Latest / Identity at the Center / #35 - Managing IAM Through A Pandemic

Transcript

#35 - Managing IAM Through A Pandemic · Identity at the Center

0:08
Identity and access management, welcome to another episode of
0:27
the identity at the center podcast.
0:29
I'm Jeff. Jeff and that's Jim.
0:31
Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff.
0:33
How you doing? I'm doing pretty good.
0:35
I think I'm still healthy. You never know though.
0:41
I think with all that's going on.
0:43
There's this major coronavirus out there that Center you get it
0:49
and you don't know that you've got it for a little bit, maybe a
0:53
manifest in the beginning, like it's a regular cold and all
0:57
that. So I guess I'm joining the the
1:00
Paranoid paranoid, Millions. Well, you and I are traveling
1:04
this week. So we're in Washington DC and
1:07
you know, I think, you know, when I left Chicago area, Monday
1:12
O'Hare Airport, which is one of the busiest in the world was
1:16
very opposite of that. I mean, just empty Gates, you
1:21
know, lots of room to spread out.
1:23
So it's definitely, you know, taking a hit.
1:26
I think the Corona virus time travel, but even since Monday,
1:30
The temperature of the situation has changed drastically with the
1:34
announcement of it that have been made in that least in the
1:36
u.s. Throughout the course of the
1:38
week. So, most of the sporting weeks
1:41
of decided to suspend, you know, play.
1:44
And there's talk now that March Madness might be kids, you know,
1:47
might be cancelled, so lots of stuff going on.
1:52
Yeah, it's it's it's unfortunate.
1:54
But I think that it's the right time to take drastic measures.
1:58
I mean, there's kind of you have to kind of look at what other
2:03
countries have done and what has been successful in.
2:06
Looks like they've got things more or less under control in
2:11
China which with the population of that country.
2:14
You wouldn't think it would be something.
2:16
That would be easy to do yet. It seems like they've kind of
2:22
slowed the spread which I think is really, it's important.
2:27
So, you know, obviously I'm not an expert and eschewing
2:31
information about coronavirus. Carly doesn't really add to the
2:35
global wealth of information, but you think about it like this
2:40
is that there's a certain number of people who are going to
2:43
become infected with coronavirus.
2:45
It's but if it all happens in one weekend or in one short
2:50
period of time, Versus spreading it out.
2:53
It really changes the impact on the medical system because you
2:56
know, 100 people show up to the hospital and one hour or one day
3:00
or one week, There's totally different scenarios.
3:04
So, yeah, I think it's important that we take the right
3:08
precautions and, and we, as individuals, I think so.
3:12
This is what this would be. My PSA is that we as individuals
3:16
of people keep telling me. Well, you know, you're young and
3:19
you're healthy, you'll be fine. And we can't just take the view
3:24
of. How does this affect me?
3:26
We have to be thinking about others.
3:27
And, you know, we might come into contact with people who do
3:32
have compromised immune systems, or as an advanced age or we
3:36
could wind up. In fact, infecting somebody who
3:39
does contact those populations a lot and that would be a really
3:45
sad situation. So I think we've taken upon
3:48
ourselves to make sure that we're not becoming part of the
3:51
Even if it doesn't directly make us sick or directly kill us.
3:57
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
3:59
This isn't definitely, definitely not a medical
4:01
podcast, but I think my PSA would be if you're sick or you
4:06
think you might be sick, just stay home.
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I mean, I know it's easier said than done for a lot of folks,
4:10
but you're not helping the situation.
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If you're spreading it around, I kind of felt bad this week
4:15
because it's also allergy season and, you know, yesterday we were
4:19
in the client office and all of a sudden Sudden, you know, that
4:22
morning. I just started have, you know,
4:24
probably allergy. So I'm sitting there, you know,
4:26
sniffing and and sneezing. And, you know, I told, I told
4:30
our customers like, hey, you know, if you're not comfortable
4:32
being here, like these are allergies and I feel fine.
4:34
But if you want me to go back to the hotel and work, I'm happy to
4:37
do that, you know, want to make sure that, you know, people are
4:39
okay with it. But yeah, some reason things
4:42
like, oh, that's it. I was in the room when you said
4:46
that and she's like, no, you're fine and thinking I sent him
4:48
home, get him here. But the good news is, I woke up
4:54
to this morning and I was like, okay, that's fine.
4:56
Like nothing going on. So yeah, so so far, I think, you
5:00
know, movie, we've dodged things but you know, coronavirus
5:04
definitely has had an impact on the business world.
5:06
And then kind of got at least me thinking and probably us
5:09
thinking from an identity and access management perspective.
5:11
What are some of the things that, you know, this type of
5:16
situation, brings to light. And the first thing that I
5:19
thought of was, you know, VPN Ben and I go back to way way
5:25
back in my history. Well, the companies I used to
5:28
work for didn't have a lot of remote workers.
5:32
So when there was a reason to work from home for a mass amount
5:38
of people, the DPN would always crash because it couldn't handle
5:42
the number of people connecting. So got me kind of think about
5:45
that, and it makes me wonder how many companies that have
5:48
recently announced, you know, they want their workers to stay
5:50
home. How many of those people are
5:53
those companies had, you know the appropriate VPN support to
5:57
be able to support that great. Well, I mean, it may be a
6:02
situation where if you haven't moved to a third-party VPN at
6:08
this point, you know, you have some kind of Hardware device on
6:11
your network that kind of constricts how many connections
6:15
you can have if you're in a situation where you do have?
6:20
That Hardware dependency. You may be may be too late to do
6:24
much and you might want to look at something like, well first, I
6:28
thought you wanted you want to test it and and really know how
6:31
much how much traffic you can support, how many users
6:36
concurrent users you can support, then you may want to
6:38
look at, you know, scheduling certain folks to have their
6:42
amount of time to be on the BPM and who are some people may need
6:49
to We get an hour day or something to synchronize emails
6:52
or something like that, or maybe it sounds kind of silly.
6:55
But at this point, you're probably having to prioritize
7:00
that kind of connection, but it's really going to be a black.
7:03
I would think if you know appropriate planning wasn't done
7:06
in the, this scenario wasn't kind of planned for not
7:10
specifically, coronavirus put some kind of scenario where they
7:14
all of a sudden everybody has to work from home.
7:17
And can we remain productive visit?
7:20
Company have not but was also something I've been encouraging
7:24
clients. When I do see a hardware
7:27
dependency on VPN or a dependency on their own VPN
7:30
configuration. So, you know really ought to
7:34
look at Outsourcing that to a third party like a an AT&T or
7:38
something like that. Where you know, you can pretty
7:40
much I think call and increase the number of users who are
7:44
still probably some partner dependency, but I think if it's,
7:48
you're leveraging A third party data center.
7:52
People are connecting in through that, everything was kind of
7:55
virtualized in your more depending on their hard work.
7:59
Right? And if you use something like
8:00
split tunneling, only sending traffic back to your network
8:03
that needs to be there and take advantage of the cloud services
8:07
and connecting to them directly for the internet, you know,
8:10
obviously the appropriate security measures don't place
8:12
like to factor a multi-factor at that sort of thing, that can
8:15
also leave E8. Some of the burden especially
8:17
since You know, a lot of companies now are are using
8:21
things like Office 365, and Google suite and stuff like
8:24
that. Yeah, a lot of my recommendation
8:26
to our clients throughout moving to a third party VPN had more to
8:30
do with security. Because one of the things we
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find, especially with smaller companies with a smaller
8:38
Workforce that they maintain their own VPN during VPN
8:45
Hardware, is that, you know, the sugar, Keep it updated with the
8:50
latest and greatest security and things.
8:52
And yes, they might have the cheapest solution.
8:55
But if you wind up getting hacked again, one of having
8:59
security issues, cheapest isn't always the cheapest, right?
9:06
I imagine that if remote connectivity was not part of a,
9:11
you know, business continuity or Disaster Recovery plan that I
9:16
would expect is probably going to become part of the plan.
9:18
You know, pretty much right away for folks to have that in place
9:21
right now, right? Some other things that kind of
9:25
thought about here, you know, having been in this position
9:27
from a identity admin perspective and operations was
9:32
people not having the right permissions in place to be able
9:35
to work remotely there. Sometimes there's a dependency.
9:38
I'm being, you know, on the network and and, you know, being
9:42
able to get the resources file shares, sorts of things, and
9:45
people start to extend outside of that.
9:49
You start to receive an influx of access requests.
9:53
And of course, everything's urgent because everyone's
9:55
working from home in an emergency situation and that can
9:59
that can sometimes wreak havoc on a on an I am operations team
10:03
as well. Yeah, hopefully the investment
10:08
has been made in the past to automate a lot of the access
10:13
request processes and automated provisioning.
10:17
Most organizations are not somewhere in between state,
10:20
where they've got some Automation and other other areas
10:24
not as much. And yeah, I can definitely lead
10:27
to that. Overworked kind of situation.
10:30
I think one thing that should we plan for is I think really we
10:35
have Watch for that potential Spike and be able to, you know,
10:40
ask people who maybe work shifts or and shift work can sometimes
10:46
be more feasible when people are working from home.
10:50
It might be more willing to do something like that, since they
10:52
don't have to, you know, be in the office and be away from
10:56
their families, but those are, those are some potential
11:01
options, shift work, and it's really going to be hard to
11:05
maybe. Add people and adding people in
11:09
the, you know, I guess I'm hoping is that this whole thing
11:13
where people are having to work remotely and businesses shut
11:16
down and be kind of relay Showdown is that we're looking
11:19
at like a four to eight week kind of situation.
11:24
And, you know, and it's probably somewhat rolling.
11:27
I don't think everybody's going to shut down overnight, but you
11:30
already exciting to see it in very public institutions, like
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the sports leagues, were Really shouldn't things down.
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And a lot of conferences are getting cancer and things like
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that. I think a lot of office workers
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are going to start working remotely in the next week or
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two. And I think that hopefully this
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whole thing only lasts, you know, a month or two months and
11:55
that really get the, the spread of the virus under control and
12:00
that time. Yeah, and I think that brings up
12:03
another issue where you have people who Maybe don't work from
12:06
home, a lot or ever. And now they're trying to log on
12:09
with maybe, you know, an account.
12:11
They haven't used in a while and I need a password reset and I
12:15
know a lot of companies struggle for instance, with like, active
12:17
directory accounts and having to be on the domain to get their
12:21
password reset, but they can't get on the domain because
12:24
they're remote. I know, we started, I struggle
12:27
with this, in the past with, you know, so the colors worked as
12:29
okay. Well, is there an office?
12:31
You can go to so that, you know, we can sink down the password.
12:35
Change essentially to your device.
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I haven't really seen a great solution for that yet.
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And I think that's one of the benefits.
12:43
I think of moving to the cloud things like, you know, Office
12:46
365 and G, sweet and stuff like that.
12:49
But I guess things are extremely rare.
12:52
Is the biggest thing that I've seen that has impressed me as
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there are some like full-time VPN solution.
13:00
So once you launch your device, that connects the vpm without
13:04
even having to How to log into the desktop to your path?
13:10
So other words, full-time connected BPM one.
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Thought I had. As you were kind of describing
13:16
this scenario is, you know, whenever I would You know how my
13:20
password locked out of usually wasn't because I just forgot my
13:24
password. I'm sure that does happen.
13:26
But the biggest reason I would get my password log out is that
13:29
it would say the pastor is going to expire.
13:32
In five days. I get to 14 days, three days and
13:36
then be Friday and would expire over the weekend.
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I come in on Monday. I launched my computer on Monday
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and I was locked out and I think that what might help is.
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Is maybe a communication people that, hey, when you start
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getting prompted for a password resets, be really helpful.
13:56
If you got a head of things and change your password and now,
13:59
wait until the last minute, right?
14:01
Or maybe even do that as part of your exit plan from the office.
14:06
You know, I don't know how feasible it is, but for folks
14:08
that are going to be, you know, going out work remotely for
14:11
time, reset it while you're still in the office, so that you
14:14
don't have to worry about password expiration, while
14:17
you're while you'r, Right. That's right.
14:22
You know, I think this is a, this is a time where probably
14:26
people are that coming up with a lot of these plans, but you can
14:30
see where if you had kind of thought through these kind of
14:34
plans well in advance. So say you were thinking about
14:37
these things a year or two ago and you start running into?
14:41
Okay. Well, how are people going to
14:43
contact the help desk? Okay.
14:44
Well, you know, we need to get soft bones instead and wear red
14:49
on the Ready. So that if we need people to
14:52
work from home, they could use cellphones and transfer their
14:56
phone to that. Okay, you know, maybe you don't
14:58
want to pay for full soft. I'm full-time, softphone
15:02
licenses, but maybe that's something that you could, you
15:07
would be willing to pay for in this scenario all of a sudden.
15:10
We're at least four people who, you know, maybe work on the
15:13
service desk, where they answer Central phone number.
15:17
Well, now, all of a sudden you can you can do something like
15:19
you. Soft bone, the VPN question.
15:23
And we talked about a little bit ago.
15:25
It's this is why you have to constantly, you know, if you're
15:29
in it or your information security be thinking about
15:35
disaster planning is its kind of call thises as something like
15:39
that. Alright.
15:40
Business continuity planning, at least.
15:43
Yeah. And part of that playing taken
15:44
to affect or take into account how it affects operations.
15:50
I was the on-call person during a snowstorm in Chicagoland area,
15:55
many years ago, and I got absolutely crushed.
15:59
You know, I and I'm dealing with, you know, six feet of
16:01
snow. It was a blizzard in my front
16:03
yard and, you know, basically my pager at the time, you know,
16:07
just going crazy every minute because people had so many
16:10
issues and we at that time, we really hadn't prepared or
16:14
thought about how you would support.
16:18
I am operations. So in that sort of situation,
16:22
you know, you're used to getting maybe, you know, one or two
16:24
calls a night at most and then all of a sudden it's, you know,
16:27
all day for 23, straight days and trying to, you know, filter
16:32
those requests for the rest of the team to keep up with it,
16:34
became a real challenge for us. It really depends on the nature
16:37
of your business because like, I know probably where you were at
16:41
that time retail operation, where those calls her like we
16:45
can't sell things. We can't conduct business.
16:49
Three left out. Now what you know gag working
16:53
environments where you could you could take hours or days to fix
16:59
problems, but not in certain environments that were certain
17:02
issues, right? And then here, you know, your
17:05
private security team. So how do you validate these
17:07
people who are calling when, you know, they don't remember their
17:11
own pin numbers or Seeker questions and they haven't, you
17:14
know, registered any of that stuff ahead of time.
17:17
So it becomes a real real. Pain in the butt for the
17:21
operation standpoint. So I'm exactly the start to work
17:24
through self-service options on that, but it's not a cure-all.
17:27
Even am also wondering, is that you and I have worked from home
17:31
for a long time. I've personally been working
17:33
from home full-time for over a decade.
17:37
And are you just so many offices where they say?
17:42
Well, you know, we've I think their culture, I'm wondering if
17:46
after all said and done with this, if it becomes a cultural
17:49
More place where they say, you know what, this couple of months
17:53
we had everybody working from home and went pretty well.
17:57
Maybe we could get by with less office space or maybe we can
18:01
give people a better work-life balance.
18:03
By letting them work from home. It might work out.
18:07
Yeah, I mean that's knowledge. He's there for sure.
18:09
I think it's a trust issue. I think for whatever reason,
18:13
some companies trust their employees, some don't you know
18:16
from from that perspective and I get it but I'm a big fan of
18:19
working from home. I think you can be more
18:21
productive sometimes at home. Then you can be in the office
18:25
but I don't know if this is the right time to measure it because
18:30
I feel like there would be maybe a little bit of a false
18:33
measurement because everyone else is doing the same thing and
18:36
there's Ready, a built-in downward movement on whatever
18:42
industry it is, because of all the issues going on.
18:44
So it's difficult to say. Oh, yeah, we were just as
18:47
effective when you know, you're, if you're have any type of
18:51
business right now, you're probably feeling some level of
18:53
impact with the coronavirus, you know, whether or not if it's not
18:57
now, probably at some point because it's starting to trickle
18:59
down to more and more things with the sports leagues, being
19:02
can't, you know, being suspended or cancelled, you know, I'm sure
19:05
travel has taken a huge hit. Right?
19:07
You? And I were laughing earlier.
19:08
I think we're probably the only people staying in this hotel
19:10
right now. Raised plenty of seats available
19:13
on my flight from d.c. To Chicago tomorrow.
19:15
So I was gonna say yeah, if I haven't gotten upgraded to First
19:19
Class very much since Northwest got bought by Delta like, you
19:24
know, eight years ago or whatever it was.
19:26
And I gotta create a first class in the way home, both legs.
19:30
I'm like, all right, nicely in one sense is nice, but there's
19:35
something know it's, you know, Get upgraded from Atlanta from
19:38
d.c. To Atlanta out of the blue right
19:43
now. They'd manacled cetis always
19:45
looking at the bright side of things.
19:47
That's it. Yeah, there was nothing to that
19:51
you brought up earlier and I'll let y'all let you have it at
19:53
once to hear thunder. But it was around some things
19:56
that might be taking place with more frequency when there's this
19:59
type of situation. Yeah.
20:01
Yeah. No, I mean, you know, sometimes
20:03
these kind of situations bring out the best in people.
20:06
There's a bridge out the worst in people.
20:08
And, you know, I think that the number of scams go up when you
20:14
have these kind of situations sometimes.
20:16
And we all know that phishing attempts, maybe everybody who's
20:20
listening, probably gets, like, attempted to be fished like five
20:25
times a day, you know, my, my own thing.
20:27
It feels like half. The email said the L people,
20:30
trying to get me to login to handle an issue for something.
20:34
I didn't buy or whatever, you know.
20:37
But I also could see the same scammers trying to play off of
20:41
this coronavirus situation. And, you know, I think the
20:46
biggest defense against phishing again is education.
20:50
It's people don't know anyone. Nobody wants to get fish, but
20:54
people get tripped. And the thing about getting
20:58
tricked is, you know, usually if you're getting an email about
21:02
something, clicking the link, put you into To the scam
21:07
website. So the best thing is if you're
21:10
getting asked to too late for something, don't click the link,
21:15
go and type the URL in your browser or something that, but
21:18
even if you do click the link, there's ways to look at the URL
21:24
to make sure that you're going to something legitimate.
21:27
So now, we're talking about things.
21:28
Generally. Hopefully your organization is
21:31
put together some educational materials already with Urge to
21:37
avoiding being finished. I know if similar organizations
21:41
that on a routine basis go out and you know, ethically hack or
21:47
ethically fish their employees to find where the people are
21:51
susceptible to this. So this might be a time where
21:56
you want to do that again, right?
21:58
Because I think the fear is driving people towards being
22:03
more susceptible to fall for this stuff, but it's just, you
22:08
know, I guess the reason to bring it up is just you know,
22:11
sometimes these these having Adventures, provide an
22:14
opportunity for people, people to act poorly, right?
22:20
And, you know, the phishing campaign is definitely something
22:23
that is part of that whole security awareness and all the
22:26
research that I've read and seen indicates that
22:30
dollar-for-dollar, security, awareness training and have
22:33
provides the most value. But it's something that has to
22:37
be continued because threats are always evolving and it's
22:41
something that, you know, you need to continually remind your
22:44
Workforce of what to be on the lookout for what to expect.
22:49
You know, if you're getting an MFA notification out of the blue
22:51
and you're not expecting it, don't click on it, right?
22:54
So it's common sense. But you know, the awareness is I
22:59
think is a big part of that and that has a big big impact on the
23:02
success of phishing emails back. To solve a completely, but, you
23:07
know, being vigilant and knowing what to look for.
23:09
I think is a big, big help. You know, it's right.
23:16
So, you know, based on coronavirus is been a lot of
23:19
different things happening with different conferences.
23:20
I was at RSA a few weeks and, you know, it was, it was a bit
23:23
of a Down year for attendance already and I don't think it was
23:26
quite at the, at the current Panic level that we're seeing,
23:32
but it was definitely accounted for and turns out.
23:35
I got an email last night, informing me that there were
23:38
people at the conference that have been infected.
23:41
So that's something nice to get. Get octane, which is something I
23:45
think you were going to attend in a couple weeks has been
23:48
canceled and to convert it into a virtual conference.
23:52
So disappointing. You're not going to go to San
23:54
Francisco, but probably not as disappointed that you won't be
23:58
improving. The odds that you might get some
24:01
sort of issue, right? Yeah.
24:03
I mean, obviously, I don't need any trouble right now.
24:06
I do I don't want to see, I hate the fact that the travel
24:12
industry taking your own. Change again, and I hate the all
24:16
I heard about the was the conference in Austin, South by
24:20
Southwest, you know, they cancel that conference and then the
24:24
next day he had to let go of like 60 people.
24:28
That's hardly news. You know, I hate hearing about
24:31
that same time, you know, it's we talked about earlier.
24:34
We went to slow the spread or who they calling it a slow.
24:39
Slow the curve or something like that.
24:42
Flatten, the curve. Are you saying brother?
24:43
Words, we made this is going to spread.
24:46
We want to slow down the pace of which is spread so that I
24:49
realize that showing up at the hospital I went and that we have
24:54
resources that we can spread out and and help people at the same
25:02
time. So, you know, it is
25:04
disappointing that they're having Hampshire's not just so
25:07
octane is the octave conference. I was going to attend I heard at
25:12
Google and Facebook God. To cancel their conference.
25:15
The really good thing about the way they handled the octane.
25:18
One egg. I think this is a lesson or I
25:21
thought they did just a really good job and how they cancel
25:24
their conference. They canceled it well in
25:26
advance. So, you know, over four weeks in
25:28
advance. They refunded everybody.
25:32
Alter money personally, good to go and apply for a refund or
25:36
anything like that. There's plenty time to cancel
25:39
your hotel. Now.
25:42
I do have a fly. It's scheduled.
25:45
Not going to give me the money back for the flight, but I
25:47
didn't feel like I was taking advantage of, or anything like
25:50
that. Like a weasel.
25:52
The absolute last minute to cancel, or they just cancelled
25:56
because other people were canceling.
25:58
They got out ahead of it and they took care of it.
26:01
No, I just saw that Major League, Baseball, suspended, the
26:05
rest of spring training. And maybe it's just because I'm
26:09
like, so locked into TV now, but it feels like they waited till
26:13
the last They're like them the last major spiritually to try
26:17
and do something about it. And it kind of felt felt to me.
26:20
Like the only reason they cancel is because everybody else
26:23
canceling that they want to look like they didn't care something
26:27
but to me, that's exactly how locally look like, you know,
26:30
they waited till the last minute to deal with it.
26:33
Yeah. We got the leaders in the
26:34
flowers and I don't know if he's seen this.
26:37
This is something just popped up while we were talking here.
26:39
Is that they've actually push the baseball start date that.
26:43
Act two weeks before the regular season.
26:44
Now, so things are literally changing, you know, by the
26:47
minute. As these organizations, try to
26:50
figure out, you know, how to handle this type of situation.
26:54
And like I said, I think octave did a really good job of keeping
26:57
people informed. And so did our SAR say sent
27:00
multiple emails ahead of time? And you know, I still went never
27:04
still plenty of attendees are over 30,000 and but there was
27:08
plenty of hand sanitizer. And I think, you know, people
27:10
were a little more cautious around it.
27:11
But yeah, OCTA did a really good job.
27:13
Got ahead of it and what I like and it's part of a silver lining
27:16
is they've now turned it into a virtual conference which is
27:19
going to be free. So if you weren't able to attend
27:22
anyway, now there's you know, some, some free sessions that
27:26
you'll be able to get to not sure what the details are on
27:29
that yet. And I think we're looking at
27:30
having Andy from OCTA. One of our friends, come on the
27:34
show in a couple weeks and maybe we'll have some more information
27:38
around that time. Yeah, actually and so Jeff
27:43
speaking. I'm hand sanitizer going to
27:45
release the issue, just open source, your formula for the
27:52
hand sanitizer that's going to take over the world.
27:54
Right? So, the standard the standard
27:56
recipe is two parts. Alcohol isopropyl, and one part
28:02
of aloe vera, right? Or gel isn't like that.
28:05
I think that you probably want to add maybe some bacon grease
28:09
to that because everyone likes bacon, right?
28:11
Why people talk about using like, Herbal Essence.
28:13
Something like that, you know, make it smell good, but I'm a
28:16
bacon fan. So I think that would be great.
28:18
I think my dogs would love that too.
28:20
Oh, yeah, and I think you'd also get like a nice coating of your
28:24
hand. So viruses, wouldn't be able to
28:26
penetrate that greasy film that you have on your hands.
28:31
I Jeff, I think you're onto something here.
28:34
Yeah. This is kind of like what was
28:36
that? Like, I don't there's some
28:37
company that makes, you know, in quotes that you can't see, you
28:40
know, man candles or something like that.
28:42
This could be like, Like, you know, man, man hand, sanitizers,
28:46
like bacon. Pizza cheese burgers, you know,
28:50
things like that. Yeah.
28:52
I know. There's a, there's all kinds of
28:55
men product. Now, there's one Walmart, their
28:58
so-called dude, wipes to place a dude wipe.
29:02
Someone someone's million-dollar idea.
29:04
That was probably on Shark Tank that person's on an island
29:12
somewhere on a boat. Yeah.
29:17
All right. I know we've been talking for a
29:18
while. We want to talk baseball, or do
29:20
you want to save that for later? No, let's have at it, man.
29:23
We, you know, I think this is probably working out well for
29:30
the Astros and the Red Sox who are, you know, the so just so
29:35
everybody do. So, the Astros were found guilty
29:38
of stealing signs electronically in the 2017. 18 and 20 18
29:44
Seasons. It's supposed to be a report
29:49
coming out that the Red Sox in some way.
29:53
Use technology to cheat in 2018 as a year that they pretty much
30:00
ran the table and they want 108 games there in the pole position
30:04
all season long and then just dance their way through the
30:08
playoffs. And so the debate that you and I
30:13
got To was. Is this really cheating?
30:17
I come from the standpoint of, absolutely, it's cheating.
30:21
I'm also a New York Yankees fan and the Yankees got bats out of
30:25
the playoffs by those two cheating teams in the last few
30:28
years. In 2017.
30:30
They got to the final game of the ALCS against the Astros who
30:35
were stealing signs. And they lost the game in
30:38
Houston and say what they were doing was they were using the
30:45
Centerfield camera, which is I think pretty much a public
30:50
camera. It's what feeds the if he's the
30:54
network TV with a view from center field and they were able
30:58
to then zoom in on it and they had a TV.
31:02
They had a room set up by the Dugout in the Astros Stadium
31:07
Minute. Maid Park where they'd have a
31:09
guy watching the signs at the capture would be putting down,
31:13
and it was going to be a fastball.
31:15
Ball, he would do nothing. It was going to be a breaking
31:19
ball, which can be a curveball changeup, things like that.
31:22
But usually breaking those move, he would bang on trash can and
31:26
based on thing on trash trash. Can this guy who's not on the
31:30
team? He was an employee of the
31:34
Asher's and you could actually watch some of the game for you
31:39
to hear the trash as saying, supposedly like that.
31:45
It one time where was happening in the kit.
31:48
The catcher got up. He's like, okay, I put down the
31:50
sides. There is that damn trash can
31:52
again, and, you know, I think the argument you were making was
31:57
well, person first argument that I would make is that they
32:01
explicitly banned using technology in game two, still
32:08
signs. So, there are very clear about
32:11
your not to do this, but I think the That you were raising was
32:16
well was the court should not good enough.
32:18
In other words, where they're signaling of the signs.
32:21
Not good enough. The thing is that when the
32:25
catcher to the pitcher signals are kind of brought back to what
32:29
was encryption in 1925 and you're comparing it with.
32:36
I can watch you from center field, using a high-tech camera.
32:42
And you know, you know, I It's combination of the, if they put
32:47
down one time. It's obvious that they put down
32:49
multiple signs, you know, a lot of times people are good at,
32:52
figuring out indicators and things like that.
32:55
So, an indicator would be something like when I put down a
33:00
to the next sign is going to be the pitcher when you throw.
33:04
So I might put down a 3 which would be a slider.
33:07
Or if it done the to I put down a 1 and B, throw a fastball and
33:12
so basically those any kind of form of encryption are human.
33:15
Is like, we agree, you know, before the pictures trailer,
33:19
before we start the Inning on, like, what the?
33:23
I'm just using my hands to show signals or my fingers.
33:28
And you're comparing that with using high-tech equipment.
33:31
That's why they banned it. If we're saying that hey the
33:34
catcher's going to have a little microphone.
33:37
He can tell the pitch to the picture or I don't know, some
33:44
way you push a Yeah, I like a little phony, get some text
33:48
messages, a picture and say poor Francisco.
33:51
I'd love to see a catcher. Try to send a text message with
33:53
that glove on his hand. Yeah.
33:55
Yeah. I do PS4 unto its own.
33:58
I guess. We really haven't figured out
34:00
what exactly fair comparison would be.
34:06
But ultimately, what it is that you've got this encryption
34:10
methodology that is based on non-technology.
34:15
And using technology to break it, and the gave up one team of
34:18
distinct advantage over the other and to me, that's got
34:23
shooting. But more than that.
34:25
It was explicitly banned. He said, don't do this and they
34:30
anyway. So I'm definitely not a baseball
34:34
fan and I don't know, all the ins and outs and the rules and
34:36
was banned or whatever. But, for my completely, Layman's
34:40
view of what happened the way I see it is that that the Astros
34:50
were able to, basically hack the teams.
34:53
They were playing against by figuring out what their password
34:55
was. And those teams didn't do
35:00
anything to guard against that, it didn't change signs in the
35:05
middle of a game. Or maybe if they did they just
35:08
got react again. So it's almost like, you know,
35:11
the Astros were Brute Force hacking the signals from the
35:14
catcher to the pitcher and obviously that gives then, you
35:18
know the benefit of knowing whether a breaking ball is
35:20
coming or not so you can lay off or, you know, Swing Away on a
35:24
fastball but I put it also on the security of that
35:30
conversation between the catcher and the Pitcher, no different
35:34
than me standing at second base, watching as well and figuring it
35:38
out. Or, you know, sometimes the
35:40
bullpen is all the way out and, you know, in the Outfield around
35:44
it, you know, I'm the bass lines, things like that.
35:46
So I think the catch here and I wasn't aware of, this was the
35:50
electronic use, but if I was sitting in the stands and just
35:54
watching with a pair of binoculars, I could figure out
35:57
the same way. It wasn't like there was, you
36:00
know, this super Advanced, you know.
36:05
Hacking machine that was doing, it was someone who literally
36:08
watching and saying, okay, I figured it out.
36:11
Now. Let me go tell my guys what it
36:12
is. So one thing from kind of
36:15
baseball tradition standpoint is that usually when Teamster down
36:20
multiple signs in other words, you know in a very simple
36:23
scenario. Put that into 1, that means
36:25
throw fastball, but don't to the Meuse or curveball.
36:29
However, when you have somebody on base, typically what they do
36:32
is they put down multiple signs and maybe it's the third sign or
36:36
maybe it's the last sign that I put down, but that's the that
36:40
you throw. So yes, I salt it.
36:43
It's salted, right? It's not quite hash, but it's
36:47
somehow makes up you only do that.
36:49
Typically, when there's a guy on second because it's a guy on
36:52
first or third. They can't see between your
36:55
legs. And so, you know, this is
36:57
baseball tradition. I think it I think this is also,
37:03
this is Sport. So there is a gaming aspect to
37:06
it. But there's also a certain level
37:08
of Ethics expected out of the sport.
37:11
It's kind of like let's say you were in a fantasy football
37:14
league and I somehow, you know, broke into your account and
37:19
change your change your line up, right before the games.
37:24
And I said, well, you didn't set your password strong enough.
37:28
Of, dude, you cheated. Let's be real.
37:34
You cheated, just because I didn't set my security from him
37:37
out. You don't break into somebody's
37:39
account, and, and do that. So, I think that there's a
37:44
certain level of Ethics involved, and I think there is
37:50
definitely the ethics, part of it.
37:52
It's a question new. If the catcher knew that you
37:55
were using the center-field camera, that was even a
37:57
possibility. Then they would change, they
38:00
would have to do the multiple signs, every pitch.
38:04
And I think then if it's like, that was a Level Playing Field
38:08
and that would be one thing. But it was kind of like, whoa,
38:11
you're doing something that we all know you're not allowed to
38:13
do. Nobody else is doing it because
38:17
baseball sending members saying, don't do it.
38:19
So, he didn't think they had seems the same for nobody was on
38:21
second base, but apparently you didn't get the memo.
38:27
Did you get the memo? Well, I think there was also it
38:31
was kind of a enough as if hearsay or, you know, rumor
38:36
going around of it. So, I don't think it was
38:39
something that just came out of the blue.
38:40
I think people suspected something was going on and I
38:43
still think that, you know, the probably could have done more to
38:48
secure that communication knowing that this has been heard
38:54
of talked about. And, you know, there was a
38:58
suspicion. Something was taking place, and
39:00
yet, they, you know, it seems like at least, you know, teams
39:03
didn't really take it seriously or even do anything or at least
39:07
enough to, you know, prevent the interception of those calls and
39:13
then being able to relay it back to the player lose.
39:15
Another thing. That's an interesting angle.
39:17
So Mo be is decided to come out and say, you know, we're Banning
39:23
the use of technology for stealing signs.
39:26
There was Ice question. Well, why why not?
39:29
I mean, using more technology throughout the game.
39:31
I mean, you can't watch a baseball game today without
39:35
getting the Amazon web services statcast information.
39:41
Every player is slow motion reviewed.
39:44
If necessary, they're talking about having an electronic
39:47
Strike Zone. And some point.
39:49
I think they're experimenting with it and some leaves.
39:52
So the bottom line is, that technology is becoming more and
39:56
more the game. Why not rather than Saying, you
40:00
can't still signs using electronics that you just get
40:05
rid of this, this archaic way of giving sandwiching, the catcher
40:09
to the Pitcher, have some kind of device, obviously technically
40:14
a text message, but have something for him to send
40:18
information back to the picture. So that, you know, he can be
40:22
getting a message and not have to worry about science.
40:26
The only thing I can say is this is always been my thing.
40:28
Doing about baseball. There's no, for more technology
40:32
used the more, you separate the pro game and The Sandlot game,
40:36
and the further less alike. They are the less interesting.
40:44
It is to me to play, send letters little kid, you know,
40:47
when I grew up playing, Sandlot boys, pretty much, you know, the
40:51
same technology that they use from the big losers, pretty much
40:55
men. And now we have And electronic
41:01
are potentially upcoming electronic strikes on this not
41:04
in place today, but instant replay and and all these other
41:09
things. So it's a balance.
41:13
I think it's about that. One thing about baseball as
41:15
compared to all the other sports as like tradition is considered
41:19
sacred. How so when you know, people got
41:23
really mad about Barry Bonds. Breaking the homerun record is
41:26
because like You know, it's like the members that you're throwing
41:31
up or just absolutely ludicrous and a guy like Henry Aaron took
41:36
20 years to hit all those home runs and you know, then Barry
41:41
Bonds comes along and takes steroids and he's hit maybe home
41:44
runs a year and would never been done before.
41:48
So that's why people, it has to be.
41:51
So give them are upset about that stuff.
41:53
I think than other sports. Well, I still haunt him.
41:57
I promise it. Essentially the Astros hat, all
42:00
the teams are playing against figured out their balls and, you
42:03
know, their pitch selection passwords and exploited.
42:08
It. Should they have done it.
42:09
Now, they use technology that wasn't known as well.
42:13
But that's how I'm looking at it.
42:15
I know worry about up on time, but let's go back to three years
42:19
ago when the st. Louis Cardinals hired away.
42:23
Somebody from the Astros that guy came over to the Cardinals,
42:28
they never Locked out his account.
42:29
There's a real. I am issue.
42:32
There were locked out his account.
42:33
He went back over and was somehow able to log into their
42:38
scouting system was old credentials and download a bunch
42:42
of data. You got caught the ash, the
42:45
Cardinals and really wrinkled. The penalty was pretty severe.
42:49
I think a few people got fired over it.
42:52
But, you know, is that all gamesmanship?
42:57
Let's say you, I say no, I think that's clearly not on the field.
43:03
And I think that was, that was purely a reason to make sure you
43:07
have good. I'm off boarding.
43:09
Procedure is employees. I think that's how I am ruling
43:15
that as a poor off-boarding performance by I guess it was
43:21
Houston, right? Yes.
43:24
I think that's corporate Espionage.
43:26
And I think they did the right thing throwing the book at them.
43:30
But I also think that the scientist Is cheating as well?
43:35
I think it's, I think it's cheating as well.
43:40
But I think the team should have done better at trying to guard
43:43
against it. It's like saying, you know, you
43:46
shouldn't hack, my password. People are gonna do it.
43:50
Right. So expect expect to try and put
43:52
some defenses up against it. Yeah.
43:55
It did. The only difference again my
43:59
final argument. The only difference is that this
44:01
is a sport where certain level Of Ethics are required, and it
44:05
was teams within the same week. This Wilson like the cold war,
44:11
like Russia versus United States or something like that.
44:14
It's right. You know, this is a really
44:18
friendly league of colleagues. It's just a game.
44:25
Yeah, but that's what we get all excited about.
44:29
Yep. Exactly.
44:31
All right. I think we're in pretty good
44:32
shot. We can shape, we can probably
44:35
wrap it up there and now you're going to catch a flight here in
44:37
a little bit, kind of a weird show.
44:40
I think for us today because you're kind of little bit all
44:41
over the place talking about world events and little bit of
44:45
baseball. And by the time folks here this
44:47
it'll be Monday the 16th probably.
44:50
So we'll see how the situation changed last couple days, but
44:54
hopefully we gave you guys some some food for thought and some
44:58
ideas and how to maybe approach some of the issues that D come
45:01
out of here with the virus impact, or other things to think
45:05
about. If you've got questions or
45:07
comments or you think I'm crazy about the Astros hacking every
45:12
team, they faced with a pitch selection, you know, you can
45:14
feel free to email us at questions at identity at the
45:18
center.com and on behalf of Jim will talk to you guys in the
45:22
next one. You've been listening to the
45:34
identity of the center podcast for more episodes of visit
45:38
identity at the center.com.