Frictionless Convenience or Human Connection? - Security for Post-COVID Remote Work With Chris Dancy (Part Two)

Head of Endpoint Security Product Management Chris Goettl continues his conversation with "the world's most connect human" and author of Don't Unplug: How Technology Saved My Life and Can Save Yours Too, Chris Dancy! 

This second half of the conversation pivots from personal user data considerations to security experiences and data collection in the hybrid and remote workplaces now common in a post-COVID world, including:

• Renewed user safety considerations, now that organizations can no longer rely on the "walled gardens" of known network security considerations.
• Chris (Dancy) breaking down how "technology can be good, or it can be easy, but it can't be both" -- and how that's not always the case.
• Chris (Goettl)'s experience with information technology solutions designed to circumvent the dreaded password and other digital employee experience (DEX) developments.
• Chris (Dancy)'s parting observation that, "We don't know how to measure what we care about, so we care about what we measure." 

• Join the conversation online on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/company/Ivanti)

Transcript

Vernon:  Hi everyone, welcome back to episode eight of Ivanti Insights. This is part two of our conversation with the most connected human in the world, Chris Dancy, who joined us in episode seven, and we had so much to unpack, so much we couldn't get to, and so we're carrying it over into episode eight. So Chris, we really appreciate you joining us again here, and of course we have none other than Chris Goettl in the house as well, to help me pose the interview questions to Chris Dancy. So Mr. Goettl, let's have you kick things off. You were fascinated by what we were talking about in episode seven with Chris, at the end, we started to think about the everywhere workplace and Ivanti has been touting, empowering the everywhere workplace. So what is it that you want to ask Chris along those lines, given that he is so connected and in a non-pandemic environment? He is traveling the world and needs to work from anywhere he is.

Goettl: Yeah, and I've got to throw out a few buzzwords real quick.  We got thrown into this new normal, we progressed the digital transformation that the world is going through by years. I've heard anywhere from like five, seven, ten years that we've now been thrown into the future from the progression that we were on before. I think that our last conversation, Chris, where you talked about how you had to look at technology differently and the value of technology, both from more of a personal standpoint. I think that's necessary as we go forward.  Adrian, you mentioned the everywhere workplace, Chris you've been living that everywhere workplace to a level of depth than most people in this COVID world had really achieved before now. Let's unpack that a little bit. So this everywhere workplace, we've got to balance work and personal, and we've got to worry about the things that we're doing, what's it exposing us to, privacy wise for ourselves, what's it exposing from a risk perspective for the companies we work for. Your mobile device may have work and personal on it, if you're working on a laptop, again, how many people aren't going to go and check on Amazon for something that they want to shop for while they're taking a quick mental break at work. All these things are interconnected and we're really just now putting some more definitive labels on it. I think that's where your experiences so far being so far ahead of most of the rest of us on this transformation could be very insightful. 

Dancy: I love the concept of the everywhere workplace, to me, I feel like I've always been in the everywhere workplace. I started, like I said, being back at Goldmine in the late nineties, so as a consultant flying all over, your workplace really was everywhere. An end point looked a lot different then, you know you got your patch disc sent to you, you didn't download them from anywhere.

I think it's really important, you know, let's start like real high level, the everywhere workplace. I think we have to now start seeing as our devices when they're not within a physical area that's managed by our organization and they are remote. Also at this new layer, because now you also have to be concerned about is your laptop or your mobile device, even clean? We don't even talk about, are you wiping them off when you're out because of viruses and things like that. I think we've helped people understand social scamming, but how many employees get scam messages, scam emails, now scam text messages. Now when you go to a parking lot and you're parking your car because you're going to a sales appointment, there's a QR code on the machine that says pay with this QR code, they open up their phone, so it's so much bigger than the everywhere workplace. I think it's everywhere safety. And I think safety is one of my values and I think everywhere safety needs to extend for really balanced companies beyond the devices, but to the people. HR has done a really good job of making sure we have the right access to resources, and are we getting enough exercise, those kind of stuff, but this whole safety thing, especially when you start to consider climate change. How has device security and endpoint management changed in a world where devices can be cut off from the internet? Do they have enough to keep functioning? Red Hook, New Jersey during one of the hurricanes back a decade ago, had to create this whole kind of mesh network so that things could keep functioning. So there's a lot here to unpack around the everywhere workplace, but I don't want to get too far into it so we can just address some very specific questions. But at its core, the everywhere workplace is about using values to drive the decisions, your company and your employees make day to day what they value.

Vernon: Well, I like your phrase there, everywhere safety, Mr. Goettl, I think you would agree with that.

Goettl: Well, yeah, and I think, this is one of those things in our last episode, you talked about, how we interact with the next generation. I remember growing up and you probably do too, there were safety things that we got exposed to. You remember the Mr. Yuck stickers or other things like that, where we got exposed to the things that we had to worry about and be safe about in the world. And I think that we've got this new level of digital safety to your point, that we all have to take into consideration. I think from a corporate perspective, anti-phishing training other security training is happening there. How much of that is getting down to this next generation before they get to the workplace and how much of that can really help us to evolve across everything that we do. What if the next generation of people coming up into that everywhere workplace already know the risks of the interactions they're having, both from a social, mobile? You mentioned SMS text, QR codes, email, all of these things can be used to attack our digital safety. How do we continue to improve that evolution of being more digital safety aware? Again, we're talking a lot about the everywhere workplace in terms of Ivanti from a corporate perspective, but I think it goes across both that everywhere workplace work and personal, safety is important for both sides, right?

Vernon: Absolutely.

Dancy: Yeah, I was fortunate enough to be asked by the national safety council, the seatbelt people, the crash test dummies to do an event for them, and that was working on workplace safety. And it's weird because the safety folks, it's not really weird, it's just interesting how these kind of little alcoves happen. But the safety folks usually think about like old factories and non-slip floors, but that whole safety industry is now starting to focus on psychological safety. Workplace psychological safety is a big deal, especially in the age of all the different social movements we're seeing happening. We all know that all you have to do is say the wrong thing online. Now let's juxtaposition that whole idea of what is workplace safety? And we've got a pretty good handle on how these devices are used and managed and controlled from an end point, but now let's move over to families. We do an amazingly good job as companies, Ivanti does a really amazing job to make sure employees are safe and secure, and the devices are safe and secure.

But I think right now, since everybody is everywhere, I don't think it's out of reason to help have companies expect that they could help manage their family. My pets have trackers on them like GPS trackers. Now I wouldn't expect my employer to manage those, but my employer should know that I have them and my employers should help me understand the best ways to deal with that information. Because yeah, you've secured my phone and download all this other stuff, but I'm walking my dog, well there's a big open hole right there. My employer might have all my devices locked down, but my house is full of cameras filming everything, which kind of negates all the security you've put into place around not letting this information slip out into the world. 

So I think we are ripe for opportunity, but I have to say that I think we need to start with young people. If the pandemic taught us anything, my husband is a school teacher, elementary, middle, and high schoolers are not ready, they are not ready for this new world. And if we think that we're going to just let them continue to remote learn, and then go to college and whatever the future looks like, and then get out on a world that's already 20 years ahead, we've got really big problems on our hands. So I think we need to look at a whole safety approach for families, workplaces and communities specifically. When I always look at my social stock, it's always me, like am I being safe and healthy. Then it's my family, are we being then it's my community, then it's my local larger community, and then it's for me, at least it's my digital social circle, the people who are in a closer proximity to me. And then it's larger societal issues, pandemics and climate change, but that stack, I think is something that any corporation could get involved with. I see a day where Ivanti could start merging Apple health or Fitbit data with email, like okay, you've been doing enough, we're shutting off your email now because you haven't gotten up from your desk. That's the type of family safety I'm looking for, that's the type of end point, that's the work anywhere. We haven't heard you interact with your kid in three days, we're actually just shutting you down, and that's the type of value-based computing we could be talking about. We've done remarkable at keeping companies and people safe from a corporate level and in everywhere workplace, we have to start to think about how we actually care for the nodes that are flesh and blood, not just silicon and aluminum.

Vernon: Well I'll tell you, I like what you're saying there. I have to ask you, how does that GPS, is that working well for your pets? Because my wife wants to get that for my dog Milo, and insert that, in case he runs away from us at the beach down in Santa Cruz. 

Dancy: I've had GPS trackers on my dogs for over 10 years and I have one dog passed away, but that's the other thing that's really weird about GPS because you start to see their behavior decline. It's wonderful. I mean, you can put all sorts of just released these Apple tags, people are already saying I'm going to clip them on my dogs.  I love it. We live in an area where I don't think the dogs will get out, but if they do that's one thing, but the more important thing is we also live in a disaster-prone area. We've had a lot of floods where I live, we just had a freeze, so being able to keep track of your pets beyond just a chip is important. Don't chip your children or track your children though. I can't believe how many people say I put a tracker on my kid, I'm like, oh my God, and you expect them to trust you.

Vernon: Yeah, and as I mentioned in episode seven, my kids are 15 and 13 and the last thing they want is for me to know their whereabouts every minute of the day.  So Chris, I listened to one of your keynotes on your website prior to this podcast, and you said technology can be good, or it can be easy, it can't be both. And in that keynote, you did not elaborate on that, and I wasn't quite sure what you meant by that, can you unpack that for us?

Dancy: I regret saying that to this day, but it's true, it's so true. Technology can be good or it can be easy, but it can't be both. This is weird and it's hard because of me talking to you, because I am your people, like Luke, I am your father. I understand our goal is always to make these systems that we deploy for our employees and for our organizations as easy as possible. But when I say easy and good, I mean sometimes we sacrifice convenience for maybe a deeper human connection. Let me give you an example. Uber, super easy, probably not good, and let's talk about why. I don't know what it does to the human psyche to be able to pick up a device and command a stranger to come pick you up and take you someplace you probably shouldn't be going in the middle of a pandemic, but it's probably not good. Now there are others ways you could use Ubers, like I think it's great for people who might be home bound and don't have transportation. But for me, what became obvious in the good or easy debate was what Uber did last year, or the year before, can't remember. Now with Uber black, when you summon your car, you can actually tell it to silence your driver.  So the option now allows you to say, have the car come get me, but I don't want to speak to the person who's driving the car because they just want a silent ride. Again, I understand there are some days where I don't want to have a casual conversation with a complete stranger, but I think we're starting to put too much emphasis on user convenience and user experience and not enough on human experience. You have to have some things as a user. As a human, if you make everything about your user experience, you will be used. If you make everything about the human experience, it won't be as frictionless, but it will have I think a lot more gravitas and deeper connections.

I think there are ways you can do both. So I hope that's a clearer way of what I meant by good or easy. I think in the enterprise, sometimes things are made so frictionless and so easy, but let's just take another enterprise process, if someone is signing up for health care, you sign up for an option you didn't have last year. Again, I think there should be some type of warning about that, but they've made it so easy, like hey, you just decrease your life insurance and you are two years older and you've missed your last two exams. I call it big mother instead of big brother. I just think there are ways that we could really focus on that. I'm all for great user experience when it comes to web design and simplicity and stuff like that, we all struggle with passwords and all the other things. To me, I wish we change passphrases to pass love-phrases, you should be able to create passphrases that are sentences of things you value. Most of my passphrases are things like 'you are loved deeply by your family on the world!', and some other strange things. That's not actually real, but again, there's an opportunity where we could take security management actually embed our values into it. When I used to change passwords as an admin, I used to send people motivational statements they would have to type in as their challenged password to change it again. This is just one of those things where I've always been deeply connected to why aren't we using tech in all the ways we manage it to get closer to ourselves. 

Goettl: Yeah, Chris, that's a good point, and your background in the ITSM space probably fits this quite well. The transition towards a more ambient experiences and omni-channel experience, I think kind of overlaps with your good versus easy description there, so I love that. And that's something that we absolutely are trying to do even outside of ITSM, why can't security be easy to use and overall a better life experience, right? You mentioned passwords, I don't think there's anybody out there who says, yeah, I love passwords, I love having a lot of passwords, I love having really long passwords. I love having complex passwords that no human can ever remember. It just never happens. So obviously we've got this shift towards passwordless authentication, I don't need a password anymore. That's great. I can use devices or tokens, I've got my biometrics, I've got other ways that I can authenticate. I think that's one good example of how technology is moving in the right way. Are there any others that you're scratching your head on saying why hasn't somebody gotten there with this one yet? What's the holdup on this one, why can't it evolve? 

Dancy: Well, let's just talk about some of the things you just mentioned because I think it's just rich. So I use Google authenticator, I use it for a lot of things, but that little count down, PI, just decrementing itself until it's absolutely gone is the most anxiety provoking thing I've ever experienced. I almost feel like I'm going to have a panic attack every time I have to log in. To me, you could make that like count up or you could turn it into a flower, you could do something else with just the imagery. I think there are ways we could talk about that. Let's talk about biometrics, face scans and fingerprints and things, I would encourage people to smile when they have to scan their face for the first time. We're just not thinking about how many ways we can start to embed the new, since we have to use so much of the security, how much we can help people think about these really wonderfully positive things. As far as things I scratch my head about, I mean, I still occasionally get asked to send a fax. Talk about security, you want me to take a highly secure document to a complete stranger at a place I've never been before handed to them? Have them scan it to another stranger I don't know, and then you hand it back to me. The things that just don't make sense.

By the way, I love the new kind of magic link things happening with security, where you log in to something, it sends you an email, I love that, but just once I would like a computer, when I check remember this computer to remember this computer. Every browser I have has some type of dementia where it does not remember the computer and I love cookies, but apparently, my computer doesn't keep them anymore. I can go on and on with how ranty all this stuff is, but you all live with it, but I do think we're heading in a better place, but I'll end with this. I have a ten-year-old sister-in-law, long story, and she was over this past week, first time I've seen her since the pandemic. When I was asking her about her school experience, she said the hardest part wasn't taking classes online, wasn't uploading her homework, it was managing the security, that was the hardest part. And I just think, man, if you can't win over a ten-year-old who wants to use a computer, we've got big problems.

Vernon: Wow, no kidding. Well, we are coming down the home stretch, so Mr. Goettl, I'm going to ask, do you have a final question for Chris here?

Goettl: Oh, that is a tough one. Chris, I would say, what would you put as your best digital experience? The one that connects with your values most, what's the thing that you look back on, on all the things you've connected to and say that's the one that I really do hold above most others.

Dancy: I have a saying I close every keynote with, and it's something I learned maybe in 2013 or 2014, and I'll apply it to all my technology. The saying is this, we don't know how to measure what we care about, so we care about what we measure. So what I do now is every single time a piece of technology tells me how to measure something, I go, is that really the best way? So that's it, it sounds cliché, but I would encourage people, if you could do one thing for the rest of your life, whenever you're handed a measurement, do not value it until you wonder, is that really what you value. We don't know how to measure what we value as a society, as a business, as a person. So we've value what we are given as measurements. I think it's huge. I'm going to give you one more, it's kind of a personal one, never tell anyone what you know, tell them how you think about it. Everyone can look up anything, but they cannot look up how you think. If you want your wife to be better, your boss to be better, your neighborhood to be better, stop telling people what you know, tell them how you think about it. Your life will be instantly better tomorrow.

Vernon: And Chris, let me ask you my final question is, so I believe you're working on a three book series, you have the one book Don't Unplug, how technology saved my life, you can save yours too. What's next for Chris Dancy, as we look to come out of COVID-19 what's on the horizon for you.

Dancy: I just shot a special for Nat Geo at the end of last year, should be out at the end of this year, and so be looking for that, but there's so much to watch, last thing I do is encourage anyone to add that to a list. The next book I'm working on right now is called The Art of Happiness, so basically it's value-based approach to personal and work computing because I just think it's super important and that's it. I've got a couple of talks already scheduled for Europe in the fall, just regular things right now. I'm about to take a couple of months off, it sounds weird in the middle of a pandemic, but it's been really stressful. You know we're coming out of the pandemic now you think okay, that's good, let's race back, but I'll be honest with you Adrian and Chris, I just need some time. Even for me, it's been really hard watching people struggle and watching people just really have a hard time with all this, and I just need some time away from the kind of overwhelmingness of it all. And I'd encourage anyone listening to do the same thing if you can. Let me say one more thing, I always say this I forgot, my phone number is on my website, if you're listening to this, and anything touched you, you feel scared or you feel anxious and you're not sure what you're going to do, people call me every single day from all over the world. I literally will pick up the phone. You are not alone, you are not your devices, and you're not the things that measure you, and if you need to hear it, someone does care about you and I'll care about you until you can find someone else who will.

Vernon: Chris I think that's a great way to end it. We greatly appreciate you taking the time, especially before you're looking to take a break for a couple of months. So we're glad that we were able to nab you now and not just for one episode, but for two. And as you continue along with speaking in Europe, working on your second book now, if you ever have time, we would welcome you with open arms here at Ivanti Insights.

Dancy: Thank you Adrian, thank you Chris. It was so much fun and, I hope everyone listens to the podcast and I appreciate you guys having me on, it was like a dream come true. I felt like it was a homecoming because I had worked for like all the different companies, and all the tools you guys have worked for. And I literally reached out to Ivanti and say can we talk, grandpa Cyborg wants to chat.

Vernon: Well, we are glad that you reached out. So folks, that has been two episodes with Chris Dancy, check out his website, Chrisdancy.com, the most connected human on earth, and we hope to have him again here soon. Until next time folks, stay safe, be secure and keep smiling.