Intel Analysis: Executive Risk Fusion Center...

How often do you try and prove that a risk hypothesis is true? Is it possible that each piece of evidence that you collect or information you process is utilized to try and prove that your hypothesis is correct.

Analysis of executive Operational Risk Intelligence in your corporation is typically being processed within the organizational silos of your enterprise business units. How it is being shared, how often and then how it is being analyzed, compared and used to confirm or refute multiple hypotheses, can make the difference in your corporate business survival.

The ACH methodology developed by Richards J. Heuer, Jr., is a vital component of Operational Risk Management (ORM).  It can be utilized with your internal Executive "Risk Fusion" Center where the Board of Directors, Senior Management and corporate risk directors determine the correct strategic course for the future:

Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) is a simple model for how to think about a complex problem. It is an analytic process that identifies a complete set of alternative hypotheses, systematically evaluates data that is consistent and inconsistent with each hypothesis, and rejects hypotheses that contain too much inconsistent data. ACH takes you through a process for making well-reasoned, analytical judgments. It is particularly useful for issues that require a careful weighing of alternative explanations of what has happened or is happening. ACH can also be used to provide early warning or help you evaluate alternative scenarios of what might happen in the future. ACH helps you overcome, or at least minimize, some of the cognitive limitations that make prescient intelligence analysis so difficult; it helps clarify why analysts are talking past one another and do not understand each other’s interpretation of the data. ACH is grounded in basic insights from cognitive psychology, decision analysis, and the scientific method.

What is the likelihood that the General Manager, Global Security of your enterprise is looking at surveillance information on a rogue employee today to assess workplace threat and to help keep the company safe? Simultaneously, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is analyzing the latest log data from various intrusion systems to determine if the "Advanced Persistent Threat" (APT) has changed it's cyber tactics to steal the latest software R & D architecture from the office suite business unit. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Head of Internal Audit are analyzing the latest revenue reports with the Vice-President of Sales & Marketing to determine why the Asia Pacific team have been losing 8 out of 10 business deals in the forecast pipeline.

The likelihood is high. Each is formulating a hypothesis independently of each other and in most cases they will never know that there is a risk related nexus to the entire enterprise. The reason is that your Executive "Risk Fusion" Center does not exist or is unable to analyze competing questions that are being asked about potential areas of concern. So when do you use this approach and the ACH methodology?

Use ACH when the judgment or decision is so important that you can't afford to be wrong. Use it to record and organize relevant evidence prior to making an analytical judgment or decision. Use it to identify and then question assumptions that may be driving your thinking, perhaps without realizing it. Use it when the evidence you are working with may be influenced by denial and deception. Use it when gut feelings are not good enough, and you need a more systematic approach that raises questions you had not thought of. Use it to prevent being surprised by an unforeseen outcome. Use it when an issue is particularly controversial and you want to highlight the precise sources of disagreement. Use it to maintain a record of how and why you reached your conclusion.

The human mind needs modern software analytics, proven cognitive tools and vetted processes of thinking to arrive at the answer. While the answer may not be what you seek, it is the answer to the question, without a doubt. Live with it or discard it. This does not matter. What does matter is that the Executive "Risk Fusion" Center brought together the best of all these operational risk components and whether the human chooses to accept it or ignore it could be our corporate prosperity or peril. What do you think AI?

Intelligence Sharing: Responsibility to Provide...

Back in the summer of 2008, the "Need to Know" was now finally becoming extinct. Intelligence Communities around the globe began ever so slightly changing their behavior.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) had released it's Information Sharing Strategy:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was announcing the first-ever strategy to improve the ability of intelligence professionals to share information, ultimately strengthening national security.

The "Responsibility to Provide" attitude combined with a "Rule-set" reset could get the entities moving the right direction. Risk Managers in institutions in the private sector have been grappling with this business issue for multiple decades.

The reality that the FBI, NSA, CIA and DHS are sharing more effectively will only be evident in actual behaviors, not technology.

The new mantra "Responsibility to Provide" would be repeated over and over but where is the evidence?  

The culture shift was predicated on the ability to manage risks associated with mission effectiveness and disclosure of sensitive information. A Trusted Environment.

This new information sharing model is not revolutionary and requires the same care with privacy, information security and civil liberties that we all expect when it comes to personal identifiable information.

Adding new incentives to share information or rewards for doing so will soon be the norm and the behavior changes will be evident. Great care will be given to the ability to protect sources and methods of collection.

Creating a "Single Information Environment" (SIE) will improve the ability for analysts and investigators to get access earlier and to discover what exists. Enhancing collaboration across the IC community would be a strategic goal and has been a dream for over twenty years.

So let's go back to the "Trust Model" for a minute:

• Governance: The environment influencing sharing.
• Policy: The "rules" for sharing.
• Technology: The "capability" to enable sharing.
• Culture: The "will" to share.
• Economics: The "value" of sharing.

A 500 day plan was then in place. The integration has now been reemphasized even today. Let's make sure that our vigilance continues and on this Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, our spirits are reenergized...

Proactive Measures: Beyond the Perimeter...

Operational Risk Management requires both proactive and passive measures that encompass a comprehensive organizational strategy. Odds are that you have devoted a majority of your time and resources to this point on the passive mode of preparedness and defense. A reactive and alert oriented focus. The time has come to change the priorities and to increase the allocation of strategy on the "Active Measures." Why?

Stuxnet is and was ground zero for a new generation of digital infrastructure cyber weapons.

The attribution game is still going on with several suspects on who actually developed, tested and deployed "Stuxnet." This is not as important as the realization that sitting back and waiting for the next variant or hybrid cyber weapon to attack your critical infrastructure assets in passive mode.

"The most advanced organizations are now taking the "Proactive" stance to not only detect changes in their environment in a more real-time mode, but they are starting to hunt down the attackers."

There is a decision point where you realize that the passive mode will not buy you time nor will it redirect your attackers to other more vulnerable assets. Your organization will continue to operate with the goal of serving your clients, members or customers yet simultaneously a "SpecOPS" team of internal experts will be monitoring, measuring and exercising tactics to legally neutralize the threat before them.

Commercial and non-governmental entities are creating the means and the capabilities to deter, detect and document who is attacking their digital systems and where they can be found. This intelligence is being shared within the private sector organizations to determine fingerprints, modus operandi and other evidence that is required to effectively hunt down the attackers. The next challenge will be how to package this and make sure that the proper authorities are notified in a timely manner.

There is no longer a solution that is wide enough or in depth enough to be distributed across a whole spectrum of companies or organizations. The answers will be specific, customized to the unique environment and infrastructure that comprises a particular enterprise.

In order for that specification to be developed internally and provided to the correct people, you have to have the internal mechanisms in place to know in real-time what is changing and how fast it is changing from the normal state.

Is your view beyond your own perimeter? Are you looking for the anomalies that are over the horizon and could impact your network soon? It's one thing to look at the changes to your own perimeter but what about the intelligence on providers and ISP's somewhere on the other side of the planet? Do you know where your packets are going and how they are being routed?

"In a savvy Operational Risk Management enterprise, the "Corporate Intelligence Unit” (CIU) is alive and thriving."

A proactive intelligence-led investigation doesn't begin with a phone call from someone who say's, "My system is down" or "What does this Blue Screen mean”?

It doesn't start when your VP, Research & Development suddenly leaves the company for no apparent reason. Intelligence-led operations will continue to be the aspiration of many, yet only possessed by a few.

operational risk

RENS: Growing Your Enterprise...

 There he was, in the early morning light, prancing along outside the fence line just seventy-five feet away.

The young “Buck Deer” with his adolescent antlers stopped and glanced over at the house, just to acknowledge that he saw us sitting on the deck.

As Fall arrives and kids are back in school, it seems as if the pace of work and the demands on peoples time starts to take its toll. Be aware.

Years ago, as some wise people developed the systems and programs around the acronym RENS, they knew from years of experience on the front lines of true battle why it was so vital to success:

• Recruiting
• Education
• Networking
• Sharing Information

This is the high level context for what your daily activities shall be focused on each day, of each week of each month this year.

"How might you design your program, your systems, your time allocations towards these four key components of your enterprise?"

The original designers knew that each organization is unique and therefore, provided an acronym to keep you on track. Easy to remember, harder to implement effectively on a consistent basis.

If you advertise as one example, for a particular event and you ask people to RSVP, how do you respond after they fill out your form, full of personal contact details?

If they actually attend the event and take the time to see and hear all about your X or Y, how do you respond after they leave and think about what they heard and experienced at your event?

Do you follow-up or do nothing?

At a recent weekly event the guest speaker and very wise man broke down the Recruiting part of RENS to further to three simple steps:

• Belong
• Believe
• Behave

First, if you haven’t created an event where people immediately feel like they belong there, that you too believe in many of the same things they do, you will have a rough time ever getting to the last “B”.

How might you get other people to behave in a certain way?

The tough part about RENS is, that if you are not executing 100% on the effectiveness of your “Recruiting”, how will you ever get the opportunity to Educate, Network and then Share truly vital Information?

Perhaps even more difficult, how will you ever get good people to join your "Just Cause"?

As the “Young Buck” glanced back at us one more time as he went around the tall Spruce tree, we smiled and waved…

Preface: Growing Up in the USA...

As we approach our 248th year celebration of the country named the “United States of America”, think about it with open eyes as you look at our flag waving in the wind on the morning of July 4th.

One of 193 countries in the United Nations on our globe today, our country has become a sought after destination for so many others in the world to see and to actually experience.

Why?

Being born in the USA, our school Principal at our “Riverside Elementary” would get on the speaker system at 8:30AM sharp. Our “Pledge Allegiance” each morning was sacred as we all would stand in our classrooms:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Little did any of us truly know at that point in our lives, how precious these words would eventually become to us. Some before we were all grown adults.

It would dawn upon us all decades later, as our team was sitting around our tables with other fellow INSA members in a 2nd Floor conference room on North Stuart Street in Arlington Virginia. Our local professionals had a new important project before us.

Our Homeland Security Intelligence Council (HSIC) had started to tackle the definition of “Homeland Security Intelligence” and we would later develop 16 key recommendations in our 20 page White Paper.

It was finally published in September 2011 and ten years since so many Americans had died on 9/11 and so many others who would fight in the wars international and thereafter domestic.

“Homeland Security Intelligence is information that upon examination is determined to have value in assisting federal, state, local, tribal and private sector decision makers in identifying or mitigating threats residing principally within U.S. borders.”

Intelligence to Protect the Homeland...taking stock ten years later and looking ahead...

Now after returning to our USA once again with your own overseas travel behind you, reach into your pocket for that dark blue "US Passport" with the Eagle emblazoned on the front in Gold and read these words once again on page one:

“The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.”

In 2024, this Independence Day, reflect on all that you have learned and now earned, as a US Citizen protecting our country and as a true proud American.

 “Never Forget”…

Analytic Priorities: Crossing the Digital RubiCON...

The governance of information within the government enterprise or the private sector enterprise remains very much the same. Both are subjected to a myriad of laws to help protect the civil liberties and privacy of U.S. citizens. Yet the data leaks, breaches and lost laptops keep both private sector and government organizations scrambling to cover their mistakes and to keep their adversaries from getting the upper hand. Again, the governance of information is the core capability that must be addressed if we are to have effective homeland security intelligence sharing to defeat the threats to the homeland 100% of the time.

The stakeholders in the information sharing environments will say that they have all the laws they need to not only protect information and also to protect the privacy of and liberties of U.S. citizens. What they may not admit, is that they do not have the assets within the context of their own organizations to deter, detect, defend and document the threats related to too much information being shared or not enough. These assets are a combination of new technologies, new education and situational awareness training and the people to staff these respective duties within the enterprise architecture.

Operational Risk Management is a continuous process in the context of our rapidly expanding corporate environments. What is one example? People traveling to emerging markets to explore new business opportunities or new suppliers that will be connected by high speed Internet connections to the supply chain management system. These boundaries of managing operational risk, have not only expanded, they have become invisible.

Ru·bi·con

1. a river in N Italy flowing E into the Adriatic

—Idiom

2. Rubicon, to take a decisive, irrevocable step

This "Digital Rubicon" before us, to take on a more "Active Defense" in navigating the risk across international waters of e-commerce, privacy and legal jurisdictions will forever shape our future. The decisions made on what constitutes an adversarial attack in the cyber domain, will not be as easy as the dawn of the nuclear age. Policy makers today have to weave the potential implications into a sophisticated decision tree that crosses the complex areas of intelligence, diplomacy, defense, law, commerce, economics and technology.

The new digital "Rule Sets" are currently being defined by not only nation states but the "Non-State" actors who dominate a segment of the global digital domains. The same kinds of schemes, ploys, communication tactics and strategies are playing out online and what has worked in the physical world, may also work even better in the cyber-centric environment. Corporations are increasingly under estimating the magnitude of the risk or the speed that it is approaching their front or back door steps.

The private sector is under tremendous oversight by various regulators, government agencies and corporate risk management. Yet the "public-private" "tug-of-war" over information sharing, leaks to the public press and Wikileaks incidents has everyone on full alert. As the government has outsourced the jobs that will take too long to execute or that the private sector already is an expert, operational risks have begun to soar.

As the private sector tasks morph with the requirements of government you perpetuate the gap for effective risk mitigation and spectacular incidents of failure. Whether it is the failure of people, processes, systems or some other clandestine event doesn't matter. The public-private paradox will continue as long as the two seek some form of symbiosis. The symbiotic relationship between a government entity and a private sector supplier must be managed no differently than any other mission critical resource within an unpredictable environment.

Once an organization has determined the vital combination of assets it requires to operate on a daily basis, then it can begin it's quest for enabling enterprise resiliency. The problem is, most companies still do not understand these complex relationships within the matrix of their business and therefore remain vulnerable. The only path to gaining that resilient outcome, is to finally cross that "Digital Rubicon" and realize that you no longer can control it.

The first step in any remediation program, is first to admit the problem and to accept the fact that it exists. Corporate enterprises and governments across the globe are coming to the realization that the only way forward is to cooperate, coordinate and contemplate a new level of trust.

operational risk

Trust Decisions: "Lake Anne to Davos"...

The 2024 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland kicks off January 15-19. Are you traveling this weekend on your way to attend?

The 54th event theme this year is “Rebuilding Trust”.

On Jan 18 at 11:00 CET the session titled “Technology in a Turbulent World” will include CEO panelists from OpenAI, Salesforce, Accenture and Pfizer.

Why?

Flashback to Reston, Virginia in the 2012-2015 time frame, one of the most brilliant people on the topic of trust was across the table asking for relevant feedback.

While several meetings over coffee at home or near the plaza on “Lake Anne”, together, we were reading some of the early drafts of his anticipated book- “Achieving Digital Trust: The New Rules for Business at the Speed of Light”, byJeffrey Ritter:

“Despite decades of research on organizational trust, behavioral sociology, marketing, artificial intelligence, user interfaces, and human relationships, the vocabulary and tools needed to build digital trust simply do not exist. So, within these pages, I share with you a new portfolio of tools and resources:” (Page 24 / Achieving Digital Trust by Jeffrey Ritter).

The “War on Trust” of information was already on the way in 2012, and yet it was well over a decade since our organizations algorithms were exploring the digital universe.

Each night, downloading terabytes of World Wide Web content, for clients reporting and analysis.

“From the Board Room to our modern day asymmetric battlefield, Jeffrey Ritter’s Achieving Digital Trust will open eyes. It provides us with a reference model that management and software architects have been seeking. The survival of the Internet as we know it is currently at stake. This book provides a look into the transparency of «Trust Decisions» and how ensuring digital truth will shape our global governance for decades to come.” Peter L. Higgins, Managing Director & Chief Risk Officer, 1SecureAudit

And next week in Davos, the global key topic is “Rebuilding Trust”?

Think about who you have trusted in your life. How did it begin? Why does it last?

You just never forget sitting across the table from someone you actually trust.

Talking together face-to-face about topics of interest or working on a new innovative solution to a problem-set for all mankind.

Picture it. Looking at each other in the eyes and asking them: Why do you believe it?

• One person is a high IQ, highly educated international lawyer and Oxford professor on the evolution of the Internet.
• One person is from a small town and a college graduate / athlete, who started in business at the digital dawn, years before the Internet was born.

As we mutually reflect on the past, and imagine the future of our world on Earth as we continue to explore our Moon and beyond, we shall always remember.

At the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce observed:

“The digital revolution needs a trust revolution. There has been an incredible shift in the technology industry. . . . We’ve gone from systems of record to systems of engagement and now we are about to move into a world of systems of intelligence. But none of these will retain form or have referential integrity unless the customers trust them. Trust is a serious problem. The reality is that we all have to step up and get to another level of openness and transparency.” (Page 32 / Achieving Digital Trust)

Godspeed!

OPS Risk: Global Digital Spring...

Over a decade later since the Arab Spring of 2011, our planet has witnessed the growth of personal mobile communications and the explosion of the Quantum "Internet of Things".

The utilization of wireless mobile communications and its intersection with social media apps in our emerging nations civilian environments is here to stay. 

How these latest digital consumer-based applications have been now leveraged for situational awareness (GPS) and information operations is exploding across the emerging nations, where the mobile Internet is now gaining even more ubiquitous use.

What this also means for our risk managers in the C-Suites of major technology companies is a heightened sensitivity and awareness to the ways your tools and capabilities could be utilized in the hands of the wrong end user.

No different than the early days of unleashing certain web tools like Metasploit, to help understand our digital vulnerabilities within the confines of the corporate enterprise.

These same new open-source “App tools” could be utilized by nefarious cyber forces to quickly exploit the unknown weaknesses in our own U.S. government and corporate network systems.

Yet like many inventions by our mission-driven mankind, they can be used for good and simultaneously for evil in the hands of a certain person.

Operational Risk Management in the high technology sector (Ai?) will be just as much of an imperative for continuous compliance as the manufacturing and international shipment of products from Barrett or the manufacturers of Detcord.

The "Export Control" compliance mechanism is here to stay and companies who operate in the new age of emerging social media via mobile technologies, will need more effective OFAC internal controls.

Operational Risks may exist within the business processes that you use with your international sales and business development organization.

When was the last time you had a compliance-based OFAC discussion within the ranks of the C-Suite at your new emerging technology company?

Are you fully funded by the VCs and ready to sell your new encrypted FinTech or social media app for Android to the world?

Innovative organizations need to make sure that part of the roll out strategy, encompasses the effective conversations with the correct government departments.

This is also to determine the right process and the online tools available to better understand where and who you can sell your products to outside of the United States.

The worlds last “Arab Spring” and the next organized movement utilizing social media and satellite mobile Internet technologies that include encrypted messaging, GPS and live video, shall be even more closely scrutinized by internal compliance officers and the regulatory watchdogs domestically and abroad.

Yet the most effective internal management tools going forward, may just lie in the same ones used by your own Mother and Father growing up.

The ethical and the growing moral arguments in many cases can have a dramatic impact on young people at an early stage in their lives, as you hand them their first mobile phone as a parent.

Perhaps it is still not too late to remind and reinforce and to emphasize the fact that our exponential High-performance computing (HPC) cyber environments, are powering nothing more than the digital mirror image of the physical world we already know about. Both Good and Bad.

Our future of effective enterprise Operational Risk Management (ORM) online and the effective compliance with potential legal sanctions, may well begin with a heart-to-heart conversation at your next company executive retreat or “All-Hands” fire side chat meeting...

Innovation: Entrepreneurial SPRINT…

Are you ready to embark on a new endeavor in your particular work or volunteer organization? Then how might you utilize an “Entrepreneurial SPRINT” methodology to more effectively accomplish your desired outcomes in National Security?

If you even develop a multi-step process to take you down an agreed upon series of collaborative actions, you will be well on your way to a more valued set of results.

Consider a focus on solving a unique problem-set that exists in your own specific Domain, Industry or Organization.

Work alongside a team partner or small group to experience the empirical evidence of answers to your questions, hypotheses and the information discovered and collected as you proceed.

Create a design SPRINT that accomplishes your agreed upon steps in a specified time frame, 4 or five days in-a-row, or 4 consecutive weeks within a month.

Utilize a proven and open-source hybrid methodology from intellectual thought leaders in the realm of innovation such as Jake Knapp or Steve Blank with Strategyzer AG. All have published a multitude of information on tools, systems, process and models to consider.

Here is an example for just one reference:

1. Map/Target
2. Sketch/Solution
3. Decide
4. Prototype

The process steps are the key to your unique journey of innovation. Two people or a small team learning together, as you interview likely beneficiaries of your proposed solution. 

Learning the potential end-users real opinions and comments is vital. What the “real problem” is, that is keeping them focused and that they are eager to solve.

How might you incorporate this type of “Entrepreneurial SPRINT” into your own organization, so that you can capture the true essence of what the customer seeks?

Your Team is going to learn together the Who, What, How, and Where your design for a solution to a more well defined problem-set, that will make a real difference.

What is vital to remember in your place of work or within your organization, is that the methodology is proven. It works for students in college, employees in Fortune 500 companies and volunteers in non-profit organizations.

“The ambition and the hope for all of us, shall be to increase our skills, our knowledge and share relevant National Security learning and information”…Onward!

Over the Horizon: Playing in the “Infinite Game”…

When you think about your future, what do you foresee? A life full of happiness fulfilled with almost every wonderful human experience?

That is where you should continue your vision and your true ambition. Stay on this course of doing what is right, talking about the good and demonstrating a life full of integrity.

Have faith that in a world trying to distract you and with people you know who are heading off course, you must continuously navigate to the light. Look up and beyond.

Your next opportunity or new acquaintance is just over the horizon. You just can’t see it yet.

Remember what you have been taught. By parents, siblings and even your grandparents. There is wisdom and lessons to be learned from each of them. Both good and bad.

The course you set and navigate now for yourself is your own.

On September 25, 2020, one year ago as these words are written, James P. Carse died. Read his book, “Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility”. When finished, ask yourself what game are you playing in?

If you are an artist playing in an “Infinite Game” then read on.

Infinite players don’t consume time, they generate it. They don’t talk about how much they have accomplished and their latest title, or after all the training they have completed.

Instead, you will talk about how much of your work still remains incomplete.

Your ambition shall be to play the game without ending it and to be even more well-educated. Not just well-trained.

Your boundaries are self-created. Infinite players oppose the boundaries and create a better culture wherever they live. You shall continuously strive for a horizon you will never reach.

Are you still trying to win? Are you bound by all the rules? You are not playing in the “Infinite Game”.

Infinite Game players shall focus on the purpose for playing the game. You find joy in what you do and you don’t want to ever cease the game.

What are you doing to stay in it and continue playing? You are not interested in how others perceive you. You are after deeds that the entire planet may benefit from for entirety.

You understand that surprise is inevitable in the “Infinite Game”. You know that every choice and move you make as a first responder, is toward the horizon.

“Soldiers who die fighting the enemy, receive the nation’s highest reward: They are declared unforgettable. Even unknown soldiers are memorialized—though their names have been lost, their titles will not be.” —James P. Carse

Are you in active pursuit of a higher purpose that will be beneficial for our challenging world…

Predictive Intelligence: Imagine the Catalyst…

 

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”

— Albert Einstein

When was the last time you found yourself preparing for something that has not happened yet?

Why were you thinking about it? Was it fear?

What did you fear? Was it the potential for a significant loss event? Loss or change of what?

How will you prepare in such a way, that it gives you some assurance that the potential loss event will not occur? Or if it does, the outcomes will not be a total catastrophe:

Definition of catastrophe

• 1 : a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin.
• 2 : utter failure.
• 3a : a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth.
• b : a violent usually destructive natural event (such as a supernova).
• 4 : the final event of the dramatic action especially of a tragedy.

How might you prepare proactively with your Team, to alleviate fear and to provide greater confidence of action?

What particular environment are you thinking about right now?

Is it Land, Sea, Air, Space or Cyberspace? Will the Catalyst for the loss event you fear, begin in plain sight? Will you see it or hear it coming? Or could it be silent and invisible?

How will you know when it has started? What indicators or changes might you measure, to give you some early warning?

Your imagination has not been exercised hard enough or long enough. You will be vulnerable and you shall experience loss at some point.

Can you imagine working along side trusted people or colleagues together to imagine your fears? Will you Understand, Decide and Act? As a team…

How might you devote a few hours per week to the people, processes, systems and external events that you fear?

Your proactive strategy will make a difference. A purposeful journey of imagination each week will increase your “Proactive and Predictive Intelligence”.

Now imagine that a person on your particular team is your Catalyst. How will you make “Trust Decisions” to imagine what they might do or how the person will make a mistake? How could the persons actions become the genesis of a real catastrophe?

Wake up. You are vulnerable today. The proactive time and the degree of effort and resources that you devote to your own Operational Risk Management (ORM) shall make all the difference.

Between a life of trusted possibilities or one full of continuous despair…it is your choice.

Onward!

Perseverance: Achieving Your Destination...

Walking down this path for the first time, it was unfamiliar.  There was no way to know what obstacles and challenges were ahead.

Yet, in your head, the education, learning and training was coming quickly into your conscience endeavor, to achieve your destination.

Looking up, there were all the signs that the direction was correct.  All the indicators and intuition said the journey would just take longer than expected.

perseverance
per· se· ver· ance | \ ˌpər-sə-ˈvir-ən(t)s
\
Definition of perseverance
: continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition : the action or condition or an instance of persevering : steadfastness

It was uncertain how or when the intended destination would be in the horizon, yet there was complete faith that whenever that arrival did occur, open arms would be witnessed.

Your future is bright.  You have so much to look forward to.  You must keep persevering.

One item is probably certain.  You will not ever forget your Instructor.  Your Teacher.  Your Wing man.  Your Buddy.  Your Brother or Sister.  Together you learned what your strengths are and how to survive until the next test of life.

So what is over that next hill?  Across the chasm after that?

There is only your Future.  Your Journey.  Thank you for allowing the time to listen.  To learn.  To really know you.

Onward!

Memorial Day 2020: Understand | Decide | Act...

Walking through Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend is a stark reminder of the Operational Risk Management challenges we have faced these past 19+ years.  One example can be found in the budget at the Pentagon, on how to defeat the IED.

Billions of dollars are devoted to the strategies and tactics to keep U.S. "boots on the ground" on foreign lands from becoming KIA, an amputee or another invisible wound such as Traumatic Brain Injury or Post Traumatic Stress.

Regardless of the dollars devoted, many grave markers in Section 60 have birth dates in the 1980's and 1990's.  Standing there remembering Neil, a tear rolled down a cheek and the wind quickly blew it away...

"Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday which occurs every year on the final Monday of May.^[1] Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.^[2] Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the Union and Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. By the 20th century, Memorial Day had been extended to honor all Americans who have died while in the military service^[3]."

If you are currently in the military we will thank you for your courage of service on Veterans Day, as we have before.  This day however, is for those in the U.S. forces who have died while serving.

Simultaneously, we must thank all of the other "Operational Risk Management" subject matter experts.  The "Quiet Professionals" who operate everyday in the shadows.  We hope that their decisions will continue to be the right ones.  They live each day with the burden of managing risk decisions, that could send another U.S. patriot on their way to Section 60 or a remembrance "Star" on the wall at Langley.

Whether you are a Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Family or Friend, this Federal Holiday is your day of memorial to your loved one(s).

Some would say that our country is currently at a degree of War.  Even though there is no official written declaration, that has been written and published to the world.

Yet, these three words, in this order, and in that continuous "Chain," means everything to those who have served and will serve our United States. 

    > Understand.

    > Decide.

    > Act.

Until the day, that all our military and all of our true "First Responders" decide, that America is no longer worth fighting for, these three words will consume them.

Thank you for being there...

Open-Source Intel: Future Preemption...

Flashback fourteen years ago...

The methods of Intelligence gathering and sharing for the 17+ agencies that comprise the DNI is evolving to new Web 2.0 capabilities. In fact, they are putting these new tools to work to break down the silo's and connect the dots faster than the embedded and legacy systems have been capable of in the past.

Intelligence heads wanted to try to find some new answers to this problem. So the C.I.A. set up a competition, later taken over by the D.N.I., called the Galileo Awards: any employee at any intelligence agency could submit an essay describing a new idea to improve information sharing, and the best ones would win a prize. The first essay selected was by Calvin Andrus, chief technology officer of the Center for Mission Innovation at the C.I.A. In his essay, “The Wiki and the Blog: Toward a Complex Adaptive Intelligence Community,” Andrus posed a deceptively simple question: How did the Internet become so useful in helping people find information?

Yet even those who have implemented the use of new Web 2.0 collaboration and social networking to try and break through those typical information sharing barriers have another problem. Getting everyone to make a seachange and cultural shift to the use of these new tools and processes. The question is that even if you get everyone to use it and there is not anything "Secret" for fear of it ever being known by the wrong person, will it work? Thomas Fingar, the patrician head of analysis for the D.N.I.:

Fingar says yes, for an interesting reason: top-secret information is becoming less useful than it used to be. “The intelligence business was initially, if not inherently, about secrets — running risks and expending a lot of money to acquire secrets,” he said, with the idea that “if you limit how many people see it, it will be more secure, and you will be able to get more of it. But that’s now appropriate for a small and shrinking percentage of information.” The time is past for analysts to act like “monastic scholars in a cave someplace,” he added, laboring for weeks or months in isolation to produce a report.

Fingar says that more value can be generated by analysts sharing bits of “open source” information — the nonclassified material in the broad world, like foreign newspapers, newsletters and blogs. It used to be that on-the-ground spies were the only ones who knew what was going on in a foreign country. But now the average citizen sitting in her living room can peer into the debates, news and lives of people in Iran. “If you want to know what the terrorists’ long-term plans are, the best thing is to read their propaganda — the stuff out there on the Internet,” the W.M.D. analyst told me. “I mean, it’s not secret. They’re telling us.”

The amount of self-publishing on "Blogs" and "Wiki" applications is here to stay and now it is just a matter of having the right analysts using the correct tools. The point is that new search technologies and all of the "bots" and "crawlers" can try and keep up with the new content, but it is not likely. Intelligence analysis will continue to take far more grey matter than we have people trained and able to do so. This fact alone, should bring us back to square one. There is no such possibility as 100% security. Prevention and Preemption are both elusive goals and will be our "Holy Grail" for some time to come.

Today’s spies exist in an age of constant information exchange, in which everyday citizens swap news, dial up satellite pictures of their houses and collaborate on distant Web sites with strangers. As John Arquilla tells Clive Thompson a contributing writer to the New York Times, if the spies do not join the rest of the world, they risk growing to resemble the rigid, unchanging bureaucracy that they once confronted during the cold war. “Fifteen years ago we were fighting the Soviet Union,” he said. “Who knew it would be replicated today in the intelligence community?”

Intelligence Fusion: The Race Against Time...

 Human intelligence may be the most sought after way to prevent new threats to your organization.

Yet that is never enough to give you total peace of mind. You have to implement multiple collection points for real-time and relevant information.

The front line of intelligence analysis begins far in advance of the actual event or incident taking place. Companies like "Quid" have provided some of the tools to detect the presence of new and relevant information in the hundreds of millions of active web sites across the Internet.

You may also see Dataminr in the corporate Security Operations Center (SOC) and even the local Fusion Center for more Real-Time information.

They assist CxO's in navigating their operational risk strategy execution across a competitive and increasingly threatening global landscape.

The fusion of intelligence from the Internet and broadcast media requires not only sophisticated software, hardware and talented Intelligence Analysts, it requires good old fashioned investigative tactics. And when you combine all of these to create the closest version of reality, then you have found true "Integrity."

Keeping information truely confidential is a difficult task. Assurance that the information will be there when you need it, is also equally important. Yet it is the "Integrity" of the information that we are in constant pursuit of.

Data fusion involves the exchange of information from different sources—including "John Q. Public" with his mobile phone, Ring and other IoT sensors, Law Enforcement, Public Safety, and especially the Private Sector—and, with analysis, can result in meaningful and actionable intelligence and information.

In a wide-ranging hearing on the myriad threats to the U.S. homeland, from white supremacist terrorists, border security, school shooters, and cyber attackers, the director of the FBI gave a glimpse of how the agency is using technology to blunt one of those threats.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said his agency has implemented a new threat-sharing capability on its Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP).

The fusion process turns this information and intelligence into actionable knowledge. Fusion also allows for relentless reevaluation of existing data, in context with new data in order to provide constant updates.

The Private Sector is still the biggest challenge. Trusted relationships need to be continually fostered. New mechanisms for public-private coordination are consistently being discussed.

Fusion Center's are not the only answer. It still remains a significant piece of a very complex operational security challenge, that we will be facing for still years to come...

Veterans Day 2019: A Spectrum of American Service...

What do we all have in common on this Veterans Day 2019?  Walking through the atrium of the U.S. National Museum of the Marine Corps, reminds us what this day is really all about, in our history and as a whole of nation.

Yet those who have sacrificed so much for our freedoms and our country, know first hand what being part of the 1% really means.

The average American walking down Main street watching the parades today, may not have the same context, experienced the same fear, nor truly understands what it means to protect the person to the right or left of you, or on the invisible front lines of this United States of America.

Our highly trained military "First Responders" deployed to foreign lands have many of the same experiences with our own Domestic "First Responders" in keeping our citizens, families and our governments safe and resilient.

Walking through the cafeteria at dinner time and witnessing the young and eager faces, at any of our "National Academies" across America, is an inspiring experience and an emotional reminder to each of us.

These young and eager Americans being trained in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnissance, hope they never will have to use the other lethal tools they may be learning about and training with, to become experts.

Others know that the new skills and experience they are gaining in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine, Logistics and Navigating, Operating or Flying sophisticated new platforms, makes a vital difference each day.

Whether you have worked on many missions overseas, or in the metro areas of Washington, DC, Chicago or Los Angeles on a daily basis, you wake up each morning with a mutual purpose.  A thought pattern that drives you to improve the safety and the security of your collective team each minute, of each day.

Veterans Day in America celebrates the service of all U.S. military roles, whether they be on the front lines of the battle in the air, space or on the ground and continuously in our growing digital domains.

God Bless you all and Godspeed!