Ontic Roundtable: Analyzing the Tumultuous Start to 2025

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. Hi, Happy New Year and welcome to the Ontic Connected Intelligence Podcast. I’m Chuck Randolph. With me is the Cindy Marble and Fred Burton. Welcome. Happy New Year, gang.

Cindy:

Happy New Year. Happy New Year, Chuck. Good to see you.

Chuck:

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we just saw each other yesterday.

Cindy:

I think we did.

Chuck:

As usual with a Roundtable podcast, we have no guests. We just have our own internal Onticians as we call ourselves and subject matter experts to kind of talk about the news, bring up the Roundtable. And, you know, I mean, why don’t we just go right into it? It’s like happy 2025. To me, it looks a lot like 2024 that looked a lot like 2023. Thoughts? 

Cindy:

All the same. Just another day. 

Chuck:

It is indeed. Uh, honestly, I mean the, the end of the, the end of the year was pretty tumultuous. We had quite, quite a few events. I mean, look, we’ve all been at this a long time. I can’t remember. I honestly can’t remember a holiday or a holiday season where something hasn’t happened. And you know, sometimes I think a lot of protectors and a lot of risk folks in the in the world kind of look around and look at the holiday and go, well, what fresh hell is this? That’s going to erupt over the holiday season.

Fred:

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. We’ve lived through a few bad ones.

1:55

Chuck:

Well, and as we, you know, as we record this, not to date it, but as we record it, I mean, we’re looking at massive wildfires out in California again. I mean, we saw this last year, you know, rain, whether manmade or natural, you know, the risks and the activities keep happening. I mean, You know, Fred, I know you’re one that watches weather. You’re not, not because you want to know what’s it like outside, but I know given your past, you know, supply chain issues and all that from previous companies and things you’ve done, I mean, what are your thoughts on the wildfires and what are your thoughts in general on kind of managing those types of risks?

Fred:

You know, Chuck, it’s a great question because I think it’s one of those issues that it never matters until it does. And then once it starts to matter, it really matters well, meaning it affects everybody. And quite frankly, I know that it’s the only thing that I’ve actually see shut down companies and production and so forth, whether it be wildfires or tornadoes. You know, I also think it’s an underestimated kind of problem when individuals are doing threat assessments to understand your geography and your footprint. I know, yeah, Chuck, uh, you know, Austin, Texas is the second largest high threat area for wildfires in the nation next to California. And I know we suffered horrendous fires in Bastrop, Texas, where a lot of high tech industry is moving and so forth. And I know I have read a lot of threat assessments in the past to include even advanced reports, Sydney, on protection details where weather is really just not even covered at times. So, you know, I do think it’s one of these issues that goes literally under the radar until it’s important.

Chuck:

I mean, Cindy, let me ask you a question. I mean, that’s a good point about whether it’s always just kind of a, a line on, on the threat report, you know, that you’re briefing out to the team. I mean, how in your, you know, your past experience, both in government and helping out in the private sector, do you agree with that statement? And is it, should it just be a line item or should we think about it more deeply?

Cindy:

I think it is thought about more deeply in my old world, in the government experience. There’s actually a team of people that are looking at all aspects of security and weather being one of them. And there were folks that stayed on top of and made weather calls. Hey, are we flying? Are we driving? Are we heloing? What are we doing? And very cognizant and aware of the weather being an issue. I can’t tell you how many, we used to call them the disaster tours that we went on that were, you know, post-weather events, but still things that were going on in areas that we had to be, you know, fully aware of and be able to react to. I think what it speaks to is anticipation, anticipating all types of events, whether, you know, like you said, whether they’re natural or they’re manmade. We talk about 360 degrees of protection, that’s part of it. It’s what’s up above and down below as well as all around you. So it’s something that needs to be anticipated.

Chuck:

That’s true. I think the reason maybe sometimes it gets I mean, if we work for a large retail chain, we probably live and breathe the weather. I know some teams, and even some of our own clients that have meteorologists on staff because they need to understand and then others like weather, you know, that doesn’t affect us or our personnel. But I was thinking about the wildfires this morning when I woke up and how many people are being displaced. But then how that weather could be used you know in terms of creating a narrative around a corporation or creating a narrative or missing disinformation around activities. I mean you’re absolutely right. I think there’s a 360 view and we always have to stop and ask ourselves what’s happening. How does it affect us? And what are like second and third orders of effect from we can’t take off in the helo to people are saying that our office is shut down when in fact it’s not. I mean, anything to pile onto that.

Fred:

Yeah, I think too, Chuck and you know, I’ve been in GSOCs where weather is the only thing that’s up and running and I think to your point, those clients that depend heavily on a supply chain have a global footprint, even watching shipments coming in from the Port of Houston or the Port of Long Beach. And we all live through the horrific events in Katrina, for example, when the fears of the Mississippi flooding would have drastically displaced the supply chain for our country and so forth. And it did a pretty hard hit on America’s supply chain to begin with. So, you know, it is one of those issues that is important for all of us to remind ourselves to think about from a contingency perspective. You know, I was thinking, Chuck, today about, you know, we all know we have protection teams out on the West Coast with ultra high net worth protectees and so forth. And you wonder, you know, how quickly were they able to evacuate? You have traffic. especially in the private sector where you don’t, you can’t have a police lead to get you out. Right. So, you know, did they have enough time to get out? Where did they go? Where was their rendezvous point and so forth? And, you know, could they get their planes up and in the air?

Chuck:

Interesting today, this morning when I got back from the gym, I was listening to the radio, and they were talking about people who were abandoning their cars to evacuate because police were coming out saying, look, get out of your car, move out. And they were going to bulldoze the cars off the freeway so they could get emergency services vehicles in. I think you’re absolutely right. No one is coming. It’s up to us. And I think there’s a seasonality to these things. I was just also thinking, what is it, 20-year anniversary of the tsunami in Thailand? You know, there’s a seasonality of some of these things that may be, you know, Cindy, back to your point, this 360 degrees also is 365 days. What are we entering into and how do we need to think about that? So there should be no black swan if it’s already happened, I guess is what I’m saying.

Cindy:

I think one of the things is taking this opportunity, especially, you know, the situation’s happening. So, you know, now’s not the time to say, okay, how are we going to, you know, plan one of these events, but using this as an after-action opportunity to really sit down and game plan these things and to run tabletop scenarios. I mean, that was one of the things that we did all the time, and organizations should do that. Run a tabletop. What are we going to do? What happens if? all the roads are blocked and we can’t get in because people have abandoned their vehicles. What happens if this, we know, like you said, there’s a seasonality. I mean, I live here on the Gulf Coast. We’re always, you know, hurricane season is approaching. This is how you prepare for it. And, you know, everybody does it or they should.

Fred:

And the devastation, Chuck and Cindy, I was looking at some of the video. I’m very familiar with that area just for some business trips I’ve made out there and specifically on the Pacific Coast Highway there in Malibu. And if you look at the footage there, literally every ultra high net worth house you can imagine with big time Hollywood personalities has been burnt to the ground. It’s somewhat unbelievable when you look at the footage.

9:43

Chuck:

Yeah, it’s eerie. It’s eerie to watch. And, you know, our hearts and our thoughts go out to everyone affected by it. And we hope this finds everybody safe. I don’t want to forget, you know, what we went through at the end of the year and the tragic assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. And while that seems to be kind of, it’s kind of enveloped by other news, if you will, that have happened. We’ve had New Orleans, we’ve had the tragic incident in Vegas. We’ve had now these wildfires and you know, there were still, this assassination still happened. People are still reeling. Organizations are still saying, what about us? Could it happen here? I mean, I’m curious. We’ve had a few minutes since the issue. How are each of you thinking about it? What are you hearing and how are you advising people to utilize the incident to the best way in terms of ensuring that we’re having the right conversations and we’re going to make sure this isn’t repeated.

Cindy:

Um, you know, one, one of the things, you know, I talk about in, in, and I think we’ve always talked about is, is the, reason to collaborate and to talk and to have conversations. You know, this isn’t just an executive protection problem. Executive protection is responsible, obviously, but it is really a team effort of an entire security apparatus to work around, provide the protective intelligence that’s needed, and to support the executive protection teams as they carry out their job, and to work to ensure that these tragic events don’t happen. This is truly a tragedy in the corporate world, and I think just across the world in general, that there could be such a targeted act like this just on the street in New York City.

Chuck:

Yeah, Fred, you know, I’ve heard you talk about, you know, the almost raising the assassin up to like folk hero status, if you will, in certain dark sectors of the internet and in conversations, I mean, what are you seeing or what are you hearing in terms of, you know, knockoff, not knockoffs, but, you know, rising tides of maybe vitriol against haves and have nots and all those things.

Fred:

Yeah, I do think it’s a troubling issue just from a historical perspective. And I think the shooter, that kind of threat actor is what I believe to be, you know, the new Jackal or part of the new Jackals. Meaning, if you go back in time and you look at the first Carlos the Jackal who tried to assassinate the CEO of Marks and Spencer there in London, and that was kind of a bungled operation. But, you know, he certainly tried. And then you had the Herrhausen hit. which we’ve all studied and learned from with a protection team. And now you’ve got these new jackals that are, you know, anti-rich, anti-CEO, anti-healthcare, whatever they might have an anti-beef about. And I think it’s important for us to understand, you know, who else is being targeted. You know, we have our internal protective intelligence blog that we manage here at Ontic. There’s still a fair amount of confusion as to exactly who has been listed where and when and so forth. I think we still have a lot of intelligence gaps on that. And, you know, I’m not overly optimistic that the FBI or the Secret Service or anybody’s collating that kind of data unless it specifically impacts them. So I get back to my point on this. Yes, it’s important to have your liaison contacts and your local state and federal authorities. But if you’re running a corporate security team or protection team, you better be threat hunting as well.

Chuck:

Yeah. Talking to your peers and talking to your slice. And where do you fit in the industry? Are you telecom? Are you marketing? Are you manufacturing and. talking broadly in your sector too, like what are people hearing? Because you’re absolutely right. I mean, before we kind of move on to that, I’m curious, like from either one of you, what about the idea that the assassin was inspired by Kaczynski and the Unabomber connection?

Cindy:

Well, I mean, we know again, through research that they typically go back and look at what others have done. And so that inspiration is there, which to Fred’s point, you know, is this, guy going to be an inspiration to others? And the answer is most likely yes. He’s, you know, they’re going to look to see what he did and how it was carried out. One of the points that I think is really critical when we’re looking at situations like this is the target themselves. This, you know, from everything that I’ve read, this was not specifically directed at at the target. It was directed at an organization. It was directed at a CEO. There was, you know, this person was unaffiliated with the organization. One of the things that people have a hard time wrapping their head around, they want it to be specific. They want it to be an affiliated person. You know, those are in the threat acting or the threat hunting world. Sometimes I think we hunt too narrowly. And as you said, Chuck, speaking to your peers, talking to people in your industry, hey, what’s going on in general? And in general, is this specific industry being targeted? OK, well, they may not be mentioning my company. They may not be mentioning my CEO. But that does still affect me. And I need to be aware of it.

Chuck:

Cindy, I think you’re onto something there too. I mean, you know, I’m an old information operations guy. There’s probably some up somewhere on here as a coin or a flag or something from my unit, but I think about the, the. We would call it the cognitive domain, the narrative. What is the narrative about our sector? What is the narrative about our company? What is the narrative about the place our company sits? Is it generally positive? Is it generally negative? Because I think you’re absolutely right. There’s clearly a bit of an opportunity that presented itself, unfortunately, that led to these tragic events in New York. But, you know, I, I think you’re absolutely right. And especially when it comes to like, we’re narrow, like we’re looking for a needle when in fact, we just need to broadly look and see what that’s a good way to put it.

Cindy:

That’s a really good way to put it.

Chuck:

Fred. I see you shifting. What, what are you going to add to this?

Fred:

No, I agree wholeheartedly with both of you when it comes to this. I, I think that, um, you have to be worried about, uh, I mean, I’ve long given up on the idea that someone’s going to knock on my door and say, you know, hey, Fred, you’ve been threatened or your company has been threatened. You need to find it first. You need to be looking for it in some capacity and then assessing where you might fit in the overall threat assessment kind of stream of what could be coming down the pike to evaluate that. So I think we at times do have a tendency to say, well, someone will let us know, right? Well, not really

Chuck:

I think there’s a bit of an assumption sometimes that, oh, if it’s going to happen, you know, they’ll let us know. But think about, you know, we jokingly open the podcast about the dumpster fire of 2025 that resembles 2024 that resembles 2023. So if you think about overwork and overwhelm, intelligence, law enforcement, safety services from the government. And like, I’m waiting for them to come tell me. I mean, I think statistically, I think you’re right, Fred. No one is coming, not because they don’t care, just because maybe they’re overwhelmed. So it’s up to me, it’s up to me and my organization to take some control over that risk monitoring.

Fred:

Yeah, the chances are you’re not part of that national intelligence collections stream, you know, regardless of what you might think, Colonel Randolph.

Chuck:

Huh, yeah, I know I’m not. Cindy might be though. Cindy, let me ask you a question that Fred and I have talked about this. I think I talked to Jonathan Wackrow about this on the podcast a few weeks back. And I’ve got this, I know Fred, you’ve got this. I know you’ve had this too, Cindy, like somebody calls up and says, hey, my boss wants to talk to me because the question is, post United Healthcare issue, like, are we good? And what do you need? So let me put you in the place of that corporate EP leader. You know, I have a program, maybe it’s big, maybe it’s small, let’s just say medium size. The CEO calls up and says, what do you need? And, you know, it’s people like default, like I need more people, I need this, you know, realities, we don’t know. But I mean, how do you, how would you answer that? Or how would you counsel somebody to think about answering that question, I guess?

Cindy:

It’s a loaded question, both from you and from the CEO or whoever is asking. It’s one of those things where, you know, when you say, are we good? We’re working on it. That’s the answer. No, it’s like, we’re assessing what we have. Um, we’re going to have a thorough assessment of what we have and where we need to be. And we’re going to get back to you on, on the game plan. And I think. I always like, especially when you’re talking to, you know, whether it’s a protectee or whether it’s the person who is handling the purse strings or whatever is, you know, honesty is always best and say, this is, this is, you know, we can’t sit here and say, you know, the day after the week after. as everybody’s reacting and say, you know, yeah, we’re great, you know, and give everyone a false sense of security. It’s like, in light of what we’re learning, we’re going to go back and we’re going to reassess. And we’re going to take a look at things. And then we’re going to come to you and lay out the game plan for you. And let you know what we need.

Chuck:

Yeah, I by the way, I think there’s some there’s some leadership gold in there to go and be willing to say, I don’t know, I’ll find out and I’ll come back to you, as opposed to, I need 25 more guards and everyone should be armed, or I need a helicopter and 15 feet of coax cable. I think the idea would be more like Like you said, like we’re assessing. So what do I need right now? I need the ability to conduct a proper assessment, whether that’s us internally, whether that’s we hire an outside firm to do it, whatever that is. So we can understand the true risk we’re facing to us. As we’ve talked about our industry, and then I’ll come back and tell you how we need to fill these gaps because you know, as always, we want to, uh, a risk-based approach.

Fred:

So, and you know, Chuck and Cindy. I flashback when you ask that question because I can’t tell you the number of billionaires and CEOs that I’ve talked to that at the end of the conversation or at the beginning of the conversation, you know, tell me what I need to protect my building or my family or myself. And my response is always, I have no idea. I don’t know what I don’t know. So I get this quizzical look from these folks. And you say, look, you know, it’s going to take a little bit of time to put together a proper threat assessment and research. And, you know, quite frankly, I don’t know who hates you until we conduct a little bit of research into this, unless you know, and you could share that with me at this moment in time.

Chuck:

And that’s always a good one too. What is it that you’re not telling me is what I need.

Fred:

And why do you want to do this to yourself is also a good question to ask.

Chuck:

I also like there’s a flip side of that coin too, where people like, no, we’re good here. It wasn’t us. It doesn’t affect us. We’re all good. I don’t need anything. I mean, I’m not sure that’s a good way to start either. I think, you know, I kind of go back to what you said. So you’re like, I’m not sure, but I’m going to come back and we’re going to let you know. I mean, anything else to add?

Cindy:

Exactly what you just said, though, is like when something like this happens, even though it didn’t happen to us, it didn’t happen to me. I need to take a look at it and say, okay, what if that is us? And then again, run these scenarios, run these tabletops. If organizations are not looking at these as opportunities to get better, then they’re doing something wrong. They should sit there and say, okay, guys and girls, this wasn’t us yesterday. It could be us tomorrow. What are we going to do? How do we react?

Chuck:

Yeah. And it kind of, there’s that growing, like, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, I think, but that right after the event, you know, Chicago PD issued an alert, like, Hey, it was like, I think three buildings had kill your CEO on them. We saw the poster come out, the posters in, in New York city, you know, apparently high value target playing cards. So, I mean, it’s not us that it doesn’t affect us. I’m kind of like, I want to call BS on that and say, you absolutely don’t know. I mean, because again, I go back to this, their narrative, like, you know, we’re an extremist organization or we’re activists. And now we want to pile onto this because what’s happening here is inspiring me and inspiring me. I want to inspire my movement. And if this young man said the way that to, to, um, to get attention is to pull off a tragic assassination. You know, I want to do the same thing. So are we safe? Go back to, yeah, we don’t know.

Cindy:

And to make sure that it’s not too narrow. And again, what they’re looking at when they’re doing the threat hunting is, you know, this could be somebody who’s just inspired and has no affiliation with any organization or any extremism, extremist group. They’re just like, Hey, this looked good. Let me, you know, let me go see if I can do this. And, you know, just be inspired by, and we see that so many times. It’s just somebody looking for a way to do something.

25:22

Chuck:

Speaking of inspired and I, we didn’t plan this, so, but I appreciate that segue. I mean, let’s turn to the, the terrible events in New Orleans that we just went through. I mean, I actually had family down there and thankfully they were all fine, but you know, our hearts go out to those people who were tragically affected. I mean, Fred, I know there’s conversations that the assailant may or may not have been inspired by terrorist activity. And I think there was a moment when like, hey, we haven’t seen anything from terrorism. It doesn’t exist anymore, yay. But I think everybody on this call and probably most people watching or listening in know that it never really goes away. It just goes quiet. What are your thoughts about the initial assessments from the NOLA incident?

Fred:

Well, Chuck, I think there’s certainly brilliance in simplicity. I think we tend to want to try to overcomplicate these kinds of attacks at times. And, you know, obviously he was allegedly inspired by ISIS to some degree. Um, you know, the use of a vehicle to add a ramp incident is, you know, we’ve seen that before and we’ll continue to see that again because it’s, uh, unless you have national resources to freeze a street, it’s going to be very difficult for local and state law enforcement and the private sector across the country to put down every barrier you could possibly think of just to stop someone from driving into an event. And we learned this lesson hard in the 80s with vehicle-borne attacks on all of our embassies overseas. you know, companies will never be able to protect themselves like that, to be blunt, nor would they want to. Uh, so this might give rise to, you know, a new special event management, you know, focus at all these events. And that’s, that might create, you know, new positions in our, in our industry as well, just for folks to specialize just in that.

Chuck:

Well, I think we have, look, We have event security teams. I think many of them are unsung heroes. Many of them do not get the accolades they should. And I’m going to go on record right now to say everyone who has an event security team should relabel it event risk management. Purposeful words. Cindy, let me ask you kind of a pointed question. And if you can’t discuss it, that’s fine. But how, if you were back at the NSC, and things like this were happening. I mean, what would be going on? What would be the vibe? And how would people be thinking of like forward-looking after this event?

Cindy:

I think you hit the nail on the head, it would be forward looking. It’s what else is going on out there? What else are we picking up? And what else can we anticipate? You know, where, where are the you know, the hotbed issues and, and, you know, areas and what else can we anticipate? Um, it’s, it’s always that it’s always that preparation piece. It’s always, you know, looking at things and no one is able to predict, but based on information, based on intelligence that’s coming in, which is information, we can, we can try to anticipate.

Chuck:

Well, and I think everything you just said is translatable to the corporate side or to an organization. Maybe you’re a nonprofit, maybe you’re, you know, maybe you’re an NGO, but all of that could be translated to the corporate side. Look, what just happened? Okay. We’ve got it. It’s terrible. Let’s, let’s suspend that for a minute and tell me what’s happening 30, 60, 90. So don’t talk, talk to me, prepare this now. But walk me through what we’re doing immediately to make sure that we’re looking, monitoring, securing these events. I mean, that’s kind of what I take from it.

Cindy:

Yeah. And I think it’s, it’s developing those listening skills to, and sort of more of the understanding of what’s going on around what just happened and not, not being like, like laser focused on the individual who carried out the act. I mean, those things are all being done. But when you’re looking at that, you know, looking forward, you’ve got to start taking in more of that, you know, those like sort of the outer rings. What else is going on? And that may give us some intel to be able to, you know, to anticipate.

Chuck:

And just so everybody kind of like listening in and watching it, we’re not suggesting you ignore what’s happening in the moment. That’s of course, that is something we need to understand and develop, but I almost, there’s almost a bit of a discipline where you’re like, okay, this is happening, Fred, I need to slice you off and I need you to be forward looking. Everyone is looking right here. I mean, honestly, you can learn what you can learn from executive protection too. The things going on here, I need you to always be forward looking. Like we’re focused here, what’s the next movement? What’s the next thing? Somebody has got to be focused on that.

Fred:

Yeah, for sure. I mean, we’ve spent probably the better part of the last couple of weeks just in meetings and this and that. And let’s face it, the whole focus of the conversations have been, you know, New Orleans and the CEO killing in New York City. And everybody in our industry is talking about it. Everybody literally is talking about it.

30:55

Chuck:

What I mean, I don’t want to like miss the bit of like the, the terrorism or the inspired terror acts, if you will, as you know, the information unfolds around. the New Orleans incident, Fred. I mean, how, you know, as the chief historian of this triumvirate, how should our audience be thinking forward about this, like past prologue, what should we be thinking about?

Fred:

Well, it’s, you know, when these incidents happen, I think none of us are really surprised because we’ve seen a variant of this or an exact model of this in the past before. And you can just pick your nation and your year and pretty much find similar events that occur. And I’m always surprised how we all sit around and say, well, how in the heck could this have happened? Well, in reality, we all know how it happens at times. And it’s very difficult to get in front of some of these threats for a range of different issues and especially in the public safety kind of arena with so many soft targets around our great nation that it’s damn near impossible to protect them all and I always went into these investigations, whether it was plane crashes or hijackings or assassinations of our people overseas, what was known about this threat actor 72 hours prior? And I still have yet to see a good timeline of that. Now, maybe the FBI has put that together by now, but, you know, was he known to the JTTF in New Orleans? I don’t know the answer to that question. And if so, what was done ahead of time. So, but I used to attack those kinds of issues, you know, the same way, just from a timeline perspective. And I would like to know too, you know, how long this operation had been put into play. Meaning we know that he used the metaglasses to do some degree of pre-operational surveillance.

Chuck:

Yeah, that’s going to be an interesting as all that comes out to understand like how technology was used from the, from the assailants point of view. Cindy, let me ask you a question. I realized as we start thinking about wrapping up, we’ve been talking about a lot of just terrible things. You know, and, and it’s easy for populations and groups to oversteer and get paranoid. I mean, how do we create as our resident threat management expert, everybody gets a title. How do we create vigilance without paranoia? Like how do we go talk to our executives and say, I want to be even keeled. And I want to create a culture that is overlooking organization, but not selling on fear.

Cindy:

Information and honesty. I honestly, I think that’s, it’s very low, you know. low tech when it comes to, you know, you, you use technology to gather information. And then you speak to it and, and speak the truth about it. And that’s, that’s the best way to, to make sure that people, you know, I go back to something that’s very basic. I think when you have children and children feel secure, they behave much better. And when, and it’s the same thing when we’re adults, when we feel secure, in a way that we know that people are taking care of things. We behave better, which means we can work better, we can work more freely, we can go about our business without always being worried. And I think that that’s critical in organizations that our people know that we have leaders that are taking care of things, but they’re also communicating what’s going on. When people feel they’re left in the dark, when they don’t know what’s going on or their fears aren’t being heard, then that’s when you start to get that behavior of, um, you know, just kind of paranoia.

35:17

Chuck:

Hey, as we close, we, I, you know, we always ask the guests and you all have done it too. Like one question, but I realized like this is an opportunity for me to ask both of you, like Fred. What does Connected Intelligence mean to you? 

Fred:

Protective intelligence. I’m down. I like what you’re putting down there. Cindy, what about you? Connected intelligence.

Cindy:

It’s the same thing. It’s, you know, I was going to actually say when Fred was talking about, um, he’s mentioning earlier about information about what was known about these people before they act. It’s like, we’ve got to connect. We’ve got to have that connected intelligence because there’s little bits and pieces out there all over that need to be connected. It’s protective intelligence.

Chuck:

It, it’s vital when I think about it. I mean, it’s vital. And if you’re not doing it, you need to get around it. And I absolutely agree with both of you. Cindy Marble, Fred Burton. Thank you both for taking time. I was going to say thanks for being on the Connected Intelligence Podcast, but we’re all hosts and we’re all Onticians. So thanks for taking time out to have this round table and help us kind of unpack as a group what we’re seeing. And I, I know I’ll see you both, but happy new year and here’s to the best of 2025.

Fred:

Thanks, Chuck. Thanks, Cindy.