Ep. 008 - Feeding the Digital Age: Part 1 - Unpacking Cyber Risks with Dr. Darin Detwiler
Dr. Darin Detwiler
“Food Safety Icon”
Show Notes:
Welcome to Part One of our enlightening episode, where we delve into the intricate world of food safety and cybersecurity. Join us as we sit down with Dr. Darin Detwiler, a “food safety icon,” professor, and leading food policy and safety expert.
In this episode, Dr. Detwiler shares his personal stories and insights, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of the digital threats in our food supply. From his favorite food memories to his professional journey, Dr. Detwiler opens up about the challenges and complexities in ensuring the safety of our food in an increasingly digital world.
Dr. Darin’s socials:
https://www.herculeaneffort.net/
https://cps.northeastern.edu/faculty/darin-detwiler/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/darin-detwiler/
Netflix Documentary, “Poisoned”
https://www.netflix.com/title/81460481?trackId=259776131&trkId=259776131&src=tudum
Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(00:32) - Food Safety and Cybersecurity Intersection
(12:33) - Food Safety and Food Defense
(20:15) - Food Safety in a Digital Age
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00:32 - Kristin (Host)
Welcome to the Bites and Bytes podcast, where we merge the worlds of cybersecurity and food safety culture. I'm your host, Kristin Demoranville. Today, we're joined by a special guest, dr Darin Detwiler, a food safety icon, quality and food safety expert professor, and also recently featured in the Netflix documentary Poisoned. This will be a two-part episode. In part one, the episode will explore the intricate relationships between our food systems and digital security. Dr Detwiler brings a wealth of experience and captivating stories that will shed light onto this critical topic. So sit back, relax and let's get ready to dive into a conversation that I'm sure will change the way you think about the food on your table. Hi, Darin, thanks for being here. I'm really excited that you're here. Thank you, it's great to be here. So I'm always asking this question what is your favorite food and your favorite food memory? They do not need to be the same thing.
01:29 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
I think that my favorite food at different points in my life. I probably would have a different answer, but I think my favorite food is tacos, low on the bread but high on the diversity of things you put inside of it, and I like it with a good crunch, but my favorite food memory. I have a least favorite food memory but my probably my favorite food memory. You know, when I was a kid we would go to family gatherings. I always remembered my grandmother, my this is my mom's mom.
01:59
She just this incredible coleslaw and it was like that was my favorite thing that, and Devleting, my grandmother brought this coleslaw.
02:07
And every year that was or every event, if I recall, it's just I, just I just loved my grandmother's coleslaw. And then there was this one year I remember very particular, when we had to pick up my grandma and we're. We go and pick her up and she's in the car. We have to run an errand. And I was a kid I wasn't really paying attention to much, I just remember she got out of the car and then at some point I did start paying attention. I realized that she was coming out of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
02:35 - Kristin (Host)
She had her coleslaw.
02:38 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
And it was at that moment when I realized my entire child was a lie.
02:42
It was a lie, I'm telling you that she was not the one responsible for that incredible coleslaw, it was Kentucky Fried Chicken. And then I had written something about that like years and years and years and years later and my aunt was like you didn't know that until you were 12? We all knew that from. We all knew that. What are you talking about? So, anyway, when we talk about things like food authenticity, food fraud or things that ruin your perception of food or whatever that's that's, my favorite memory is when I had that awakening about how coleslaw were my childhood, how Kentucky Fried Chicken ruined my childhood, you know, and I'm.
03:20 - Kristin (Host)
I'm over here practically in tears, laughing, and I'm trying to restrain because I don't want my laughter just to be filling the airwaves right now. But that I wow. I mean that's some emotional damage ultimately.
03:31 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
It was, it was. You know I can't look at coleslaw the same way ever again.
03:35 - Kristin (Host)
No, no, but I do like it that you were making me think about it about like salads and different things when we were in family gatherings and of course yours went to a whole other dark place. But I was thinking about, like you know, remember all those like old fashioned salads from back in the day that were like ambrosia salad and there was a green one.
03:54
Yeah, there was like a green jello one or something like that, and it was funny cause I was just reminiscing about that with my sisters because there's a cookbook that's called like days gone by. It was from a TikTok cook and he was cooking through all the recipes from like the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and all these other things and those salads are in there and I think, wow, people miss that generation big time because we see some strange stuff that actually work for some reason. Pineapples and sour cream, I mean, who knew?
04:20 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Yeah, there were also things that I think somehow back in the day, the way people were cooking brussel sprouts ruined it for us, because now now I'll eat brussel sprouts cooked, you know, in different ways, like I'll bake them and you know, get them all crispy and stuff like that. But something was in the way people were preparing certain foods that just kind of like. I don't really like that way.
04:43 - Kristin (Host)
I think they just steam. Them Grow up that way. That's why I was just steamed. It wasn't like the crispy roasted goodness that it is now, or we include bacon and ours, you know. So like that helps. Oh yeah, yeah.
04:54 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
But I think that there's something about today. You know, when you go back to your childhood, you look at how many foods were low processed. They weren't manufactured, they were just kind of raw ingredients in many cases and obviously there was like your TV dinners and stuff like that. But today you just have so many more, like you can buy rice cauliflower, you can buy, you know, broccoli in this form or that kind of a thing, whereas when I was a kid it was like boom, there's some broccoli, boom, you know, there's some cauliflower. It didn't, didn't, didn't really appease the eight year old me, but now I'll eat it. Well, it's different today.
05:29 - Kristin (Host)
So definitely appreciate that. Thank you so, Darin. A lot of people who listen to this podcast actually don't know who you are, so you want to do a intro, sure.
05:38 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
So I'm Dr Darin Deweiler and I am I'm a voice in terms of food safety and food policy in the United States. I bring a unique perspective through my collaboration with multiple agencies, multiple NGOs, multiple universities over the decades. While I have one foot in policy arena, I have another foot in the academic arena. I have degrees in education I used to be high school which I've been teaching at the university level for 50s multiple universities, I guess, speaking of the universities and I focus a lot on and I think this this really stems from the fact that I don't have like the traditional I was an executive for this food company or I was elected to this position situation.
06:21
I've been appointed to many advisory boards and I have consulted with many companies and I've sat on many editorial boards and it's this kind of combination of perspectives that helps people view the work ahead of them through a different light in some cases, whether it is bringing validation to the courage this needed behind, whether it's making a policy or enforcing a policy for following procedures and protocols, ramping up our food safety efforts or recall efforts, extending it the full journey of food to the last mile. You know, sometimes a lot of the same messages by the same people are very textbook. They kind of lose that emotional element, that kind of element of the true burden of disease as the underlying drive behind what is shared. It has been something that stems for me not only through my experience academically or professionally, but from having lost a child 30 years ago during the landmark 1993 Jack in the Boxe-Coleye outbreak. I was a nuclear engineer operating at the Pulsion Planet in Submarine and I was a quality assurance inspector. I was 24 at the time and I thought I was pretty smart In 24, I guess I thought I was immortal, a 24 year old thing. But you know I really changed my world perspective on things. I was learning about E Coli and my son's deathbed, learning about vulnerabilities, rethinking invisible threats and you know, we deal with invisible threats and we want to minimize them, we want to justify them, we want to put them into a nice little easy to measure number package kind of a thing. But it's not that way and my lack of conflict of interest, if you will, from perhaps having had certain positions, has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate with so many incredible stakeholders over so many different years of different products and industries and innovation and technology and work through different crises. And obviously this is great in terms of bringing this into the classroom for my grad students and my doctoral students, but then bringing the experiences back from the classroom actually to industry and speaking in front of audiences, delivering workshops that help you understand.
08:39
Communication as a leader helps people understand. What does it mean to have courage? How do we foster courage? Helps people understand. You know the difference between trying to put things into a simple package and taking a more systems approach and saying, if we're going to take a systems approach.
08:55
We have to look at this from all stakeholders perspectives, including those of the people, in that last mile of food is journey, which includes consumers, and I talk about this great deal in the recent Netflix documentary Poisoned that came out, as well as books that have chapters and even columns that I write for various industry magazines.
09:18
And I'll just kind of sum it up by saying you know, 30 years ago, if I were asked what I'd be doing this today, I would say these issues would be resolved by science and technology and policy.
09:28
If anything, I could say three things over the last three decades Consumers are considered more stakeholders today than ever that there are incredible people who work to keep our food safe in many different capacities, with many great tools and many great partnerships and many great efforts around the world At the same time, complexity complexity of our food supply has just grown. I mean, some people don't even understand the true complexity of our food. It's not just like it's a store or a restaurant. There's so many variations of stores and hybrid retail and restaurants today and third party delivery shopping and apps and food trucks and things delivered and food ready for the manufacturer, and there's just so many more points of opportunity. There's so many mile markers along this journey, more so than there were in the past, where there is not only opportunity to lose transparency and traceability, but to lose trust and to open the door for opportunity, for threat, whether they be unintentional or unfortunate.
10:35 - Kristin (Host)
Attention, and it's this greater diversity of topics that I focus on, both in and out of the classroom, and this is why you and I have talked about cybersecurity in this space quite a few times now, and I'm grateful that I finally have a chance to get you on air and have this conversation, and we've been on a few podcasts together already talking about this the synergy between our two very seemingly different industries.
10:59 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
We've even been in the same place at the same time.
11:02 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, that's true. That's right. There'll be more to come to, I'm sure. Darin, thank you for that, and I do recommend everyone does watch Poisoned on Netflix.
11:12
I think that it's a really good start to understand the food system Kind of sums up what we're dealing with, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.
11:20
Like we talked about a couple of weeks ago, Darin, like there's so much more to that documentary so I'm hoping that they make a second one.
11:27
So, with all that being said, Darin and I really appreciate that you have done a variety of jobs, so your perception on the industry isn't completely unique in that perspective where no one's gonna look at the way you do, especially because of the loss of a child, but also your time as a submarine in various other academic pursuits and our quality jobs. I mean you've really kind of done it all across the gambit. So, first of all, thank you for doing all that, because you've paved the way for the people that are coming behind and for these type of conversations, again, creating some type of synergy, because food safety culture isn't just unique to food safety. It's a lot of different avenues. Like you said, I would like you to define for the audience what a food defense threat and or a food safety threat looks like, because a lot of my listeners are cyber security, so I want to make sure they have an understanding of what that means, specifically if they're working in the food industry.
12:19 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
So I'm going to I hope it's okay. I'm gonna approach this from almost like a timeline perspective.
12:24 - Kristin (Host)
I'm fine with that.
12:26 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
So in reality and I don't want to shatter people's image of the industry, but in a way consumers are just canaries in the. We don't talk about recalls or outbreaks or incidents. For the most part, there's always going to be an exception. For the vast majority of all incidents and I'm using Eric quote we don't do a lot of the work in terms of communicating, investigating, recalling. You know all these things until after someone's been home and when someone is harmed either A. We say this a lot oh, I've got a stomach, I've got a stomach flu. It must be something I ate. Oh, it's a good reason to take off. This is probably the vast majority of all incidents or a healthy adult, but in reality not everyone reports to their doctor, to a health department. They got sick from something right. Not everyone who reports it gets tested to verify that it's Salmonella or Z-Coli. Not everyone who reports it necessarily goes to the hospital. Or you know is tested right, and even if you are tested, it's found. You have E Coli, it's found. You know. You're in the hospital, you're being treated.
13:30
Not everyone can actually find out what was the food that triggered this, what was it that they ate? I know doctors who say that some of their peers are part of the problem. There are doctors who will say things like well, what did you eat? What's the last thing you ate? And there's doctors who have more experience in this who say, no, look, it's either in the gut or it's not. You treated. Don't look at it in terms of the last thing you ate, because it's never the last thing you ate, it's something you ate two days ago or you know something like that, right? So then you look at it in terms of okay, if we're at that point where we can say here's a person who's sick, they're tested, it's lab confirmed, it's E Coli, it's Salmonella, it's Listeria, whatever it is right, then some 80% of people will never actually find out what caused it, right?
14:14
Was it cross-contamination? Was it under cooked meat? Was it? You know what was it? And there's all these different areas. There's food quality issues, which you don't typically impact anyone. That's like how does food look, smell, packaging, you know like kind of it? And then there's food safety and here's where we talk about biological contamination. This is your E Coli, salmonella, et cetera. Chemical contamination, such as allergens and actual chemicals, and physical physical contamination like rocks, glass, rubber, plastic, things that-.
14:45 - Kristin (Host)
Or like that frog they found in ice cream.
14:47 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Yes, yes, that was disgusting.
14:49 - Kristin (Host)
If anybody's seen that picture, that was gross.
14:51 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Yeah, you know, I've seen everything from glove pieces to, you know, glass, plastic, the strangest of things, right. So that's the second cast food safety, food. The third category would be, like your food defense. This is where you have economically motivated adulteration. You can have food bioterrorism or deliberate sabotage kind of issues, and these take place far more often. Actually, no one will.
15:17
Probably one of the most famous ones Well, okay, one of the most popular, if you will once was like the ice cream liquor, the person who went into grocery stores a little while back and was opening the lid to ice cream and licking it from the lid back and going. Good luck finding that kind of thing. But people don't often talk about what happened near Portland Oregon, in the Dalles Oregon, back in the 80s when this cult basically went and they intentionally took samples of Salmonella and put into like a spray bottle and we're spraying it on salad bars. Back in the day we had a lot of salad bars, I had fast food restaurants and the purpose was to essentially make this town I mean because many people as they can sick in this town for the purpose of disrupting the local elections because they wanted to not have the most popular candidate. It's the most likely candidate to be elected.
16:07
So we look at the idea of a lot of this food defense issue for purposes of economic or political disruption. You know, you hear about someone being fired from a grocery store and they go back and they decide to peel up the produce section or peel into a water bottle and spray it on the produce section. There's crazy stuff like that, right, and then we have what sounds the same food security Like. Food security sounds like a lot of like food defense. Food security is when you're talking about things like sustainability and food that does it actually have nutritional value? And it's something that we're dealing with in the United States more and more, and that there are foods that literally fiber and protein is being stripped out of, such that people are.
16:50
Then you know they just eat more and more and more. They think they're eating food but they're not really eating. You know they're not getting the nutrition they come, and then finally we have food authenticity. This is where you have, like counterfeit products, intentional mislabeling, you know, saying that it's extra virgin olive oil from France or something like that, and it's really not you know kind of thing. Or saying that it's GMO free, but it's not saying that it's certified as this but it's not. And it's not necessarily a one or the other kind of thing.
17:22
You can be a food authenticity issue, counterfeit food. That is also a food safety issue, right? So imagine there's a food safety issue with a product and, by the way, let's say it's recalled. It's illegal to sell something that's been recalled. But imagine if someone goes and puts a fake label, a doctored label, on top of that, so it looks like it's not from that company or it's not from that lot, right? And so that part right.
17:45
There is a food authenticity issue in terms of the falsification, but it resulted in someone being harmed, just like I was talking about how a food defense issue could also be, you know, if someone is injecting something into it, it could be a food biological contamination issue. But I mentioned about timeline, right, someone is harmed. Let's say someone is harmed, someone is hospitalized, someone is tested, they're able to say it is this. It may take years If they find out enough information to say this is an issue of food defense, of economic sabotage. That's like a legal definition.
18:19
It may take a long time for the Department of Justice, let's say, is able to say you know, we can definitively say that the reason for this issue over here was not just an innocent failure in food safety, unintentional this, it was a deliberate attack.
18:35
And so that's what's difficult in that, you know, it's hard to look at the more deliberate things, like the point to the person who goes in the grocery store retaliates about being fired by an honor using it or something, or worse, or the ice cream liquor, because that's like a, that's like the last. You know, it's like it's at the end, it takes place at the end, it's right there. You know what I mean. Kind of the other, but it's far, it's a far cry from what the average public knows about what takes place in the long distance of food's journey between the farm and raw agricultural product holding or the slaughterhouse and hag manufacturing, packaging, distribution, center distribution across the state lines. You know, there are many cases where that is where this kind of intentional act, or even the unintentional act, may take place, and we just don't necessarily see that.
19:47 - Kristin (Host)
Thank you for tuning into the first part of this insightful discussion with Dr Daren. I hope you're finding the conversation as enlightening as I am. If you're enjoying this episode, make sure to stay tuned to part two, when we continue to unravel the complexities of cybersecurity in the food industry. Also, if you are enjoying this episode, please leave us a review and share it with your coworkers and friends. It means so much to have your support. Now let's get back to the episode. It's amazing to me in talking to cybersecurity professionals about food in general and how we need to talk about it in real terms, that they completely believe the propaganda from the marketing train that we still hand milk our cows and they live in red barns and they're happy and they're sunshine. It's automated. The documentary poison showed automation of chickens moving around that people got really upset about, but we don't know what was going on with chickens, so it's probably fine. They're probably just moving them to leg. It's not a big deal, but we even wait.
20:45 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Chickens were handled.
20:46 - Kristin (Host)
Oh yeah.
20:47 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
I talk with people who think that if they go to the grocery store and they buy ground beef, that it's from one animal.
20:52 - Kristin (Host)
Oh no, that's crazy and in some ways I have to give it to that marketing machine that they've removed the humanity or the human need for us to know what's happening. We're so far removed from our food now that we have TV shows that are about that, just because we find it entertaining. It's now become entertainment. When did we get there? But it's incredible to me that, even as the professionals who work in this area are still just as unaware in a lot of ways, because we just trust the food system works, isn't it?
21:24 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
weird how that trust, the imagery behind trust you'll have the dairy industry that'll show you images of here's the farmer and they're milking the cow and it goes into the bucket and then pour that bucket into a jar kind of a thing. Of course there's a whole issue between pastries, milk and raw milk.
21:43 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah.
21:44 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
But and then, yeah, you had TV shows, I believe, in the 90s. They're like reality shows and it's like they would take people from the city and put them out in the farm and it's like, you know, go milk a cow and and like, oh my God, you know. And then like, drink the milk, oh my God. It's like where do you think, where do you think this comes from? You know why are you surprised that milk comes from a cow or that, you know, fill in the blank, food comes from, fill in the blank, this source kind of a thing.
22:14
It reminds me of that joke in the Adams family movie the lemon cookies. Are they made from real lemons? Of course I'm selling Girl Scout cookies. Are they made from real Girl Scouts? Or like dino nuggets? I remember my boys when they were very young. I had to explain to them that dino nuggets were made from chicken, not from actual dinosaur. I think that we have these barriers because that's why we, you know, we, we, we see a pig, but we eat pork right we see a cow but we eat beef.
22:44
We put up these barriers, both definition wise and mental picture wise, and even distance, you know, in terms of what we eat and where it actually comes from.
22:54 - Kristin (Host)
Yeah, it's. It's really interesting that we've done that as a society and globally. That's not necessarily just limited to the states, it's global and how disengaged we are from how things are produced. So it's almost like a shock when you find out that it's completely different than you expected and and then it's automated. It's highly automated and there's a lot of robots and there are still a lot of humans and there's still a lot of processes that are digital and I think people are just like wait, what? Like what is happening? I thought this was just really analog and I thought it was really human, and don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of places that are analog in some ways, but it's crazy. And how do food security or we'll just say food protection to blanket it, because you did a great job of explaining all of it how does food protection deal with this new digital frontier that could potentially and if it hasn't already, because you've already established that there and then we don't know what we don't know right now completely alter the safety of our food?
23:53 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
Well, this is one of those stories where you look at food and its reality of how it's made right. You know we are looking currently at the idea of traceability issues and transparency issues today and the idea that a new rule from the FDA within the Food Safety Modernization Act is basically saying that by a certain date in the future, there should be better awareness of where all the ingredients came from, and there are industry stakeholders right now that are freaking out about the idea of having to collect, store and even distribute that information.
24:28
You know we had a lot of talk about blockchain and blockchain as a way of encrypting information and sharing information with authorized access, you know, can allow for, let's say, a recall to be faster because we can find out where it came from greater speed. But within that space, in talking about blockchain and of course we don't talk so much about blockchain now in the bigger picture we just kind of rephrase that. We just talk about it in terms of greater digital transparency and digitization. You know there's entire companies that they'll digitize their sales. They won't digitize their food side of things. And I have been at events where I'm speaking for an audience, a there are people with the purchasing power and the decision-making powers of companies that will say things like well, we don't want to adopt it until many other companies have adopted these technologies, because we don't want to be, you know, the first to adopt is the first to be crucified because people find out too much information. And then there's conversations around well, we're just going to wait for a while because, you know, we want to make sure what we're getting into. We're not going to do anything until you know we're ready to be sold on the idea of digitizing, and I'll point out that, okay, well, you can't just buy a digital solution on Friday and flip the switch Sunday night and Monday. You're ready to go.
25:48
You have to be dealing with data collection, data storage, data security, data access, data analysis and even with your analysis, you've got to be asking the right questions. You've got to figure out, you know, if you have machine learning involved and artificial intelligence involved with this. You know you want to go from having a ton of data to having actual information, and having actual information is not just someone's opinion, it's. Are your protocols and processes and your people able to react in a timely and effective manner based on this information? And when we're talking about digital solutions and all these different things, that's what it really comes down to.
26:29
Right, are we actually we have this indicator Are we able to react in a timely way such that we can prevent disaster from happening, whether that is someone being harmed, killed, hospitalized, whether it is a reputation, trust, whether it is an economic impact, all these different things? Right, and you know we look at how. When there are incidents, it's usually never that kind of it's just the straw that broke the camel's back, not all the previous. You know straws kind of thing. Right, almost every event we look at.
27:04
There were telltale signs that were already there that no one was looking at, and I think that it's because we typically look at signs. In terms of food safety, we look at a food safety red flag. Today we're in a world where we're moving more and more towards ESG, environmental, social governance issues and we start looking at those red flags. Now you can start to see well, there was a red flag over here. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to result in safety, but if someone is willing to have overlooked their rodent infestation problems or to not follow child labor laws due to a really relaxed security issues because it was more economic for them, why would they not then be willing to take shortcuts when it comes to food safety? Why would they not, if there's?
27:51
You know, talk about technology and, like cybersecurity, you know if someone's willing to be okay with the level of security and their technology that allowed for a data breach when it comes to their marketing team, let's say, and one might say, well, that has nothing to do with food safety. I'm pretty sure the same people in charge of technology and data security who were working with your marketing team are working with your data collection when it comes to food safety. And you know, the pandemic. Pandemic was far more than what most people talk about People talk about the pandemic in terms of, you know, masks vaccination.
28:28 - Kristin (Host)
He's stuck at home, he's stuck at home and working remote.
28:31 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
But for so much of industry, especially the food industry, we're talking about remote monitoring, remote environmental monitoring, remote employee monitoring, safety and security monitoring, remote, you know, data collection, this. We're also talking about change and consumer behavior People ordering direct from the manufacturer, new ways of distributing food because people weren't going to the same places they were going to, whether it is the local farmers market or the local, you know, community co-op kind of things or whatever. I remember in the early days I thought this was when I was living in Massachusetts. At the time there was this, this co-op that people used to go there and it's like a grocery store, but it was a grocery store of the produce and products from local farms in the area. And well, now you can't go there. So what they did was they created a website and said you can go to packages and you just drive up. Basically held a piece of paper up with a QR code, you know, inside your window, so double, and then someone would come and scan your QR code and they had ordered and they had trucked and they would box and drop the closure truck in your own way. It was complete context kind of thing. It was changing the way people were now collecting people's private information. You know, here was a store that wasn't collecting your name and your address and your purchasing history and your credit card, necessarily, you know kind of stuff, because it was cash only, operation kind of deal. Now, all of a sudden, they're collecting all this other information because you're volunteering this online from home and you know so.
30:01
There's so much more collection, storage, security, data issues today than we had literally before the pandemic. And there are companies that are the challenges that they're trying to address them using the same people with the same job descriptions and the same credentials as they had before, rather than hiring new people. I'm always amazed when people say so, we'll have our IT team take care of that. It's okay. Your IT team cannot make decisions based on the you know the data you collect kind of a thing. Your IT people can help you make sure that you can collect and store data. They can't make the decisions for you. Who are you hiring to make these decisions? That is one of the big questions that's kind of come out through this, our current phase of evolution with technologies.
30:48 - Kristin (Host)
It's not just who handles the risk, who handles the?
30:50 - Dr. Darin (Guest)
risk. Who helps?
30:53 - Kristin (Host)
you decide. If it's a risk, who is the risk owner, do you know? I mean, that's the thing that scares me is there's so much, the landscape is so different. Now, like you just said, how do we navigate and mitigate at the same time in collective order? I don't think that's really possible. I think you kind of have to know what your?
31:09
landscape looks like and a lot of people when I've gone into various food companies and other manufacturing facilities. They don't know their crown jewels, Darin. They don't know what's important and what's not. They don't know what machines are important. They don't know what data is important. They don't know where the data is, and this is asking executive level to security, to IT. They don't know because they don't know what they don't know. It's not their fault entirely.
31:30
And then I've had conversations with other cybersecurity professionals and they said well, what is anything actually secret in a food company? And I had to fix my face real fast because I'm like wow, do you value certain foods that you've had? There's secret recipes that are coveted all over the place. I mean Campbell's soup, for example. Their tomato recipe is secure and safe. You know, it's something that's paramount to their business. We wouldn't want to share that with their competitors, would we? I mean, these are the kind of things that people don't think about because they just want to enjoy their can of soup.
31:59
And I think, as cybersecurity professionals, we're in a unique position to help food protection do their job, because we see everything. It's not like we have godlike cosmic powers, but we do see everything. We have systems that are monitoring everything that's connected to the internet. We have systems that are connected to things that would probably be very much of an interest to people who are doing any type of audit and or investigation for fraud or some type of a food born illness. I think that this is why and I know you and I have spoken about this prior the cybersecurity is such a vital portion of food safety culture.
32:32
Now we come to the end of the first part of our discussion with Dr Daren. Remember, this is just the beginning. Part two of our conversation will dive even deeper into the world of food safety and cybersecurity, so make sure to subscribe to the podcast. You don't miss out on the continuation of this discussion. I'm Kristin Demoranville and it's been an absolute pleasure to have you with us. Stay safe, stay curious and we'll see you on the next episode. Bye for now.
