Ep. 003 - Bread, Bugs, and Bytes: Cybersecurity’s Role in Food Safety with Sabetha Wells
Sabetha Wells
Food Safety & Quality Director for Rise Baking Company
Show Notes:
In the latest Bites & Bytes Podcast episode, we have the privilege of hosting Sabetha Wells, an expert in food safety with over two decades of experience in the field. Currently leading the charge as the Food Safety & Quality Director for Rise Baking Company, Sabetha's rich portfolio encompasses everything from cheese, yogurt, and dry mixes to sumptuous cakes, cookies, and fillings. Not just a Kansas State alumna, Sabetha is a dedicated wife, mother, mentor, ASQ Certified Manager of Quality & Organizational Excellence, and an FSPCA Preventive Controls Qualified Individual Lead Instructor. And if you're curious about her downtime? She's quite the crocheter!
Join us as we explore the fascinating crossroads of food safety and cybersecurity. From understanding the nuances of flour mites and bread production to diving into the pivotal roles played by people and processes, we highlight the significance of inter-sector collaboration. We discuss the food industry's unique community dynamics and discover how tech and food converge to ensure the bread on your table is not just delicious but safe.
Sabetha's Socials:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabetha-wells-75762938/
Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(00:00) - Food Safety and Quality Journey
(12:39) - Challenges in Food Protection Security
(34:50) - Impact of Cybersecurity on Food Safety
(44:03) - Personal Connections in the Food Industry
(53:39) - Gratitude for Food Security Project
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00:00 - Kristin (Host)
Hi everybody, thanks for joining us on the Bites and Bytes podcast. I am with a fabulous guest today that I have known for God, I think, for at least a decade now, and it's been a pleasure talking to her prior to the recording, but I'm really excited to get into this conversation.
01:04 - Sabetha (Guest)
Sabetha Wells, I am a currently food safety and quality director for Rise Baking Company and I have the pleasure of supporting five separate plants and helping them with food safety and quality, as well as helping to set the standards for all of our facilities. Previously, I've worked in regulatory for four years and doing a lot of food establishment inspections, hotels, childcare and the glamorous, the ever-glamorous on-site wastewater treatment systems. Woo-hoo, that is what I know. And then I also had 10 years. I would say that's how I tell people. I grew up in operations, right? So I was a operations manager and supervisor. So that was kind of my work history, my career background. I come from a very small town in Kansas and I have a four-year-old and her dad fortunately still likes to hang out with me. So, yeah, we're a small family but the two giant dogs we have kind of round that out.
02:29 - Kristin (Host)
For sure, for sure, full house for sure. Yeah, yeah, no, and I definitely woo-hoo to the water treatment because I have a degree in environmental management and I've toured through water treatment facilities and have extreme respect for people who do that for a living. Like they see stuff that I'm not going to tell anybody because they could be eating right now, but it is definitely an interesting job.
02:53 - Sabetha (Guest)
But my favorite thing is the same one.
02:55 - Kristin (Host)
Exactly. My favorite thing is they pump oxygen into the water for releases back into the stream for the fishes. Like the little fishies get oxygen. I think that's the coolest thing ever and I'm such a geek Like I think it's amazing. Anyways, thank you very much for being here on the show and just as an icebreaker and I'm going to continue doing this for most guests is, can you tell us what your favorite food is and your favorite food memory? They do not have to be the same thing.
03:23 - Sabetha (Guest)
Right. Okay, my favorite food kind of varies every day, but I have never. Chocolate has never let me down, and so I'm, you know, I'm going to stick with chocolate, something simple. But in terms of food memories, because my entire life has been based on food, I literally grew up in agriculture, agricultural community, so you know, we were raising our own food, you know, from garden to animals and so forth, throughout my childhood and then pretty early on in high school, I had become aware of food science. So I geared myself up from that from the very beginning. Being a nerd who loves science, I just went hand in hand with my love of food.
04:18
So in terms of great or memorable food experiences, oh golly, to just pick one, I think it would have to be when I made sourdough for the first time. I was, it was summer and it was I had, I want to say, 4-h camp to go to, and so I made that, started it before I left. Come back, you know, six days later, and here's this, you know this, this dough, just, you know, trying to get out of this bowl because it's been expanding so much and it's just, my mom was just fit to be tied because she knew she threw it out. I was going to have a fit, but she was about to have a fit because it smelled so bad.
05:09
You know, so strongly I should say not necessarily bad, but strongly and so that was I don't know. It was fun experimentation and of course, she loved the bread in the end which I got to work making as soon as I got home to get the smell out. I didn't get to keep that starter. That's a bummer. Yeah, no, that was she's like. Yeah, no way are you doing that again. But I did learn a lot from that experience and yeah, so that was a good one, that's great.
05:45 - Kristin (Host)
I love sourdough. It's like one of my favorite breads. So I have complete respect for people who'd bake. I think we've talked about this years and years ago, since we worked at a bakery company together. But I'm a good cook. I'm not a good baker because I'm not about that measurement life. I don't like doing that. I like to be able to put in what I want, what I want, and not be told what I have to do. I'm sure some people are listening on this or like, yeah, that's Christen Tugetie.
06:12
So, anyways, that's great, it's amazing. So let's just jump in a few questions. Keep it really light, no big deal, since we're still getting to know each other after this decade long apart. Can you tell me a bit about your journey into food protection and food quality and I'm going to use all these terms, I'm sorry food people I take food protection and just blanket it a lot? I had somebody, a good friend of mine, who will not be named, who barked at me one day of just saying food protection instead of food defense, safety and security all in one. And can you tell me a little bit about your journey into food protection within the food industry and what sparked your interest to go that route, since we already know you kind of had this assorted past?
06:55 - Sabetha (Guest)
Sure, absolutely so, I would say, in terms of food protection. So, as I had indicated, I have a food science degree, and so that was. You know you get a taste for it in school. You don't really. You know, you think you know all these things and then you go to work and you realize you don't know squat and you know it's one of those fake it till you make it situations right. And so, being in operations, I had a very different look at the food defense and food protection than, say, I do now working directly in food safety and quality. So one of the things that we have to do, or that operations do, is conduct food safety or food defense tests. Right, you need to test your process or your program. And so my boss just very cleverly he was the plant manager of a plant that had, excuse me, 450 associates working at this site and myself and another supervisor we're all that is there on night shift, right.
08:17
And we get not knowing squat, not knowing and being responsible for all this equipment and people. I took it very, very seriously because again, I was going to fake it till I make it mode. So I had the bravado you know to pretend to back this up.
08:37 - Kristin (Host)
As they say the moxie, you have the moxie to do it. There you go.
08:41 - Sabetha (Guest)
So he arranges for this local cop to come in around midnight, one o'clock, and just walk into the plant and of course you know the associates were working with they, you know, get my attention immediately and point to this guy that just walked in off the floor and I went into mama bear mode Like you're not, this is mine, these are my people. I must protect them. And this guy got shoved right out the door.
09:12 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, he did.
09:13 - Sabetha (Guest)
And then I called the plant manager and I told him about it, because the guy was like, hey, don't be so rough. I was asked to be here and I'm like, no way, you know, they nobody would do that, as you know. So, sure enough, I call my boss and and he's like, oh my God, yeah, that was my first run in there with food security. I guess in a real sense you know, being participating in that kind of event.
09:40 - Kristin (Host)
So it's interesting because, as a security professional, I was thinking about how this gentleman socially engineered his way and, if you will, if he was a bad actor or not, granted, he had permission. But again, that needs to be communicated, otherwise what happened happened as a referee should, how people shouldn't let just anybody into a facility. On a personal note, I did have the privilege of going through different factories in Japan years ago and there's such a trusting culture that I did my sign into the beginning and then nobody stopped me when I walked into the facility. It sounds just like that situation where you just kind of get all the way into the production line and all of a sudden people that were in like the clean room area were like wait, what? And then all of a sudden it was like this eruption of like hands and and and yelling and languages. I didn't know when it was happening, but I I didn't do it, I didn't think I did anything wrong, and that cop probably felt the same way.
10:35 - Sabetha (Guest)
Oh, really, it's really interesting.
10:39 - Kristin (Host)
Well, it's really interesting because it kind of butts up against what we do in cybersecurity automatically, because you're already trying to control the physical security of the situation rather than, you know, objectively just letting people do whatever they want. Like, oh yeah, go ahead, feel free to stick your finger in the vat, it's cool, like we don't mind, jump in if you feel like it you know, like take a swim, it's fine.
11:03
So I think that's that's already. Within three seconds of talking to you, we've already got commonality right there. That's, that's very unplanned people. That was awesome. Speaking of collaboration, in your experience, have you seen the the world of food? We'll just say the world of food, because this is easier and cybersecurity intersect, and we just named something. But when we were talking earlier, you were saying that the world has gone so digital that you already see that Anyway, so I'll let you look right.
11:33 - Sabetha (Guest)
Oh yeah, absolutely Nothing is accomplished without a computer. Every system, be that operations management, evaluation records, inventory records, block stock, every aspect of a food, of the food business, is interacting electronically. Now I'm sure that there are those smaller, exempt operations that won't have that same experience, but those are going to be very small and have a much smaller impact on the human population at large. So, but when you talk about an organization such as some of them that I've worked in with cheese and yogurt and now with bakery products, these are large organizations touching a, you know, millions of people throughout a year, right? So it is extremely important that we have a great sense of security around formulations, for example. That's one piece of it, but there's, you know, the data is someone to mess with.
12:45
The information regarding block stock could be the difference between releasing some product that was just out of spec for color versus something was out of spec for micro results. So I mean it could have a significant impact to not maintain the data. And then, of course, there are the traceability aspects of it when you get into regulatory requirements and you know, in the event of something like that. So if that was to happen, where micro is something that was negatively impacted by micro results. The outcome was negative and it got released. If you're not able to trace that effectively, where did it go? Where did it ship, and you don't have that information readily available through your system? Yeah software, yeah yeah, Then you're sunk right.
13:48
You can't answer to the FDA and you can't be precise in what exactly you need to be withdrawing or recalling and therefore you put yourself in a position to have to do everything. And so it becomes. I mean, it's very much a business requirement for food protection, right. If we're not protecting food because we ingest food, right and it's the business of food manufacturing is definitely securing and protecting the food.
14:24 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, and I was thinking while you were talking to that oh my goodness, imagine if some bad actor wanted to go in and mess with the formulas and you didn't know, because they left right, you know, and then they're being inputted into the system and things are a couple of.
14:40 - Sabetha (Guest)
Allergens. That's where allergens become extremely. Yeah, that you're exactly right. Or even just the labeling right, if our labeling systems all of what we print, all of our labels at the production site. So if that gets out of line, we're releasing product that doesn't have all of the correct information on it. For example, we could definitely endanger the lives of those who are allergic to anything from wheat, milk, egg and soy to, you know, tree nuts and sulfites. So it's extremely important that our data systems and security are fully intact.
15:23 - Kristin (Host)
It's pretty scary to think that printers are paramount to the industry, and when printers are like the bane of cybersecurity, they're such jerks. I remember being inside the factories and the zebra or zebra for those on the other side of the world.
15:36 - Sabetha (Guest)
You remember those things.
15:37 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, those things are such a beast, but they're also obesity because they're ginormous and huge and hard to move, so there's actually like a physical danger in shifting them around. So once they're in place inside of a production operations environment, they're not really going to go anywhere. They're going to stay where they are and they are critical. And I often wonder how many people in you know an executive suite or even a cybersecurity team or IT, realize how important those particular printers are. They literally will affect production on a high level. I do remember when they went down at one facility I was working at, we ended up having to hand write them. It was a mess. It was an absolute mess. Oh, wow.
16:24
And because the trucks were waiting. We didn't have time. And you know how the trucks are, they don't wait, they got to pick up their stuff and go. These are company trucks, necessarily. These are contractors, so they're on a time schedule and we're interrupting that as well. So there's this whole supply chain effect just from freaking printers. It's just crazy and I think that that is a challenge inside of the industry in general.
16:50
The food industry in general is these little like small silos we're going to make all these comments, people that are going to relay back to food, so just roll with it All of these silos that were within different aspects of the food company that are, if one goes, it's a domino effect. One goes down. They're all going down at the same time, if not very shortly after, and it's not just from the formula. It's, like we said, the printers and moving forward, since we're going to more of this digital transformation. So I think those challenges are really important to note. Is there any specific challenges that you can think of that you've noticed as companies have digitally transformed? I know there's a lot of thoughts and feelings on how the transformation happens. Obviously, I have my own personal view on that as well. However, for your side of the house, what has been challenging?
17:44 - Sabetha (Guest)
Okay, well, I think you brought up a good point Just getting people to understand that the food defense and food protection includes far more than just your doors. This is a much broader spectrum, and then you know from inspections and information that we keep about, because if we're not looking right when we're talking about food protection, it's one of the most critical things that our teams and plants do is conduct an internal audits. It would be great if everyone was policing themselves and everyone remembered every rule all of the time. It would be amazing. However, we remain humans at the end of the day and we do make mistakes and we do forget things, and so that's why internal audits become very important, but that's the kind of information you don't need someone having access to for your facility. So, getting folks to understand that all of the software, all of the hardware, everything we interact with that requires a network, must be secured.
19:11
A sample of one of the challenges that I encountered was around tablets and trying to get tablets set up so we could use them for internal audits, and so you know, I went through the due diligence with our, the online auditing tool to ensure it was secure and had that approved by our IT team. But then I came to these tablets and we weren't even going to put cellular networks on it, it was just going to be Wi-Fi and we were only going to put certain downloads certain, you know and this is a tool from safety culture called iAuditor but we were going to have that was going to be the only thing you could download. You could use the camera, and it was such a trick to get folks to buy in to this limited use as a matter of food protection. They wanted it open, they wanted to be able to use it in all the ways you would typically use a tablet which it wasn't cringing.
20:19
I'm cringing, yes, so it wasn't so much. It was obviously able to do this right. This is something that they can handle. But it was the communication and the convincing or educating others about how these tools could be used effectively and properly to ensure security that became the largest challenge. I mean, we got there, but it did take quite a bit of information and in the end we didn't move forward with the program. We found that it was easier to have folks download the information directly to their personal phones, and then they were right. Fortunately, the software itself was secure, so that's the only positive we have on that.
21:21 - Kristin (Host)
Unfortunately, folks, you can't see my face, but I definitely looked like I was about to jump out my window, so yeah, I felt the same way.
21:30
Oh God, that is. Is that defeats the purpose, right? It doesn't keep it secure. If you're using someone's phone or their personal phone Again, I talk about this all the time you never know what's on a Wi-Fi. You don't know what 15 year old is looking at what anywhere. You don't know what's on those phones. A data connection is a little bit better than a Wi-Fi connection, but if you're going to be in a facility that it's that large that Wi-Fi doesn't penetrate some of the spaces you're going to I'm sorry data is not going to penetrate some of those spaces Wi-Fi will have to be enabled. So we don't want personal phones on the Wi-Fi. So there's just sort of this tumble effect of ultimately the tablets were the more secure option and the time wasted of trying to get it done.
22:09 - Sabetha (Guest)
That is why this process took years and in the end, yeah, so that in the yeah, in the end it I shouldn't say it worked, didn't work out. It didn't work out, yeah, but anything it became less secured. And then we still still made the same decisions, even after folks understood what the risks were.
22:31 - Kristin (Host)
So see that's. That's such an example of real world issues that are happening. It's not this theoretical situation. We're actually dealing with this in real time and I think, in my opinion, if there was a security leader that could have partnered with the project in a change management capacity, that probably would have been more successful to be like okay, here's the, here's the strategy, this is what we're going to do, this is how we're going to allow it to be online for this amount of time and not cut it off. There's plenty of ways you can do access control with devices, and that's really frustrating to hear that even at the end of it, after all that time, it kind of doubted out and then there was some insecure behaviors, if you will, at the end. That's so frustrating and such an avoidable moment. And this is why we're having these conversations, because ultimately, at the end of it, we want everybody's food to be safe and secure to the point where we can't be having tablets and people's phones on the network unless there's a conversation around it. And education, like you said and you said it so many times now that I hope everybody's getting it Awareness and education are key to sustainable food supply and safe supply, as well as security. It's it's just going to be the paramount conversation over and over again.
23:48
I feel like we're constantly on the hamster row with it like I. Please use common sense, please, please be educated, please be aware, please be curious, please do all these things. It's not just done to annoy people or make their job difficult. It's because I don't and I know you echo this. I don't want my family to eat unsafe food and I don't want to live in a world where the formula has been tampered with and we don't know until it's already gone onto the shelves. That scares me. That's the stuff that keeps me up at night. And it's avoidable.
24:18
I have worse, so I think I think that that tablet situation is going to haunt me all day now, but.
24:26
I think, looking forward, in the futuristic views of the industry, do you see any additional emerging tech or emerging applications or anything to help out you do for a living, and how, how you see that being either a real good benefit or a concern, or both together?
33:30 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, it's true, and I actually started asking another question, and that's when I probably cut out. So perfect, so I'll just start from there. I have a sip of coffee, yeah, computer, okay, I was talking about looking ahead. Oh yeah, how do you envision the future of cybersecurity within the food industry, and are there any emerging trends or technologies we should be aware of that are currently, you know, hot button topics or you know new things?
34:05 - Sabetha (Guest)
Well, in terms of what's currently going on and looking to the future, it will just get become more and more necessary, and you know the, the entities that wish to infiltrate, you know, these types of businesses for their own gain it's. They get stronger, they get smarter, and if we're not moving ahead of that, then you fall behind and you fall victim to that, and there's some good examples out in the industry of that that we can talk about. I don't know if it is now a good time to bring that up. Yeah.
34:46
I think we should do it.
34:47
Yeah absolutely so. There have been some significant data breaches. I think we'll all remember when Georgia public school systems, I believe, or, sorry, no, county city, maybe it was the city of Atlanta Anyway there was a ransomware situation where they wanted so much money and people couldn't pay their water bills. People couldn't. I mean it was just insane, and how much I mean you think about water and how we are affected by water. I mean, in most of our, I think all of our facilities 15 within the current organization use a public water source, right. So you've got a direct link, just you know, a basic government levels to a need for cybersecurity and then beyond that, you know, with the data and the information you know associated with with the operation itself. But so there's the and maybe I should look it up so that I can say it correctly. But I want to say it was the city of Atlanta, but it could have been a specific county.
36:01 - Kristin (Host)
I think a lot of them have been hit over the years anyways, and you're right, because it attacks on a government body, whether it's state, local or federal, are far reaching consequences, right, not just people can't pay their water bill, but they can't go get a new license. They can't, you know, they can't get married, maybe they can't. Death certificates might be slowed down. There could be other I mean things I probably don't even think about because they're just a part of the normal routine that we just deal with. The postal service could be affected, if you think about it too. If they can't get into a building because the access control has been cut as well, that's really scary stuff. Or even down to food stamps, right, like that's. That's scary, that stuff's really scary.
36:44
Ransomware is so nasty it is. If you've been plaguing the food industry more so than other industries in the last two, three years JBS, dole Package, lettuce, there's a few others it is literally the question I get the most when I'm speaking with food professionals is what do I do if I have a ransomware that hits my screen? And then it dawned on me that we really have done a disservice in the cybersecurity community of not educating people how to handle it in the moment. Sure, you go through, like your security awareness trainings and all the compliance based things, but there's never any practicality to the training of what do I actually do. We have fire safety training from when we're like birthed right to know exactly what to do in a fire stop, drop and roll. We all know that. In whatever language or country you come from, it's similar. And the fact that we haven't done that yet inside of cybersecurity, at least in the food industry, is really scary to me and I'm like on this mission now, like it's like a total movement for me to get that on board with people, because I don't want you to be sitting at your computer someday and you have a ransomware and you don't, and you panic and and then the shame hits because you might have done something wrong, which you probably didn't, or if you did, then we move past it.
38:04
It's just like a spill on the floor. Get them up, let's clean it up, and that's that's the real stress when it comes to dealing with an industry that is so vital to humanity. You know, water and food, or paramount we can survive without oil and gas and energy in general. We could go back to the days where we rub sticks together in a cave if we had to. Nobody's going to want to do that, but I'm saying we could if we had to, but we can't live without food or water, so it's. It's really one of those things where, again, we have to make sure going back to the education and awareness piece how important it is to constantly drive those things home. And I think you're so right, because, as we get more digital, we're going to have to have these more candid conversations of hey, if your rents, where it does pop on your screen like these are the four steps you're going to take. I'm not going to get into that right now, because this is about you and not about that.
38:59 - Sabetha (Guest)
That's a really good point about having that next step right. I think that's critical, and I have another example from a third party warehousing organization that we've utilized throughout the network. It is they recently had a breach and fortunately they their security was able to stop the breach, but it literally took down their entire system. They were dead in the water. They could do nothing. They couldn't create a bill of lady, they couldn't print a bill of lady, they couldn't pick, they didn't have access, their scanners wouldn't work. Literally nothing in their organization was functioning to allow them to move forward. It was when, I say, nine days of being unable to operate.
39:54
Now, eventually, I shouldn't say that they got some things figured out right and there were some things you can do manually, and so there were. So, you know, by prioritizing what needed to ship and what customers got preference and things like that, there were some some shipments going out, but they weren't doing it by, you know, with their electronic System, right, they weren't doing it with their, their ERP. So I think it's Another example of having that crisis management right. It's it's, you know, cyber security is where we start.
40:32
But then, from there, what? What comes next? What are the next steps? And then, of course, as you pointed out earlier, educating folks about what those are so they understand what they need to do next, because you know, just stopping it is great, but it isn't enough if you want to continue to conduct business, and, based off of what I have learned in the years I've been working In this career, is that they all, we all want to continue our business, right, oh, yeah, like what we're doing. So, yeah, yeah, but I think also You'd ask about what's to come, and I think it's one of the things that is Been really a big part of any any of the organizations that use FDA or regulated under the Food and Drug Administration. They'll they will have heard about the new era of smarter food safety blueprint.
41:38
Oh yeah, that's four components of tech enabled traceability, smarter tools and approaches for prevention and outbreak response, new business models and retail modernization, and then food safety culture, and every single portion of that requires technology and Security. For that technology I mean even reporting a recall now it's done online. Reporting a food reporting, foodborne illness is all done online. So all of these things require Security to to be in place to protect the names of individuals or, in some cases, customers.
42:23 - Kristin (Host)
Oh, yeah, for sure I. You know privacy is going to be a big thing within food. I'm not a privacy expert. I cannot speak to that. However, I do know that it will be a big portion of it moving forward, especially with everything you mentioned, and I love that one of the components of that is food safety culture, because I'm a huge advocate For inserting cyber security into food protection culture. It just makes sense. It just makes sense, based on everything we've been talking about today, that we could incorporate those two worlds together as much as possible.
42:52
Ultimately, fighting the same thing is just in different spaces. Right, it's not. It's it's not. It doesn't take a rock side. It's just to draw this conclusion and the dots together. But, yeah, thank you for that. That was yeah, I love that they actually are trying at this point, even though there's a lot of controversy around FDA and how you know the F needs to be removed out of it. That's a whole other conversation. People will get there someday. But, um, and as we're has some closing thoughts here, I really want to hear about a particular project or experience that really stands out in your career and this is kind of selfish because, like, we've worked together, so I obviously know how you work and how you are and I've been in the factory that you've been in, I've had the food that was there and Just wondering, like, what about your job makes you go back to your job and that personal experience that kind of wraps into it.
43:46 - Sabetha (Guest)
Wow, well, I guess it's all you know. We try not to take things personally in our jobs, right? I mean, I was whatever. We are persons.
43:57 - Kristin (Host)
I take my job personally, but that's the whole other conversation.
44:02 - Sabetha (Guest)
Absolutely. But. But there are Um personal aspects of your job. You're doing it for a reason. You're doing it to support the rest of your life, which is very personal to you, and and we, we create these relationships and friendships and bonds with people. And you know that that naive, fresh out of college Person who was shoving a off-duty police officer out of her building, you know, I'm still I'm the same person in terms of how much I care for the people who I am responsible for. And so, beyond that, you know, I've come to realize it's not just the people in that facility and it's important that we, we help protect them because this is their job.
44:56
Right, if we have cybersecurity breaches, that could definitely impact them having a job. The other piece is, of course, that as consumers right we're we're Creating something that people will literally ingest into their bodies. I mean, there, he doesn't get more personal than that. Right From my, you know the creation of my hands into your mouth to nourish your body. It is about as personal as it can get. And if you, if we, don't, have those food safety protections in place that includes cybersecurity you, those people, have become vulnerable and you put them at risk, whether that be from a Micro perspective, an ingredient allergen perspective. There's a A lot of different ways that that conduct, you know, directly impact a consumer. So, yeah, it's, it's personal.
45:54 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, it is, and I and I just realized, digging up memories of the past, I believe I actually was on the factory with you and I know I was there for a project and I remember some I think it might have been you an offhand comment, like not a negative space. This is very positive. That said, you have to remember the food is about a lot of things. It's about celebrating, it's about Wishing a loved one Goodbye, it's about a lot of things. We celebrate everything with food and I believe you said something to that effect, because we were talking about something to do with this back in the day and it really struck me and it like hit me over the head with a frying pan, almost like, oh my goodness, like I have, my job is. My job was important because it paid my rent and kept me fed right, but we were actually feeding people and providing the ability to celebrate, say goodbye, all the things, and it just struck me as such a. It became personal in that moment, like really personal, and it was really kind of neat. I remember because I was probably like a muffin or something sitting in front of me at the time that I was probably devouring, but I just remember that, that kind of candid conversation that was off cuff, it didn't have anything to do, anything. We were working on and and, and I was such an honor at that point to serve the community I was with, and it still is to this day.
47:15
Even if I walked into a lab or if I walked on the production floor or even if I was hanging on the office area, it was everybody how is on the same mission good quality food that was safe for people to ingest, and, and it's the same as cybersecurity in a way. Yeah, especially if you're a cybersecurity professional in the food industry, you understand that what you do is the same mantra, the same rhythm, and I think that we need to, especially as a security community, because it can be quite daunting, because we are constantly in a Flight or fight kind of mode. Unfortunately. I think that a lot of times we lose perspective of why we serve, what we serve and how we do it. And I think, and I'm grateful that I I work within the food industry and I am grateful for the people that I interact with, such as yourself, because you remind me and you keep me humble, that this is what I do, I do for the greater good and if anybody else just echoed greater good, you're my friend.
48:13
Anyways, but as we wrap up this, again, thank you so much for being here and I I really have enjoyed this conversation. I actually took notes. I I feel like I just got educated. I love that. There's always something to new to learn and or remember, and that's so beautiful. But as we close up, is there any final thoughts that you want to say to the food industry or cyber security or anybody else? That is just kind of an echoing of the conversation or anything that you just feel passionate you got to get out. Go for it.
48:47 - Sabetha (Guest)
I Would say that it's probably that I I don't know what, I don't know and I don't know how to actually secure our Cyber network right. That's why we need professionals, we need people who know how to do that and how to do that in a way that protects not only consumers but the business itself, and so I I'm just grateful that you are part of our team when you were, when we were implementing SAP, and what a Cluster a giant job that was a Cluster would be.
49:31
Yeah, that'd be generous, but it was a time that you know you came to appreciate what our, our IT teams were doing. I mean, it was so many different levels of chaos and work just hours and hours and weekends, nights, weekends and I just don't think I truly appreciated the time that was required to maintain and to take care of that business. So I think it's something to you know. I would say, like maybe sanitation is one of the most important jobs in our food production facilities, and then definitely, I would say, you know, close to that would be IT and cybersecurity, because it affects everything, and including sanitation. Right, so you can't effectively do one without the other.
50:32 - Kristin (Host)
I love that you just put sanitation and IT and cybersecurity together. Like I actually am really honored by that, because I think sanitation has a really tough job. They've got a lot to do, and if you don't know what sanitation is, people, there's something called Google not to be rude, but we're not going to get into that today either but it is a tough job and it's not just about cleaning up spills. So that is, yeah, totally respect for those people.
51:00
I think the thing that I adore about the food industry as well is it's a community, it really is a community, and just as you said before with the off duty cop no, he's out, like he's not part of this. Get him out, it's not going to happen. And I just want to take a moment to say thank you for welcoming me whenever I was there. I showed up the day after you bombed for you know, flower mites or whatever the hell they were called, and I was wondering if I was going to be, you know, turning into the next Marvel superhero, because I was in a building that had like nuclear material in it.
51:33 - Sabetha (Guest)
I remember that I forgot all about that. That was obnoxious.
54:01 - Sabetha (Guest)
Thank you. Thank you for what you do to help secure our food systems and I really appreciated catching up with you a bit and helping you with this great project. I'm so glad that you're doing this. It's great to continue that push and getting that education information out there. Yeah, thank you.
54:25 - Kristin (Host)
Definitely. Thanks so much, appreciate it All right, just hold on to the
