Creating a Culture of Safety: Strategies for Effective Workplace Violence Prevention

0:00

CHUCK:

Hello and welcome to the Ontic Connected Intelligence Podcast. I’m Chuck Randolph, Ontic’s Chief Security Officer. Join us as we delve into valuable insights and practical advice that will empower you to navigate the complexities of modern corporate security and risk. We’re here to share knowledge from experienced leaders and innovators in the field. All right, get settled and let’s dive in. Hector Alvarez is a nationally recognized expert with over 30 years of experience specializing in workplace violence prevention. He served as a security director protecting critical infrastructure, a city police officer, and a professional security consultant. He has assisted hundreds of organizations in creating threat assessment and workplace violence prevention programs. And through his extensive field experience, Hector has responded to thousands of potentially violent incidents and provided litigation support in high-profile cases. As a California-based consultant, he has contributed to workplace violence prevention standards and is actively preparing organizations for the implementation of Senate Bill 553. Hector, welcome to Ontic’s Connected Intelligence Podcast, my friend.

HECTOR:

Thank you, Chuck. Appreciate it. Glad to be here.

CHUCK:

Yeah, it’s always a mouthful to kind of read those. I’m always happy to get through those, but just says a lot about you and the experience that you bring to bear.

HECTOR:

Yeah, it’s always interesting to hear it read back to yourself and, you know, sit there quietly being polite about people who explain what you’ve done.

CHUCK:

Well, I know, I know you speak a lot. And you’re called on to speak a lot. Isn’t that always the worst thing is when you’re like, now tell us about yourself. And I can always a little bit of like, okay, once we get through that, then I’m happy. But yeah, you’re right.

HECTOR:

It’s that most interesting thing that happened recently. One of my announcers persons introduced me asked me what I do for fun. And I was taken back because I hadn’t really ever thought like, what do I do for fun? And I was pretty perplexed. And him didn’t holler for a while, because right now I’m doing this work. And my wife and I do this together. And so this is our baby. This is what we do. And it forced me to go find something fun to do. Kind of interesting.

CHUCK:

And what was that? Spoiler alert. What was it?

HECTOR:

Traveling. We’re going to go to Rome here in a couple of weeks.

CHUCK:

Oh, nice. I’m going later this year. So I’ve been a few times for work. but it will be exciting to be there as a tourist, won’t it? Yeah, no work, just vacation. And by the way, I understand, you know, my wife is also involved in the industry. So I understand a lot of times that that becomes a little bit of your, your home life to the discussion of, of what you’re looking at, what you’re seeing. So totally get that.

HECTOR:

Yeah, it is. We have to balance it, you know, we’ll be sitting on the table and something will pop in and we go right into work, but we’ve, uh, we’re navigating it pretty well.

CHUCK:

But then there’s all the standard conversations that every couple has, you know, who’s going to the grocery store, what do you need, you know, what’s happening with the cars, all the other stuff. Yeah, completely agree. But. I guess that’s kind of a great segue. I’m curious about your journey. You know, what led you into the field? Was there an aha moment where you said, this is kind of my thing and what I like to do? I mean, what inspired you to get into this area?

HECTOR:

So, you know, right out of high school, I joined the Navy, I was kind of a knucklehead and needed some guidance. And about two years in, at Moffettville, California, Our base was attacked by just a disillusioned young man who wanted to take over a plane and fly to Cuba. He crashed the gate. It was very dramatic. You know, I was on the security side or running around. And it just kind of always set with me like what would cause somebody to go that direction. When I got out of the Navy. I got a job at Dell Computers in Austin, Texas, and they were growing fast and it was changing. And, you know, there was a lot of potential for violence. And I was around a lot of people that were focused on protecting people from violence. And it just stuck, Chuck. It really just stuck. And I started learning the practical side, the work side, and we were big enough. And, you know, Michael’s team was growing so fast. There were just so many interactions and experiences that I was able to learn in the field. And then it just kind of took from there.

4:04

CHUCK:

What’s interesting in that moment that you had in the Navy, and thank you for your service, by the way, and then how that continued to inform you. Can you think of like kind of looking back at that young man who would later get into the expertise in the field you’re in? I mean, was there any early lessons learned or pivotal moments beyond the, let’s call it the Cuba, Cuba gate issue that informed you?

HECTOR:

You know, what I very became aware of early on was that it was very rare for me that a situation would turn out the way it presented at me. You know, I had people come to me to us with, Oh, my gosh, this is terrible. And we’d start pulling it apart, we start looking at it, and it really wasn’t that bad. And then the big cases, the serious ones, the dangerous ones started out with Hey, Hector, do you have a second? And, and, and we’d start sitting down and then several hours later realized this is a very serious one. So for me, it was that exploration of trying to understand something that we only had bits and pieces to. And that really stuck for me. It was that, it was that putting the pieces of the puzzle together for me, I think was what attracted me to the work.

CHUCK:

Yeah, me too. I started out my career as a private investigator. And it was always the allure of solving a complex issue. Because you’re right, yes, my grandma used to say, you know, you can’t judge a book by its cover. And those things often that maybe appear to be the most dangerous, maybe are just howlers, where in fact, there’s somebody over here that’s far more insidious, looking at things, scouting, and those hunters are the ones that you really got to worry about. So I like that. I especially like the idea of that little, that little shout out to like critical thinking in this space.

HECTOR:

I will tell you, though, that mine was a practical experience journey. It was a lot of work in the field. And as I shifted from Dell to other other jobs, you know, not a lot of schooling. I hadn’t been a police officer. So when I landed at my final job that I landed for, like, stayed at for like 15 years, I put myself through school. I put myself through the academy and worked as a police officer as a reserve in parallel. So I probably was not eligible to hold the job that I had when I first started, but I grew into it. The studying, the law enforcement, the ATAP, and understanding, you know, the academic side, the research side.

CHUCK:

Well, think about it, though. Sometimes when you build that career from the field up, if you will, you know, I’ve mentioned people I’m sure you have before as well, where you’re like, look, you need to go get your paper and catch it up with you. It’s not maybe your or my personal, you know, our personal beliefs. It’s just a matter of culture and where we are. So were you capable or were you just catching up the paper with your own personal expertise?

HECTOR:

I tell you what, when I got into my work at the master’s level, and I really started to understand research, and the science behind it, for me, it was really an eye opener, because I learned how to learn. And I think just being the practical person leveraging the experience is useful. But for me personally, when I learned how to learn, it was really an eye opener. And my competency just just shot to the roof.

CHUCK:

No, you’re absolutely right. I had a similar experience. And when you get your master’s, and now you’re studying something that maybe if you’re getting, let’s say an undergraduate and you’re 60% or 40% of something you’re, you’re interested in, but you kind of got to get through that. When you get to your master’s level, you’re like 75, 85% down the road. And you’re right. Then you really like, I I’m really into this. I love the subject. I’m into the research. It is going back to what we said earlier. It is kind of my hobby now. Um, and I love that learning to learn. I mean, have you continued to weaponize that? air quotes there, learning to learn and other things like now I need to go this, so you can more rapidly learn a subject.

HECTOR:

You know, the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t learn, you know, and I really, I really stay on the shoulders of giants and some of the big people in threat assessment, which is really kind of where I work. And I love trying to interpret their studies. And so I’m constantly taking, you know, basic courses, advanced courses, this is constantly evolving. And I still feel like threat assessment, even violent prevention and security are such a new and evolving domain that I get nervous when I see people presenting the same stuff they presented 10 years ago with no change, because the dynamics keep changing, the inputs, the influences keep changing, and we have to keep learning.

8:48

CHUCK:

Here’s a question, just like, how much, okay, let’s say art and science of threat management, How much is art and how much is science? Realizing we have, we have no data. It’s just two people talking on a podcast, but I’m curious, like what’s your Kentucky windage on that? Because I believe there is both to it.

HECTOR:

It’s both. I still strongly believe it’s a little bit of art, a little bit of science, because I’ve had situations with very limited information and people looking at me like, what do we do? And I have to go a little bit off my gut experience and intuition and, and it’s hard to articulate. It’s like, I just feel like this is a case that because, or I’ve had a similar situation. And it’s been hard in those cases to articulate where the advice is coming from. And it’s that art, I’ve, you know, been there, I’ve done that. And we leverage the team’s opinion to do that. I don’t know that we’re ever going to get away from that, because I think the human psyche, the human behavior is just so unpredictable. And we’re really good at understanding it after it happened. When we don’t have all the information, it’s, I’ve been here before, but this is what I think. And it’s an opinion.

CHUCK:

Well, and there, I mean, look, there is structured analytics, there’s structured intelligence and threat management analytics that we can use. But I think you’re right. A lot of the art comes from experiences as well, both like dealing with people on the ground, reading reports. understanding, you know, the various, you know, one thing I love with you go to an ATAP conferences, they are chock full of case studies. And I think it’s consuming all that stuff, you know, again, learning how to learn that helps in maybe inform and influence, you know, the gut instinct as well. How do you draw the line though, between art and hey, oh, okay, now we need to go do some structural analytics on this and determine something.

HECTOR:

For me, it’s when the case slows down, when there’s a little bit of a pause and stability. I tend to always err on the side of caution. We can make adjustments to the environment. We can do some things with the person concerned with limited information. But when it starts to, I don’t want to say stabilize, just slow down, Then I think it’s time to dig the information out, to look at background and history. What can we find through an OSINT search? What do we know about history? What do we know about the person reporting? So I think there’s sometimes a natural, I don’t want to say pause, but a delay. And I think it’s critical then that we collect the pieces and we make sure everybody’s on the same page and everybody has access to the same information.

CHUCK:

I mean, look, you hear in the security side of things, and I know you heard this when you worked in critical infrastructure and as a police officer and in the Navy, the idea of that common operating picture. You know, we need common operating language, common operating info to get to that. Same thing works in threat assessment, threat management too. I mean, plus you also have a, I would say you have a strong cultural layer to that because, you know, you could be German, I could be French, you know, French and we’re looking at a threat case one way, but we both have cultural nuances we’re going to bring to our approach and how we deal with that as well.

HECTOR:

Yeah, there’s still a lot of aha moments in even the most professional threat assessment teams I have. And it’s just a constant reminder that, you know, slowing down, going through that formal process, you know, dragging out the structured professional judgment tools really help. And there’s a time, there’s a time when I’ve got limited information. The threat seems serious, possibly imminent, and we go based on our best judgment. So I’ve seen both. I’ve seen both.

12:32

HECTOR:

Yeah, and I’ve started to shift kind of professionally on this. Because what I started to notice when I get called in, which is usually after a case, that the individuals, the supervisors, the managers, the leadership recognized at some point that there was a problem. And it’s what they did about it. And I think if there’s a gap, it’s not recognizing the warning signs. I think the gap is between awareness and action. What do we do about it? Interesting.

CHUCK:

What do we, what do we go with it? And what is like, what is that? I guess I’m trying to purposely put my brain on that. that I’m the organization, not security or threat management base, but just an organization, maybe I’m a CLO or HR lead, and I’m asking this, so walk me through that gap between those two.

HECTOR:

Absolutely. For me, that gap, and this is my experience, this is one consultant’s work out there, but what I see is a lot of frontline, mid-level managers and supervisors who are promoted because they have the technical capability. And I think very often what’s lacking is the ability to sit across from the table and do an intake. They get very specific and tell me what happened. What do they say? What do they do? And I think that very fact based intake can have problems. And, you know, some of the most critical, serious threats that have been averted that I’ve been involved in, we had a manager who asked the question differently. Tell me why you felt uncomfortable. Tell me why you felt unsafe and allow the person to talk and tell their story. And it’s the ability for that to come across. And so it’s such a very nuanced intake. But I have found that once it gets to the team, the team does a great job of assessing it. I think it’s getting it from the person who’s reporting it to the person who’s doing the intake. And that handoff, I think, is where we have a great opportunity to make some changes.

CHUCK:

I think you’re absolutely right there. I mean, I remember in a previous life, you know, we all went through crucial conversation training. You know, they wanted everybody in the organization to understand it. Cause I think you’re absolutely right. People get promoted because tactically I’m very good. I’m a good engineer. I’m a good marketer. I’m a good, scientists, whatever insert here. But now as a manager, there’s new things that get thrown onto my plate. Yes, of course we know you can do what you do tactically, but now you have to manage 10, 20, 50 other people. And in that, you know, it requires that you have active listening skills, you can ask open ended questions to kind of get the read on the other person, all those things. So I guess if I could take that one step further, I mean, if we identify some of the warning signs, like we’re able to go out to these folks and get them the training, you know, crucial conversation type training and all that.

HECTOR:

Now, what I’ve been struggling with, you know, if any of us Google, you know, workplace violence warning signs, we get, you know, these 30 item list of behaviors to watch out for. And what I’ve started to see is these lists have become so inclusive, that they’re almost difficult to use. Because, you know, I woke up grumpy. I take change difficultly. I’m narcissistic. I got fired. I got hired. I got married. I got divorced. And when I’m presenting and talking to people, they’re just overwhelmed. And, you know, one of the things I say when people ask me, Hector, when should I share my concerns? What I always tell them is, you know, if you find yourself wondering whether or not you should say something, you should probably say something. Because you’ve already filtered out all the other situations that just don’t bother you.

CHUCK:

And that’s kind of what I was getting at is we have the idea of the science, like here’s your here’s your list manager, go look at it, they check five of these off. But if you’re not listening, and you’re not, you know, you’re not bringing the art back into the conversation, you could either miss something, or you could misinterpret something. So I mean, you know, absolutely, you know, maybe the way to address them effectively, is through training, and through development of the art of the manager and that as that first line leader of recognizing something’s off I don’t know what it is, but something’s off. Maybe I need to go validate or invalidate my thought.

HECTOR:

And then I think there’s part two. I think once we look at it and it comes to us, then I think the team can look at the specific behavior. Where does it fall in the category? Is there a cluster of concerning behavior? But I don’t need my manager to know that. I don’t need my frontline supervisor to necessarily know that. I just need them to knock on the door and raise their concern.

18:00

CHUCK:

How do you help people get through this balance of like, look, we’re not big brother, but you kind of have to see something, say something, you know, loose lips sink ships, but loose lips also, you know, identify a pattern or maybe save somebody’s life or help somebody get out of a bad spot. I mean, how do you balance, how do you balance those two?

HECTOR:

Yeah. So for me, a lot of my clients are private corporations, um, not, you know, very, very specific in, in, uh, in regulatory compliance. And so I try to stay away from words like report your concerns. And I try to highlight a, uh, an environment of sharing your concerns because collectively we all want to work in a certain type of environment. And I highlight not just the benefit of bringing a concern forward because you’re worried about violence, but you may just have a coworker who’s struggling emotionally, mentally, and sharing your concerns could address individuals who are having problems that with just a little bit of input could get back on path to their mental or, you know, So their wellness, just get back to wellness. And I’m really trying to stay away from creating this culture of reporting and create a culture of sharing your concerns.

CHUCK:

Subtle difference. I like that. I mean, it’s about care. It’s about care and feeding of your fellow of your fellow, you know, your fellow employee also. I mean, maybe that’s the way to lead is like, look, you’re not tattling on someone. You actually could be, you could be saving them. You could be doing something that’s going to help them. you know, future on from doing something harm like suicide or an act of shooting or, you know, whatever threat that might be.

HECTOR:

Yeah, you know, in a class that I give, one of the scenarios I present is you walk into a break room and you see one of your coworkers kind of head down crying and what would you do? And it’s really surprising how many people say, well, I would give them their space and walk out. And when I explore that, it’s a nervousness to engage. Yeah, I don’t want to, I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want to be involved. And I think we have to get past that. I mean, if we’re going to, a lot of us spend as much time with our coworkers than we do with our family. We can tell when there’s a difference. We can tell there’s a problem. And I think we have to be able to talk to each other.

CHUCK:

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I mean, it’s, and it’s fostering a culture of safety and trust. I mean, trust, you know, security runs on trust, both cyber and physical, but in the same sense, I mean, trust between you and your fellow worker, trust that the process is going to work. There’s a lot of, I mean, most organizations probably have trust issues, let’s be honest.

HECTOR:

You know, a lot of organizations focus on psychological safety, you know, creating this environment where employees feel comfortable coming forward. What I’ve been hearing a lot more is this concept of organizational betrayal. where the employees just don’t feel like somebody is going to do something. I’ve said something before, nothing changed. Why should I come forward? And once, you know, once their opinion gets tainted, it’s a really hard journey to recover from that. And I’m hearing that more and more from employees. They’re like, they will stop me mid-president. Hector, that’s great, but nothing ever changes. We’ve got to address that.

21:13

CHUCK:

Well, and now, I mean, let’s take Senate Bill 553 out of California. I mean, now you have the government, state governments getting involved saying, well, thou shalt now thou shalt do these things. So things that maybe we were ill prepared or unwilling to do now the government is going to step in and say, these are things you’re going to do to protect your employees. I mean, what, what’s your take on now that we’ve gotten through the initial phase of 553? I mean, What’s your thoughts as we move forward?

HECTOR:

So we’ve seen you know a lot of blowback from 553. You know it’s directed. And what a lot of people don’t understand is the Senate bill passed a law that directed our California’s health organization to follow that law while they develop their own standard. And Cal/OSHA has done that, and it’s going out. And it’s been a mix as I’ve been approached, or I approach people to help out. Some who just want to be compliant. Hector, just tell me what I need to do just to meet the minimum requirements. Others who’ve already been embracing a culture of safety, a culture of prevention, and it’s super easy. But we are already seeing the shift in Cal/OSHA, the shift in the bill. And I have a real nervousness for companies that focus on compliance period versus a culture prevention that it’s just not going to work out. Cal/OSHA is really, really focused because of the people that were hurt that motivated the creation of 553. And we’re seeing the impact. It’s going to be a rapidly changing landscape in California.

CHUCK:

Rapidly changing because you’re going to see the embrace culture vice minimum viable, you know, minimum viable product to get it done?

HECTOR:

That and, you know, the Senate bill created a new definition for workplace violence in California that exists no place else, which also includes behavior that could lead to psychological trauma and or stress. There’s no other definition of workplace violence that includes that. It’s lowered the bar, it’s made it very broad. Cal/OSHA is trying to understand and get their arms wrapped around it because they want to treat it like a health and safety hazard. A hole that’s too deep that may collapse. Temperature that’s too high. The challenge is there’s no bright line with workplace violence and what may be a threat. And so that has created a definition problem. You know, I’m going to kick your butt after work, very clearly a defined threat, maybe not serious. But a statement like, you know, watch yourself, buddy, it could be much more of a serious threat, but not less than content.

CHUCK:

Well, definitely some unanticipated consequences or unanticipated actions from a law that’s out there to try to probably get its arms around something that no one’s tried before.

HECTOR:

And I’ll tell you, Chuck, it covers a lot of the bases. It’s got a lot of good elements. I think the things that organizations need to understand are the four categories of violence, which explain offender behavior and how that may affect them. it’s got to be individualized, it’s got to be customized. You know, I worked with a major warehouse company, they distill it, deliver stuff. And I worked with a small mom and pop restaurant, their exposures are uniquely different, and they need to interpret them differently.

CHUCK:

That’s interesting, because that’s like my obvious next question is where, you know, I’m, Where am I in the paradigm of this? And how should I start? Like you said, there’s some companies that have already based that like, employee culture, this is not a new thing, we’re happy to do it and help. And there’s others like, just tell me what I need to do. I mean, how do you like, that’s two very vast differences. I mean, how do you advise the ones that don’t care, just give me the checklist as opposed to the ones that like, this is great, give me more.

HECTOR:

So there’s some administrative stuff. The bill definitely creates a requirement to document more than you ever did. And so if you don’t have a focus on that, you have to get ready because things have to be captured. But the probably the greatest area of focus I’ve been given these my clients, other people that I work with is understand the topography of violence, those four categories of violence, which is based on the offender. So then you can understand your employees’ exposure to each one. We can’t just mitigate, you know, we can’t just put up a solution. You know, people ask about ballistic barriers and locks and gates and guns. You have to understand the threat to then apply a mitigation. And so if you just start applying mitigation, tools, strategies, but you don’t understand the threat, you may be wasting money. Right. And so I really come back to a lot understand and learn those four categories of violence.

26:12

CHUCK:

And do you advise people in terms of a strategy like the old standard, you know, people process technology? I mean, and you know, if you want to wrap your head around something like here, let’s start with this PPT, people process technology and how those four categories, you know, you could almost make a grid and say, let’s walk through the strategy for each of them.

HECTOR:

And we, yes, because you know, a lot of people that have cameras and they don’t know what they’re using them for, what they’re looking at, what the recorded, we’ll have people that have access control systems, you know, card readers and they’re not monitored, they’re not checked. They don’t, they don’t understand how, what they have. is intended to be used, and it’s not being utilized properly. And so sometimes it’s just helping them understand what they’ve got. But then again, you know, I’ll have a 12 person bike shop that’s like, Hector, what the heck does this mean? So there’s going to be a learning curve for a while. You know, I think if you have any, you know, mid to large size company, It’s really making sure that you’re focusing on prevention and intervention, not just compliance. Because the big thing that Cal/OSHA pushes, and it’s splattered throughout the entire document, is an effective program. Cal/OSHA put out a template for compliance. And at the very end, it says, hey, following all the steps in this template does not guarantee that you’re going to be in compliance. You’ve got to do the lifting on your own. That’s a big cautionary tale.

CHUCK:

And how do you see technology fitting into all that? I mean, I mean, clearly, I can see some easy things that it could be something as simple as a spreadsheet where people have never used it before, or reporting to, you know, something as big, big as a system of record.

HECTOR:

Yeah, you know, I think technology is going to have a huge role to play and then how it’s applied, because there’s just so much data. And we have to be able to sort the information that’s available. Going back to that simple thing of just access control systems, a lot of people don’t monitor it. And they don’t know if they’ve had a forced entry attempt. They don’t know if they have a lost or stolen badge attempting to scan in. And we’ll go do a check, like run a report, like, oh, look, this lost badge tried to get in last Saturday at two o’clock in the warehouse, and nobody was alerted. So I think there’s a huge role to be played for technology, whether it’s video analytics, whether it’s processing data, whether it’s, you know, employees interact with each other, but I think there’s just too much information for a human being to make that initial pass. And I think that marrying of what I see and what I hear and what I’m dealing with is a great place for technology to help fill the gap.

28:42

CHUCK:

Yeah. Let me ask you another question that just occurred to me. I mean, behavioral threat assessment teams, you know, big or small organizations, Hey, Hector, calling you on the phone. You know, I’m interested in this BTAT type, you know, threat assessment team, like, but I don’t know where like, what does this mean? How should I start? How do I get everybody together? I realized like this could be a podcast in and of itself. I mean, I’m a fan of that approach. I mean, how do you kind of coach people who have never had a BTAT philosophy to kind of like, you know, think people process technology, like, you know, which could lead to other great things like insider risk committees and all things. But where do we start getting the team together?

HECTOR:

One of the gut check questions I asked him is, do you guys trust each other? You know, does this HR trust security enough to call them ahead of time for a situation that’s developing? How do they wait until an hour before the separation or termination and say, I need security to stand by? The latter. It’s the latter is what we get a lot of times. And it’s really hard for my security folks to provide any material benefit without being able to do the research. So it’s really a gut check question. Do you really trust each other? Because once we get past the structured processional judgment tools, the, any analytics, I’ve got to sit across from a person and have a very raw, in-depth conversation about our employees. And I got to trust you. Likely uncomfortable. Likely uncomfortable. So for me personally, one consultant, do you trust each other in this process? And then we can build all the other steps that we know that exist. There’s a structured process. There’s other people that have done this before. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s just what works for us. But it’s really hard to do if you honestly, legitimately don’t trust each other.

CHUCK:

Well, think about it from like, you know, larger organizations, I worked at a multinational, a lot of that was pre built in when I got there. And even then, you know, one of the biggest not problems, but a hurdle that we always face was just like bringing everyone to the table when there was a risk that we needed to talk about. Now, I think there’s opportunities for smaller organizations to take the BTAT mentality and just say, look, we’re going to start a security or risk governance hub in our organization. That could be all things. We think that Chuck Randolph is an insider issue. We’ll bring it to this group. We think that Hector is showing signs of a mental breakdown if you wish. I’ll bring it to this team and getting them all to talk like security people. Sometimes we forget, like we talk first responder or we talk security and HR talks HR, legal talks legal, finance talks budget. And then you’re right at the end of the day, I don’t grok what you’re saying. And it makes me feel weird. So I’ll just clam up. I mean, I got to imagine as a consultant, that’s the first hurdle you get is like y’all need to talk.

HECTOR:

And a lot of times I’ll get called in just to deliver a message they didn’t want to hear internally. Like, I just need you to come in and basically it sounds, tell them the same thing I said, but they want to hear it externally. Bring your briefcase. Yep. You know, exactly. Look official. Um, other times I find myself reminding people to stay in their own swim lanes because they will start assuming what the other person’s going to do or say either HR, legal, security, and it, The whole idea, and it’s batted around so quickly, this whole multidisciplinary approach, it’s because I need the security opinion to contradict, to be in conflict with the HR opinion, and they work through that. And the product, I believe, becomes better.

CHUCK:

That’s interesting. I love it. And I love the multidisciplinary approach should because for many organizations who who can’t have like, separate, you know, separate councils or committees or working groups or whatever, for specific risks in say, insider or workplace violence, I mean, you can create one, it’s probably not optimal, but it’s it’s a place to start. Well, I’ve one more question that we ask everybody, which is what does Connected Intelligence mean to you?

HECTOR:

You know, so for me, you know, I started out just a security person and people in information would come to me and, and I would figure it out and I’d have a spreadsheet on my own. When I start looking at Connected Intelligence, um, and realizing that information can come from so many different places and the ability for it to be presented in a way that we can all understand at the same time, it’s made a big shift for me and what I’m seeing. And so I think it’s understand that it doesn’t have to be expensive, that there’s systems that exist, but that it is a big part of it. There’s simply too much information, I believe personally, for a human being to sort through and tying that together with whatever you think technology is, And however that applies makes a massive difference organizationally. I mean, the longest I’ve ever dealt with a case has been 10 years from the time the individual left until the time they came back and started doing something. He was off our radar. Nobody was thinking about him, but we had the databases, the systems and, you know, one name in popped up, Hey, by the way, this is that guy from that time at the place. And we were to catch up. Chuck, I think it makes a huge difference as we learn to understand and apply it.

CHUCK:

10 years, can you imagine? I mean, that could have been three iterations of threat managers or investigators or HR officials dealing with that.

HECTOR:

There was only one person left in the organization who remembered him. And that was only after looking at the systems that everybody else had moved on.

CHUCK:

That kind of sent a shiver down my spine. It was pretty serious. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. And I like the idea of like Connected Intelligence as a strategy, as a philosophical strategy for your organization and start wherever you can start. Wherever you start. Hector, where do people find you? I mean, if they want to find you, are you best to get in touch with you on LinkedIn or what?

HECTOR:

Yeah, I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I don’t sell anything. Just show up Hector Alvarez and you’d go find me. I do a lot of presentations. People ask me to come share my opinion. You can tell I’m not afraid to share my opinion. But I think LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to find me. I’ve got a little company and we’re plugging away. We’ve got a handful of people. But I think like you, we’re trying to keep people safe. And there’s just a lot of people rolling in the same direction. So don’t hesitate to reach out.

CHUCK:

Yeah, I love it. And I love all you do to, you know, serve the country, serve your community and continue to serve organizations, keep them safe.

HECTOR:

You guys do amazing stuff, too.

CHUCK:

Absolutely. Hector, thank you for being part of the Connected Intelligence podcast, my friend. Yeah, Chuck. Thanks for having me.