December 16, 2025 • 45 mins
Operational technology runs the systems we depend on every day. Power grids, hospitals, manufacturing lines, transportation networks, and smart buildings all rely on environments where uptime directly affects safety and revenue.
In this episode, we sit down with Pat Hurley and Ryan Davis from Acronis, along with Chris Daggett from HUB Tech, to explain how OT differs from IT and why convergence between the two is accelerating. The conversation focuses on what it takes to protect physical systems while maintaining performance and reliability.
We discuss the realities of securing legacy-heavy environments, where downtime is not an option, and many systems were not built with security in mind. Our guests break down how regulations such as NERC CIP, FDA requirements, and Europe’s Cyber Resilience Act are shaping OT security programs. They also explain the importance of asset visibility, network segmentation, and disaster recovery plans that teams can execute under pressure.
The discussion then moves into practical defense. We cover digital twins for safer testing, broad operating system support for faster recovery, and how teams manage aging machines tied to critical production. We also explore AI use cases such as predictive maintenance and anomaly detection, as well as the risks introduced by Industry 4.0 and increased connectivity.
This episode is for leaders responsible for uptime, safety, and cyber resilience across factories, hospitals, utilities, transportation, and smart infrastructure. It offers clear guidance for building OT and IT programs that work together to protect the systems that run our world.
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For more information about all-in-one cyber protection, please visit Acronis at www.acronis.com
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Episode Transcript
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Announcement (00:00):
Please drive the future by team.
Powered leaders take to work.
Welcome to the Beyond theFirewall Podcast.
Powered by HubTech, where we gopast the headlines to talk with
technology leaders, industryexperts, and IT practitioners,
shaping how we work, live, andlive.
Let's get into today's episode.
Host (00:25):
Episode of Beyond the Firewall Podcast, powered by
HubTech.
I'm your host, Adam Shaffer,and today we're unpacking a
topic that is critical to thesystems that power our world,
operational technology, or OT.
OT runs the physical processesbehind manufacturing lines,
hospitals, utilities,transportation systems, smart
(00:46):
buildings, and increasingly,it's intersecting with IT in
ways that create newpossibilities and new risks.
To help us break this down,we've invited our friends from
Acronis.
So let me introduce the guestsjoining us today.
First, we have Chris Daggett,Director of Managed Services and
Security at HubTech, and alsoour co-host.
(01:07):
Second, we have Pat Hurley,Vice President and General
Manager of America's at Acronis.
Pat is a veteran technologyexecutive with over 17 years at
Acronis, leading one of theindustry's most recognized
brands in data protection,backup, cyber resilience, and
more.
He's an expert in scalingenterprise and MSP go-to-market
(01:28):
strategies, and he spent hiscareer helping organizations
stay secure and productive in arapidly evolving digital
landscape.
And lastly, Ryan Davis, seniordirector of enterprise sales at
Acronis, who leads global teamssupporting the world's largest
commercial accounts and majorOEM partners.
Ryan brings a unique frontlineview into how the biggest
(01:50):
enterprises are approaching OT,IT convergence, cyber
protection, and digitalmodernization.
With Pat and Ryan, we're goingto explore what OT really is,
how it integrates with IT, whyit matters to every industry,
what organizations must do tokeep their operations safe,
resilient, and future ready.
(02:11):
So with that, guys, let's jumpin.
How's it going, everybody?
Thanks for joining today.
Um, it was a long intro, butguys, before we go into it, did
I miss anything on your awesomeintroductions?
Patrick Hurley (02:28):
I think you never know.
You know, you could have saidPat Hurley's sales, that would
have probably summed it uppretty pretty.
Host (02:35):
No, you guys are the best.
We want to make sure everybodyknows who you are.
So, with that, let's get intoit.
I mean, I I think the biggestthing is, and and I didn't
really understand it before Istarted getting involved and
hanging around with Chris, butyeah, you know, Pat, can you
just help us define what is OTand what does it mean?
What's the difference betweenthat and IT?
Patrick Hurley (02:57):
Sure.
So uh the way I look at it isOT really refers to the kind of
the manufacturing of widgets.
So the hardware, the softwaresystems that monitor and control
the physical devices andprocesses that exist out there
in the world.
If you compare that to what youmight call traditional IT, I
look at that as like managingdata, managing business
applications.
(03:17):
Um, operational technology ismore focused on the operation of
and successful operation ofmachinery, uh, industrial
equipment, criticalinfrastructure, right?
They're the backbone of whatyou guys see in a day-to-day
basis operating in the worldtoday, production lines,
utilities, smart buildings,really ensuring that physical
processes run safely, they runefficiently, efficiently, and
(03:40):
run reliably at the end of theday.
Host (03:42):
So it is IT, but it's really, it's really the building
blocks of of these smartbuildings.
It's really the processes thatare happening in the background.
And and so, so Ryan, from anenterprise and OEM perspective,
how are the largest companiesthinking about OT today?
I mean, like, do they eventhink about it in their world,
(04:03):
or is it something that you talkto them about?
Ryan Davis (04:05):
Uh well, they're definitely thinking about it
more and more.
And uh a lot of that is drivenby the regulatory environment
that is constantly changing andnow bringing attention to this
area, the business thatpreviously might have been uh a
little bit of a black box.
But you know, to your commenton it, it's like IT, uh, but you
(04:27):
know, Rob Lee has a really gooddistinction around IT are the
systems that uh help you managethe business.
OT is why you're a business.
So you know, with the wholeITOT convergence concept, it's
starting to make theenvironments look similar.
But OT is everything that'sinvolved in the production,
whether it's the IoT, which maybe simple sensors or supervisory
(04:51):
control systems that actuallymonitor and manage the processes
themselves.
So as I alluded to earlier,from an enterprise perspective,
the OEMs are the ones that aretypically providing these
systems.
But from an enterpriseperspective, you know,
historically there is a littlebit of kind of a black box type
perspective.
Hey, we'll have our keyautomation supplier manage that
(05:11):
for us.
But as the regulatoryenvironment is changing, and
you're starting to see thingslike uh in Europe, they
introduced the CRA CyberResilience Act.
The US have had someregulations from an FBA
perspective or NERCSIP and bulkpower, where now they're
requiring businesses to haveplans, to have programs, to have
(05:32):
disaster recovery plans, tohave proactive risk management
and cybersecurity.
And that's forcing largeenterprises or even up to
medium-sized businesses to wraptheir arms and have programs
where they're actually managingthese environments proactively.
So it's been a really goodchange over the last few years.
Host (05:49):
So so they have to have a written plan too.
Is that what this is about,too?
For these regulations?
Ryan Davis (05:55):
It really depends uh on the regular regulations.
So NURCSIP is for bulk power.
So if you're like an oil andgas company or you're a power
utility, then yes, they need tohave a written disaster recovery
plan that they then follow.
Um NURC SIP, I don't rememberthe number of controls, 11, 12,
it it it's it's changing.
Um, but they're they're verypeculiar and extends everywhere
(06:18):
from cyber, which might becybersecurity, it might be
business continuity, but also tolike physical security.
How do you get access to thebuilding and perimeter security?
So um, you know, and again, Imentioned FDA, that would be
tied to really anything that'sbeing put in the human body,
whether it's food and beverageor whether it's pharmaceutical.
So those regulations might looka little bit different than if
(06:41):
you're uh I don't know, a toycompany, right?
Manufacturing some consumerproducts.
But um, in addition to theregulatory environment, we're
seeing current events that driveinvestment and drive attention
in this area.
And I'll point to two examplesJaguar Land Rover, um, their
production was impacted formonths.
They actually had to get like abailout from the UK government
(07:04):
related to a cyber incident.
And currently, ongoing inJapan, uh Asahi, the uh a very
large brewery or distillingcompany, they make one of the
most popular beers in Japan,their production is still
impacted, tied to uh a cyberevent.
So, you know, the regulatoryenvironment has really at scale
(07:26):
started to drive activity anddrive investment and focus in
this space.
But we're also seeing uh thesesort of outages that prompt
industries to start takingaction.
So, you know, not petcha was agood example, I think 2017, that
drove a lot of investment.
But then you see, hey, therehasn't been as big of a
(07:47):
large-scale event over theyears, and then things like
Jaguar Land Rover and Asahireally galvanize industries to
take action to make sure thatthey're not the next.
Host (07:57):
Yeah, no, I heard a lot about the Japanese brewery.
They were taking orders on thephone and writing them on paper.
They were struggling to get theorders out.
It was, it was, I mean, theyfigured out how to manually do
it, but it was painful.
And and so, so Chris, I mean,you talk to a lot of clients,
um, but both public sector andand private sector all day long.
You know, what of what do theyknow about OT?
(08:19):
What do they think about OT,and what what what are they not
understanding about OT thatyou're trying to bring to their
attention?
Chris Daggett (08:27):
So it's really important to uh understand OT
and how to secure it uhappropriately.
You know, many, many folksrefer to OT as anything on the
plant four floor.
Um, but you know, there aredefinitely some common gaps
there.
You know, it's thinking, youknow, a basic firewall uh equal
segmentation, it doesn't, youknow, um you actually need to
(08:50):
break things down into you knowzones and conduits, meaning, you
know, security domains and thenhow uh the data is uh you know
moving from point A to point B.
Um, you know, because typicallythose um you know those OT
environments are air gapped andlocked down.
So understanding how tocommunicate communicate and
connect to them is superimportant.
(09:11):
Um you know, many, many assumethat OEM networks are secure by
default.
You know, many manufacturers,just like our regular IT
environments, are you know, theyrelease patches and and things
like that, and there aresecurity considerations that you
need to take into account.
You know, secure configurationsare super important.
Um, you know, making sure youhave backups of those secure
(09:34):
configurations uh in the eventof you know some downtime is is
critical.
Um but you know, essentially,you know, you need to treat
availability like it's uptime.
You know, OT downtime equatesto production loss and safety
risk.
You know, as Pat and uh Ryanhad alluded to, you know, these
(09:56):
are the systems that make theworld go round.
So if there's any kind ofdowntime to them, they have a
direct impact on many day-to-daythings that we take for
granted.
Um and another critical gap isnot realizing, you know, asset
visibility.
Um, you know, that's stuffserious.
You need to understandeverything, every asset that's
(10:17):
in your OT environment and howit's communicating.
So, you know, you know, toPat's point, IT and OT are very
um, they're they're differentthings and they need to be
treated as such.
Host (10:29):
So so is OT harder to secure than IT?
I mean, is it more complicatedto to make sure that you have
the the security in place forthis?
So if you think about it, Adam,right?
Chris Daggett (10:42):
If in a typical IT environment, all right, we'll
take security patching, forexample, you know, the desktops,
you know, servers, things likethat.
We typically will put these ona regular um cadence and
schedule maintenance windows andthings like that.
Doing that in an OT environmentis a challenge.
(11:02):
You know, if you try to patchan electrical grid, you know,
without having any impact, youknow, it's just it's not very
realistic.
So, you know, many are underthe I'm you know under the way
of just, hey, you know, if it'snot broke, don't fix it.
So and and the life, you know,the lifespan of anything in OT
(11:23):
is like 10 to 15 years, whereas,you know, you're dealing with a
lot of legacy stuff, and youknow, the environments
themselves are, you know,they're they're locked down.
So, you know, the ITenvironments are locked down to
an extent, but it's important tohave that net network
segmentation in place, make surethat you know you understand
who's connecting to theenvironment and how, and
(11:45):
ensuring that the appropriateyou know security controls are
in place.
Host (11:50):
And and so with OT, I mean, and and anybody kind of
jump in, Ryan or Pat, Pat.
Um are there ways that they cantest um you know the OT
systems, you know, you know,while the OT systems are
running?
Like you can't really shut themdown, but is there is there a
way to test them while they'rerunning?
Ryan Davis (12:10):
Yeah, so I'll just piggyback on Chris and answer
your question.
So in terms of testing, there'sthis really big movement to uh
a concept called a digital twin,which is um you know
essentially creating kind ofreplicas of the production
environments in areas that allowyou to do whether it's data
extraction um or kind of testingand validation.
(12:32):
Now, that being said, there'sonly so much that that applies.
If you're gonna make a changeto a production system,
typically it has to bere-qualified or revalidated,
depending on the industry you'rein.
They use differentterminologies.
But to Chris's point, if you'redealing with something on the
electrical grid, right, and achange on the system can take it
down, which means people don'thave power.
The prerequisites for doinganything are much higher than in
(12:56):
IT, right?
And so again, typically that'scalled like qualification or or
validation.
So um, to your question on isit different, does it need to be
managed differently?
Absolutely.
And that is because you'regonna have a much more
heterogeneous set ofinfrastructure.
To Chris's point, things 10, 15years old, right?
(13:18):
You're not gonna see XP in acorporate IT environment, right?
IT can just say we got to getrid of it.
Well, if that machine isattached to a robot that costs a
million dollars, well, unlessthat they can somehow upgrade
that machine and have it stillwork with that robot, they're
not gonna do it, right?
So it takes different tools tobe able to manage that sort of
(13:39):
environment as well as differentprocesses, because you have to
recognize that you don'tnecessarily have the same uh
authority or the same ability tojust unilaterally make
decisions on what happens onthose computers because of the
sensitivity to them and becauseof the potential impact on
production.
So uh what we see, most of ourcustomers that are most
(14:00):
successful in having a modern uhcybersecurity posture or really
good hygiene from a cyberperspective in OT, they have
dedicated stacks, separatestacks.
So that doesn't mean they don'tuse any expertise or any of the
learnings from IT, but it'staking the best practices,
taking the expertise from the ITside, but then applying it
(14:25):
rationally where it makes senseto OT and also recognizing where
it makes sense to deviate.
So that's really the key tohaving a successful program.
And to me, that's theculmination of this concept of
ITOT convergence, which has beengoing on for many, many years.
The original kind of form ofthat was well, let's try and
(14:45):
make OT look like IT.
And it caused a lot of frictionbetween the two sides and a lot
of issues.
But now what we're seeing isthe ITOT convergence really
means let's bring expertise fromIT and expertise from OT to
build a dedicated program thataccounts for the best practices
of both sides.
Patrick Hurley (15:05):
And that convergence, um, some data that
I was reading a couple of weeksago, that convergence, that
market for ITOT is going toexceed one trillion dollars by
2030.
It's about an eight to ninepercent kegger on that.
And I would say if you do haveXP in your environment, call
Chris Daggett at how it'sactually people still have XP in
their environment.
Oh yeah.
(15:26):
Come on.
Host (15:28):
Oh my.
Patrick Hurley (15:29):
Well, the thing is, Adam, I remember even a year
or two ago, I remember seeingit at airports.
You'd see like blue screens andit would have an XP logo
instead.
Oh right.
Chris Daggett (15:38):
I mean, another thing, Adam, you know, one thing
to take into account, these OTdevices are not necessarily
connected to the internet.
So they can run these legacy uhoperating systems.
Um, you know, as long asthey're up, they're they're
fine.
Um, they typically don't um,you know, patch them too often,
um, and they're not susceptibleto uh you know these remote
(16:03):
risks um that IT is typically umyou know susceptible to because
it's in such an isolatedenvironment and there are
controlled connectivity methods.
Host (16:13):
Okay, that's pretty cool.
So changing it, I mean wetalked a little bit about this,
but so so Pat, like whatindustries are most reliant on
OT?
We talked about smart buildingsand the utilities, but but like
you know, where do we see themajority of OT kind of living
and and and the most reliance onit?
Patrick Hurley (16:32):
I mean, it's like it's kind of the backbone
of the U.S.
economy, right?
It's what we manufacture, thestuff we make.
So think all the factories, theassembly lines, but then drug
manufacturing, chemicalmanufacturing, oil and gas
production, uh power plants,everything from nuclear to coal
to water, etc.
Uh think of the healthcareindustry, hospitals, but all
(16:54):
those medical devices thatthey're plugging into you to
figure out what's wrong withyou.
Those are all part of the OT umstory.
Uh transportation, railways,airports, logistics providers.
How do UPS, Amazon, and FedExmake sure that all these
packages arrive within 24 hoursor less when you order them
online?
It's a significant amount of OTreliance there.
(17:15):
Uh Ryan mentioned this earlier,utilities, right?
Water treatment plants,electrical grids.
Um, and you mentioned smartbuilding.
This is probably, I guess, oneof the fastest areas of growth
is think of the fire systems,the security systems, think
about um municipalinfrastructure.
All these areas are reallybuilt on uh having a reliable,
(17:36):
you know, OT story in place thatthey're they're heavily reliant
on operational technologycapabilities.
Host (17:44):
So, you know, when I think of IT, I think of all the
hackers out there.
Uh I I don't even know if Iwant to call it hackers like
threat actors, uh, whatever youwant, what whatever the proper
uh words are for them.
But are are are are peopletrying to hack into these OT
systems or are they trying tojust more hack into the PCs and
and and the servers more thanthey're trying to hack into
(18:08):
these these uh OT processes?
You know, I was just watching,I don't know, did you guys ever
see Mr.
Robot?
That is the weirdest movie.
It's like a series, but I meanthey they hack into everything.
Like, like, so are they arethey breaking into this now or
is this harder?
Chris Daggett (18:24):
Recently, Adam, uh, there was a case on 60
Minutes.
Uh the town of Littleton inMassachusetts was actually uh
their OT infrastructure wasbreached by China, and China was
sitting in their OT environmentfor about six months unnoticed.
So, you know, it's it's a realthing that we're dealing with.
And, you know, these thesebusinesses and and
(18:46):
municipalities, you know,whatever the case may be, if
anybody has OT in theirenvironment, they really need to
understand how they'reconnecting to it and how they're
getting out, you know.
So, you know, that there's alot of there's risk everywhere
at the end of the day.
Patrick Hurley (19:00):
Uh the convergence of IoT into this OT
store, think you're in a Waymoor uh Lyft or an Uber, you're in
a self-drapping car.
That's something you want tomake sure it's not hacked,
right?
You want to get to that, youwant to get there safely.
Um, and those are the they whatmight have may have seemed as
like outlandish thoughts of justa few years ago are now things
(19:20):
that these organizations have totake extremely seriously and
have the right types of uh layerprotection plans in place to
make sure that they'reconsistent.
Host (19:27):
Even with that, Pat, I don't know if I'm getting in a
way mo.
Patrick Hurley (19:29):
I mean that that that seems like I took my first
phone in uh in Phoenix lastweek.
Ryan Davis (19:34):
I felt very phenomenal drivers.
Yeah, they're really phenomenaldrivers.
Host (19:40):
I'm gonna let it mature a little bit before I go in there.
But it but you actually did it.
You there was no driver.
Patrick Hurley (19:46):
No driver.
You show up to the car, you geta notification on your phone,
it drives right past you, itdoesn't know who you are.
Drives right past you, and youclick a button, it opens the
door, unlocks the door, you getin, you press the button to go.
It gives you some safetyreminders, tells you not to
touch the steering wheel.
And then five minutes later, Iwas at our office in Tempe, safe
and sound, perfectly controlledtemperature environment.
I was able to, you know,integrate my Spotify app to play
(20:09):
my music and the ride over.
It was a lovely case.
Host (20:12):
There were no close calls like uh people honking at you or
anything.
No.
Chris Daggett (20:18):
Were you sitting in the actual driver's seat?
Patrick Hurley (20:20):
I was stepping back.
I wanted to feel the realexclusive experience, like I was
wanting to get on a veryspecial rider.
Host (20:27):
Okay.
I didn't mean to you know getout of the main topic, but I
always see these things aroundtown and I'm scared to death of
them.
But I don't think my kids aregonna have to learn how to
drive, is really what I thinkthis is all about.
They're gonna be just doingWaymo's or getting driverless
cars.
So anyway, getting back gettingback to the the the OT.
I mean Chris, is this now a bigpart?
(20:51):
And I don't want to just youknow be make this an
advertisement for HubTech or aCronus, but it is it is this
like now a big selling feature,like you're going in and and
marketing and selling thatyou'll help people with their
their OT?
Chris Daggett (21:06):
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it there's a there's aneed out there for sure.
And if you know folks are notlooking at their OT environments
on a regular basis, you know,to ensure that you know things
are locked down and you know theappropriate access controls are
in place and networksegmentation and and things like
that, you know, that's a majorrisk to not only you know to the
(21:30):
to the company, but topotentially you know, millions
of people.
Um you know, it's it's adifferent day that we live in.
You know, we there's a cyberwar happening every day, all
day, that people are not awareof.
So they're they're casting avery wide net.
And you know, these IoT the IoTand OT devices that are out
(21:55):
there, they've kind of been umovershadowed um in many cases
from a security perspective,than traditional IT is.
You know, there's been this bigspotlight on cybersecurity and
how it applies to IT, but youknow, it's really kind of status
quo on the OT side of things.
(22:16):
And with the IoT devices,nobody's really taken those into
consideration as potentialentry points for uh you know
these hackers because they'renot getting secured.
Patrick Hurley (22:26):
Yeah, ring doorbells, baby monitors, your
refrigerator is now connected tothe internet.
Um, there's a lot of entrypoints.
It just the the threatlandscape continues to spread.
The attack service gets widerand wider every day as we
advance in technology.
Host (22:41):
So so without making it too much of a commercial, like
you know, we we follow Acronisand you guys are into so much
stuff.
What what what does Acronis do?
Like, how do they helporganizations with OT?
Because I know you guys are allover backup and and cyber
protection and all that stuff,but is there is there a specific
(23:01):
play for OT?
Ryan Davis (23:03):
Yeah, well, you know, Acronis helps our
customers in a variety of ways.
Uh, and and being that we havebeen focused on this space for
you know, going on 15 yearsreally gives us kind of some
unique advantages.
And so you reference the backupand restore um without going
into too much detail, Acronisreally has market leading
capabilities for businesscontinuity and fast recovery of
(23:24):
industrial control systems.
And this is played out by wehave partnerships with almost
all of the leading industrialcontrol system manufacturers,
the big global automationvendors that make uh distributed
control systems, SCADA, HMIs,and the different devices.
Right.
And so there's a couple ofreasons why Cronus has really
become the default beyond justhow fast and easy it is for a
(23:47):
Cronus to uh recover thesesystems back to working
condition.
But because of our knowledge ofthe space and our understanding
of the heterogeneous nature ofthese environments, we have
maintained a very broad supportfor different operating systems
and hardware types.
And so most other vendorsreally have more of an IT lens
where they're thinking about itfrom the traditional IT
(24:09):
perspective.
So they're trying to get rid ofsupport for old operating
systems as fast as possiblebecause it makes their lives
easier, right?
And we're what that does totheir end customers then, if
you're looking at an OTenvironment and you're a
manufacturer that's got 50plants and the life cycle of a
lot of those systems are 10, 15,25 years, you've got a lot of
legacy stuff.
And so when they look at othervendors, those vendors are
(24:32):
covering 50, 60, 70% of theirinfrastructure, right?
Meaning they've got largepercentages of their platforms
that are unsupported, right?
Meaning they would have to comeup with alternative manual
processes for large portions oftheir infrastructure.
Whereas Acronis can coverpretty much all of it, the most
of it.
Now, you were surprised thatyou heard that the XP is out
(24:55):
there.
I still hear Windows 2000.
I hear about random open VMS isone that I always like to talk
about because I never heard ofit before when a customer asked
me about it.
So we hear real legacy, reallyniche.
So even a Cronus may not do100%, but if we can get 99% of
your system covered, that meansyou're having to figure out a
(25:15):
manual workaround on much fewer,where you can spend your time
on automation, on the actualproduction of your good and
optimizing your operations, notfiguring out how to secure it.
Let a Cronus be that turnkeysolution.
Host (25:30):
Wow, so that was a good plug for Acronis.
Ryan Davis (25:35):
I've been here about 17 years, like Pat, right?
So we've been around a longtime.
And then the the only othertopic that I think is really
interesting, and we're seeingthis more as uh as kind of a
more recent uh evolution of ourutilization within these
customers.
A typical OT environment, a lotof these systems are sized to
serve a specific purpose.
So what I mean by that is theamount of memory, the amount of
(25:58):
CPU, right, processing, RAM, allof that is really designed for
the purpose that that machinewas was intended for, not to run
anti virus and your patchmanagement and your backup and
restore and your EDR and yourremote desktop and all that
other stuff, right?
So the modern stack has becomemuch more robust than it was,
(26:20):
you know, even five, 10 yearsago, much less 20 years ago.
And so Acronis's ability todeliver multiple services within
a single agent utilizes a lotless resources on the machine,
which impacts production a lotless.
So we're starting to see thatability for Acronis to
consolidate the stack intosingle solution has also been
(26:41):
appealing to a lot of our OTcustomers.
Host (26:44):
Okay, I mean that that's great.
Uh I mean, uh so I'm glad youtold us all about that.
I try I try not to do that, butI think it's it's worthwhile
for people to understand uh whatAcronis does.
And so thank you for explainingthat.
And and so now here's aquestion for maybe Pat or or
Chris, whoever wants to jump onit.
But where where like you know,so the big buzzwords are you
(27:06):
know cybersecurity and AI.
Where does AI fit into allthis?
Like, is there a play with AIand and OT?
Patrick Hurley (27:14):
You want to go first, Chris?
I got some stuff in my uhchamber here, but yeah, if you
have some stuff in the holster,you can you can take it.
Yeah, I mean it's definitelytransforming the entire
industry, it's transforming ourway of life, right?
Think about the things that weum do today that we automate in
the future.
So automate automation iscertainly something that's gonna
help um organizationsstreamline uh everything from
(27:35):
repetitive tasks to very complextasks for great proficiency.
So Ryan mentioned consolidationearlier.
I think consolidation andautomation are two areas where
um organizations are definitelygonna see that transforming.
Um think about all thepredictive capabilities that
some of these um, you know, uhtools have, right?
So using sensor data to predictwhen uh a machine is gonna
(27:58):
fail, understanding what a harddrive might be ready to fail.
So I think the predictive typeof that uh type of capabilities
that are coming out every dayare gonna really transform the
business.
Um, you know, you guysmentioned earlier about threat
detection, right?
Identifying either unusualpatterns or behaviors that can
indicate that a cyber attack isimminent or that a cyber threat
(28:18):
is currently happening, orthere's maybe operational issues
that you need to address.
So I think you'll see more umadvancements in terms of like
real-time monitoring of thosesystems, the control systems,
ICS, GATA, um, or other OTdevices or assets for different
anomalies.
Uh, you're gonna be able topredict how to defend some of
(28:39):
those machines where thepotential failures or breaches
uh might occur by analyzinghistorical data, but also the
real-time live data that mightbe coming into those systems.
And then you're gonna see alot, and we talk about this on a
different side of our business,our MSP business, is really the
automation of response.
So a gentic AI driving umworkflows, they'll autonomously
(29:02):
triage incidents.
They'll check with thecompliance requirements, they'll
follow that disaster recoveryplan that Ryan mentioned
earlier.
Hopefully, it's not written ona sticky note and it's actually
documented in the system.
Uh, it can simulate attackscenarios, it can eliminate the
need for some humanintervention.
All that comes with risk, allthis stuff needs to be vetted
(29:24):
out, right?
If an OEM that we work with islooking to even just upgrade
something in their operations,operating system or move over to
our new version of thesoftware.
I mean, Ryan can speak this, itcan take them a year to two
years to validate that and testit very rigorously across the
different components that theyoperate with.
So for me, those are the mainareas that we're already seeing
(29:44):
some of these changes takeplace.
And I'd say the last part isreally um AI forcing more of
that conversation of pulling ITand OT together.
You talked to some of theseguys in the different
departments within the samecompany a few years ago.
There was not muchcommunication happening between
them.
There's much more collaborationtoday, and you're seeing some
of those processes,capabilities, um, um, best
(30:08):
practices be imported to eitherside.
Ryan Davis (30:11):
And and something to just add on to that.
So, not even speaking to theAI, you know, capabilities that
maybe Acronis or HubTech has,but just the impact on the
overall industry.
So there's this concept uhcalled industry 4.0.
And it's basically a referenceto the fourth industrial
revolution, which is ongoingnow.
And what they mean by industry4.0 is essentially the
(30:34):
utilization of uh AI or othertools to analyze big data.
And in order to enable theseIndustry 4.0 initiatives, they
have to do digitaltransformation to interconnect
whether it's an individualfactory or their set of
factories.
This is the concept of smartfactories.
And so the legacy way ofcompletely isolating the
(30:58):
environments and having no sortof networking or communication
doesn't really work when theyneed to be able to extract the
data to do analysis of your bigdata to identify areas for
optimization, right?
So industry 4.0 and the use ofAI to analyze data to make
better decisions, what that'sdoing is it's driving digital
(31:18):
transformation initiatives tointerconnect these different
areas of their OT environments.
And that's increasing theattack surface, right?
That's creating morevulnerabilities in order to be
able to derive the benefits ofAI.
And that creates a tremendousopportunity for a service
provider community that can addexpertise for these customers,
(31:39):
right?
And so as they increase theirattack surface, they need to
increase their investments inprotection to be able to make
sure that they're still asreliable in this new world.
And so a customer previouslythat may have, oh, they're just
gonna have their OEM come in,service that local network and
leave.
Well, they should still dothat, but they also need to have
(31:59):
someone centrally orchestratingan overall uh OT cyber approach
to make sure that if somethinggets in here and now it has the
ability to transition acrosstheir network other areas, they
can respond to thatappropriately.
So AI has almost driven a lotof other infrastructure changes
to allow them to analyze andextract the data that is driving
(32:21):
other investments in cyberhygiene within OT environments.
Host (32:26):
Cool.
Chris Daggett (32:27):
So I think to add to that, one quick thing.
Um, you know, from a complianceperspective, NIST has recently
released some updated guideguidance on securing AI.
And you know, I I highlyrecommend that folks are you
know looking at that guidanceand applying you know the these
(32:47):
concepts to to their uh OTenvironments.
Um you know, it's super, superimportant.
You know, at Hub, we'reactually going through an
exercise right now around thatNIST guidance, and it's it's
definitely brought up some uhsome some food for thought um
you know regarding adjustingthings on our end.
Host (33:07):
So okay.
Well, I think you were talkingabout a little bit.
This might be a little bit of anaive question.
So most of my questions areprobably naive, but um is there
when you go into enterprises ororganizations, is there a
separate IT team and a separateOT team, or is it just like one
group um together or are theyseparated?
(33:27):
Depends.
Chris Daggett (33:29):
Yeah, it depends.
Sometimes the maintenance uhteam would handle the OT stuff,
and I you know, the IT stuffwould be handled by you know IT.
Um, but you know, now that youknow Ryan had brought you know
brought to light that you knowthings are merging together, and
what I envision moving forwardis IT is gonna have a larger
(33:51):
stake in you know managing thoseenvironments um and ensuring
that they're secure andavailable.
Host (34:01):
So you you see it evolving more to I the the IT
professionals there will startto take on a bigger role.
Chris Daggett (34:08):
Yep.
Host (34:10):
Okay.
Chris Daggett (34:11):
At least that's my two.
I don't know if the other guysagree or disagree.
Ryan Davis (34:15):
Yeah, I like like I said earlier, I I think it's
it's really about taking thebest practices that you get in
IT in terms of proper enterpriseIT service management and all
the principles that go with it,but applying it in a reasonable,
rational way to OT.
So not just doing what you'redoing on the IT side and doing
(34:36):
it to OT, but you develop a setof OT practices that works for
OT, that you leverage as much ofthe principles from IT as
possible.
I mean, they wantstandardization, they want
consistency as much as possible.
That allows for scale, right?
But you know the most effectiveuh OT programs recognize that
(35:00):
you you can't just lift andshift what you're doing over
here and try and apply it to OT.
You need to customize it.
Chris Daggett (35:06):
So it's not a one-time solve kind of thing.
Ryan Davis (35:09):
Yeah, it's taking that expertise and then
modifying it to apply it to thenew environment properly.
Host (35:16):
So I I know the world is gonna look a lot different in
five and ten years, but I mean,where is this thing going?
What is the future of OT looklike?
I I mean, 10 years I'llprobably be dead, so I don't
know if it matters.
But you know, like say say,like in in a few years, where's
this thing going, guys?
Like, you know, start with Pat.
(35:36):
Like, what does the future looklike?
Patrick Hurley (35:39):
Well, I mean, I think you're seeing it in the
current economy, right?
You're seeing the jobs reportscome out, you're seeing all
these companies announcing alltheir AI initiatives, the huge
investments in NVIDIA that'sbeen wrapping around to ChatGPT
and all these otherorganizations.
So I think at some point you'regonna start to see a uh a drill
down in terms of the actualefficiency and productivity
(36:02):
gains, right?
And that's number one.
Number two, you're gonna see acontinued um you know,
investment into reducingcybersecurity risks.
So you're gonna see uhorganizations continue to talk
about that convergence thatChris and Ryan were just
speaking to, and needing tostill have some of that required
um, you know, uh intelligenceon either side of the fence,
(36:27):
whether it's IT or OT.
And then you need to considerthe impact of the workforce in
general, right?
I think uh the next five years,AI is supposed to generate
something like 170 million newjobs, but it's also gonna kill
somewhere between 90 and 100million jobs globally, right?
And some of those will be inIT, some of those will be in OT
(36:48):
because you'll see thatconvergence happen.
So I think that uh economicallyis the major consideration um
that you need to play in here,and AI is a major driver of how
companies are making decisionstoday and how they're able to
leverage all of that, not justto produce their widgets in a
more efficient, effective, lessrisky manner, um, but also in
(37:09):
terms of how they sell them, howthey market them.
Um it's really a very quicklyevolving time we're in.
Host (37:16):
So so with AI, uh and and me, you know, I don't want to
just focus on AI, but with allthis stuff potentially
eliminating a lot of repetitivejobs, what would you guys
recommend kids focus on andstudy in school?
Because these entry-level jobsaren't really there and I think
they're suffering the most.
I I mean that's a little bit ofa political question, but what
(37:37):
what do you guys think?
Like where if you your kidsgoing to college now, what we or
about to store college, whatwould you tell them to study?
Jump on that AI bandwagon.
It's not going anywhere.
Patrick Hurley (37:49):
They've got to understand technology, right?
And and AI is now a standardpart of that conversation around
technology.
Um, and the speed at which isit it's evolving is only
accelerated by AI and machinelearning.
So that's that's definitely anarea.
I think they need to be it's abit off topic, but they need to
be financially um educated.
Right.
I think when when probably whenwe grew up, home economics
(38:11):
wasn't really about homeeconomics, it was about how do
you make a pancake.
Right.
And I think there's there needsto be more of that financial um
education happening, startingat a very early age, so so kids
understand uh the importance ofthat over the long term.
Um but I think generallytechnology is something that
kids need to be understandingand and developing their brains
around.
Host (38:33):
Okay.
I was I was gonna tell my kidsto be drone pilots or something.
I thought that would beinteresting.
But that's gonna go away also.
We need drone pilots.
They have trifle drones.
No, you're right.
You're right.
It's uh it's interesting.
So it's like, what do what arethese kids?
I guess that if they're notscientist, you know, if they
don't understand technology,there's they're kind of screwed
unless they want to become aplumber or something like that,
(38:54):
which you know.
Patrick Hurley (38:55):
Yeah, the trades are probably gonna be one of
the last impacted, I think,areas by that.
But think of um like digitalmarketing creation, right?
That seems to be an area that'sgonna be quickly wound down.
I think Coca-Cola this year hadtheir first their Christmas
commercial, was done entirely byAI.
It didn't use a single humanother than the person asking the
questions and the prompts tobuild it.
(39:16):
So I think you'll see that typeof rejection.
Certain industries will beimpacted faster and more
dramatically, but over longterm, um, you know, you're gonna
need those Elon transformermachines that your house and
unplug your toilet for you.
But that's I think another 10to 15 years down the road.
Host (39:33):
Okay.
So so then with that, you know,let we let's go around the horn
here, though.
Like, so so starting withChris, what excites you the most
about the future of OT?
Like uh and NIT convergence,like so what's what do you see
as the most exciting thing?
Chris Daggett (39:50):
I think just the adoption of you know AI and you
know, you're gonna see more uhon a topic called quantum
computing.
Um, you know, that's That'sgoing to be a big, big topic
moving forward.
And quantum computing isactually going to dwarf AI in
many cases.
So, you know, thesesupercomputers that are coming
(40:10):
out that are going to be readilyavailable to folks.
Um, you know, the the level ofautomation and the amount of uh
data processing and data miningand you know that all will
assist in providing greatoutcomes uh for businesses.
And, you know, we'll be able toget you know to our desired
(40:33):
state quicker.
Um, but you know, it it comeswith a learning curve.
You know, everybody's gonnaneed to reskill, um, you know,
including everybody on thiscall.
You know, it's we will allleverage AI in one way, shape,
or form to help with our job.
And it's just gonna get easierand easier, you know, as we
understand these tools.
(40:54):
But, you know, the evolution ofAI is uh probably the you know
the big thing that I'm mostexcited about.
You know, it's really taken ourindustry and our everybody's
day-to-day lives by storm.
Um it's a huge topic.
We're all in the thick of it,we're all figuring it out
together.
Um you know, there's a lot ofopportunity um around artificial
(41:16):
intelligence and how it'sapplied to our day day-to-day
life.
Host (41:21):
Okay.
Patrick Hurley (41:22):
Pat?
Yeah, I mean, all the stuffthat Chris mentioned there is
spot on.
All of the all of the AI stuffthat's happening, all the
machine learning that'shappening, um, it's creating
massive, massive amounts ofdata.
And all that data needs to beprotected.
So for us, selfishly right nowis the reason why we've been
here for so long is because wesee that opportunity, we see uh
(41:46):
data exploding in growth and theneed to protect that data
becoming a priority fororganizations, uh, specifically
within OT.
Uh, you're definitely seeingthat they're becoming
increasingly exposed to cyberrisks, which creates an
opportunity for us, it createsan opportunity for hub tech,
that creates an opportunity forthe workers um, you know, at
those organizations to be aheadof the curve in terms of their
(42:08):
understanding of what they needto do to protect it.
Um, so I think from thatperspective, we're kind of in
the right market um to be ableto capitalize on that.
I think the OT cybersecuritymarket is supposed to be growing
about 15-16% over the next fiveto six years, which is
obviously faster than theconvergence is happening.
So that to me is exciting, andthat just creates opportunity.
(42:29):
Whether or not AI is going toreplace all of our jobs later.
Right now, we have anopportunity to I think go and uh
and leverage them.
Host (42:36):
Yeah, I mean, chat GTP became like my friend.
It's my only friend at thispoint.
It's it's it's really been niceto talk to you.
Always nice to me, always supercool.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it just is you're you'reno, uh Adam, you're a good guy.
You're not a bad guy.
So, so Ryan, what excites youthe most?
Ryan Davis (42:56):
Well, I you know, I I referenced the industry 400,
fourth industrial revolutionearlier, and you know, all the
possibilities that exist fromit, the quantum computing, AI, I
mean, all ultimately, you know,this is unlocking a new era of
efficiency production, and ithas the potential to impact
almost every single industry,right?
(43:17):
So you we may talk about how ityou know impacts more
efficiency and you know, powerproduction or manufacturing, but
you know, you just walk into aBurger King and now they've got
kiosks instead of people takingyour order, right?
So the ability or the potentialfor it to impact like point of
sale, um, those systems need tobe protected.
Smart cities, not just abuilding, now as they're
(43:40):
building highways, they havesensors where they can monitor
the traffic, right?
And they can analyze if wechange things here or there, how
is that gonna impact trafficflows?
So all of this IoT and smartcomputing needs compute behind
it, and then they're runningapplications to analyze it, and
those applications need to beprotected, right?
So I believe all of thesetrends are gonna drive both an
(44:03):
increase in infrastructure thatneeds to be protected, and more
important, infrastructure thatthey're going to protect because
of the cost if it goes offline.
And so I think this is a greatspace to be in, as you know, not
only do we have greattechnology and great partners,
but we're in a great space wherewe're gonna be able to ride
that wave of growth for theforeseeable future.
Host (44:24):
Cool.
So, with that, we're gonna haveto start wrapping it up, guys.
We really appreciate everythingthat you guys have been talking
about.
I think it's an importanttopic.
I think it's super interesting,and you guys are saving the
world, protecting the world, andwe really appreciate your
advice today.
Um, I also wanted to make surethat the folks that are
listening understand thatAcronis is a great partner of
(44:46):
HubTech and they're alsosponsoring this.
Uh, so thank you very much fortoday's help.
And we wanted to play a quick15-second video and then we're
gonna end it.
So if we can get that teed up,Maria, uh, it would be great.
People can go crazy trying tostop a cyber attack.
A cronet take the headache outof IT security.
(45:15):
Wow.
Awesome commercial.
So thank you very much, and umand let's uh let's keep on going
and growing.
Announcement (45:26):
Thanks for having us, Venom.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in to theBeyond the Firewall podcast
powered by HubTech.
If you found this conversationuseful, follow or subscribe
wherever you listen to stayupdated on new episodes.
For more information aboutHubTech's IT solutions and
services, please visithubtech.com.
Please drive the future by team.
Powered leaders take to work.
Welcome to the Beyond theFirewall Podcast.
Powered by HubTech, where we gopast the headlines to talk with
technology leaders, industryexperts, and IT practitioners,
shaping how we work, live, andlive.
Let's get into today's episode.
Host (00:25):
Episode of Beyond the Firewall Podcast, powered by
HubTech.
I'm your host, Adam Shaffer,and today we're unpacking a
topic that is critical to thesystems that power our world,
operational technology, or OT.
OT runs the physical processesbehind manufacturing lines,
hospitals, utilities,transportation systems, smart
(00:46):
buildings, and increasingly,it's intersecting with IT in
ways that create newpossibilities and new risks.
To help us break this down,we've invited our friends from
Acronis.
So let me introduce the guestsjoining us today.
First, we have Chris Daggett,Director of Managed Services and
Security at HubTech, and alsoour co-host.
(01:07):
Second, we have Pat Hurley,Vice President and General
Manager of America's at Acronis.
Pat is a veteran technologyexecutive with over 17 years at
Acronis, leading one of theindustry's most recognized
brands in data protection,backup, cyber resilience, and
more.
He's an expert in scalingenterprise and MSP go-to-market
(01:28):
strategies, and he spent hiscareer helping organizations
stay secure and productive in arapidly evolving digital
landscape.
And lastly, Ryan Davis, seniordirector of enterprise sales at
Acronis, who leads global teamssupporting the world's largest
commercial accounts and majorOEM partners.
Ryan brings a unique frontlineview into how the biggest
(01:50):
enterprises are approaching OT,IT convergence, cyber
protection, and digitalmodernization.
With Pat and Ryan, we're goingto explore what OT really is,
how it integrates with IT, whyit matters to every industry,
what organizations must do tokeep their operations safe,
resilient, and future ready.
(02:11):
So with that, guys, let's jumpin.
How's it going, everybody?
Thanks for joining today.
Um, it was a long intro, butguys, before we go into it, did
I miss anything on your awesomeintroductions?
Patrick Hurley (02:28):
I think you never know.
You know, you could have saidPat Hurley's sales, that would
have probably summed it uppretty pretty.
Host (02:35):
No, you guys are the best.
We want to make sure everybodyknows who you are.
So, with that, let's get intoit.
I mean, I I think the biggestthing is, and and I didn't
really understand it before Istarted getting involved and
hanging around with Chris, butyeah, you know, Pat, can you
just help us define what is OTand what does it mean?
What's the difference betweenthat and IT?
Patrick Hurley (02:57):
Sure.
So uh the way I look at it isOT really refers to the kind of
the manufacturing of widgets.
So the hardware, the softwaresystems that monitor and control
the physical devices andprocesses that exist out there
in the world.
If you compare that to what youmight call traditional IT, I
look at that as like managingdata, managing business
applications.
(03:17):
Um, operational technology ismore focused on the operation of
and successful operation ofmachinery, uh, industrial
equipment, criticalinfrastructure, right?
They're the backbone of whatyou guys see in a day-to-day
basis operating in the worldtoday, production lines,
utilities, smart buildings,really ensuring that physical
processes run safely, they runefficiently, efficiently, and
(03:40):
run reliably at the end of theday.
Host (03:42):
So it is IT, but it's really, it's really the building
blocks of of these smartbuildings.
It's really the processes thatare happening in the background.
And and so, so Ryan, from anenterprise and OEM perspective,
how are the largest companiesthinking about OT today?
I mean, like, do they eventhink about it in their world,
(04:03):
or is it something that you talkto them about?
Ryan Davis (04:05):
Uh well, they're definitely thinking about it
more and more.
And uh a lot of that is drivenby the regulatory environment
that is constantly changing andnow bringing attention to this
area, the business thatpreviously might have been uh a
little bit of a black box.
But you know, to your commenton it, it's like IT, uh, but you
(04:27):
know, Rob Lee has a really gooddistinction around IT are the
systems that uh help you managethe business.
OT is why you're a business.
So you know, with the wholeITOT convergence concept, it's
starting to make theenvironments look similar.
But OT is everything that'sinvolved in the production,
whether it's the IoT, which maybe simple sensors or supervisory
(04:51):
control systems that actuallymonitor and manage the processes
themselves.
So as I alluded to earlier,from an enterprise perspective,
the OEMs are the ones that aretypically providing these
systems.
But from an enterpriseperspective, you know,
historically there is a littlebit of kind of a black box type
perspective.
Hey, we'll have our keyautomation supplier manage that
(05:11):
for us.
But as the regulatoryenvironment is changing, and
you're starting to see thingslike uh in Europe, they
introduced the CRA CyberResilience Act.
The US have had someregulations from an FBA
perspective or NERCSIP and bulkpower, where now they're
requiring businesses to haveplans, to have programs, to have
(05:32):
disaster recovery plans, tohave proactive risk management
and cybersecurity.
And that's forcing largeenterprises or even up to
medium-sized businesses to wraptheir arms and have programs
where they're actually managingthese environments proactively.
So it's been a really goodchange over the last few years.
Host (05:49):
So so they have to have a written plan too.
Is that what this is about,too?
For these regulations?
Ryan Davis (05:55):
It really depends uh on the regular regulations.
So NURCSIP is for bulk power.
So if you're like an oil andgas company or you're a power
utility, then yes, they need tohave a written disaster recovery
plan that they then follow.
Um NURC SIP, I don't rememberthe number of controls, 11, 12,
it it it's it's changing.
Um, but they're they're verypeculiar and extends everywhere
(06:18):
from cyber, which might becybersecurity, it might be
business continuity, but also tolike physical security.
How do you get access to thebuilding and perimeter security?
So um, you know, and again, Imentioned FDA, that would be
tied to really anything that'sbeing put in the human body,
whether it's food and beverageor whether it's pharmaceutical.
So those regulations might looka little bit different than if
(06:41):
you're uh I don't know, a toycompany, right?
Manufacturing some consumerproducts.
But um, in addition to theregulatory environment, we're
seeing current events that driveinvestment and drive attention
in this area.
And I'll point to two examplesJaguar Land Rover, um, their
production was impacted formonths.
They actually had to get like abailout from the UK government
(07:04):
related to a cyber incident.
And currently, ongoing inJapan, uh Asahi, the uh a very
large brewery or distillingcompany, they make one of the
most popular beers in Japan,their production is still
impacted, tied to uh a cyberevent.
So, you know, the regulatoryenvironment has really at scale
(07:26):
started to drive activity anddrive investment and focus in
this space.
But we're also seeing uh thesesort of outages that prompt
industries to start takingaction.
So, you know, not petcha was agood example, I think 2017, that
drove a lot of investment.
But then you see, hey, therehasn't been as big of a
(07:47):
large-scale event over theyears, and then things like
Jaguar Land Rover and Asahireally galvanize industries to
take action to make sure thatthey're not the next.
Host (07:57):
Yeah, no, I heard a lot about the Japanese brewery.
They were taking orders on thephone and writing them on paper.
They were struggling to get theorders out.
It was, it was, I mean, theyfigured out how to manually do
it, but it was painful.
And and so, so Chris, I mean,you talk to a lot of clients,
um, but both public sector andand private sector all day long.
You know, what of what do theyknow about OT?
(08:19):
What do they think about OT,and what what what are they not
understanding about OT thatyou're trying to bring to their
attention?
Chris Daggett (08:27):
So it's really important to uh understand OT
and how to secure it uhappropriately.
You know, many, many folksrefer to OT as anything on the
plant four floor.
Um, but you know, there aredefinitely some common gaps
there.
You know, it's thinking, youknow, a basic firewall uh equal
segmentation, it doesn't, youknow, um you actually need to
(08:50):
break things down into you knowzones and conduits, meaning, you
know, security domains and thenhow uh the data is uh you know
moving from point A to point B.
Um, you know, because typicallythose um you know those OT
environments are air gapped andlocked down.
So understanding how tocommunicate communicate and
connect to them is superimportant.
(09:11):
Um you know, many, many assumethat OEM networks are secure by
default.
You know, many manufacturers,just like our regular IT
environments, are you know, theyrelease patches and and things
like that, and there aresecurity considerations that you
need to take into account.
You know, secure configurationsare super important.
Um, you know, making sure youhave backups of those secure
(09:34):
configurations uh in the eventof you know some downtime is is
critical.
Um but you know, essentially,you know, you need to treat
availability like it's uptime.
You know, OT downtime equatesto production loss and safety
risk.
You know, as Pat and uh Ryanhad alluded to, you know, these
(09:56):
are the systems that make theworld go round.
So if there's any kind ofdowntime to them, they have a
direct impact on many day-to-daythings that we take for
granted.
Um and another critical gap isnot realizing, you know, asset
visibility.
Um, you know, that's stuffserious.
You need to understandeverything, every asset that's
(10:17):
in your OT environment and howit's communicating.
So, you know, you know, toPat's point, IT and OT are very
um, they're they're differentthings and they need to be
treated as such.
Host (10:29):
So so is OT harder to secure than IT?
I mean, is it more complicatedto to make sure that you have
the the security in place forthis?
So if you think about it, Adam,right?
Chris Daggett (10:42):
If in a typical IT environment, all right, we'll
take security patching, forexample, you know, the desktops,
you know, servers, things likethat.
We typically will put these ona regular um cadence and
schedule maintenance windows andthings like that.
Doing that in an OT environmentis a challenge.
(11:02):
You know, if you try to patchan electrical grid, you know,
without having any impact, youknow, it's just it's not very
realistic.
So, you know, many are underthe I'm you know under the way
of just, hey, you know, if it'snot broke, don't fix it.
So and and the life, you know,the lifespan of anything in OT
(11:23):
is like 10 to 15 years, whereas,you know, you're dealing with a
lot of legacy stuff, and youknow, the environments
themselves are, you know,they're they're locked down.
So, you know, the ITenvironments are locked down to
an extent, but it's important tohave that net network
segmentation in place, make surethat you know you understand
who's connecting to theenvironment and how, and
(11:45):
ensuring that the appropriateyou know security controls are
in place.
Host (11:50):
And and so with OT, I mean, and and anybody kind of
jump in, Ryan or Pat, Pat.
Um are there ways that they cantest um you know the OT
systems, you know, you know,while the OT systems are
running?
Like you can't really shut themdown, but is there is there a
way to test them while they'rerunning?
Ryan Davis (12:10):
Yeah, so I'll just piggyback on Chris and answer
your question.
So in terms of testing, there'sthis really big movement to uh
a concept called a digital twin,which is um you know
essentially creating kind ofreplicas of the production
environments in areas that allowyou to do whether it's data
extraction um or kind of testingand validation.
(12:32):
Now, that being said, there'sonly so much that that applies.
If you're gonna make a changeto a production system,
typically it has to bere-qualified or revalidated,
depending on the industry you'rein.
They use differentterminologies.
But to Chris's point, if you'redealing with something on the
electrical grid, right, and achange on the system can take it
down, which means people don'thave power.
The prerequisites for doinganything are much higher than in
(12:56):
IT, right?
And so again, typically that'scalled like qualification or or
validation.
So um, to your question on isit different, does it need to be
managed differently?
Absolutely.
And that is because you'regonna have a much more
heterogeneous set ofinfrastructure.
To Chris's point, things 10, 15years old, right?
(13:18):
You're not gonna see XP in acorporate IT environment, right?
IT can just say we got to getrid of it.
Well, if that machine isattached to a robot that costs a
million dollars, well, unlessthat they can somehow upgrade
that machine and have it stillwork with that robot, they're
not gonna do it, right?
So it takes different tools tobe able to manage that sort of
(13:39):
environment as well as differentprocesses, because you have to
recognize that you don'tnecessarily have the same uh
authority or the same ability tojust unilaterally make
decisions on what happens onthose computers because of the
sensitivity to them and becauseof the potential impact on
production.
So uh what we see, most of ourcustomers that are most
(14:00):
successful in having a modern uhcybersecurity posture or really
good hygiene from a cyberperspective in OT, they have
dedicated stacks, separatestacks.
So that doesn't mean they don'tuse any expertise or any of the
learnings from IT, but it'staking the best practices,
taking the expertise from the ITside, but then applying it
(14:25):
rationally where it makes senseto OT and also recognizing where
it makes sense to deviate.
So that's really the key tohaving a successful program.
And to me, that's theculmination of this concept of
ITOT convergence, which has beengoing on for many, many years.
The original kind of form ofthat was well, let's try and
(14:45):
make OT look like IT.
And it caused a lot of frictionbetween the two sides and a lot
of issues.
But now what we're seeing isthe ITOT convergence really
means let's bring expertise fromIT and expertise from OT to
build a dedicated program thataccounts for the best practices
of both sides.
Patrick Hurley (15:05):
And that convergence, um, some data that
I was reading a couple of weeksago, that convergence, that
market for ITOT is going toexceed one trillion dollars by
2030.
It's about an eight to ninepercent kegger on that.
And I would say if you do haveXP in your environment, call
Chris Daggett at how it'sactually people still have XP in
their environment.
Oh yeah.
(15:26):
Come on.
Host (15:28):
Oh my.
Patrick Hurley (15:29):
Well, the thing is, Adam, I remember even a year
or two ago, I remember seeingit at airports.
You'd see like blue screens andit would have an XP logo
instead.
Oh right.
Chris Daggett (15:38):
I mean, another thing, Adam, you know, one thing
to take into account, these OTdevices are not necessarily
connected to the internet.
So they can run these legacy uhoperating systems.
Um, you know, as long asthey're up, they're they're
fine.
Um, they typically don't um,you know, patch them too often,
um, and they're not susceptibleto uh you know these remote
(16:03):
risks um that IT is typically umyou know susceptible to because
it's in such an isolatedenvironment and there are
controlled connectivity methods.
Host (16:13):
Okay, that's pretty cool.
So changing it, I mean wetalked a little bit about this,
but so so Pat, like whatindustries are most reliant on
OT?
We talked about smart buildingsand the utilities, but but like
you know, where do we see themajority of OT kind of living
and and and the most reliance onit?
Patrick Hurley (16:32):
I mean, it's like it's kind of the backbone
of the U.S.
economy, right?
It's what we manufacture, thestuff we make.
So think all the factories, theassembly lines, but then drug
manufacturing, chemicalmanufacturing, oil and gas
production, uh power plants,everything from nuclear to coal
to water, etc.
Uh think of the healthcareindustry, hospitals, but all
(16:54):
those medical devices thatthey're plugging into you to
figure out what's wrong withyou.
Those are all part of the OT umstory.
Uh transportation, railways,airports, logistics providers.
How do UPS, Amazon, and FedExmake sure that all these
packages arrive within 24 hoursor less when you order them
online?
It's a significant amount of OTreliance there.
(17:15):
Uh Ryan mentioned this earlier,utilities, right?
Water treatment plants,electrical grids.
Um, and you mentioned smartbuilding.
This is probably, I guess, oneof the fastest areas of growth
is think of the fire systems,the security systems, think
about um municipalinfrastructure.
All these areas are reallybuilt on uh having a reliable,
(17:36):
you know, OT story in place thatthey're they're heavily reliant
on operational technologycapabilities.
Host (17:44):
So, you know, when I think of IT, I think of all the
hackers out there.
Uh I I don't even know if Iwant to call it hackers like
threat actors, uh, whatever youwant, what whatever the proper
uh words are for them.
But are are are are peopletrying to hack into these OT
systems or are they trying tojust more hack into the PCs and
and and the servers more thanthey're trying to hack into
(18:08):
these these uh OT processes?
You know, I was just watching,I don't know, did you guys ever
see Mr.
Robot?
That is the weirdest movie.
It's like a series, but I meanthey they hack into everything.
Like, like, so are they arethey breaking into this now or
is this harder?
Chris Daggett (18:24):
Recently, Adam, uh, there was a case on 60
Minutes.
Uh the town of Littleton inMassachusetts was actually uh
their OT infrastructure wasbreached by China, and China was
sitting in their OT environmentfor about six months unnoticed.
So, you know, it's it's a realthing that we're dealing with.
And, you know, these thesebusinesses and and
(18:46):
municipalities, you know,whatever the case may be, if
anybody has OT in theirenvironment, they really need to
understand how they'reconnecting to it and how they're
getting out, you know.
So, you know, that there's alot of there's risk everywhere
at the end of the day.
Patrick Hurley (19:00):
Uh the convergence of IoT into this OT
store, think you're in a Waymoor uh Lyft or an Uber, you're in
a self-drapping car.
That's something you want tomake sure it's not hacked,
right?
You want to get to that, youwant to get there safely.
Um, and those are the they whatmight have may have seemed as
like outlandish thoughts of justa few years ago are now things
(19:20):
that these organizations have totake extremely seriously and
have the right types of uh layerprotection plans in place to
make sure that they'reconsistent.
Host (19:27):
Even with that, Pat, I don't know if I'm getting in a
way mo.
Patrick Hurley (19:29):
I mean that that that seems like I took my first
phone in uh in Phoenix lastweek.
Ryan Davis (19:34):
I felt very phenomenal drivers.
Yeah, they're really phenomenaldrivers.
Host (19:40):
I'm gonna let it mature a little bit before I go in there.
But it but you actually did it.
You there was no driver.
Patrick Hurley (19:46):
No driver.
You show up to the car, you geta notification on your phone,
it drives right past you, itdoesn't know who you are.
Drives right past you, and youclick a button, it opens the
door, unlocks the door, you getin, you press the button to go.
It gives you some safetyreminders, tells you not to
touch the steering wheel.
And then five minutes later, Iwas at our office in Tempe, safe
and sound, perfectly controlledtemperature environment.
I was able to, you know,integrate my Spotify app to play
(20:09):
my music and the ride over.
It was a lovely case.
Host (20:12):
There were no close calls like uh people honking at you or
anything.
No.
Chris Daggett (20:18):
Were you sitting in the actual driver's seat?
Patrick Hurley (20:20):
I was stepping back.
I wanted to feel the realexclusive experience, like I was
wanting to get on a veryspecial rider.
Host (20:27):
Okay.
I didn't mean to you know getout of the main topic, but I
always see these things aroundtown and I'm scared to death of
them.
But I don't think my kids aregonna have to learn how to
drive, is really what I thinkthis is all about.
They're gonna be just doingWaymo's or getting driverless
cars.
So anyway, getting back gettingback to the the the OT.
I mean Chris, is this now a bigpart?
(20:51):
And I don't want to just youknow be make this an
advertisement for HubTech or aCronus, but it is it is this
like now a big selling feature,like you're going in and and
marketing and selling thatyou'll help people with their
their OT?
Chris Daggett (21:06):
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it there's a there's aneed out there for sure.
And if you know folks are notlooking at their OT environments
on a regular basis, you know,to ensure that you know things
are locked down and you know theappropriate access controls are
in place and networksegmentation and and things like
that, you know, that's a majorrisk to not only you know to the
(21:30):
to the company, but topotentially you know, millions
of people.
Um you know, it's it's adifferent day that we live in.
You know, we there's a cyberwar happening every day, all
day, that people are not awareof.
So they're they're casting avery wide net.
And you know, these IoT the IoTand OT devices that are out
(21:55):
there, they've kind of been umovershadowed um in many cases
from a security perspective,than traditional IT is.
You know, there's been this bigspotlight on cybersecurity and
how it applies to IT, but youknow, it's really kind of status
quo on the OT side of things.
(22:16):
And with the IoT devices,nobody's really taken those into
consideration as potentialentry points for uh you know
these hackers because they'renot getting secured.
Patrick Hurley (22:26):
Yeah, ring doorbells, baby monitors, your
refrigerator is now connected tothe internet.
Um, there's a lot of entrypoints.
It just the the threatlandscape continues to spread.
The attack service gets widerand wider every day as we
advance in technology.
Host (22:41):
So so without making it too much of a commercial, like
you know, we we follow Acronisand you guys are into so much
stuff.
What what what does Acronis do?
Like, how do they helporganizations with OT?
Because I know you guys are allover backup and and cyber
protection and all that stuff,but is there is there a specific
(23:01):
play for OT?
Ryan Davis (23:03):
Yeah, well, you know, Acronis helps our
customers in a variety of ways.
Uh, and and being that we havebeen focused on this space for
you know, going on 15 yearsreally gives us kind of some
unique advantages.
And so you reference the backupand restore um without going
into too much detail, Acronisreally has market leading
capabilities for businesscontinuity and fast recovery of
(23:24):
industrial control systems.
And this is played out by wehave partnerships with almost
all of the leading industrialcontrol system manufacturers,
the big global automationvendors that make uh distributed
control systems, SCADA, HMIs,and the different devices.
Right.
And so there's a couple ofreasons why Cronus has really
become the default beyond justhow fast and easy it is for a
(23:47):
Cronus to uh recover thesesystems back to working
condition.
But because of our knowledge ofthe space and our understanding
of the heterogeneous nature ofthese environments, we have
maintained a very broad supportfor different operating systems
and hardware types.
And so most other vendorsreally have more of an IT lens
where they're thinking about itfrom the traditional IT
(24:09):
perspective.
So they're trying to get rid ofsupport for old operating
systems as fast as possiblebecause it makes their lives
easier, right?
And we're what that does totheir end customers then, if
you're looking at an OTenvironment and you're a
manufacturer that's got 50plants and the life cycle of a
lot of those systems are 10, 15,25 years, you've got a lot of
legacy stuff.
And so when they look at othervendors, those vendors are
(24:32):
covering 50, 60, 70% of theirinfrastructure, right?
Meaning they've got largepercentages of their platforms
that are unsupported, right?
Meaning they would have to comeup with alternative manual
processes for large portions oftheir infrastructure.
Whereas Acronis can coverpretty much all of it, the most
of it.
Now, you were surprised thatyou heard that the XP is out
(24:55):
there.
I still hear Windows 2000.
I hear about random open VMS isone that I always like to talk
about because I never heard ofit before when a customer asked
me about it.
So we hear real legacy, reallyniche.
So even a Cronus may not do100%, but if we can get 99% of
your system covered, that meansyou're having to figure out a
(25:15):
manual workaround on much fewer,where you can spend your time
on automation, on the actualproduction of your good and
optimizing your operations, notfiguring out how to secure it.
Let a Cronus be that turnkeysolution.
Host (25:30):
Wow, so that was a good plug for Acronis.
Ryan Davis (25:35):
I've been here about 17 years, like Pat, right?
So we've been around a longtime.
And then the the only othertopic that I think is really
interesting, and we're seeingthis more as uh as kind of a
more recent uh evolution of ourutilization within these
customers.
A typical OT environment, a lotof these systems are sized to
serve a specific purpose.
So what I mean by that is theamount of memory, the amount of
(25:58):
CPU, right, processing, RAM, allof that is really designed for
the purpose that that machinewas was intended for, not to run
anti virus and your patchmanagement and your backup and
restore and your EDR and yourremote desktop and all that
other stuff, right?
So the modern stack has becomemuch more robust than it was,
(26:20):
you know, even five, 10 yearsago, much less 20 years ago.
And so Acronis's ability todeliver multiple services within
a single agent utilizes a lotless resources on the machine,
which impacts production a lotless.
So we're starting to see thatability for Acronis to
consolidate the stack intosingle solution has also been
(26:41):
appealing to a lot of our OTcustomers.
Host (26:44):
Okay, I mean that that's great.
Uh I mean, uh so I'm glad youtold us all about that.
I try I try not to do that, butI think it's it's worthwhile
for people to understand uh whatAcronis does.
And so thank you for explainingthat.
And and so now here's aquestion for maybe Pat or or
Chris, whoever wants to jump onit.
But where where like you know,so the big buzzwords are you
(27:06):
know cybersecurity and AI.
Where does AI fit into allthis?
Like, is there a play with AIand and OT?
Patrick Hurley (27:14):
You want to go first, Chris?
I got some stuff in my uhchamber here, but yeah, if you
have some stuff in the holster,you can you can take it.
Yeah, I mean it's definitelytransforming the entire
industry, it's transforming ourway of life, right?
Think about the things that weum do today that we automate in
the future.
So automate automation iscertainly something that's gonna
help um organizationsstreamline uh everything from
(27:35):
repetitive tasks to very complextasks for great proficiency.
So Ryan mentioned consolidationearlier.
I think consolidation andautomation are two areas where
um organizations are definitelygonna see that transforming.
Um think about all thepredictive capabilities that
some of these um, you know, uhtools have, right?
So using sensor data to predictwhen uh a machine is gonna
(27:58):
fail, understanding what a harddrive might be ready to fail.
So I think the predictive typeof that uh type of capabilities
that are coming out every dayare gonna really transform the
business.
Um, you know, you guysmentioned earlier about threat
detection, right?
Identifying either unusualpatterns or behaviors that can
indicate that a cyber attack isimminent or that a cyber threat
(28:18):
is currently happening, orthere's maybe operational issues
that you need to address.
So I think you'll see more umadvancements in terms of like
real-time monitoring of thosesystems, the control systems,
ICS, GATA, um, or other OTdevices or assets for different
anomalies.
Uh, you're gonna be able topredict how to defend some of
(28:39):
those machines where thepotential failures or breaches
uh might occur by analyzinghistorical data, but also the
real-time live data that mightbe coming into those systems.
And then you're gonna see alot, and we talk about this on a
different side of our business,our MSP business, is really the
automation of response.
So a gentic AI driving umworkflows, they'll autonomously
(29:02):
triage incidents.
They'll check with thecompliance requirements, they'll
follow that disaster recoveryplan that Ryan mentioned
earlier.
Hopefully, it's not written ona sticky note and it's actually
documented in the system.
Uh, it can simulate attackscenarios, it can eliminate the
need for some humanintervention.
All that comes with risk, allthis stuff needs to be vetted
(29:24):
out, right?
If an OEM that we work with islooking to even just upgrade
something in their operations,operating system or move over to
our new version of thesoftware.
I mean, Ryan can speak this, itcan take them a year to two
years to validate that and testit very rigorously across the
different components that theyoperate with.
So for me, those are the mainareas that we're already seeing
(29:44):
some of these changes takeplace.
And I'd say the last part isreally um AI forcing more of
that conversation of pulling ITand OT together.
You talked to some of theseguys in the different
departments within the samecompany a few years ago.
There was not muchcommunication happening between
them.
There's much more collaborationtoday, and you're seeing some
of those processes,capabilities, um, um, best
(30:08):
practices be imported to eitherside.
Ryan Davis (30:11):
And and something to just add on to that.
So, not even speaking to theAI, you know, capabilities that
maybe Acronis or HubTech has,but just the impact on the
overall industry.
So there's this concept uhcalled industry 4.0.
And it's basically a referenceto the fourth industrial
revolution, which is ongoingnow.
And what they mean by industry4.0 is essentially the
(30:34):
utilization of uh AI or othertools to analyze big data.
And in order to enable theseIndustry 4.0 initiatives, they
have to do digitaltransformation to interconnect
whether it's an individualfactory or their set of
factories.
This is the concept of smartfactories.
And so the legacy way ofcompletely isolating the
(30:58):
environments and having no sortof networking or communication
doesn't really work when theyneed to be able to extract the
data to do analysis of your bigdata to identify areas for
optimization, right?
So industry 4.0 and the use ofAI to analyze data to make
better decisions, what that'sdoing is it's driving digital
(31:18):
transformation initiatives tointerconnect these different
areas of their OT environments.
And that's increasing theattack surface, right?
That's creating morevulnerabilities in order to be
able to derive the benefits ofAI.
And that creates a tremendousopportunity for a service
provider community that can addexpertise for these customers,
(31:39):
right?
And so as they increase theirattack surface, they need to
increase their investments inprotection to be able to make
sure that they're still asreliable in this new world.
And so a customer previouslythat may have, oh, they're just
gonna have their OEM come in,service that local network and
leave.
Well, they should still dothat, but they also need to have
(31:59):
someone centrally orchestratingan overall uh OT cyber approach
to make sure that if somethinggets in here and now it has the
ability to transition acrosstheir network other areas, they
can respond to thatappropriately.
So AI has almost driven a lotof other infrastructure changes
to allow them to analyze andextract the data that is driving
(32:21):
other investments in cyberhygiene within OT environments.
Host (32:26):
Cool.
Chris Daggett (32:27):
So I think to add to that, one quick thing.
Um, you know, from a complianceperspective, NIST has recently
released some updated guideguidance on securing AI.
And you know, I I highlyrecommend that folks are you
know looking at that guidanceand applying you know the these
(32:47):
concepts to to their uh OTenvironments.
Um you know, it's super, superimportant.
You know, at Hub, we'reactually going through an
exercise right now around thatNIST guidance, and it's it's
definitely brought up some uhsome some food for thought um
you know regarding adjustingthings on our end.
Host (33:07):
So okay.
Well, I think you were talkingabout a little bit.
This might be a little bit of anaive question.
So most of my questions areprobably naive, but um is there
when you go into enterprises ororganizations, is there a
separate IT team and a separateOT team, or is it just like one
group um together or are theyseparated?
(33:27):
Depends.
Chris Daggett (33:29):
Yeah, it depends.
Sometimes the maintenance uhteam would handle the OT stuff,
and I you know, the IT stuffwould be handled by you know IT.
Um, but you know, now that youknow Ryan had brought you know
brought to light that you knowthings are merging together, and
what I envision moving forwardis IT is gonna have a larger
(33:51):
stake in you know managing thoseenvironments um and ensuring
that they're secure andavailable.
Host (34:01):
So you you see it evolving more to I the the IT
professionals there will startto take on a bigger role.
Chris Daggett (34:08):
Yep.
Host (34:10):
Okay.
Chris Daggett (34:11):
At least that's my two.
I don't know if the other guysagree or disagree.
Ryan Davis (34:15):
Yeah, I like like I said earlier, I I think it's
it's really about taking thebest practices that you get in
IT in terms of proper enterpriseIT service management and all
the principles that go with it,but applying it in a reasonable,
rational way to OT.
So not just doing what you'redoing on the IT side and doing
(34:36):
it to OT, but you develop a setof OT practices that works for
OT, that you leverage as much ofthe principles from IT as
possible.
I mean, they wantstandardization, they want
consistency as much as possible.
That allows for scale, right?
But you know the most effectiveuh OT programs recognize that
(35:00):
you you can't just lift andshift what you're doing over
here and try and apply it to OT.
You need to customize it.
Chris Daggett (35:06):
So it's not a one-time solve kind of thing.
Ryan Davis (35:09):
Yeah, it's taking that expertise and then
modifying it to apply it to thenew environment properly.
Host (35:16):
So I I know the world is gonna look a lot different in
five and ten years, but I mean,where is this thing going?
What is the future of OT looklike?
I I mean, 10 years I'llprobably be dead, so I don't
know if it matters.
But you know, like say say,like in in a few years, where's
this thing going, guys?
Like, you know, start with Pat.
(35:36):
Like, what does the future looklike?
Patrick Hurley (35:39):
Well, I mean, I think you're seeing it in the
current economy, right?
You're seeing the jobs reportscome out, you're seeing all
these companies announcing alltheir AI initiatives, the huge
investments in NVIDIA that'sbeen wrapping around to ChatGPT
and all these otherorganizations.
So I think at some point you'regonna start to see a uh a drill
down in terms of the actualefficiency and productivity
(36:02):
gains, right?
And that's number one.
Number two, you're gonna see acontinued um you know,
investment into reducingcybersecurity risks.
So you're gonna see uhorganizations continue to talk
about that convergence thatChris and Ryan were just
speaking to, and needing tostill have some of that required
um, you know, uh intelligenceon either side of the fence,
(36:27):
whether it's IT or OT.
And then you need to considerthe impact of the workforce in
general, right?
I think uh the next five years,AI is supposed to generate
something like 170 million newjobs, but it's also gonna kill
somewhere between 90 and 100million jobs globally, right?
And some of those will be inIT, some of those will be in OT
(36:48):
because you'll see thatconvergence happen.
So I think that uh economicallyis the major consideration um
that you need to play in here,and AI is a major driver of how
companies are making decisionstoday and how they're able to
leverage all of that, not justto produce their widgets in a
more efficient, effective, lessrisky manner, um, but also in
(37:09):
terms of how they sell them, howthey market them.
Um it's really a very quicklyevolving time we're in.
Host (37:16):
So so with AI, uh and and me, you know, I don't want to
just focus on AI, but with allthis stuff potentially
eliminating a lot of repetitivejobs, what would you guys
recommend kids focus on andstudy in school?
Because these entry-level jobsaren't really there and I think
they're suffering the most.
I I mean that's a little bit ofa political question, but what
(37:37):
what do you guys think?
Like where if you your kidsgoing to college now, what we or
about to store college, whatwould you tell them to study?
Jump on that AI bandwagon.
It's not going anywhere.
Patrick Hurley (37:49):
They've got to understand technology, right?
And and AI is now a standardpart of that conversation around
technology.
Um, and the speed at which isit it's evolving is only
accelerated by AI and machinelearning.
So that's that's definitely anarea.
I think they need to be it's abit off topic, but they need to
be financially um educated.
Right.
I think when when probably whenwe grew up, home economics
(38:11):
wasn't really about homeeconomics, it was about how do
you make a pancake.
Right.
And I think there's there needsto be more of that financial um
education happening, startingat a very early age, so so kids
understand uh the importance ofthat over the long term.
Um but I think generallytechnology is something that
kids need to be understandingand and developing their brains
around.
Host (38:33):
Okay.
I was I was gonna tell my kidsto be drone pilots or something.
I thought that would beinteresting.
But that's gonna go away also.
We need drone pilots.
They have trifle drones.
No, you're right.
You're right.
It's uh it's interesting.
So it's like, what do what arethese kids?
I guess that if they're notscientist, you know, if they
don't understand technology,there's they're kind of screwed
unless they want to become aplumber or something like that,
(38:54):
which you know.
Patrick Hurley (38:55):
Yeah, the trades are probably gonna be one of
the last impacted, I think,areas by that.
But think of um like digitalmarketing creation, right?
That seems to be an area that'sgonna be quickly wound down.
I think Coca-Cola this year hadtheir first their Christmas
commercial, was done entirely byAI.
It didn't use a single humanother than the person asking the
questions and the prompts tobuild it.
(39:16):
So I think you'll see that typeof rejection.
Certain industries will beimpacted faster and more
dramatically, but over longterm, um, you know, you're gonna
need those Elon transformermachines that your house and
unplug your toilet for you.
But that's I think another 10to 15 years down the road.
Host (39:33):
Okay.
So so then with that, you know,let we let's go around the horn
here, though.
Like, so so starting withChris, what excites you the most
about the future of OT?
Like uh and NIT convergence,like so what's what do you see
as the most exciting thing?
Chris Daggett (39:50):
I think just the adoption of you know AI and you
know, you're gonna see more uhon a topic called quantum
computing.
Um, you know, that's That'sgoing to be a big, big topic
moving forward.
And quantum computing isactually going to dwarf AI in
many cases.
So, you know, thesesupercomputers that are coming
(40:10):
out that are going to be readilyavailable to folks.
Um, you know, the the level ofautomation and the amount of uh
data processing and data miningand you know that all will
assist in providing greatoutcomes uh for businesses.
And, you know, we'll be able toget you know to our desired
(40:33):
state quicker.
Um, but you know, it it comeswith a learning curve.
You know, everybody's gonnaneed to reskill, um, you know,
including everybody on thiscall.
You know, it's we will allleverage AI in one way, shape,
or form to help with our job.
And it's just gonna get easierand easier, you know, as we
understand these tools.
(40:54):
But, you know, the evolution ofAI is uh probably the you know
the big thing that I'm mostexcited about.
You know, it's really taken ourindustry and our everybody's
day-to-day lives by storm.
Um it's a huge topic.
We're all in the thick of it,we're all figuring it out
together.
Um you know, there's a lot ofopportunity um around artificial
(41:16):
intelligence and how it'sapplied to our day day-to-day
life.
Host (41:21):
Okay.
Patrick Hurley (41:22):
Pat?
Yeah, I mean, all the stuffthat Chris mentioned there is
spot on.
All of the all of the AI stuffthat's happening, all the
machine learning that'shappening, um, it's creating
massive, massive amounts ofdata.
And all that data needs to beprotected.
So for us, selfishly right nowis the reason why we've been
here for so long is because wesee that opportunity, we see uh
(41:46):
data exploding in growth and theneed to protect that data
becoming a priority fororganizations, uh, specifically
within OT.
Uh, you're definitely seeingthat they're becoming
increasingly exposed to cyberrisks, which creates an
opportunity for us, it createsan opportunity for hub tech,
that creates an opportunity forthe workers um, you know, at
those organizations to be aheadof the curve in terms of their
(42:08):
understanding of what they needto do to protect it.
Um, so I think from thatperspective, we're kind of in
the right market um to be ableto capitalize on that.
I think the OT cybersecuritymarket is supposed to be growing
about 15-16% over the next fiveto six years, which is
obviously faster than theconvergence is happening.
So that to me is exciting, andthat just creates opportunity.
(42:29):
Whether or not AI is going toreplace all of our jobs later.
Right now, we have anopportunity to I think go and uh
and leverage them.
Host (42:36):
Yeah, I mean, chat GTP became like my friend.
It's my only friend at thispoint.
It's it's it's really been niceto talk to you.
Always nice to me, always supercool.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it just is you're you'reno, uh Adam, you're a good guy.
You're not a bad guy.
So, so Ryan, what excites youthe most?
Ryan Davis (42:56):
Well, I you know, I I referenced the industry 400,
fourth industrial revolutionearlier, and you know, all the
possibilities that exist fromit, the quantum computing, AI, I
mean, all ultimately, you know,this is unlocking a new era of
efficiency production, and ithas the potential to impact
almost every single industry,right?
(43:17):
So you we may talk about how ityou know impacts more
efficiency and you know, powerproduction or manufacturing, but
you know, you just walk into aBurger King and now they've got
kiosks instead of people takingyour order, right?
So the ability or the potentialfor it to impact like point of
sale, um, those systems need tobe protected.
Smart cities, not just abuilding, now as they're
(43:40):
building highways, they havesensors where they can monitor
the traffic, right?
And they can analyze if wechange things here or there, how
is that gonna impact trafficflows?
So all of this IoT and smartcomputing needs compute behind
it, and then they're runningapplications to analyze it, and
those applications need to beprotected, right?
So I believe all of thesetrends are gonna drive both an
(44:03):
increase in infrastructure thatneeds to be protected, and more
important, infrastructure thatthey're going to protect because
of the cost if it goes offline.
And so I think this is a greatspace to be in, as you know, not
only do we have greattechnology and great partners,
but we're in a great space wherewe're gonna be able to ride
that wave of growth for theforeseeable future.
Host (44:24):
Cool.
So, with that, we're gonna haveto start wrapping it up, guys.
We really appreciate everythingthat you guys have been talking
about.
I think it's an importanttopic.
I think it's super interesting,and you guys are saving the
world, protecting the world, andwe really appreciate your
advice today.
Um, I also wanted to make surethat the folks that are
listening understand thatAcronis is a great partner of
(44:46):
HubTech and they're alsosponsoring this.
Uh, so thank you very much fortoday's help.
And we wanted to play a quick15-second video and then we're
gonna end it.
So if we can get that teed up,Maria, uh, it would be great.
People can go crazy trying tostop a cyber attack.
A cronet take the headache outof IT security.
(45:15):
Wow.
Awesome commercial.
So thank you very much, and umand let's uh let's keep on going
and growing.
Announcement (45:26):
Thanks for having us, Venom.
Thanks, everybody.
Thanks for tuning in to theBeyond the Firewall podcast
powered by HubTech.
If you found this conversationuseful, follow or subscribe
wherever you listen to stayupdated on new episodes.
For more information aboutHubTech's IT solutions and
services, please visithubtech.com.
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