Evolution of the Security Integration Landscape

In this episode of Unspoken Security, host AJ Nash sits down with Eric Yunag, EVP of Product and Services at Convergint. They explore how security integration is changing as organizations face a fast-moving threat landscape and rising expectations from leaders and regulators. Eric explains why today’s environment demands a new approach—one that connects hardware, software, and services in a more dynamic, real-time ecosystem.

Eric shares how integrators help companies navigate not just the technical, but also the legal and operational complexity of modern security. He describes how shifting to cloud platforms, unifying physical and digital identities, and balancing privacy with business outcomes all add new layers of challenge. The conversation highlights the growing use of AI and “visual intelligence”—using camera data for both security and business insight—as organizations look to do more with their investments.

Throughout the discussion, Eric makes the case for trusted, neutral advisors who help organizations build smarter, more connected security systems. He shows how today’s integrators are positioned to guide clients through tough choices, benchmark best practices, and unlock value that goes far beyond traditional security.

Transcript

Unspoken Security Ep. 53: Evolution of the Security Integration Landscape

[00:00:00] Eric Yunag: what's really emerging is this kind of value chain ecosystem where, look, all those things are still there. I mean, you're gonna need hardware, you're gonna need software, but, fulfillment and security operations and services and how does that integrate with AI and data strategies?

[00:00:14] Eric Yunag: Really all collaborating around. The customer outcomes that are being tried to be delivered in a much more dynamic and real time fashion. And that's a very interesting, process to watch evolve right now, 

[00:00:25] ​

[00:01:10] A.J. Nash: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Unspoken Security. I'm your host, AJ Nash. Spent 19 years in the intelligence community, mostly at NSA. I've been, building and maturing intelligence programs in the private sector for, I don't know, 10, 11 years. At this point, I'm passionate about intelligence, security, public speaking, mentoring, and teaching.

[00:01:27] A.J. Nash: I also have a master's degree in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University, go Zags. So I continue to be deeply committed to servant leadership. Now, this podcast brings all these elements together with some incredible guests to have authentic, unfiltered conversations on a wide range of challenging topics.

[00:01:41] A.J. Nash: This is not your typical, polished podcast. My dogs make occasional appearances. In fact, I got one sleeping next me right now. So we'll see how it goes. it's not the hound, at least she's the less quiet of the, she's the quieter of the two here. people will argue and debate on the show. We even swear sometimes.

[00:01:53] A.J. Nash: I've certainly have been known to. That's all. Okay. I want you to think of this podcast as a conversation you'd overhear at a bar after a long day at one of the larger cybersecurity conferences. These are the conversations we usually have when nobody's listening. Now today I'm joined by Eric eag. he's EVP of Product and Services at Convergent, which is a global systems integrator focused on delivering results for their customers through unparalleled service excellence.

[00:02:17] A.J. Nash: Eric brings 26 years of experience in the security industry, including 16 years as CEO of Dakota Security Systems, followed by nearly a decade now serving in leadership roles in mergers and AC acquisitions, marketing, innovation and technology. for Convergent, he's currently responsible for evaluating the impact of industry trends on customer requirements and developing strategic technology partnerships and comprehensive solution offerings.

[00:02:39] A.J. Nash: Eric, it's a hell of a bio. You've been doing this a long time. You've been around, I know, 16 years as a CEO means. You've, you've learned a lot along in that space, but then this last decade at convergence sounds like it's been fascinating. Is there anything you wanna add to your bio before we start, you know, getting into the conversation today?

[00:02:52] Eric Yunag: No, but as I, as I listened to you describe, my executive bio, it just, it strikes me that I shouldn't be old enough to have 26 years of experience anything. But that's kind of how it goes, I guess. I, I, but I would add to that, I just, I, it is interesting looking back on, you know, a quarter set. Country really in a straight line in the career, in the systems integration space that I'm really fortunate to have, have worked with so many good people and had such a long tenure in the single industry that is security systems integration.

[00:03:21] Eric Yunag: So I love this. I love the topics around this. I love the way you frame what you do. So I'm looking forward to the conversation.

[00:03:27] A.J. Nash: Yeah, me too. 

[00:03:27] A.J. Nash: So, you know, let's baseline this for some people who might not know what we're talking about when we say this. You know, what do we mean when we talk about security integration and what's it about?

[00:03:36] A.J. Nash: the end-to-end environment that's driving evolution in the security integration landscape right now.

[00:03:40] Eric Yunag: Yeah, it's a good question. It's one of those, descriptions whenever I'd say, Hey, I, I work in security systems integration. Rarely does somebody say, ah, I understand what I, I understand what you're saying. And that really happens. Not at parties, not none of those things, you know, but, but it's, it's really, at the end of the day, it's really about the, the delivery, the service, and the optimization of all those electronic security systems that, you know, go to deliver security outcomes in physical environments.

[00:04:06] Eric Yunag: convergence is a little bit unique in that regard, in the sense that what we, what, how we think about integration in general is that we don't make anything. We're, we're not a manufacturer of any kind. We don't make any products into those kind of things. What we bring is expertise and capabilities to, you know, deliver those physical systems wherever they need to be delivered in the world.

[00:04:25] A.J. Nash: So when, when organizations get inundated by, by vendors with all their fantastic marketing and all their, all their great promises, and they go, gosh, I'm gonna buy all these things. So, and then none of them work well together, or not always right, obviously, but sometimes you buy a bunch of things and you're like, wow, these don't really, these don't plug and play, that's for sure.

[00:04:40] A.J. Nash: And, and you gotta get engineering involved, and you gotta figure out what's gonna work with what it sounds like you're, you know, you guys are the guys, or you're one of the people that, that goes, okay, I, I know how to make all these things work together. Either help make them plug together, or, or then you work on integration.

[00:04:52] A.J. Nash: You know, there's a, there's a middleman technology, right? That fits in between it. it sounds like you, you, among other things, I'm sure this is, you know, simplifying it too much,

[00:04:58] Eric Yunag: No, that's a great way to frame it. I think, you know, largely, I, I think it's the benefit of the security integration systems integration space that we don't, that we don't make anything. Meaning when a customer comes to us with a problem to solve, I mean, we have the, the, the, the good fortune to be able to sort of step back and say, well, what, what is it, what collection of technologies or solutions that we bring together to deliver the right.

[00:05:21] Eric Yunag: Solution, right? That solves those problems in their environment. And so, you know, bringing that together sometimes is, is fairly straightforward, but a lot of times it's difficult. 'cause, you know, everybody would love to be able to deliver systems into brand new buildings in the ground up with no legacy, you know, no legacy technology or no programs and all those kind of things.

[00:05:40] Eric Yunag: But inevitably, organizations grow, they're adding on, they're acquiring all the complexities that come with running, you know, security programs in modern environments. that's where integration comes into play from a, from a physical systems perspective.

[00:05:53] A.J. Nash: Yeah, you rarely get to show up at the new house, right? You don't have that, that clean slate. You're, you're almost always showing up and there's something there, I assume. And then like you said, even if you have a clean slate, you build the company from scratch. You do it all, quote unquote, the right way, and you got all the, and then you buy somebody and then, oh.

[00:06:07] A.J. Nash: You know, or you get purchased. Either way, whatever it is, there's an acquisition, there's a merger, and it's well now whatever's, now we gotta start all over. We gotta figure it out. We gotta integrate things like it's, and mergers, acquisitions is a never ending thing, so nobody has a clean slate for long, I would assume.

[00:06:19] Eric Yunag: No, and, and you know, you, you, you, you alluded to a, another dimension of this, which is what's changing about all this right now? And, you know, all those things have been, you know, historically we touched on my 25 years in this business. you know, they, they're very static use cases historically, right? And you think about access control, intrusion, video surveillance, they, they weren't very, all that dynamic in terms of the types of technologies and how they were applied.

[00:06:43] Eric Yunag: But it, it is fascinating right now to see this confluence of things that are happening to the security practitioners that we serve. And I think, I think about this in a, in a few different dimensions. You know, just start things that you're intimately familiar with around just the dynamic nature of the threat landscape.

[00:07:01] Eric Yunag: You think about everything that's, that they are navigating the speed and change at which the threat landscape around their organizations is constantly evolving and they're constantly having to pivot programs and technology capabilities to. Respond to those threats and mitigate risks. I mean, that's one thing, and that, that by itself would be enough.

[00:07:19] Eric Yunag: And I think today's environment is, is definitely different. you think about the stakeholder expectations around these programs, that the expectations of what their security programs are delivering is higher and higher all the time. So the pressures on practitioners that we serve are is, is very high, you know, the board and executive, expectations, the reputational protection, the duty of care stuff, all the things that surround that.

[00:07:45] Eric Yunag: The expectations are just higher and higher.

[00:07:47] A.J. Nash: Yeah. Well, and it's, and it's dynamic, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's not just, you know, there was a time, and it wasn't even that long ago when it was like, all right, you had a, a physical security system, right? There was a badge. You put a badge on a, a reader or a swipe, and you walked in, right? And there was probably somebody in an office someplace with some cameras and maybe watched a few things.

[00:08:01] A.J. Nash: And that was kind of it, it was like an isolated en, you know, environment. But that doesn't happen anymore, right? These, these all have to be integrated. You know, the, the, the system you have for security tied to your camera system, which is tied to your cybersecurity system, which is tied to your insider threat system, you know, and your executive protection and all these different components, right?

[00:08:17] A.J. Nash: 'cause you wanna get this holistic, ideally, at least you want this holistic security picture for large enterprise. So very few things just live alone, you know, isolated. And if they do, then, then you have problems, then you're doing with stove piping, and now you can't really have the communication you want.

[00:08:28] A.J. Nash: Maybe you're paying

[00:08:28] Eric Yunag: And, and that's that, that, that element is then further compounded by the, the whole technology modernization theme is happening right now. I mean, it's very easy for us to just say AI air quotes, right? That that's driving everything. And I know we'll talk more about that. But that's really what that's really doing at a practical level is causing everybody to step back and look at the systems that make up their infrastructure and say, what things should we be investing in across all those different system types that ultimately deliver AI outcomes Given by technology modernization pressure, you have the threat landscape, you have, the stakeholder expectations, and that's changing the way all these solutions are being.

[00:09:04] Eric Yunag: Delivered in the marketplace. So we really just see this confluence of all these things right now at one time crashing down on, you know, the security practitioners, in, in the environments that, that, that we work in. So, I, I think it is a unique moment and that, that, to me, any one of those things is, you know, creates pressures and complexity.

[00:09:21] Eric Yunag: But having all four of 'em really, accelerating at the same time is, is, is fascinating to navigate.

[00:09:27] A.J. Nash: Yeah, I can imagine. It's, it makes for, there aren't a lot of boring days in in our industry to begin with, but even less now. Now, I'm curious when you're, when you're working in this space right now, I think I know the answer, but I'm gonna set up the question anyway. Are you more likely to run into an organization that's, that brings you in because they've recognized they have challenges either because they've, they've got a lot of technologies don't work well together, or they've had a merger and acquisition or whatever it is.

[00:09:47] A.J. Nash: Or do you get opportunities to come in from scratch and say, Hey, we wanna, we we're new at, you know, fresh, clean slate. We wanna build a roadmap. We wanna do it all the right way from the start, even if it means getting rid of everything we have or we don't have anything yet 'cause we're that new as a company, which I guess would be rare, which is more common.

[00:10:02] A.J. Nash: Is it coming in and saying, Hey, we gotta fix problems that exist and make things work. Or we get a clean slate, we have to start over. Or is it somewhere in between?

[00:10:08] Eric Yunag: You know, rarely is it clean slate. I wanna answer that in two ways. One is, you know, I, I think, you know, as you know, you know, most, most organizations of any significant size have some, have a security strategy of some kind. And that strategy may be we do the minimum possible requirement, right? But that, that's certainly an acceptable, that's certainly a strategy.

[00:10:26] A.J. Nash: doubt they write that one down, if I'm guessing though, but,

[00:10:29] Eric Yunag: probably not, probably not. you know, but, but, but changes in that, that risk environment or threat landscape certainly cause people to reassess what they're doing and how they're doing it. And that happens, I think I would say continuously. you know, in our, in our case, we, we serve mostly mission critical enterprise environments.

[00:10:46] Eric Yunag: So, you know, financial, healthcare, oil, gas, energy, utilities, government, defense, those kind of things. tech, you know, global, global organizations. And they're, they're relatively sophisticated, obviously, in the way they approach that. But I think what's changing today is that there really, there is an increasing posture of, of wanting to step back and say, you know, they probably wouldn't describe it the way I described it, about all four of those things, but they're feeling something different about this moment and saying, we really need to step back and say, what are we doing the right things?

[00:11:18] Eric Yunag: Are we making the right investments? Because I think there is an outsized impact on the decisions made right now relative to unlocking. What I would describe as probably a more intelligent security infrastructure in the future. You're not gonna snap your fingers and get there. You, it is gonna take a few budget cycles.

[00:11:36] Eric Yunag: It's gonna take, you know, some thoughtful decisions today that over the next, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 years ultimately will transform these environments to be somewhere different. And I think that's the expectation that people are beginning to feel more visceral than they have in the past, where it's oh geez, I hope I have an AI enabled infrastructure, whatever that means.

[00:11:55] Eric Yunag: Versus now they're saying, man, we really need to be making the right decisions with, you know, our, our systems and technology architectures married to, you know, the security program outcomes we're trying to deliver, and how should we go about, you know, pursuing a strategy to deliver those things in the future.

[00:12:12] Eric Yunag: So I think that that slowing down and pulling back almost has that, Hey, let's think about this. Like we were doing it from scratch in a, in a moderate way, and then develop a, a strategy to deliver that in the future.

[00:12:22] A.J. Nash: Yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, it's, you, you made an interesting point in there. I mean, you made a lot of 'em obviously, but one I'm gonna latch onto is, you know, the outcome piece, right? I've, I've had a lot of discussions even this week. I've recorded a couple different episodes with different places and, and it comes up repeatedly about business outcomes, right?

[00:12:35] A.J. Nash: Whether it's intelligence, whether it's security, whether it's physical, it's cyber, whatever. It's. There's an increasing, and it's been going on for a few years, obviously, but there's this increasing push of reminding people, Hey, what's the business outcome? What are we trying to accomplish? Which I'm not sure, it's gotten better over the years, but there's still been a lot of challenges sometimes of just, Hey, we have to do a thing without sitting down and saying, why are we doing this?

[00:12:56] A.J. Nash: other than the the obvious, Hey, you know, we have security 'cause we don't want the bank to get robbed. Okay, we get that. But, you know, why are we doing the specific elements of it? Why are we setting up the specific way and how does that tie to the business outcome? What justifying your, your costs, right?

[00:13:07] A.J. Nash: Return on investment, things like that. And it seems increasingly, especially now as you're talking about this, this more, I wanna say complicated, but hopefully eventually simple, environment of having all these different elements that are coming together into more of a holistic security picture is what are we trying to accomplish?

[00:13:20] A.J. Nash: You know, what, what is the, as you said, the business outcome. There's really no point in spending a ton of money to secure a system that we don't own, for instance, you know, to, to prepare, to defend against a threat that isn't our threat. And a lot of organizations have fallen into that trap where they get so interested in.

[00:13:34] A.J. Nash: Defending against so many things that, that aren't really relevant to them. 'cause they didn't do their intelligence requirements, they didn't do their security requirements. They didn't actually do the, the assessment that I'm, I'm gonna gamble guys like you and companies like you are coming in and helping them see here's what matters to you and here's what it doesn't and here's how they integrate together.

[00:13:48] A.J. Nash: But I'm curious, so let's talk about the market, right? So there's, listen, there's, there's more cybersecurity co companies than you can count. I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of them. There's, it's the same thing in physical security. It's the same thing where you're doing with hardware, software, whatever it might be.

[00:14:01] A.J. Nash: But let's talk about how are the solutions coming to market today and how are they being delivered? What, what are they doing well and what's going poorly when it comes to, to new systems and solutions on the market?

[00:14:10] Eric Yunag: Yeah. I wanna touch quickly on, on

[00:14:13] A.J. Nash: sure. Go ahead.

[00:14:14] Eric Yunag: about the, you know, the risk landscape. It, it's interesting because in the MO several decades I've been doing this, everything is, is largely a bit reactionary based on the way that people have traditionally delivered systems. I'm, I'm speaking from the systems integrator

[00:14:30] A.J. Nash: Yeah.

[00:14:31] Eric Yunag: is, you know, if you were, if you acquire somebody, you built a new building or you acquired more space, then you just extended whatever system, you know, more, more access control doors, more points, all those types of things.

[00:14:43] Eric Yunag: and 

[00:14:43] Eric Yunag: what's really emerging is this kind of value chain ecosystem where, look, all those things are still there. I mean, you're gonna need hardware, you're gonna need software, but, you know, fulfillment and security operations and services and how does that integrate with AI and data strategies?

[00:14:59] Eric Yunag: Really all collaborating around. The customer outcomes that are being tried to be delivered in a much more dynamic and real time fashion. And that, that's a very interesting, process to watch evolve right now, 

[00:15:11] Eric Yunag: because we we're kind of seeing the fundamental limitations of that traditional linear channel model and much more of a, a dynamic IT centric kind of a model, emerging for, for the systems integration space.

[00:15:22] Eric Yunag: I, I, I'll give you a a practical example of that. If you think about, you know, the, the move to cloud or the modernization of a lot of the, the legacy systems that our industry has leveraged, you know, on-premise video surveillance systems, VMSs and on-premise access control systems, you know, that the, the relatedness of the hardware that we installed, that car meter on the wall and the camera that's hanging on the wall was very tightly coupled to that, you know, the software system that was there.

[00:15:50] Eric Yunag: As those systems begin to move to the cloud, and for all of our benefit, new systems and feature or features and capabilities are coming online all the time. How, how do you coordinate and orchestrate all of the, the demands that those physical devices now need to, to deliver to and unlock a lot of those capabilities?

[00:16:12] Eric Yunag: So if you have, you know, a, an AI driven surveillance platform that's, that's hosted in the cloud, that, that needs, you know, a certain amount of pixels or this lighting condition, or this coverage of this scene, it's great that you can turn it on in the cloud, but you still have to orchestrate, you know, some movement of physical devices in space.

[00:16:29] Eric Yunag: So it's just, it's much more dynamic and it's, it's excellent that we're able to bring, you know, new capabilities and new AI driven features and solutions into the environment. But at the same time, now you're trying to move around, you know, the hardware and the capabilities in, in a way that, that we haven't previously had to orchestrate in that type of a cycle.

[00:16:48] Eric Yunag: So, lot, lot, lots of complexities there to, to deal with.

[00:16:51] A.J. Nash: Well, yeah, and from a security standpoint, it changes, you know, we continue to evolve, right? as you said, it used to be everything was OnPrem. let's, you know, think dinosaur age for us at this point, right? There's a lot of good and bad that goes with that, right? Everybody knows that if it's on-prem, you have control.

[00:17:03] A.J. Nash: That's one of the big advantages of things being on-prem, is you have control theoretically of everything, right? It's a closed system, you know where all your data is, you know where all your technology, you, you own everything. If you're compromised and somebody had to come to you to, to do it right? As we say, well, okay, we're gonna go to the cloud, you know, for a lot of good reasons.

[00:17:18] A.J. Nash: There's a lot of advantages to cloud and, and, you know, dynamic, you know, storage and, and speed and all these things. But now you've also said, okay, somebody else is in charge of a big chunk of our security because we've signed some agreements and said, okay, they're gonna be in charge of, of whatever cloud we're using.

[00:17:31] A.J. Nash: and now they have responsibilities, but we don't have insight necessarily, and we don't have access necessarily. We know exactly how well they're doing it. We've seen how that's turned out, right At times. again, I'm not bagging on cloud, but we've seen lots of stories in the news where somebody gets compromised and it's because there was a, an S3 bucket that was misconfigured.

[00:17:47] A.J. Nash: you know, is because somebody who's a third party vendor that you signed off on, didn't do their job as we hoped they would, as they were contractually obligated to do. 'cause human error happens and then now we, we. We have to eat that. We have to deal with that. So I, I wonder, in your position, in the position as, as the integrators here, how much more complicated does that make?

[00:18:06] A.J. Nash: You have to understand the technologies, all the technologies your customer has or, or prospect, prospective customer has. All the other potential technologies they could or should have, if you wanna offer solutions and, and recommendations. All the intricacies on the other side of those technologies, like that seems like just an incredible amount of knowledge that's required to be in this, in this position where you are the trusted advisor who is a neutral party, thankfully, but the trusted advisor who's gonna give these recommendations.

[00:18:30] A.J. Nash: How do you, how do you stay on top of all that?

[00:18:32] Eric Yunag: Yeah, that's a great question and it's a great observation and I would, I would tell you that it's, it is an. A significantly higher level of time and money investment from our perspective on really kind of maintaining that ecosystem of solutions and partners that we provide. Because it is a fundamentally different set of requirements around, you know, not just the compliance and it resilience kind of things that you are alerting to.

[00:18:57] Eric Yunag: But really also one of the huge things that comes up is really kind of the end user environment, data residency requirements that show up, particularly in regulated environments. How are those platforms handling? You know, the PII and those things, particularly if they're cross border in their international, so that, that never used to, you know, we used to get a, a box that was shrink wrapped with a CD in it and we'd install it in the server going way back now, but you know, if you contrast that to where we are today, where.

[00:19:27] Eric Yunag: You, you think about all of those, the IT resiliency and IT security challenges that need to be fully vetted and understood, but then also the data residency and how do they both wanna protect, you know, both their corporate private information, but the employee's private information. And then, but, and then also at the same time, how do they want to use and leverage it for better security outcomes internally?

[00:19:48] Eric Yunag: So it's, it's a much more complex thing to assure really the, supply chain, if you will, in, in all those circumstances. And then you overlay with it, particularly in our case, that we work in complex compliance and regulation driven environments where that has its own set of expectations. And you know, if you think about something like utilities, well there's air gap requirements on certain things.

[00:20:11] Eric Yunag: Cloud, you know, a cloud outcome may be very well desired or that might be a great way to think about delivering something, but it may be very impractical in, you know, an actual physical substation environment, as an example. So it is, it is a far greater burden that, that we're trying to bear for our customers to help, you know, vet and understand the complexities of those things.

[00:20:35] Eric Yunag: And to say that's why we don't sell one thing of anything. You know, and, and sometimes this is difficult for us to manage, and we have, you know, we may have, you know, seven or eight, you know, of the world's largest access control platforms as partners of ours, but there's reasons why fit very well in some environments and other ones fit, fit better in, in, in different environments.

[00:20:52] Eric Yunag: So, yeah, it, it's, I think that's, it's a piece that people are also increasingly recognizing why they need, you know, people like us, not just convergent, right? But people in our role that are thinking about that differently to help them navigate the comple, the complexities that are, that are there in that environment.

[00:21:08] A.J. Nash: Well, yeah, it's virtually impossible, in my opinion, at least if you get into these complex environments. Otherwise. So if you don't have integrators, you know, then your options are either a trust, what the vendor tells you, you know, whatever they say, you gotta, you gotta go with their belief because they, they're the experts on all their systems and no, no shot at vendors.

[00:21:23] A.J. Nash: I've worked for a whole bunch of 'em over the years and I don't, most people generally make the effort to be honest. But they're not necessarily completely honest all the time. either by, by design or just because they, they made a mistake or an error or, you know, there's a lot of complex complexities.

[00:21:36] A.J. Nash: It's easier to get things wrong, so, but you have to rely on them or internally to your own company. You have to somehow become an expert, do your own market research, and it could go on forever. You'll go on rabbit holes, you never get out of, and that's only on maybe one or two technologies, not try to do it over the 40 or 60 you're trying to integrate.

[00:21:49] A.J. Nash: And then a piece you mentioned briefly in passing as we're going through this that I hadn't even thought of yet, is all the legal complexities, the laws are and, and not just US laws, the international laws, You gotta deal with, you know, if, if you're a national company, obviously you gotta deal with gdp DR and you gotta deal with, you know, India's got a law and China's got a cyber law, not that that ma maybe matters much domestically for us.

[00:22:08] A.J. Nash: And of course, California's got the laws that they've got that are very similar to GDPR. And so now you have to have general counsel apparently involved in all this stuff. Which reminds me, I, I hadn't thought to ask it, but in your process, how much of your stuff has to go back through a legal review? Is that something like would be in your hands or do you actually have lawyers that you also bounce some of this stuff through?

[00:22:25] A.J. Nash: Or do you

[00:22:25] Eric Yunag: we have a team. Yeah, no, we have, we have a team that, that helps us vet and onboard the partners that we resell. So this, and that's a big part of it, the understanding of sort of what our contractual relationship is so that we are able to then, you know, properly inform our customers on all the complexities of that.

[00:22:41] Eric Yunag: That's a huge part of what we do, 

[00:22:42] Eric Yunag: having clarity at the federal level on what the guidelines are around some of these things would really help the adoption of what I think are really meaningful technologies, you know, understanding we have to navigate, you know, privacy issues and all those kind of things like we always do with this type of technology.

[00:22:58] Eric Yunag: But there are some meaningful things that are helpful in saving lives and limiting loss to property that, that I don't think are being deployed nearly as much as they would be if there was clarity at the federal level on how some of this stuff would work.

[00:23:11] A.J. Nash: Yeah, I think that's, that's a really valid point. I attended a briefing not that long ago. I happened to be here locally. It's besides Twin Cities. there was a lawyer, who was actually the closer for the entire event, and everybody wants, you know, the last person to speak before, dinner to be the lawyer.

[00:23:22] A.J. Nash: But, but he did, he was actually really entertaining. And he, and actually he's a, a, a professor, in the Dakotas, one of the universities out there. And I, I would call him out by name if I could remember where the hell he was from. Yeah, I'll, I'll check it out and see who it was. I cannot remember who it was.

[00:23:36] A.J. Nash: But, anyway, it was a very interesting position and he talked about exactly this, the, the fractured legal situation that every state's a little bit different. And we were trying to talk through well, what do you do then? How do you make sure you're compliant? Ultimately, the answer was, well, you just figure out which one's the most, you know, stringent and decide to, to live to that requirement.

[00:23:50] A.J. Nash: You, you probably are covered on all of them, but it was the same concept of, you know, what's the answer gonna be? People don't love hearing about regulation, but sometimes the solution's gonna have to be there, otherwise you're gonna be navigating through just a myriad of problems. And like I said, some of them will conflict with one another.

[00:24:04] A.J. Nash: now I'm compliant in this state, now I'm not in this state. And how do you make that work? It's, you know, it's, it's, this is all new frontier, right? We're all trying to figure it out. I think there's gonna have to be more regulation and, and continuity of regulation, at some point as, as we get through it.

[00:24:16] A.J. Nash: Because as a company, you just, I mean, maybe you're gonna in a position as a company where you just go, Hey, listen, you know, we end up on the wrong side of the law at some point, but we're able to prove best effort, right? Due diligence. And, you know, malice is, is something that does come into play sometimes if you can prove, Hey, we did everything we could, but the comp, it was very, very complicated.

[00:24:32] A.J. Nash: We're trying our best to get it right and at least, you know, then it's like, all right, get yourself compliant. But, you know, we're not gonna hit you with massive, you know, fines and penalties. It, it's gonna be all, all sorts of legal issues I would imagine. which makes things just all the more challenging 'cause people are just trying to do good work.

[00:24:42] A.J. Nash: You know, you're trying to figure out how to get the best outcomes, as you said.

[00:24:46] Eric Yunag: You know, and I, look, I, I think public privacy and personal privacy are, are enormously important things for us to protect as a country. And, and obviously it, it's always a continuum on, you know, safety and privacy. We, we know those, we balance between one end and the other. But I, I'll give you just the listeners' a little, just one, maybe one practical example of this.

[00:25:04] Eric Yunag: We worked with a large multi-state retail, and we don't do a lot in retail frankly, but, but for big complex ones where our, ability to navigate a lot of the things we just talked about plus sort of program and, and program management. And to be able to deploy these things consistently. we're piloting a,a face of recognition technology in their stores, that they had kind of two use cases for.

[00:25:24] Eric Yunag: One was largely to drive a better, actual shopping experience to be able to do recognize VIP shoppers, this kind of thing. But then also obviously loss prevention. And in the loss prevention use case, they were essentially comparing it against local, law enforcement. Known in loss per front.

[00:25:41] Eric Yunag: And then when people, the store that were on that list, then they would just put LP people on 'em and follow 'em around. And the, and the, in the pilot in the stores, they ran massive reduction in loss. It was a store that had tens of millions of dollars in annual loss, all these kind of things, and significantly.

[00:25:58] Eric Yunag: Were unable to actually roll out the program because of in, in more than half of the states that they, operated in, there was either prohibition of that type of technology and or total lack of clarity on how it would be treated if they made that investment in the state. So both delivering an operational outcome for their store to drive revenue.

[00:26:17] Eric Yunag: I mean, that's a, and then also, you know, limiting shoplifting and loss prevention in that environment. So it, it is just a good example of look and there's, again, complex issues around that, but that, that's an interesting place where you say either, well, look, it's either holistically, it's illegal, or there's constraints around it.

[00:26:34] Eric Yunag: Or like everywhere you could make a decision one way or the other instead of sort of, you know, you're spending money and trying to make decisions and very difficult to move forward. So hard to see innovation come forward in that space in a responsible way when there's that lack of federal clarity on how it's being handled.

[00:26:50] Eric Yunag: So,

[00:26:50] A.J. Nash: Yeah, exactly. No, it's a, it's a great example. Like you said, that's a business outcome that they would be very much want and appreciate. But you can't put it forward because of, you know, other concerns that just haven't been, it's just too much gray area and they don't wanna end up, you know, in, in the wrong side of the law.

[00:27:02] A.J. Nash: Now I will say, I mean obviously you didn't get this far down the path with them. I would also add that they probably should take a look at their brand risk. If you go down that path, if that word gets out, that's going to be very unpopular with a lot of people, which I'm sure they'll take into account.

[00:27:13] A.J. Nash: Everybody does. And, you know, they'll have to do their own math to say is the, is the loss prevention, you know, value higher than the, you know, brand hit? Or do we find our way around it? 'cause people are gonna scream and yell about profiling and about bias and about all sorts of things, which are valid arguments and complaints and concerns to have.

[00:27:26] A.J. Nash: Technologies have shown some of these things. So very complicated, but, but an interesting use case I think is the more important piece that you've pointed out. There's this really cool technology that could do a lot of good things that even test it out well. But ultimately the fractured legal landscape right now left them going well, we can't, we can't deploy this thing yet.

[00:27:41] A.J. Nash: So, that'll be interesting to see as

[00:27:42] Eric Yunag: I do think, I do think what is one, one thing that we're touching on there is what is increasingly a beyond security use case for a lot of this technology that's emerging. And I think that is helping pull the security use cases forward. And in that example, we, you know, was talking about, you know, shopper experience essentially.

[00:27:59] Eric Yunag: If it's surprising to me in the last, you know, three years how often in corporate environments and other environments, you know, the, the, the both the customer experience and the employee experience is becoming part of that. And what use cases can we also unlock with investment new technology that both improve security but then also improve, you know, either a customer experience or employee experience that helps with driving revenue or retaining and recruiting employees.

[00:28:23] Eric Yunag: What does that look like? You know, multi-use is of technology to do things and it, it, it, I think that's helping to just create more and more gravity to say, Hey, we need clarity on how to adopt these technologies so that we can do overtly good things for the environments that people wanna see move forward.

[00:28:38] Eric Yunag: And so I, I think that's helping. I just, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a complex thorny issue that, you know, lowly systems integrators of the world are not gonna solve the, the, the legal ramifications of all that. But our, our job is to, is to navigate it, help our customers navigate those things in a way that makes 'em, you know, compliant and, allows 'em to build a roadmap that, that brings the right technologies forward at the right time.

[00:29:00] A.J. Nash: Yeah. And, and while the integrators may not solve the problem, you guys are in a, I hate using the word unique, but I will, I guess in sort of a unique, a uniquely beneficial position, right? In that you're neutral, and that you're in the middle of all of this, right? So you're seeing all the different technologies and all the different legal concerns all around the world, and all the nation, if not the world.

[00:29:17] A.J. Nash: And so you'll have a, the integrators of the world are gonna have a, a wider. Understanding, A, a wider lens, a bigger picture. and, and while an individual organization, whether they're the vendor side, whether they're the customer side, even whether they're a government entity in the state, they're gonna see their piece.

[00:29:33] A.J. Nash: But integrators are more than likely gonna be able to see close to, if not entirely the whole picture. Because, because of just the diverse environments. Now, again, if you're limited to specific industries, maybe all some blind spots, but across the integrator industry itself, it seems like you guys are gonna actually be in a really, unique position to offer the best insights on how to close a lot of these gaps, because you're gonna run into the most problems.

[00:29:53] A.J. Nash: That's just where you sit in the, in the ecosystem.

[00:29:55] Eric Yunag: It is interesting because, you know, I sometimes I describe our industry a little bit as the, the guys that are, you know, trucks and ladders and, you know, technology guys behind server racks and all the things that we do, probably program and deliver, you know, but, but, but it's, it's interesting to see how many people are coming to us asking for benchmarking now in these areas.

[00:30:15] Eric Yunag: What help us understand what peer cohorts are doing, what are other people, because we do, we have the good fortune, of being, having grown to a size where we have so many customers that span lots of industries and all around the world and, you know, being able to speak into what do we see other people doing.

[00:30:31] Eric Yunag: We don't have all the answers always, obviously, but. We, we work with really smart customers and, and collaborating with them to deliver solutions in really hard to serve envi or difficult to secure environments help helps us inform that. But it, it, it wasn't something, I don't think that people were quite as, collaborative or upfront on in the past.

[00:30:50] Eric Yunag: People were a little bit more protective of that now, and it seems like there's, there's a more of a, of an appetite to say, Hey, let's talk about, you know, sort of best practices and, and benchmarking in peer cohorts. And even in competitive, you know, industries, it seems like there's more and more of an appetite to, to be talking about that.

[00:31:06] Eric Yunag: So I, I think it speaks to your point, like there's, there are, there are places in the industry where, there are unique points of view and, and being able to engage those really does help people at a time where there is exceptional change right now. And people are looking for that, you know, thought leadership or trusted advisor kind of ecosystem where you can get good advice on, on, on how to make good investments that, that are gonna put you in a different place to your programs in the years ahead.

[00:31:30] A.J. Nash: Yeah, I mean that trusted advisor piece, you know, I've been in that role in a couple different companies for different reasons and I've, I've run into that term a lot. And there's a lot of value in that. The trust obviously is the big component, but there's a lot of value in that because, and that's why integrators are, are so important because you're in a position and, and listen, let's be fair, it's this is how business works.

[00:31:45] A.J. Nash: Integrators can be that way because you've got relationships with a lot of different vendors, right? That's the idea is build all these partnerships. So ultimately the in integrator wins no matter what. And that's fine. 'cause from the customer standpoint, you can go, okay, I know he is gonna tell me the truth because whether it's company A, B, C, or D, that he recommends they're gonna get paid either way.

[00:32:00] A.J. Nash: So they don't have a reason to tell me differently. And I make the assumption that, you know, you're not being motivated by one of those companies, you know, with a better, you know, pay plan or some of those other things. Obviously putting that stuff aside for a minute, for those listening and watching who are gonna go, wow, what about this?

[00:32:11] A.J. Nash: Yeah, I know, I know there's complications here. I'm trying to simplify it. But the point is, it does put you in the best position to be those trusted advisors, and these companies need that because they just want to get the right answer and they're not gonna be able to be the experts. So again, that's why it's so important to have integrators who have a large.

[00:32:27] A.J. Nash: A, a stable of, of relationships, of partnerships. you know, if an integrator comes in and they've got two or three partnerships, I may be questioning. Unless, unless it's a specific segment of industry where those are really the only, you know, players, I'd be questioning a little bit because obviously they're going to, no matter what they're gonna do, their recommendation's gonna be from their stable of, of partnerships.

[00:32:43] A.J. Nash: Whereas if they say, have got, you know, 250 tech integration partners, you're like, oh, well pretty much anybody in the industry I might want they know about. So now I can just talk to them and I can trust they're gonna put me in the right position if they get my requirements, and we can, we can have a discussion that leads to the right place.

[00:32:56] Eric Yunag: You know this?

[00:32:56] A.J. Nash: that because I know that's, that's biasing against the small and mid-sized, you know, integrators. Sorry guys, but, I, I do understand the value of having a large stable of partnerships.

[00:33:05] Eric Yunag: Well, I, I think, I think that the place that that really separates itself is in big integrators that also are manufacturers, you know, because in, in our world, you know, our, some of our largest com and this look, we, we work with those, those companies as well. And it is just a different way of thinking too.

[00:33:18] Eric Yunag: Like we've, we've made a very intentional strategic choice to never get into the product business because I, I, I think this is definitively true, and I, I don't say this out of pride or ego or anything. I think we're definitively the largest independent security integrator that makes nothing in the world.

[00:33:34] Eric Yunag: Like we don't, we're not a manufacturer, we don't make cameras. We don't control none of that. because it does keep us in a posture of saying what is the best technology? And we'll bring that together. I'll tell you where the, where there's friction in that. And it goes back to a bit of the marketplace evolution and what's changing right now.

[00:33:48] Eric Yunag: You know, when you think about some of the largest customer environments in the world, The way that they buy security sometimes gets in the way of everything you just described. 

[00:33:56] A.J. Nash: I, and I've seen some of that too. I've dealt with some procurement organizations and once it's gotten to the point where there's an RFP once they're past, you know, all their other thinking, good luck getting 'em to rewind that stuff because it's embarrassing and it's time consuming.

[00:34:07] Eric Yunag: It's not the procurement department's job. They assess like the, the, the effectiveness of this solution against the security requirements. That's not what they're there for. And so once it reaches that point, and look, we've influenced a lot, worked with a lot of organizations that develop good and thoughtful procurement processes and we participate and we win some, we lose some, right?

[00:34:23] Eric Yunag: That's, that's, that's, that's the market. I think, to me, back to sort of the role of the integrator. I think the integrator, we all make this, we don't make anything thus we're all selling the same thing. So, you know, if it's a certain brand of camera that we sell, like everybody sells the same brand, like nothing I do with that necessarily is, is different.

[00:34:42] Eric Yunag: It is really how I think about applying it, you know, the, the, the programs and services that we put around that to make sure that that solution is both delivered effectively, it's managed and available through the lifecycle that's there, and that it's ultimately effective at delivering the outcome that we've.

[00:34:58] Eric Yunag: You know, thought through that. It's trying to deliver in that environment. And if we do those three things really well, that's where I think integrators compete on their merits on helping, making, helping that solution really get delivered, you know, be available and be effective in the environment. That, that's, those are the three things that we think about, you know, really doing well.

[00:35:16] Eric Yunag: That if we can, if we can deliver that to an end user, then I think we, we've done our, we've done our job right, to effectively help them, you know, deliver outcomes in their environments.

[00:35:26] A.J. Nash: Yeah, absolutely. Now listen, let's look ahead for a second. All right, so we've talked about what the industry looks like and the complications of the industry and, and you know, what's working well and some of the things that you are challenges there, especially look ahead a bit, you know, what do you see as technologies, you know, as they're evolving and integrating, what do we see coming up over the horizon?

[00:35:43] A.J. Nash: Obviously this is where we talk a lot about ai, I'm sure, but you know, how do you see the evolution in integration, in the next few years?

[00:35:50] Eric Yunag: Yeah. I look, I think the headline on this for me really is, is around a move towards. You know, intelligent security, security intelligence and that, that sounds a bit cliche, but from a systems perspective, I think that's really what's happening here. You see that a really, a macro technology modernization move that's happening right now, so that in, in the next, you know, three to five years, fundamentally, the capabilities of these systems in combined totality are gonna deliver a much more real time and informed set of intelligence outcomes than they have in the past.

[00:36:28] Eric Yunag: I think so that, so that's a bit of the headline. There not, that's not kind of the underlying trends. I think, you know, the, the pieces that make up make that up are really the move towards platform type capabilities, meaning move away from siloed premise based systems to more. Platform modernization where, you know, IOT technologies and real time, you know, data integrations to other sources, all of that stuff, that's a fundamental rewiring of a lot of the security systems in the world today.

[00:36:57] Eric Yunag: We have a lot of hardwired pro proprietary protocols that exist in, in this space and, and a move towards a more, you know, unified modern technology. Architecture is, is setting the table to unlock a lot of that. So we see a lot of that. there's a, there's a whole series of priorities around, you know, credentials and identity assurance, and we see this a lot.

[00:37:18] Eric Yunag: I mean, you know, you go into really any major facility in the world that's kind of a base building and you still see a lot of legacy, you know, card technologies and, you know, old card formats that are really unsecure. You know, the upgrade of all that infrastructure and the move towards secure multi-factor wallet credentials on mobile devices.

[00:37:37] Eric Yunag: And that is a huge theme right now. Everybody wants that user experience of a frictionless, you know, credential in, in wallet on, you know, apple and Google and Samsung devices. That, that requires a whole modernization of technology. That's a big priority. I mean, not only is it kind of realtime issuance and revoking of credentials in environments, it's also different types of use cases on those credentials.

[00:37:59] Eric Yunag: Realtime multifactor is possible when you have a digital credential. So there's a lot of, lot around both the modernization of the credential and then the unification of identities. I mean, you, we can do an entire podcast on identity and identity management and, you know,

[00:38:13] A.J. Nash: I have, I've done some.

[00:38:15] Eric Yunag: I'm sure you have, you know, the unification of, of logical and physical credentials and.

[00:38:20] Eric Yunag: That, that is a huge area of intersection with physical systems right now. So that whole identity in, in credential world is a big one. you know, we, we talk quite a bit more about autonomous platforms now, you know, and, and this, this is a big rat hole still to, to discuss sometimes around, you know, drone and tech and, you know, humanoid robots being, essentially extensions of surveillance infrastructure.

[00:38:43] Eric Yunag: That's really how we describe it. And look there, a lot of that's not ready for real time, but some of it is beginning to be pretty effective at, at augmenting man guarding capabilities for, you know, guard patrols and this kind of thing. And in a lot of environments, even the anti drone technology to, you know, if you're a substation, you're a corrections facility, how mitigate, you know, drone from a detection and all, all, all that perspective.

[00:39:08] Eric Yunag: So the whole autonomous category is a big one. you know, AI and visual intelligence is an enormous area of investment, I think for companies right now. And I, that that's the, that's really the, the, the, the one that I think has the most interesting use case applications across and beyond security. Not only does it make your security fundamentally smarter, you know, the query and do all of the visual AI stuff that you can do, but bringing online a lot of other, you know, operational and, you know, customer use cases in, in different environments is a really powerful thing to do.

[00:39:40] Eric Yunag: And I, we talk about all the time about if, if you're making a decision now to spend money on, on cameras and surveillance, you should really take just a beat for a second and talk to other areas in your organization and say, what would it look like for us to begin to invest in a visual intelligence infrastructure?

[00:39:57] Eric Yunag: And, and I say that intentionally because not only does that make your security better, but how else might that data contribute to other, your bi, your business intelligence data. In other areas of the business. 'cause it rationalizes better investments and more investments and more cameras and more that you might be able to leverage in other places.

[00:40:15] Eric Yunag: So that, that, that's a huge area that we think about. And then the last part of it's really just around, you know, situational awareness and decision intelligence. I think when you stack all those, those technologies up and you begin to think about, you know, the unification and overlay of, of, of good AI platforms and the unification of that technology, you're fundamentally able to make better security decisions and respond to threats in a more real time fashion to the things that are true threats and not just the massive false alarms that our industry has been buried in for, you know, for 50 years.

[00:40:48] Eric Yunag: So those, those five or six things I think are the, are the things that we talk about the most and we hear the most from people saying. You really need to have a plan on those areas to modernize your infrastructure. 'cause you don't wanna wake up, you, your bosses don't wanna wake up in five years and be like, why is our, why do we have the only security infrastructure in the world that is not delivering much more of a, of an intelligent AI enabled set of capabilities?

[00:41:14] Eric Yunag: And nobody can do that overnight. I mean, that's the thing that I think we've really begun to navigate differently is it take, it takes a kind of a thoughtful, multi-year approach to say, what investments can you make, when and what priority? That ultimately you will get to a point in the next, you know, number of budget cycles that you'll have a, a technology infrastructure that you really can step back and say, this is fundamentally different than what it was before.

[00:41:38] Eric Yunag: And it is providing us that, you know, kind of, intelligent security outcomes that we're looking for.

[00:41:43] A.J. Nash: Well, yeah, I mean, you're talking about, you know, systems of systems and to get to a holistic, viewpoint, right? Where it's everything coming together into one place and being able to say, well, I understand all the implications from the physical, cyber and cybersecurity and, you know, the customer experience if you have customers and, and the employee experience and, and the business intelligence and the, you know, the competitive intelligence, all that.

[00:42:01] A.J. Nash: It's, it's like I said, systems of systems, which is, you know, where we've been heading for a while between, you know, big data and then AI being laid on top of this stuff. Now, you know, things that get to the point of you just aren't gonna be able to do these things as we used to in the old ways because people couldn't process it.

[00:42:14] A.J. Nash: That we couldn't process that much data. We couldn't process it that fast. Certainly. And now you just process, you know, x number of, you know, multiples of data, in, in, you know, so much less time. I, I do wanna ask one thing, I, I heard you use a term I haven't heard used before, actually. So I'm curious, you've talked about vis visual intelligence.

[00:42:30] A.J. Nash: is, are we just talking about imagery essentially? it's, I've never heard uses that term, so it's kind of interesting concept.

[00:42:35] Eric Yunag: yeah, I, I, I use that term a lot and I should probably explain it. I, the, the, the way I, I, I personally think about it. Is, we've really reached a point in human history where anything we, we can see, we, we can turn into data. That's a really, that's a really, and I think that's just factually true now, but it's a really interesting thing to step back and think about for a second.

[00:42:56] Eric Yunag: And, you know, that means that our security will absolutely be better. 'cause the cameras can, we can query in natural language anything that we want to know about. I need to see the person in the, in the red jacket, with the white backpack at this time, you know, exiting at night and then, you know.

[00:43:12] A.J. Nash: Oh, as opposed, you mean just scanning through 62 hours of, of video tape to look. 'cause that's how it used to be. Hey, I know sometime this happened, you're like, oh great, I'm gonna spend all my days in a quiet room figuring it out. I hadn't even thought about it till you said though, it's a great point.

[00:43:24] A.J. Nash: Now you can have AI and say, Hey listen, you know, AI is gonna be able to scan the, the, you know, cameras, right? This footage, that kind of thing. And like you said, you can give a natural language description and it'll be able to go tell you Yeah, here's, you know, 12, time hacks where something similar to that was, you can just go look at those.

[00:43:38] A.J. Nash: I hadn't even thought about how much faster we'll be able to search through

[00:43:40] Eric Yunag: all of the investigative accelerants that are coming with that are, are very much happening. But I think the, the, the visual intelligence idea is really that if you think about that and describe it to the, to your leadership in an organization, if you're an end user and say, yes, you know, we, we need to make contin.

[00:43:58] Eric Yunag: This is always a cost center, right? Security, and we need to make investments in our security infrastructure to unlock the things we just talked about. But how might we use those cameras as a visual intelligence infrastructure for the whole business? Meaning what else might we be seeing in these environments that we could turn into data and use it in other areas of the business?

[00:44:18] Eric Yunag: I think this is the, this is the construct that to me is really becoming interesting and some of our smartest end users in the security space are really getting significantly higher. Budget allocations to these activities because of this thinking. And just, so just if you step back for a second and think if I'm, if I'm the CEO of a company and, and I really kind of internalize this idea of visual intelligence and anything we can see, we can turn into data.

[00:44:44] Eric Yunag: Well, what might I want to know about my environment is this, if I'm a, if I'm a retail or a bank organization and I have cameras in a bank and I see queue lines and I'm able to turn, wait time, visual wait times into data for branch, man, what else might I wanna know? I I, it, it, it's just really interesting to begin to think about, you know, let's, let's get investments from marketing and let's, let's get investments, you know, operations on, you know, helping us build out a visual intelligence infrastructure that of course is gonna make our security better, but oh, by the way, we can also leverage that visual data for other things, right?

[00:45:22] Eric Yunag: So it, it's, it's a, it's a, certainly an emerging world, but it's, it's a bit of the beyond security opportunity to. Reframe the, the capabilities of these systems as providing value to other parts of the business.

[00:45:36] A.J. Nash: Well, yeah, you just triggered a memory for me. not necessarily a positive version of this, but what's that?

[00:45:40] Eric Yunag: It's not Vikings related,

[00:45:42] A.J. Nash: It's not, no. God no. 

[00:45:43] A.J. Nash: I think it's very interesting. I hadn't thought about it though. They, you could do that with all sorts of retail organizations to figure out efficiencies, right? Always to make it more efficient, more effective, not about trying to punish employees, which I sadly think company companies will do.

[00:45:54] A.J. Nash: But the flip side is saying, Hey, how do we make the experience better for the consumer when, listen, when I get to the coffee shop, if you tell me you use technology and you turn my ti consistent 12 minutes, you know, wait time in the morning into two minutes, I'm gonna love that, right? And so is everybody else.

[00:46:06] A.J. Nash: And so you're gonna get more people coming in. And so that's good. A good example of here's cameras were designed for security, which as you said is a cost center. It's always, you know, you gotta manage those costs. But now if you say, hold on, it's not just a cost center, what if we're able to improve your efficiency by, you know, X percent and as a result, your revenues are gonna go up, you're gonna have more repeat business, you're gonna have happier customers, all these things.

[00:46:24] A.J. Nash: And you go, well, geez, now it's not just a cost center, it's actually saving us money at the same time as it's protecting our business and maybe cutting down on, on, inventory loss or whatever, you know, whatever you use the system for. And that's that multi-use approach you're talking about. So I,

[00:46:35] Eric Yunag: it makes the case and it does, it has a compounding effect because not only does it make a case for more cameras, and provide essentially more budget area to allocate to those cameras, you, you, you are fundamentally driving different outcomes. I, I'll give you one more example. the retailer was thinking about this high density camera concept in a retail, a big box retail store for two reasons.

[00:46:58] Eric Yunag: One, obviously better, you know, loss prevention and you know, slip and fall and litigation, all the things that happen

[00:47:03] A.J. Nash: Oh yeah.

[00:47:05] Eric Yunag: But then from a visual intelligence perspective to well, what might we do to more closely mirror? The online experience that we have or compete with online retailing for all the things that we do, you know, on, on web, right?

[00:47:20] Eric Yunag: So on, in, if you think about e-commerce, right? You go to a website, it, it tracks, it knows you're there, right? It knows how many visitors were there, how many converted through a shopping cart,

[00:47:30] A.J. Nash: Sure.

[00:47:32] Eric Yunag: apply all that logic to a physical environment and begin to optimize and understand all of that.

[00:47:38] Eric Yunag: this person came in, did they exit through an exit door or do they exit through a, a cash register?

[00:47:42] A.J. Nash: so you wanna change your floor plan design. You can change all sorts of things on how you set up your entire stores really

[00:47:46] Eric Yunag: actually they were actually thinking about can we create a gesture that would be recognizable via visual intelligence and ai That would help, rather than having people wandering the stores

[00:47:56] A.J. Nash: yeah.

[00:47:56] Eric Yunag: all grown up with, could you do some unique, you know, brand related gesture? That all Yeah. That ultimately summon someone to help you.

[00:48:02] Eric Yunag: I think it would take that to get somebody in some of those stores. 

[00:48:05] Eric Yunag: But to me, I think that this is a unique moment in time where there is new value to be unlocked created, and good rationale to invest additional money in systems and capabilities that ultimately will benefit the business in a lot of different ways, not just transform as if that's small, not just transform to an intelligent security infrastructure.

[00:48:25] A.J. Nash: Well, yeah, if you've got rabbit holes in silos, you're not, you're not gonna be able to do this, obviously. So having that bigger picture is, is really important. And, and that's a, a huge takeaway from this. I think that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it, obviously, coming into this conversation, and I think that's a fascinating takeaway on, on the value of integrators and the value of, these technologies and where we're going in these, you know, these dual use capabilities.

[00:48:42] A.J. Nash: So listen, we're, we're running short on time, as I always am. I'm always running over. but I, I wanna thank you first for being here, and I'll thank you again at the end anyway. But thank you for being here and, and for having this discussion. It's, it's fascinating. I think it's really interesting. and it's nice to see where, where people are going with this and, and the complications and technology.

[00:48:57] A.J. Nash: It's good to have, experts, unbiased experts, in the middle there that can help make sure people are getting, the solutions they need for those business outcomes. But as we get to the end of the show. you know, the name of the show is Unspoken Security. As you know, this is no longer a gotcha question.

[00:49:08] A.J. Nash: I've been doing this long enough. Everybody knows the question's coming, but as you know the name of the show being Unspoken Security, I ask every guest the same thing at the end, which is tell me something you've never told anybody before. Something that so far has been unspoken. Mm-hmm.

[00:49:22] Eric Yunag: a, a couple things popped into my mind. This, this, this one might make me sound crazy

[00:49:27] A.J. Nash: You won't be the first one.

[00:49:30] Eric Yunag: because it, it speaks to the integrator world. and it, it also speaks to kind of how I think about security in general. But I, when I, I sold my business at Conversion almost, it was 10, actually 10 years ago next month. So it's been nearly a decade. and, and I, I love what I do. I love being an integrator.

[00:49:47] Eric Yunag: I love, you know, my people and customers and all those kind of things. And I was really. Struggling with the idea of you know, take, taking kind of a left turn on what I thought. And, in that process, I actually sent my family up to Minneapolis to see my, my father-in-law, take my kids outta the house.

[00:50:01] Eric Yunag: I'm like, I just gotta think. And I, and the thing that I decided that I was gonna do, and I don't know really where this came from, is I was gonna have dinner with myself and I was gonna put a mirror at the other end of the table and I was really gonna order food. And then I was gonna ask myself questions out loud and really just hear myself rationalize out loud, you know, what, what it is about, how I was gonna serve my customers.

[00:50:21] Eric Yunag: All the things. And because if you've ever, if you think you can lie to yourself in your head, there's no chance you can do it out loud. So I sat there for almost an hour and a half and just, I had a whole list and I just, I made myself do it out loud and I asked myself questions and I, I was pretty happy with most of 'em, but a handful.

[00:50:36] Eric Yunag: I'm like, I don't know about that one. So.

[00:50:40] A.J. Nash: this could have been a good use for cameras, by the way. I would've liked to see the visual data, the vi, the visual intelligence on, on this conversation.

[00:50:47] Eric Yunag: That's tenure in statute limitations.

[00:50:52] A.J. Nash: I actually listen, I think it's fascinating. You said it's gonna make you sound crazy, and I could see somebody saying that, but I also think it's a fascinating concept. You know, we talk about introspection, which most people do a terrible job of. you, I mean, you, you went to the extreme. You didn't just do it, but as you said, it's easy to lie to yourself, but it's really hard to lie to yourself if you stare at yourself in a mirror, right?

[00:51:09] A.J. Nash: And, and a chance to, to hold yourself accountable. A chance to see what you look like when you tell these stories or when you, you give these pitches to other people. I, I think it's brave, if I'm gonna be honest. I think it's brave. You told me too, by the way, but I, I think it's, I think it's brave. I hate looking at mirrors, for all sorts of things.

[00:51:23] A.J. Nash: So I, I would probably have a very short dinner with myself if I had done it that way. I think it's, I think it's fascinating.

[00:51:29] Eric Yunag: I think it does, it, it probably isn't just me though. I think it speaks to a lot of integrators out there who I look, I, I believe what we do is important and take it really seriously. And I, it's one of those things where you can very easily be distracted by the noise around it or a financial outcome or whatever was going on there.

[00:51:45] Eric Yunag: And I, to me, there was a lot more at stake with that. It's like, how do we serve our customers, I thought was really important and unique, and the people that go do that work every single day that were employees and colleagues of mine and, you know, the people that we serve and the industries that we served and, you know, all the impacts of that stuff.

[00:52:01] Eric Yunag: So I, I think, you know, come, kind of comes full circle about what do innovators do and, you know, I think there's, there's, there's a, a certain, expectation that what we do helps you do what you do better and, you know, security outcomes in your environment. So, it's a privilege to do that. And, you know, it was, it was fun having this conversation.

[00:52:17] Eric Yunag: Talk a little bit about it.

[00:52:18] A.J. Nash: Yeah. No, I appreciate it. I think, by the way, you made a very wise decision, I think, in shipping the family outta the house before you had that little experience. I suspect that would've been hard to witness without a lot of

[00:52:27] Eric Yunag: Yeah.

[00:52:32] A.J. Nash: Yeah. If I walk in and find my partner, at a table with a mirror on the other end having a conversation, I'm, I'm, that's gonna be a very interesting, follow up. So I think it was wise of you to ship people out so you could have that clean experiment. But, but no, I think it's fascinating. Actually. I, I'm gonna, I'll probably ponder that a bit.

[00:52:45] A.J. Nash: I, I doubt I'll be able to replicate it, but I do think it's an interesting idea. and I'm glad you shared it. I think it's something that's, you know, that's important. It shows how much you care about this, how much you wanted to do a good job, and, and we're willing to hold yourself accountable and what's kind of an uncomfortable but, you know, unique concept.

[00:52:58] A.J. Nash: So I, I appreciate you, you know, coming in and chatting about it. before we jump out, is there anything, last things you wanna add? Anything you wanna plug in? You wanna talk about? you know, obviously we minute or whatever, but anything you wanna plug before we, you know, close out the show?

[00:53:09] Eric Yunag: No, I'm, I'm not a plug guy, but I just wanna thank you for having me on and having the conversation. It's, it, it's fascinating. I love, I love conversations like this where you can step back a little bit and, and just, you know, talk about what's important and how it fits together and really what's changing.

[00:53:22] Eric Yunag: I think it is very much a unique moment in the world now, and the, the confluence of all this thing right now that's coming down. Kind of the heads of, of our, of the end users in the world is different. And, you know, I think a lot of us have, not have, who have a microphone right, have, have a chance to kind of raise the awareness on a lot of that stuff and, and challenge some of the status quo and how things are done and the way systems are delivered and, you know, how we all collaborate to deliver those security outcomes and these environments.

[00:53:49] Eric Yunag: So I love the conversation and thanks for, setting it up.

[00:53:52] A.J. Nash: Yeah, man, thanks for having me, having me have you. I guess that's how it works out. But, you know, thanks for, thanks for, I think you heard people actually reach out first to be fair, so I appreciate it and, and it's been a, a really good time. So listen, for everybody who's been listening or watching again, thank you.

[00:54:03] A.J. Nash: obviously this is all about, you know, really the, the audience and the guests. I'm just, you know, herding cats around here. But the, the goal is to make sure people have things, you know, that are, they have content here, or dogs in my case, you're right. but I wanna make sure people have content that is, you know, interesting and informative and educational, you know, and hopefully able to fun as well.

[00:54:19] A.J. Nash: So thanks for everybody who takes the time to listen and watch. you know, please feel free to subscribe, share that information with others. We could always use more people that are interested in the show. if you like, what's going on, you know, that's great. you know, if you don't,tell me anyway.

[00:54:29] A.J. Nash: I guess I, I want feedback from everybody so we can be better about it. but, you know, feel free to reach out and, and let me know so we can keep doing it and keep subscribing and keep watching and we'll keep trying to put great. People like Eric out in front of you so you can learn more. So with that in mind, I'm gonna go ahead and close this one out for today.

[00:54:42] A.J. Nash: Again, thank you Eric. Thank you everybody who listens and watches. This has been another episode of Unspoken Security.

[00:54:48] ​