EP 058 Michael Gips, Global Security Influencer - His Journey From Harvard Law School To Becoming One Of The Top Security Professionals In The World

Michael discusses his wonderful journey from Harvard Law, to being a Judges Clerk dealing with death row cases, to finding his niche as a multi-potentialite in the Security Industry and why physical and cyber security convergence is a singular focus now for all security professionals.

BIO

Michael Gips, CPP, CSyP, is a security professional, attorney, writer, researcher, volunteer leader, expert witness, and principal of Global Insights in Professional Security.

The former Chief Global Knowledge and Learning Officer for ASIS International, Mike founded the CSO Roundtable (now CSO Center) and served as editor and publisher of Security Management. Mike was named the most influential person in global security thought leadership by IFSEC for 2022, Outstanding U.S. Security Consultant (OSPAs) that same year, and one of Security magazine’s most influential people in 2019. He has won more than a dozen awards for his published security articles.

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

0:02

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Yoyo 0:40

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. If PO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, we are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members mental health and wellbeing. Our listeners are global, they are the decision makers of tomorrow. We want to thank you wherever you are for being part of the Security Circle podcast series. If you love the podcast, please like, comment, and share, or even do a review. It means a lot. Now with me today is Michael Gips. I dunno if you know Michael Gips, but it's one of those names. I remember someone saying to me, have you spoken to Michael Gips? I mean, who's Michael Gips? And then someone else said to me, have you spoken to Michael Gips? No. Who is this? Michael Gips. So I found out who Michael Gips is. Here he is. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. How are you doing

Michael 1:32

Great. Yo-yo, thanks for having me on the show. I'm a lot less I don't know ooky or whatever, when you that name is I'm just a normal person, you know, so that's funny.

Yoyo 1:43

Looking at this, I've got here security expert attorney, Harvard Law School content specialist, and ranked number one globally for security thought leadership in 2022. And you're a US OSPA winner for outstanding security consultant. I mean, look, wow. I'm gonna go straight back to Harvard. Harvard Law School. Tell me if you can, was this a key shift that sculpted your career?

Michael 2:08

It was, but maybe not in a way that you would think it made me, well when I was pretty good through college. I had very good grades. I kind of breezed through and I thought I would do the same thing at Harvard Law School and my grades were fine, but no way did I breeze through. And it was humbling in that I remember one professor described it and said, Harvard Law School, takes the cream off the milk, and then they put it in a tube and they shake that tube. And then the successful ones, the top of the class get, get skimmed off of that top of the tube. I was sinking down like it was pretty medium down low on the bottom of the tube, which was okay. But it was very, very Competitive, the people there, every single person was brilliant in a way that I wasn't. And it makes you feel kind of inadequate, you know, being around all those people. You know, one of'em was Barack Obama. Another one was who's Gorsuch, who's Supreme Court Justice. People who were like presidents of countries. You know, they drafted constitutions for, you know, for various new nations. They're heads of government. they're partners and huge law firms. And then I kind of come out, it's like, oh yeah, I'm doing security. You know, so,

Yoyo 3:28

but hey, listen, don't knock it. We think it's the best industry

Michael 3:30

in the world. I think it is too. You're helping people. but as pure of heart as you can get, I'm sure you can get cynical about it, but talk about cynical law is probably pinnacle of cynicism. You see what, you know what you want to have an ideal world and it's like, oh yeah, the justice will will prevail. And, but then you see how the sausage is made from within. And I was a judicial clerk, so I I wrote opinions for judges on cases. So I helped see, how that thinking came into be. I mean, it was good and it was very enlightening. But at the end of the day, once practicing law, they kind of, I was at a big firm and you're sort of forced into a big firm if you pay a lot for law school and they just turn you out into, Cogs in a machine, and I didn't like it. It was long hours, like a lot of pressure kind of demeaning in a way. Like a partner wouldn't tell you what, he would say, okay, do this kind of research. And I'd say, well, what's this for? It's like, don't worry about it, do this legal research. It's like someone saying to somebody, do a site assessment or whatever, but you can't go to the site and you know who the client is. just gimme generic generic review of of facility or something like that. Mm.

Yoyo 4:51

I have no idea. Barack Obama went to Harvard.

Michael 4:54

Yep. Yep. So did Michelle actually. Yeah.

Yoyo 4:57

I mean, in fact, I knew she did. In fact. Was that where they met?

Michael 5:01

Yes, they did. Mm,

Yoyo 5:03

yep. A nice story that, and because it's really humbling of you, Michael, really to say that you found it tough there. I wouldn't even have a clue. What sort of cost does it cost now to go to Harvard, do a law degree?

Michael 5:17

I would guess when I went there, this was 30 years ago, it cost$12,000 a year, which was expensive. Yeah. I would guess it's probably$70,000 a year. that would cost the top of my head. Yeah. Cause I think it would be similar to one of the higher costs colleges in the United States. And then luckily I worked while it was my second and third year, so it defrayed a lot of the cost, but there was a lot of time eating pasta and, well pretty much pasta, cereal and eggs, it was past the

Yoyo 5:52

cereal eggs. I remember my student days, I used to make this concoction. I used to, if it was a good week, I'd have a tinner tuna and then I'd put some tuna at the bottom of a bowl and then a, some sweet corn from a tin and then some baked beans and sprinkling of cheese. That was my food. But I got all my staple things in there, apart from a lot of vegetables. But it's amazing the resilience you have as a student, isn't it? You don't necessarily think you are heart done by either.

Michael 6:17

Yes. And you are smarter than I am. I just went for the cheap stuff. I didn't really consider you know, the, the major food groups or vitamins and minerals and things like that. It was a, okay, this will film me up. Good enough.

Yoyo 6:28

So to your point earlier about working for judges, How did you get into doing that? I mean, what led you in that route? Because I'm gonna ask you in a minute about some of the cases that you were very instrumental in making very key decisions on, we'll talk about that, but, you know, to write opinions for judges. Wow. I mean, that is a huge responsibility anyway. How did you handle that?

Michael 6:53

Yeah, and, and not only is it a huge responsibility in general, but I was doing death penalty cases. So deciding whether, first of all, somebody was, you know, guilty or should be guilty of murder. And secondly, whether they decide they merited the penalty of death. So I was always, I always liked writing and I always knew I wanted to be a judge, a, a, a judicial clerk. I tried for the federal for some federal district courts, it's, you know, f from the Supreme Court where you can't get it unless you. Clerked for a lower judge, but usually a circuit court judge at the federal level down to federal district courts. You know, those are really, really hard to get, and I almost got a federal district court one, but then you, after that, it's okay, go to the state supreme court, then the state appellate court, and then the state district court. Well, I, lucky enough to get one, the New Jersey Supreme Court, New Jersey Supreme Court was one of the two. I would say at least if you're on the left politically, they were very Forward thinking, progressive in finding new causes of action sort, recognizing new torts, things like that. So they're on the cutting edge, California, New Jersey. So I thought I was gonna be doing, you know, pro products liability, finding new areas where companies were liable and they wanted to be for death penalty clerk. And I was like, okay, that sounds fascinating. and it was a lot of responsibility and a lot of pressure, especially since one of the cases I worked on was the first case that they actually upheld the death penalty. So under, under my watch the court by four to three margin voted to uphold the death sentence given by a judge and jury in a case, it was a famous case. They wrote a book about, it's called it was called Blind Faith. It was about a guy New Jersey, obviously, who had his wife killed. he was a, like a well-respected member of the community, very upper middle class. I think he was an insurance agent and he had his wife killed. He had, he was having an affair as these things go right? And he had his wife, like whacked on the side of the road and on the New Jersey, on the Garden State Parkway. And he said the whole thing collapsed because, you know, falling out with his girlfriend. And the girlfriend kind of knew what was going on. And so, and the court, here's the political part of it. Most of the death sentences that came down, probably 80% of them were people of color, either African-American or Hispanic. This guy was white. And I don't think that they, well, I don't want to surmise, but I think. It was better optics for the first person to be not a minority. And I'm sure they would never say this. It just happened that way that they probably were not upset that the first person was white. And as it turned out, the death penalty was overturned a few years later. So they never executed him. So he's still rotting away in jail, along with all the other ones that, got life in prison instead of the death penalty. Do we know

Yoyo 10:12

how he was able to get past that death penalty?

Michael 10:17

Well, he got past it because, The sentiment turned in New Jersey against the death penalty. I think there was a federal case that may have gotten the legislature to rethink the wisdom of the death penalty. So when they reversed, when they invalidated death penalty, they retroactively invalidated all death sentences and his was, there might have been another one or two that had happened since then, but they were all wiped out. They're all abrogated and because they do a proportionality review, proportionality review is like, okay, if this person's treated like this, is it out of proportion to how other people who did similar things. Are being penalized. So these three guys or whatever are getting the death penalty and these a hundred aren't just because of when the law was passed. Let's just invalidate these three. So that's how the thinking goes. But very, very stressful going through hundreds of pages of documents, looking at pictures of, of usually spouses or otherwise, women or girlfriends who were like shot or bludgeoned or hacked the pieces, just and having to look at these pictures cuz you had to look at the pictures because often there was an argument that made by the defense that the prejudi, the prejudicial effect of the pictures outweighed the probative value. That means the jury would be so shocked at looking at this and saying, oh god, guy's, guilty. Right. Very rarely does that work unless it's really, really gruesome. I mean, they were showing pictures of women who were like, hacked the pieces and like packed into suitcases, or there was a kid that was like batted, like by a hammer, like hit with a hammer a hundred times. And in that case, that's one of the few cases that the evidence was thrown out because the jury was given like a hundred pictures of this kid. And they would just kind of sort through and it was like every possible way the kid could be, beaten up with a blunt instrument. So having to deal with that kind of thing, like 16 hour days, making sure, cuz then you have some people's lives on line. You wanna make sure you review all the evidence, everybody gets a fair say. And, you know, the both advocates, the prosecutor and the defense counsel are making very passionate. And arguments and sometimes very detailed arguments and you wanna make sure you get it right. And so I would write it not for just this one judge, but for the whole court. So I'd write an opinion and I'd say, okay, these judges are probably gonna want, say, are gonna vote for the death penalty from this case. So I'd write, I'd write, you know, the factual case and then I would do an analysis and I'd say, you could argue this if you're in favor of the death penalty, sort of. And then you can, you can write this if you disagree. And so, it's funny cuz I saw, in some cases, I saw things I had written just plopped right, put into the into the opinion. And one of'em, the a lot of it I would write for one judge cuz he always dissented. So one area I wrote This is a close, this is a close decision or something. And then he just plopped and he said, this is not, he put not, this is not a close decision cuz he, he thought, oh, there's, this is violated the person's, due process rights or whatever. So, yeah. It's kind of cool seeing that. I remember when I

Yoyo 13:45

joined the police here back in 2002 and my gal pal who was I joined with, we were in the force headquarters canteen and just across from us was a very seasoned, typical, very senior detective, like a senior investigating officer, s I o. And we were just like kids. We were like, have you seen those, their bodies and anyone like really mangled and have you ever been to any scenes with this blood? Like all over the walls? And he's like, do you wanna come up and see some photos? So we were like, yeah, can we? And he said, yeah, come up. Just told us where he was and we weren't there. And he said, this is a case I'm working on at the moment. And he showed us all these photographs of all of the, you know, the blood spluttering against the wall and where the body was found and it was an asphyxiation case. And and we were just like, wow., so cops, ex-cop, ex-police officers, we all love that kind of stuff. Like how has he got that body into that suitcase We're looking at where, you know, with the, the howls and the whys, we don't really see. And I think this is what makes us good as detectives, we don't really see the emotional aspect. We don't see that as a person. We see it like a physician, an MD would see a body, you know, it's a, it's a, a body that needs investigating. But it's interesting because you didn't, you didn't have that kind of, policing background. So I should imagine there were some, and I can still don't get me wrong, I can still, if I think really hard, I can go back to some images I've seen, especially around children and sexual offenses. And I just think, oh, I, I, I genuinely wish I'd never seen that. It's really hard to unsee something that horrendous. So I get it. And everyone's got their limitations. So what did you do? Put yourself back in that moment, what did you do at that stage of your career? You've got this huge burden of responsibility. You seem to come across very diligent and conscientious. What did you do when you had those days to just, stay levelheaded?

Michael 15:50

Well, this perhaps would is a little more personal than you wanna get, but at the time I had just been married and I was living, so the car was in Trenton and I was living in northeast Philadelphia and my wife at the time was in graduate school at Penn and she was spending all her days down there and I was spending all my days up in tr we barely saw each other and it was a new marriage and that just did not work. So, emotionally I was falling apart. So the only way I wasn't falling apart was I was working out a lot. So, I'd get outta work at like nine or whatever and I'd go to the gym. So I was doing that a lot. So I was in good shape, but that was our putting all my sort of psychic emotional energy, that was left into, into doing that. So my relationship was collapsing there and so I was trying to navigate that. So it made the whole thing rather, and plus where I was working out was right across the street from Trenton State Prison, so it was like ex-cons working out there and prison guards. So it was not like, like a what do they call the places in England, like the really fancy spas or whatever. where it's like really fihi it wasn't like that. It was like, dirt on the floor like rusty, barbells and stuff like that. So it was kind of like a grim existence at that time. There was a high school kid who the defense portrayed to be like the captain of the chess team. He was a big kid. I think he was a football player too, who encountered a 15 year old girl in the woods cutting, you know, cutting through the woods, go to school and hit her overhead head with a rock. You know, I think tried to. Do something sexually to her, hit her overhead in the rock and killed her and maybe by mistake and tried to bury her so no one would see it. And, that was an interesting case. There was one where a couple was in an tempestuous marriage and it was, a Latino couple and the husband was very jealous. And they were at a party, I guess with other friends, and they were doing, the wife was doing the merengue dance. I remember this was a meringue case with some other guy, and when they got home, he stabbed her to death. it's like a million different variations on the same theme. There was a man who was upset at his wife or some woman, and either bludgeon her, stabbed her, shot her. There was only one other case that wasn't like that. It was a drug dealer who would. Killed another drug dealer and you would think, you know, well how did that get to be a death penalty case? And it probably shouldn't have been cuz it got thrown out. But yeah, just seeing, the depravity of men and how men will just, you know, take all their life's frustrations out against women who's just, really sobering. Yeah. And to be

Yoyo 18:43

honest with you, that's not, it's not got a lot better, to be honest with you. The statistics of women becoming more vulnerable to violence and sexual violence from men is, is ever more prevalent and is another subject in itself. So we don't seem to be really breaking through much there. But look, you told me you didn't like being a lawyer, and is that because sometimes you think. The law. I've had people say to me, the law isn't worth shit until you get on the wrong side of it. Of course. And then you realize it's a whole different ballgame. And then I think certainly in America, the law seems very unfair if you are poor or if you have no money. And I think the law works differently if you have money and you can defend yourself. And the law simply isn't, an episode of Ali, that Bill or Boston Legal, and I love American legal dramas. I dunno why I always have, but I get it. That's not reality. That's just entertainment. And it's a lot more different. Where do you think the law let you down.

Michael 19:41

Those are all valid points that you make. But none of those were the reasons, were reasons why I left law. It was more personal. It was A lot of attorneys are very arrogant. And say, I've put in my time, hours and hours of billing, kind of doing, the scut work that you're gonna have to do that you're at my beck call. Basically, the only good things about it, I was at a fairly, I was on medium-sized firm, so there were maybe 150 attorneys, but there were a lot of new attorneys that came in my class. So there, there were 30 young men and women. So at this time I was like 25 years old and with, so the money was good and there were a lot of people my age. So the social life, was pretty good when you had it, because you weren't getting out of there till like eight or nine o'clock at night. But they're asking you to do, wrote things like document requests or document reviews, digesting depositions, doing. research on pick u pick aune points of law that they wouldn't tell you any of the context or like, you know, just, just find the find this proposition in any one of the cases. I'd get calls at six o'clock in the morning, say, we need you in for this. And sometimes it was just sort of just to satisfy a whim of a partner. It just, it, I just found it kind of demeaning and I know a lot of people would do it. It is good money. It is a fair amount. You get a fair amount of respect. But you also, on the other hand, whenever someone introduces me as a former lawyer, I kind of get fake booze, or like humorous, like, say, oh, but then they say, okay, you're recovered. You're good. And even when I talked to another lawyer who's still practicing, they, they congratulate me or they salute me and they say, oh, you got, good for you. Yeah,

Yoyo 21:38

yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's the same for me being an ex-police officer. You get, you are either one party, you can split them down the middle. They're all like, really sus really sort of, suspicious. Why did you only do seven years? How do I get to seven years in such a job that's so antisocial. You, you feel like you're putting your life on the line most days, you know, you had a kick or hit and, and you don't have great social life. You can't commit to anything like a course or a hobby or anything like that. And you can't really commit to a gym and sports. So yeah, how did I get to seven years? But then the other half is like, you, you got out at the right time cuz it all went a bit downhill. You know, morale's really low. And then we've got lots of scandals and the police at the moment here just around really behaviors and conduct of some men murdering women and sexualizing women and. Never, stop really bringing the force into disrepute. Certainly provoking questions about reform, but let's face it, law is still, there's still a kudos around putting yourself through what we know, like a medical doctor a huge amount of study. And it takes a certain type of individual, doesn't it, to, to get on with this. Maybe you were the outlier, maybe you weren't the typical cast of a lawyer in America. Certainly, I wasn't the typical cast of a police woman in the United Kingdom, and I used to get beaten sometimes. I mean verbally by my peers. Because they used to say, oh God, you're so sensitive. You should be in social services. Because I would go above and beyond and I would help the youngsters out. I would rebook them for things if they rang me up and told me they needed to change appointments. And I'd thank them for staying in touch with me and we're talking about criminals, but I was always polite and courteous and people would say, oh, you're in the wrong job. You need to be in social services. And so I kind of thought, yeah, maybe I am in the wrong job. Cause if you think I'm not suitable, then I'm never gonna have a really enjoyable career here. I'm always gonna be, there's always gonna be a bit of meanness. So maybe, you know, you didn't like that ego, you didn't like that higher hierarchical kind of struggle, that rat system of, scratch, scratch, scratch. Get there, get there, get there. And you went into publishing and writing. So how did that happen? Cuz I think you made the right decision.

Michael 23:49

Well, thank you. And I think I. They needed more people like you. They were trying to squeeze your altruism and positivity out of you and make you cynical and jaded. You didn't become that way and they were threatened by you, and they wanted to kind of take you down a peg. So what they needed was more of you, not less, but that's a story from you're

Yoyo 24:13

very gosh, you're so right. I should have paid you that money before you said that, but Yeah. No, you'll, you'll, I I had had a lot of people say that. Yeah. And, and if only there were more people like me, maybe there would be a very different situation, but Absolutely. So publishing writing is ticking boxes for you then, Hey, tell us about that.

Michael 24:31

Okay, so I was working at the law firm and I knew I didn't like to do it, but I knew I liked the issues that I was dealing with. One of the cases I was working on was pro bono, was a death penalty case. Another one was on workplace violence. There was a discrimination case. There were intellectual property cases that I was working on, and they all seemed to have something to do with, security workplace policy issues that are sort of like security, HR issues that, that, that flange with security. And I started writing for a local it's like an alternative newspaper. It would be like the Village Voice in New York, and I'm sure London has papers. It was called, it's called the City Paper. It's still around and it takes on, local issues, basically in a more pointed way than say the local newspaper, like Washington Post or Washington Times. And I started writing, I found it really interesting to delve into these issues on one was a copyright infringement case. Another one was a a guy who spent his career like, or had a newsletter dedicated to like bashing homosexuals. There were, basically municipal cases that had a crime aspect to it. I wrote about mandatory minimum sentencing in Washington DC and I was saying, oh, this is all this circling around security and workplace compliance and policy issues. And it end up that. I was doing freelance writing. I was early on in, in my relationship with my current wife. So this was, a long time ago. And she saw an ad in a newspaper cuz it was hard to make it as a freelance writer. It was an ad, a newspaper for a security editor. She said, Hey, this is all the stuff that you do and like to do. So I applied for it and got the job and it was with a s i s security management magazine. And I came in as an associate editor and I jumped right in and I said, yes, this is the kind of stuff I really like to do. And it, it was a little more technical than I thought it was gonna be cuz if you're coming into security from the way I did, it's, you think of security as, the workplace issues, maybe. Besides violence in the workplace, drug use or alcohol. And the first things I was working on were access control articles, and I had to explain how different access control technology works. So I was talking to people in the field like Roy Bordes, who are legend. He's passed away now. He was a legend in the field. I remember talking to another guy, this was an early days of computer security, and he was telling me about how we were working on an article that I was editing of his on how to erase. Data from magnetic media. And he explained to me how first it's imprinted in the first place and the dousing and things like that. And I had no idea. And these people like this walked me through access control systems, surveillance magnetic media and medic media magnet, magnetic media ar erasure through document destruction, sort of all this technical stuff from the people who were writing who are leaders in the field. and a lot of them are gone now. This was, I started the career there in the early, in the mid nineties, but slowly slowly I started developing the body of knowledge, of understanding the technical side, but also understanding the practice side because I had a column where I was writing about news and trends in the industry, and I would learn what the latest thinking was. I would call around to different experts and say, Hey, what's, what's going on? And I learned sep Ted and I learned, oil and gas and I learned, and other parts of critical infrastructure learned about, retail and shrink and basically anything there is to know, even safety, like safety standards and regulation like hazard Whopper, which has to do with ha hazardous material handling. And over time, I was writing this column, so I was keeping on top of all the, on top of all the trends I was having, Detailed discussions with sources and with authors about their areas of expertise. For the magazine I was writing other stuff. So it was really like marinating in this atmosphere of, just taking in as much as I could about the security profession. In a few years, I got promoted to senior editor and was doing all of this even more. I was writing probably my own article every month or every other month on trends. So everything from my earliest articles were on trends and school security. There was one on rail security. I did something called high on the job, which was a workplace drug abuse. I did one on this US spying infrastructure and how and how it was evolving so that different intelligence agencies could work together better. I did one before nine 11 on the readiness of our high rises for terrorist attack. Oh, wow. So something like, yeah, something like six months before nine 11 happened. I did, yeah. A survey and wrote about the integrity of our high rise structures and which ones were most, were best suited to, to withstand a terrorist attack. And, which one was by far the most suited to withstand a terrorist attack was the World Trade Center, because they had been bombed earlier by truck bomb underneath in, in the garage in 1992. And it unsettled the foundation. it killed a few people. And, but after nine 11, it kind of became forgotten because it was, the first attack. Well, they put in 60 million of work after that first attack to, to shore up the building to increase the standoff distance. for a bomb. And, all these other things like they, with the fireproofing and, so that the building wouldn't collapse, if it was, the foundations were, were rattled. All these things they put in. But what they couldn't do was regulate, the F FAA and, tell them that, they needed to lock the doors in the cockpit or better screen for weapons or whatever. So no matter what they did, unless they put a giant, you net around, the World Trade Center, which obviously I'm being facetious about, they couldn't have done anything. So in my analysis, almost any other building would've been like completely obliterated. Just from the beginning cuz they didn't have that structural integrity of, and it would've been ea much easier to get into any of those buildings anyway for a conventional attack. So, and then after that I started writing more about doing regular follow-ups with, well, what came out of the World Trade Center attack as far as high rise structural safety and security and all the other things that, that came out of it. Cuz it spawned a kind of a new era in home. It's, it created homeland security as we know it. Department of Homeland Security was created in the aftermath of that. And a lot of money went into security from the government, from the private sector. So in 2001, security was still a niche area and then everybody got into it. Anybody who made a camera, who made any kind of piece electronics had a homeland security solution in 2002. So I saw the explosion there and then I saw it get back to normal when, of course things happen all the time, but nothing of the magnitude of nine 11. So I saw a huge spike and a lot of different countries have had that spike because London has Lu London had bombings. I believe there were train bombings, if I recall. Madrid had train bombings. So a few years later So a lot of major nations sort of had their own surge and homeland security after major events in their in their locality. But then it kind of got back down and I saw it normalized again. And that means security being treated as a cost center, as something that, compliance equals security, let's do the least amount possible because it mm-hmm. Takes away from the bottom line. I saw also the rise of cyber, concurrently. So they, the internet really started being used, globally in a big way, commercially, maybe in the mid to late nineties. And then over time, cybersecurity has really overtaken physical security in almost every way in terms of costs, in terms of losses and in terms of budget. And in terms of commanding attention. So you look at surveys or reports that talk about boards of directors of companies and what they consider major risks. And cyber is always in the top five, 10, sometimes number three or one physical security. It's way down the list because, for as often as these things happen, terrorist attacks, workplace violence or whatever, they still, for any given site, it's still incredibly rare. But with cyber, every company gets hacked. Everybody gets phished. So it's really front and center because With a physical attack, it takes a lot of planning. It takes dedication, it takes resources. With a cyber attack, you just basically plug in some code and your network looks for vulnerabilities and does probes and everything, so you can just sit back. It's much easier. There's much less risk being caught, and you cast a much wider net. So, and the effect of corporations is that we can, we are getting pelted at all times with probes or cyber attacks or other kinds of malicious online threats. Whereas the physical ones like, much less common and they don't move the share price or so if there's a huge data breach or privacy breach. the stock price plummets, right? It's like, oh my God, there are a million names. And I social security numbers were just exposed. And now, this is an embarrassment to the company. Shareholders get upset, the board gets upset, the stock drops, whereas, there's a shooting, at least in the United States, there's a shooting in a place that's not great, but at least it can be covered by insurance. We can manage the aftermath and, it's probably never happened again here. Whereas a data breach could happen anytime and, affect a million people rather than one person.

Yoyo 35:29

I'm a huge fan of physical and cybersecurity convergence, and I think it's a pretty hot subject at the moment, but I know that you advocate for it as well. Tell me why it's important to consider the convergence of the two now, as a security operative in a leadership role.

Michael 35:49

Because security is security to me, it doesn't make sense to say, okay, here are the issues involving personnel and security and let's give that to hr. Here are issues say having to do with alarm, physical alarms, cameras, access control. Let's give that to physical security here. This is supply chain stuff. So theft of supply chain, a diversion of goods, let's give it to the supply chain or logistics and with cyber, which, undergirds every modern organization, it just doesn't make sense. And it's not just me, it's a lot of people to say, okay, now that. That it's information instead of physical assets. It's data. It's no less important as and often much more important. And it needs to be protected. And just because you know how to use a computer better, doesn't mean that you know that should be in your remit. So cuz a lot of threats these days, they cross. So say you have a person who you know would've failed a background check. You have an insider who's a bad actor. And if you followed their online access, or you filed even their physical access, you saw they came in at a certain time or they used a certain door or whatever they, they tried open a door or they didn't have, shouldn't have access to, and then they did something in the network. Well, if you did it, looked at it that way. That's three different groups, myopically. So the HR people would say, okay, well there's an isolated incident of a human resource policy violation. And the physical security people say, well, here's an isolated incident of, a breach of our physical assets control policy and the cyber. It's like, well, he was, doing some activity, but that's not enough alone to cast suspicion on him. If all three work together and looked at it, oh my gosh, that's a clear pattern. And there's one thing, working together that helps for sure. But if it's integrated, converged, then you have an overall view of the security posture who are possible bad actors and across the enterprise. Cuz today so many of these things cross between departments and nobody notices it. Or that maybe they don't have the the insight. If they had seen other bits of the picture, they would've. seen a two plus two is equal to four, right? Mm-hmm. But they only have the two. So that alone is, we get a million of those, so let's just, we can't investigate everything or, do analytics on everything.

Yoyo 38:28

The way I see it, Michael, is that there's a commonality when you look at the convergence between cybersecurity and physical security, the commonality is people, alright? Mm-hmm. And the evidence to support why people are so critical is because there are many studies and reports that demonstrate that human errors, their behaviors and actions are the primary cause of business risk. Hundred percent. You look at the cost of insider threats, I'm gonna go through some stats now. The cost of insider threats 2020 report. So the average cost of an insider related incident is 11.45 million. The report found that 60% of these incidents were caused by employee or contract and negligence, while 23% were caused by malicious insiders. Now, that doesn't mean to say that 23% of your workforce are potentially malicious insiders, it just means that 23% of the incidents are attributed to malicious insiders. They could just be dis disgruntled employees. Sure. We've got here I chatted with an expert friend of mine who designed the insider threat program, so businesses like Tesla and Uber, and he said, gen Z they are. So centric to their teamwork, their coworkers, and, and other things that they won't put the business needs first as other generations were before. So they would do things that would protect each other rather than protect the business. So there's a whole new threat that loyalty to coworkers rather than their employer sends red flags from a a risk perspective. Then you look at the 2021 Verizon data breach. This report found that 85% of data breaches involved human interaction such as phishing scams, social engineering tax, and errors made by employees. And this human error or negligence can include, but it's not limited to accidentally sending sensitive data to the wrong person or configuring security settings. It goes on Accenture, 69% security breaches are the result of human error. So when you look at this, I think it's important when you look at convergence between cybersecurity and physical security practitioners, the commonality is people getting people right. You know, the right people in the right place with the right knowledge and the right actions and behaviors.

Michael 40:34

Yeah, that's well put. I actually was one of the co-authors of the first convergence report that ASIS did on the convergence. The report was called the Convergence of Physical Security, cybersecurity and Business Continuity in the United States, Europe, and India. And we surveyed something like a thousand professionals and maybe got full results back or, cause it was a long survey from five or 600 of them. So it was pretty comprehensive. And we did interviews in different industries and in the various countries through Europe and United States and India. And we looked for commonalities and data. And it turned out that 19% of respondents across all sizes, industries, locations, said they were converged. And we gave a very specific definition of convergence. It would be something that you would be very comfortable with, I'm sure. And it's a 19 percent. We're converged, all three and 24% converged at least physical and cyber and other data since then. Ass did another one last year and it was very similar. And my friend James Willison, I think, and Martin Gill did one a few of years earlier, and it was also similar. So that would seem to be kind of rock solid evidence. Right. Well, and I'm a big believer in convergence, but I don't believe those numbers because they don't jive with reality. Nope. Yeah. I'll ask people, I'll ask, and I know a lot of heads of security, I'll say, are you converged? Like, oh my gosh, no. And of course it's anecdotal and I'm supposed to trust the evidence, but I don't know, five or 10%, maybe five or 10% that are converged. But our figures are showing, 20 24%, 25%. Now, that's one out of every four companies converge. Now, I believe maybe some of the smaller ones, right? Because they have one person doing everything, so they have to be converged. Maybe some of the very, very larger, very largest ones because, they have an ordered to, be more, from the top to trim costs or be more efficient or whatever. And they, they can make it a big project, but I just don't see it in, in real life. I think it's a good idea. What's keeping it apart is, people wanting to keep their jobs. it's like there's a CSO and the C I S O, it's

Yoyo 42:58

like, It's more than that, I would add into that, that they keep recruiting technical specialists into CISO roles when the CISO needs to be across a number of different disciplines other than technology, including processing people. And that requires a whole different skillset. And that's where the convergence is relevant. And I also think there's an awful lot of what I call carbon copy recruiting going on. So if you are replacing a certain type of role with a certain type of responsibility, they're looking for someone to come in who's just been doing exactly that same thing. And they're not looking to be progressive and forward thinking, to think, actually, do we need to be offering more in this role? Do we need this person to be more progressive? Do we need more horizon scanning? Do we and, and they're not, and I dunno if it's because we've just got so many people responsible for hiring. We've got so many hiring managers that just really don't wanna hire people. They really don't. You have a vacancy to fill, the first thing that goes through your mind as a hiring manager is, this is gonna take up a lot of my time and I'm busy and it's disruptive and it's a problem that needs solving. So quite often I think decisions going into recruiting the right candidates are more about fixing a problem than actually really recruiting for the future decision makers of the business.

Michael 44:12

I couldn't have said that better. We're we are very closely aligned there. As a matter of fact, one, you know, been in the industry for so long to help a lot of people look for new opportunities. I'm in the middle of that right now. As a matter of fact. Very talented, capable people who can't get good jobs that they're more than qualified for, would be great for, because they don't exactly check the box. They don't reflect. That, they don't reflect the job description. There's so much more. And I've, I've gotten to the, point where it's like, all right, just pretty much copy the job description, put that in your resume, if it's, or in your cover letter, if it's fair. Obviously you don't wanna, be fraudulent or misleading, but like people like, don't, don't say you have these talents, don't focus on exactly what's in the four corners of the, the job description and that is much more effective for them than sort of showing what they could, extra they can bring to the job. Because you're exactly right. I, I don't know whether to blame it on, HR managers or recruiters or whatever. And I don't mean to, insult anyone partic particularly,

Yoyo 45:26

no, but it's not right is it though? It's not right at the moment. It's not right at all.

Michael 45:30

It's like they're losing, you know? So a few years ago I was looking for I was moving out from a s I s and I had been a C S O role at ASIS but I'd also been the Chief Global Knowledge and Learning Officer. So I had run standards of guidelines, certification, the c s csso Center Publishing and for time marketing and membership. So I had all these skills and capabilities. And so I was looking, it's like, well, I could be, I'd be a good for like a security trainer, content evangelist role. And I was looking out there and, there would be some jobs like that. And I'd put the whole thing out there in my resume and they're like, no, sorry. I wouldn't even get an interview. And certainly this is not about me, but a lot of people who have gone through similar things are going through similar things. And I'm like, but I do all these things and more. It's like, yes, but. You do too many other things. We just want someone for this. So a good example is I've recently been looking, for on behalf of other folks for a training role that combines physical and cybersecurity. There is none they least that I could find. They're all cyber and that's great if they put in for it. It's almost like the physical security stuff is a demerit. It's a detriment to getting a job. Yep. it's like, oh, you're not all cyber all the time. Then, But it's like bringing extra value. I can talk about, I can talk about pretending workplace violence. I could talk about all these other issues. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. There's about cyber. It's like, cuz then we'd have to worry about who you report to. And it's like, oh my goodness. so you don't want all this extra value, you just wanna check the box.

Yoyo 47:11

how about this going into a job and a job interview and saying that not only do you have skills in multiple disciplines across, across cybersecurity and physical security, that your whole underpinning methodology is around risk. So you see risk first before anything else, and they still don't get it. because if they don't think the same way, they're not gonna relate to you. People are hiring with their own mental likeness. Do you know what I mean? Of, of how they feel and think. Doesn't matter how right you are or how progressive you are, sometimes, to one's own detriment, one can be too progressive. You know, the world's not ready yet for us. Michael,

Michael 47:50

I think you're right. Is what, that's why I have my own consultancy. Cause I do things that, you know, and part of that is a problem because, no one is really a hundred percent sure what I do, right? So they're like, okay, I'd love to use your services, but I'm not quite sure what you do. And it's like, I do a lot of things and that's the problem. It's, I don't fit into a box. So I do traditional security stuff, especially on insider threat, social media monitoring crisis management. But I do a lot of communication. So I do training in crisis management. Speaking, presenting to the board. I also do, I create a lot of content for, for organizations that want to present themselves as thought leaders in any industry. So if you came out with a special kind of video analytics and you, okay, I, I'm the leader. Our company wants to distinguish itself as the, the leading choice. And so we want to be in the magazines, we wanna blogs, social media reports, blah, blah, blah. I'll help them do that. So that's what, but so I'm kind of all over the place. And for someone like me and someone like you who has different skill sets, I'm not saying we're any better, but if we have kind of a unique group of skills that don't go together, we either have to take a job and do a bunch of side gigs, to get our other interests in, or we have to be consultants and. Carve out our own, fractional c s o, be a fractional marketing person, be a fractional PR person, be a fractional security trainer. But that also requires business development all the time. And not, and business development, not just talking to clients, potential clients, but generating content on your own. writing articles reports, having a social media presence, speaking at conferences, doing podcasts, doing webinars. So it's fulfilling in, in that you get to do, someone like you gets to do a podcast and you get to scratch that itch. But it's, making money for these things, when, and instead of volunteering, it's a very kind of precarious balance and it's very rewarding. But it's a lot of business development, so anyone going this route should know that. It's 50% of what you do or more is not paying. Right. It's generating content, it's thought leadership, it's volunteering, it's mentoring people. Mm-hmm. And you hope it comes back to you. And, I'm right in the middle of that right now, so, and I see you on your journey and, I feel like we're soulmates or like-minded people at least, and soulmates might be a little bit deep, but,

Yoyo 50:39

no, I, I think so, and I think this is what, this is what made it you our first conversation. So interesting. And again, super interesting for a podcast. Look, that's where thought leadership comes from, right? Thought leadership is about being progressive, coming up with ideas that maybe the general population isn't ready to take on board yet. And we have to keep pushing it out. And I do that through talking to other thought leaders. The Security Circle podcast is the best in class. You know, what's the point in putting up somebody that no one knows about? Because how is their message or their narrative gonna be influential? And so this is how we shape change. This is how we model the decision makers of the future. If only one person listens to this and comes away with a view of Hell's Bells, I've always been thinking I should be getting into cybersecurity, but now I can see this is definitely gonna be the future. And maybe I should be doing that ISO 27,001 accreditation. Maybe I need to be looking at nist. Maybe I need to be doing some courses around data protection, data security, data infrastructure, data networking. perhaps if I take this as a route, I can make myself more desirable because I've got more tools in my toolbox. Right? That's the whole point. So we're putting ourselves out there. That's all you can do. We're advocates of making the world a better place. I couldn't do it as a police officer, you couldn't do it as a lawyer. We have to find a way to do it. And I don't know about you, but I think the older I get, money becomes less of an incentive. And I think it's more about, you know, slowing down, enjoying the moments every day because I don't know about you, but I lost a lot of time just going through the motions at in my workplace and giving a lot more than I got back. And just losing days, losing weeks, losing months, losing years in serving someone else. And I think sometimes you've gotta take a break, jump off the wheel and just breathe.

Michael 52:38

Yeah. And I'm glad you're taking care of yourself, but I would say to you that. You were in service at least to something to other people and there's no higher calling. So even though you weren't getting back and you should have been getting back, at least you were serving others. And I know from how you describe your role as being more empathetic or altruistic or kind of working from the heart and not being so cynical that I'm sure you helped a lot of people. And even though you may not have seen it, especially from your colleagues saying, why are you going the extra mile for this person? Or, these are just, criminals. Why are you being sympathetic that I'm sure you've left, even though you kind of felt burned out, out by it. I'm sure you left a lot of people with a better feeling towards the criminal justice system and you helped out a lot of people. So I would say don't be down on yourself that you served and you didn't get that much. You don't know what kind of influence you had, and I'm sure it was out of proportion. I'm sure it was greater than you even know.

Yoyo 53:42

I think you are right and I think the same for you. None of those people who are currently serving long custodial sentences who are alive now really recognize the fact that maybe you had an instrumental decision in them being alive now. And they'll never know that. They'll never be able to sort of say, listen, I'm not living the life of Riley where I am in my cell with Boris. But I have found love. No, I'm just joking. I'm thinking, no one's gonna turn around and say, Michael, you, I'm alive today because of you. And I think you can only reconcile that with your own ethical decisions and good sound, judgments and like I do. I always came away and thought, have I done a good job today? Yeah, I might not have been able to do everything I wanted to do or achieve everything I needed to do, but sometimes it's the little wins and it's all about the journey, right? It's never about the destination, Michael.

Michael 54:31

Yes. And if you, that's probably the, if you're gonna take something out of this whole podcast, it is the journey and you hear that a lot. It's not the destination, but all, your character, your personality, your who you are is forged by, the trials and tribulations and like, everything you have to go through and you realize, if you get to that pot of gold or whatever, you realize that it wasn't, that, I mean, of course that helps, but it was all the experiences and the relationships and the interactions that you had getting there, that was what's rewarding about it. So a lot of people, they create businesses, they make millions of dollars and they're like, okay, I'm selling that and doing again, because I want the journey, not the destination. Right? So, mm, I, I think a lot of people are driven by that. It's something innate.

Yoyo 55:22

And there's a lot of people struggling right now, like, I really wanna do this, or I wish I could do that, or I keep doing this and I keep failing. And I always say this one quote, it's not one day, it's day one. And it doesn't matter how many day ones you have, it's about the conscientious effort you're putting into something. And it, and it is important to identify, like if, imagine a person walking along the pavement. So for you, it would be a guy for me, it'd be a woman. And they're holding a load of balloons on string. And when the balloons are on top of you, the red balloons, think of these big red balloons. It means your problems are with you. And if your balloons are behind you it means your problems are behind you. And I always think it's really important to look at this picture and imagine yourself with some balloons walking down the street. Where are your balloons right now? Because I think sometimes it's really hard to determine where you are at and just know that compass of where you are in your life. And I think I, always take that with me as well. And I, I like to think that I've got mostly balloons behind me, but I've got one above.

Michael 56:20

Right. I like that image. For me, I have a similar image. It's in the movie Groundhog Day. I don't know if you've seen, it's the I

56:29

love

Yoyo 56:29

that movie so much. Tell me which bit you mean, which

Michael 56:32

bit, well, it's actually, it's actually the whole thing because I, I had a, a boss you know, kind of reveal this to me. I felt like an idiot that I didn't see it immediately. That, cuz it seems so evident that the point of the movie is that every, you say it's not the first day, it's day one. Every day is a chance to remake your life into, or you make yourself into the way you want it. So at the beginning, Bill I forget his last name. The Bill Murray character, who is the news reporter, is and the, the huge, you know, the huge breakfast. And he's, he's trying to seduce women. He's mean to the insurance guy. He doesn't care about the town and like, solely, and, and he's trying to basically hook up with the Andy McDowell character. And he sort goes down a real dark path and he robs a Brinks truck and does all this. He tries to commit suicide. He does all these things and he's stuck in that loop. And then one day he realizes that, he doesn't have to be in this tailspin that just, he can make himself a better person or the person that he really wants to be or thinks he was meant to be. And so step by step, he. he starts to learn how to play the piano. he starts to meet the people, new people in town and like, help them, gets to know them. Yeah. And he gets to know them and helps'em with their problems. And, it becomes an ice sculptor. And by the end, he's beloved in town. And, finally that breaks the Groundhog Day curse with, I've got you babe, coming on in the morning. Yeah. And the lesson of that is like, every day, forget about everything before, I mean, obviously you have responsibilities to your family, your, your work, you know, blah, blah, blah. But to remake yourself as a person, it just takes a change on any day, any second it's possible. Just go out on a separate track and pursue that. And you don't have to be burdened by, the things that you know that. We've left behind you. And I love that movie for, I mean, there's so many great scenes.

Yoyo 58:36

Okay, how about this one? Steven Toski plays the guy, Ned Ryerson. Hi, it's Ned Ryerson. And he's just like the most, he's just the most stereotypical type cast insurance bloke ever. And I just think, I always, I don't even know how know, how I know that name, Ned Ryerson. It's just all bit

Michael 58:54

stuck. Ned Ryerson. You know, I just read something yesterday about that movie that when Bill Murray is changing and he decides to be nice to Ned Ryerson, there's a point where Steven Ky goes up to and says, Phil, Phil, whatever his last name is, and can sell him insurance and bill Murray breaks character, or not breaks character, but goes off the script and he goes, Ned Ryerson how are you? I've missed you. I've been thinking about it. He grabs him in an brace and. Steven Tobolowsky looks really, it's not in the script and he looks really uncomfortable and like he breaks out of the, it goes on for a while, the embrace. And it

Yoyo 59:34

gives him a, it gives him a really intimate hug,

Michael 59:36

doesn't he? Yes. He breaks out of it and kind of runs away and looks at him like, what kind of weirdo is he? And that was completely unscripted. That was, yeah. that was off the cuff. So, that's, you know, that's a great movie for that lesson. I didn't mean to go on about it for so long, but

Yoyo 59:52

No, but it's good. It's now rated like 8.0 on the I M D B too low. The movie database. I dunno, I think it's gone up. I think it's become one of those legendary movies now that's just a classic of its day. But he was also really good in the one, the Christmasy one, what's it called? Scrooge. Scrooge, yeah. He was great in that. Yeah. For the same reasons. Yeah. Listen great. I mean, what a great note to end on. Michael Gips, thank you so much for sharing your insights and future scanning, horizon scanning with methodologies, everything today. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.

Michael 1:00:29

Same here. It's it's really nice to speak to a kindred spirit and share thoughts and opportunities for growth and, talk about where the profession is going and where it can go. So thank you so much for having me. Brilliant. We'll

Yoyo 1:00:44

make sure that your LinkedIn profiles there so people can reach out and connect and if anybody isn't sharing isn't following you right now or connected, I would recommend it because I think, Michael, you're posting some really great content. It's this really good stuff and you're an amazing writer.

Michael 1:01:01

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.