dialogues will help bring the community together more. So don't think that this is a daunting thing. You can do it in small bits, bytes, if you will. Just a pun there as well. But ultimately, it's just about how you want to react to it.
Remember, it's about resilience. It's not about just the recovery. We need to move from IT security and IT recovery to IT resilience, cyber resilience. And in this type of atmosphere and industry, so don't be scared of it. Just ask lots of questions. Like you, Kyle, I learn stuff every day. I do this, but I learn all the time.
Oh, I didn't know that this nation was doing this. Or I didn't know that this is amazing. Why aren't we replicating this? Or is this, we have metrics on this, right? Let's talk about it. Or I'll highlight things that I see, especially on the podcast, because some people out there are doing some amazing work that like really grabs at the heartstrings.
And. Makes you want to [00:57:00] cheer harder for this industry, um, because it's such an amazing place. It really is, but it needs our help. It needs our protection. And everybody has a bit of a stake in this, obviously.
Kyle King: Thank you very much for being here and for sharing your insights on the Grads Lab podcast and letting us know a little bit more about food security and pushing us off into the deep end.
And hopefully that will get people interested and push them in to take action and get involved. So thanks again for joining us.
Kristin Demoranville: Thanks, Kyle.
Kyle King: And that's all the time we have for today. Again, huge thanks to our guest, Kristen Demaranville, for sharing her knowledge and experience as we discuss the integration of cybersecurity and our food systems.
If you want to listen to part one of this series, head over to Kristen's podcast, Bites and Bites, B Y T E S and B I T E S, as in taking a bite of food. You may also follow her on LinkedIn for similar content centered around food security and cybersecurity. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to the Crisis Lab podcast.
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