Hello and welcome to theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We've got great two remote guests coming in to our Palo Alto studios, some tech athletes as we say. People have been in the trenches and years of experience. Lena Smart, CISO at MongoDB, CUBE alumni and Tara Hernandez VP of developer productivity at MongoDB as well. Thanks for coming in to this program and supporting our efforts today. Thanks so much. Thanks for having us. Yeah, everyone talks about the journey in tech. We're all started before we get there. Talk about what you guys are doing at MongoDB specifically. MongoDB is kind of gone the next level as a platform. You have your own ecosystem, a lot of developers, very technical crowd, but it's changing the business transformation. What do you guys do at Mongo? We'll start with you, Lena. So I'm the CISO. So all security goes through me. That I like to say, well, I don't like to say, I'm described as the one's throat to choke. So anything to do with security easily starts and ends with me. We do have a fantastic cloud engineering security team and a product security team and they don't report directly to me, but obviously we have very close relationships. I like to keep that kind of church and state separate and I've spoken about that before. And I just recently set up a physical security team with an amazing gentleman who left the FBI and he came to join us after 26 years with the agency. So really starting to look at the physical aspects of what we offer as well. I interviewed a CISO the other day and she said, every day is day zero for me. Kind of goofing on the Amazon day one thing, but Tara, go ahead. What's your role there developer productivity? What are you focusing on? Our developer productivity is kind of the latest description for things that we've described over the years as DevOps oriented engineering or platform engineering or build and release engineering development infrastructure. It's all part and parcel, which is how do we actually get our code from developer to customer and all the mechanics that go into that? It's been something I discovered from my first job way back in the early 90s at Borland and the art has just evolved enormously ever since, so. Yeah, this is a very great conversation, both of you guys right in the middle of all the action if data infrastructure is changing, exploding and evolving big time AI and data, tsunami and security never stops. Well, let's get into, we'll talk about that later, but let's get into what motivated you guys to pursue a career in tech and what were some of the challenges that you faced along the way? Well, first, the fact of the matter was that I intended to be a double major in history and literature when I went off to university, but I was informed that I had to do a math or a science degree else the university would not be paid for. At the time, UC Santa Cruz had a policy that called open access computing. This is, you know, the late 80s early 90s and anybody at the university could get an email account. And that was unusual at the time. If you were, those of us who remember you used to have to pay for that computer or AOL or whether there's another one, I forget what it was called, but if a student Santa Cruz could have an email account and because of that email account, I met people who were computer science majors and I'm like, okay, I'll try that, that seems good. And it was a little bit of a struggle for me. I won't buy, but I can't complain with how it ended up. And certainly once I found my niche, which was development infrastructure, I found my true love and I've been doing it for almost 30 years now. Awesome, great story. Can't wait to ask a few questions on that. We'll go back to that late 80s early 90s. Lena, your journey, how you got into it? So I had a slightly different start. I did not go to university. I had to leave school when I was 16, got a job had to help support my family. Worked a bunch of various jobs till I was about 21 and then computers became more prolific. I wouldn't say they were ubiquitous, but they were certainly out there. And I'd also been saving up every penny I could earn to buy my own computer and I bought a 16 and Amstrad 1640. When I make hard drive, it rocked. And kind of took that apart, put it back together again and thought, hmm, there could be money in this. And so basically just teaching myself about computers, any job that I got, because most of my jobs were like clerical work and secretary at that point, but any job that had a computer in front of that, I would make it my business to go find the guy who did computing, because it was always a guy. And I would say, I want to learn how these work, let you know, show me. And I would take my lunch hour and after work and anytime I could with these people and they were very kind with their time. And I just kept learning. So yeah. Those early days remind me of the inflection point we're going through now. A major sea change coming back then. If you had a computer, you had to kind of be your own internal engineer to fix things. Member back on the systems revolution late 80s, Tara, when your career started, those were major inflection points. Now we're seeing a similar wave right now, security, infrastructure. It feels like it's going to a whole another level. At Mongo, you guys certainly see this as well. With this AI surge coming in, a lot more action is coming in. So there's a lot of parallels between these inflection points. How do you guys see this next wave of change? Obviously the AI stuff's blowing everyone away. The new user interface, it's been called the browser moment, the mobile iPhone moment kind of for this generation. There's a lot of people out there who are watching that are young in their careers. What's your take on this? How would you talk to those folks around how important this wave is? You know, it's funny. I've been having this conversation quite a bit recently in part because to me, AI in a lot of ways is very similar to back in the 90s when we were talking about bringing the worldwide web to the forefront of the world, right? And we tended to think in terms of all the optimistic benefits that would come of it, free passing of information availability to anyone anywhere. You just needed an internet connection, which back then of course meant a modem. Not our own head though. Remember from that time. Exactly, but what we found in the subsequent years is that human beings are what they are and we bring ourselves to whatever platforms that are there, right? And so, you know, as much as it was amazing to have this freely available HTML based internet experience, it also meant that the negatives came to the forefront quite quickly. And there were ramifications of that. And so to me, when I look at AI, we're already seeing the ramifications to that. Yes, are there these amazing, optimistic, wonderful things that can be done? Yes, but we're also human and the bad stuff's gonna come out too. And how do we as an industry, as a community, you know, understand and mitigate those ramifications so that we can benefit more from the positive than the negative. So it is interesting that it comes kind of full circle in really interesting ways. Yeah, the underbelly takes place first, gets it in the early adopter mode, normally the industry's with, you know, money involved, arbitrage, no standards. But we've seen this movie before, is there hope, Lena, that we can have a more secure environment? I would hope so. Although, impressingly, we've been in this, well, for 30 years now and we're at the end of the day still telling people not to click links on emails. So yeah, that kind of still keeps me awake a wee bit. And the whole thing about AI, I mean, obviously I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination in AI. I did read Mo Goddatz book recently about AI and that was kind of interesting. And I'm just trying to teach myself as much as I can about it, to the extent of even buying the dummies guide to AI, just because it's actually not a dummies guide, it's actually fairly interesting. But I'm always thinking about it from a security standpoint. So it's kind of my worst nightmare and the best thing that could ever happen in the same dream.  And my team are working on with Mark Porter or CTO and his team on almost like an incubation of AI. Like what would it look like for Mo Goddatz? What's the legal ramifications? Because there will be legal ramifications, even though it's the wild west. Just now, I think regulations going to catch up to us pretty quickly, I would think. And so I think, you know, as long as companies have a seat at the table and governments perhaps don't become too dictatorial over this, then hopefully we'll be in a good place. But we'll see. I think it's a really interesting, there's that curse me, you live in interesting times. I think that's where we are. It's interesting just to stay on this tech trend for a minute is the standards bodies are different now.  T3C. Developers are the new standard. I mean, now you see open source completely different where it was in the nineties to here beginning. That was gen one. Some say gen two, but I say gen one. Now we're exploding with open source. You have kind of developers setting the standards. If developers like it in droves then it becomes de facto, which then kind of rolls into implementation. Yeah, I mean, I think if you don't have developer input and this is why I love working with Tara and her team so much, it's because they get it. If we don't have input from developers, it's not going to get used. There's going to be ways of working around it, especially when it comes to security.  Yeah, developers are on the front lines now versus even back in the nineties. They're like, okay, get set up, the developers got a QA team. Everything was waterfall. Now it's cloud and developers are on the front lines of everything, Tara. I mean, this is where the standards are being met. What's your reaction to that? Well, I think it's outstanding. I mean, you know, like I was at Netscape and part of the crowd that released the browser as open source and we found in Mozilla.org, right? And that was, you know, in many ways kind of the birth of the modern open source movement beyond what we used to have, where it was basically free software foundation was sort of the only game in town. And I think it is so incredibly valuable. I want to emphasize, you know, and pile onto what Lena was saying, is it's not that just that the developers are having input on a sort of company by company basis. Open source to me is like a checks and balance where it allows us as a broader community to be able to agree on and enforce certain standards in order to try and keep the technology platforms as accessible as possible. I think Kubernetes is a great example of that, right? If we didn't have Kubernetes that would have really changed the nature of how we think about container orchestration. But even before that, Linux, right? Linux allowed us as an industry to end the Unix Wars. And as someone who was on the front lines of that as well and having to support 42 different operating systems with our product, you know, that was a huge win. And it allowed us to stop arguing about operating systems and start arguing about software or not arguing, but developing it in positive ways. So, you know, with Kubernetes, with container orchestration, we all agree, okay, that's just how we're gonna orchestrate. Now we can build up this huge ecosystem. Everybody gets taken along, right? And now it's, it changes the game for what we're defining as business differentials, right? And so when we talk about crypto, that's a little bit harder, but certainly with AI, right? You know, what are the checks and balances that as an industry and as the developers around this that we can, you know, enforce to make sure that no one company or no one body is able to overly control how these things are managed, how it's defined. And I think that is only for the benefit in the industry as a whole. And particularly when we think about the only other option is it gets regulated in ways that do not involve the people who actually know the details of what they're talking about. Regulated and or thrown away or bankrupted by a company. What was driven under ground, it would even work, actually. Yeah, that's a really interesting that checks and balances, I love that call out. And I was just talking with another interview part of the series around women being represented in the 51% ratio, software is for everybody. So that we believe that open source movement around the collective intelligence of the participants in the industry, in gender, independent of gender. This is going to be the next wave. You're starting to see these videos really have impact because there are a lot more leaders now at the table in companies developing software systems and with AI, the aperture increases for applications. And this is the new dynamic. What's your guys view on this dynamic? How does this go forward in a positive way? Is there a certain trajectory you see for women in the industry? I mean, I think some of the states are trying to, again, from the government angle, some of the states are trying to force women into the boardroom, for example, California, which can be no bad thing, but I don't know. Sometimes I feel a bit a fear about all this kind of forced, you know, making, I don't even know how to say it properly, so you can cut this part of the interview. Well, and I think that they're... I'll say, it's not organic. And I think they're already pulling it out, right? That's all, it's already been challenged in the process. Well, this is open source angle, Tara. You are getting at it. The change agent is open, right? So to me, the history of the proven model is openness drives transparency, drives progress. If you believe that to be true, this could have another impact. Yeah, it's so interesting, right? Because if you look at McKinsey consulting or Boston consulting or some of the other, blocking on all of the names, there has been a decade or more of research that shows that a non-homogeneous employee base, be it gender or ethnicity or whatever, generates more revenue, right? There's dollar signs that can be attached to this, but it's not enough for all companies to wanna invest in that way. And it's not enough for all venture firms or investment firms to grant that seed money or do those seed rounds. I think it's getting better very slowly, but socialization is a much harder thing to overcome over time. Particularly, we're not just talking about one country like the United States in our case, but around the world, tech centers now exist all over the world, including places that even 10 years ago, we might not have expected like Nairobi, right? Which I think is amazing, but you have to factor in the cultural implications of that as well, right? So yes, the openness is important and it's important that we have those voices, but I don't think it's a panacea solution, right? It's just one more piece. I think honestly that one of the most important opportunities has been with cloud computing and cloud's been around for a while, so why would I say that? It's because if you think about like everybody holds up the Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak back in the 70s or Sergey and Larry for Google, you had to have access to enough credit card limit to go to fries and buy your servers and then access to somebody like a Susan Wojcicki to borrow the garage or whatever, but there was still a certain amount of upfrontness that you had to be able to commit to whereas now, and we've I think seen really good evidence of this, being able to lease server resources by the second and have development platforms that you can do on your phone. I mean, for a while I think Africa, that the majority of development happened on mobile devices because there wasn't a sufficient supply chain of laptops yet. That's no longer true now, as far as I know, but like the power that that enables where people who would otherwise be underrepresented in our industry instantly opens it up, right? And so to me, that's I think probably the biggest opportunity that we've seen from an industry on how to make more availability in underrepresented representation for entrepreneurship. It's something like AI, I think that's actually gonna take us backwards if we're not careful because of reinforcing that socialization. Well, also the bias, let people comment on the biases of the large language was inherently built in are also a problem. You know, I want you to weigh on this too because I think the skills question comes up here and I've been advocating that you don't need the pedigree, college pedigree to get into a certain jobs, mentioned cloud computing, and it's been around for you think a long time, but not really, really think about it. The ability to level up, okay, if you're going to join something new and half the jobs in cybersecurity are created in the past year, right?  Now that's gone. Yeah, it's like policy in fact, that's impacts of psychology. I think so, but the people who I buy in large, who I interview for jobs, they have I think security people and also I work with our compliance folks and I can't forget them, but let's talk about security just now. There's a, I've always been a particular kind of mindset with security folks. We're very curious, not very good at following rules a lot of the time and we'd love to teach others. I mean, that's one of the big things to see them from the start of my career. People were always interested in teaching and I was interested in learning, so it was perfect. And I think also having strong women leaders at MongoDB allows other underrepresented groups to actually apply to the company because they see that we're kind of talking the talk and that's been important. I think it's really important, you've got Tara and I on here today, there's obviously other senior women at MongoDB that you can talk to as well.  It's definitely growing. I've been there for four years now and I've seen a growth in women in senior leadership positions. And I think having that kind of track record of getting really good quality underrepresented candidates to not just interview, become and join us is seen and it's seen in the industry and people take notice and they're like, okay, well, if that person's working, if Tara Hernandez is working there, I'm gonna apply for that. Yeah, and that in itself, I think can really reap the rewards, but it's getting started. It's like, how do you get your first strong female into that position or your first strong underrepresented person into that position is hard. I get it. If it was easy, we would have sold already. It's like anything. I want to see people like me and my friends in there. I'm not going to be alone. I'm going to be of a group. It's a group psychology. Why wouldn't, so getting it out there is key. Is there skills that you think that people should pay attention to? One's come up, it's curiosity, learning. What are some of the best practices for folks trying to get into the tech field or that's in the tech field and advancing through? What advice are you guys giving? What I say to my team is within my budget, we try and give every at least one training course a year and there's so much free stuff out there as well, but keep learning. And even if it's not right in your wheelhouse, don't be myopic about it. Don't take a look at what else could be out there that could interest you and then go for it. What does it take you? Few minutes each night to read a book on something that might change your entire career. Be enthusiastic about the opportunities out there and there's so many opportunities and security, just so many. Tara, what's your advice folks out there? Tons of stuff to taste, taste test, try things. Absolutely. I mean, I always say my primary qualifications for people are smart and motivated, right? Because the industry changes so quickly what we're doing now versus what we did even last year versus five years ago, is completely different. Though themes are certainly the same, we still have to code and we still have to compile that code or package the code and ship the code. So, how well can we adapt to these new things instead of creating floppy disks, which was my first job? Five and a quarters even. Five and a quarter, that's old school, oh gee. There it is. Well done. And now it's containers, golden image containers. And so, I've gotten a lot of really great success hiring boot campers, career transitioners because they bring along experience in addition to the technical skills. I think the most important thing is to experiment and figuring out what do you like because maybe you are really into security or maybe you're really into like deep level coding and you wanna go back, try to go to school to get a degree where you would actually want that level of learning or maybe you're a front-end engineer.  There's so many different things. Data science, right? Maybe you wanna go learn R, right? I think it's like, figure out what you like because once you find that, that in turn is gonna energize you because you're gonna feel motivated. I think the worst thing you could do is try to force yourself to learn something that you really could not care less about. That's just the worst. You're going in handicapped. And the choices now versus when we were breaking into the business, it was like, okay, you software engineer, they call it software engineering. That's all it was. You were that or you were in sales. Like some sort of systems engineer sales. And now- I've never heard of my job when I was in school, right? I didn't even know it was a possibility that there's so many different types of technical roles. Absolutely. It's so exciting. I wish I was young again. Me too. I don't, I like the age I am. So one of the things that I did to kind of harness that curiosity is we've set up a security champions program. It's about 120, I guess, volunteers globally. And these are people from all different backgrounds and all genders, diversity groups and the represented groups, we feel are now represented within this champions program. And people basically give up about an hour or two of their time each week with their supervisors permission. And we basically teach them different things about security. And we've now had seven full-time people move from different areas within MongoDB into my team as a result of that program. So, you know, monetarily and time, yeah, saved us both. But also we're showing people that there is a path. You know, if you start off in Tara's team, for example, doing X, you join the champions program, you're like, you know, I'd really like to get into red teaming. That would be so cool. If it fits, then we make that happen. And that has been really important for me, especially to give, you know, the women in the underrepresented groups within MongoDB just a window into something they might never have seen otherwise. That's a great comment, fit matters. Also, getting access to what you fit is also access to either mentoring or sponsorship or some sort of, at least some navigation, like what's out there. And not being afraid to like, you know, just ask. Yeah, we just actually kicked off our big mentor part program last week. So I'm the executive sponsor of that. I know Tara is part of it, which is fantastic. We'll put a plug in for her. Go ahead. Yeah, it's, no, it's amazing. There's that, gosh, I don't even know the numbers anymore, but there's a lot of people involved in this. And so much so that we've had to set up mentoring groups rather than one-on-one. And I think it was 45% of the mentors are actually male, which is quite incredible for a program called Mentor Heart. And then what we want to do in the future is actually create a program called Mentor BEM so that it's not, you know, not just on the female and so that we can have other groups represented and, you know, kind of break down those groups a wee bit more and have some more granularity in the authoring. Tara, talk about mentoring and sponsorship. Open Source has been there for a long time. People help each other. It's community-oriented. What's your view of how to work with mentors and sponsors if someone's moving through the ranks? You know, one of the things that was really interesting, unfortunately, in some of the earliest Open Source communities is there was a lot of pervasive misogyny, to be perfectly honest. And one of the important adaptations that we made as an Open Source community was the idea and introduction of code of conducts. And so when I'm talking to women who are thinking about expanding their skills, I encourage them to join Open Source communities to have opportunity, even if they're not getting paid for it, you know, to develop their skills to work with people to get those code reviews, right? And I'm like, if whatever you join, make sure they have a code of conduct and a good leadership team, it's very important. And there are plenty, right? And then that idea has come into, you know, conferences now. So now conferences have codes of contact if they're any good, and maybe not all of them, but most of them, right? And the ideas of expanding that idea of intentional, healthy culture as a business goal and business differentiator. I mean, I won't lie, when I was recruited to come to MongoDB, the culture that I was able to discern through talking to people, in addition to seeing that there was actually women in senior leadership roles, like Lena, like Kailin Nelson, that was a huge win. And so it just builds on momentum. And so now, you know, we're those of us who are now representing. And so that kind of reinforces, but it's all ties together, right? And in the open source, as the open source world goes, particularly for a company like MongoDB, which has an open source product in our community builds, you know, it's a good, it's a good mind, a good thing to be mindful of for us how we interact with the community. And, you know, because that could also become an opportunity for recruiting, right? So we, in addition to people who might become advocates on Mongo's behalf in their own company as a solution for themselves, so. You guys had a great successful company and great leadership there.  I mean, I was going back 10 years. It's like, just keeps getting better and better. You guys do a great job. So it's so fun to see the success of developers. Really appreciate you guys coming on the program. Final question, what are you guys excited about to end the segment? I'll give you guys the last word. Lena will start with you and Tara, you can wrap us up. What do you guys excited about? I'm excited to see what this year brings. I think with the chat GPT and it's copycats. I think it'll be a very interesting year when it comes to AI and always on the lookout for the authentic deepfakes that we see coming out. So just trying to make people aware that this is a real thing. It's not just pretend. Kind of of course our old friend runs somewhere. Let's see where that's gonna go. Let's see where we get to and just genuine hygiene and housekeeping when it comes to security. Excellent, Tara. Ah, well, for us, we're always constantly trying to up our game from a security perspective in the software development lifecycle. But also, what can we do? One interesting application of AI that maybe Google doesn't like to talk about is it is really cool as an addendum to search and how we might incorporate that as far as our learning environment and developer productivity and how can we enable our developers to be more efficient, productive in their day-to-day work. So I don't know, there's all kinds of opportunities that we're looking at for how we might improve that process here at MongoDB and then maybe be able to share it with the world. One of the things I love about working at MongoDB is we get to use our own products. And so being able to have this interesting document database in order to put information and then maybe apply some sort of AI to get it out again is something that we may well be looking at, if not to share them, certainly in the coming year. Awesome. Lena Smart, the Chief Information Security Officer, Tara Hernandez, Vice President, Developer Productivity from MongoDB. Thank you so much for sharing here on International Women's Day. We're going to do this quarterly every year. We're going to do it, and then we're going to do quarterly updates. Thank you so much for being part of this program. Thank you. Okay, this is theCUBE's coverage of International Women's Day. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching.


when they got the deal, the label, Def Jam had them performing in front of Fat Joe. And Fat Joe just, honestly, he wasn't feeling it. You know what I mean? Fat Joe, then he wasn't into it.  How do you know he wasn't into it though, Gutter? Cause he stopped them from rapping. They was performing. He said, stop. And he told him. What did he say? If you know what I mean? It's been a while on the bridge. Now, was it like detail? Like you gotta work on this, this, this? He was like, I can remember word for word what he said. Then they say it. Yeah, we on boss talk, one on one, one on one. Yeah, we gonna talk.  I mean, you've been working on a lot of different people, man, I've seen you do different things. You behind the scene doing a lot of things too, man. How do you feel like the music game is going to like, like now for when you look at the labels, when you look at the talent and just the way that people are moving the independent versus being signed to a label. Like what do you think? Shit, what do you want me to answer? The independent part, like verse signed to a label. You can do that and then you can come back and tell me how it is signed to a label today versus where it used to be.  It's hard, ain't it? I've been that and they don't want that. That come with responsibility. That come with you being the person to put up and do everything. You feel me?  And I agree with that so much, man.  I'm saying, if you ain't got it yourself, you need the help. Yeah. Ain't no way around it. No, you're exactly right. I agree with that 100%. Most of these guys don't understand what it takes to even push an artist and develop an artist. Like a lot of people think it's a one and done, but you know, you don't have but freak accidents like that. A lot of it's build up. A lot of it's behind the scene build up. And I think they underestimate how much goes into trying to make an artist. It's a lot too. Am I right? Nah, it's a lot. Cause I seen you work with so many different people like explain like even that deal you did with what's her name then? Which one? Tensei Mali and Lil Brooke. How was that deal leading going into that deal for them? Like you was there from the beginning all the way till they left. And you just tell me how was it walking in and understanding how to develop getting them into a deal? See, they didn't understand that, I mean, that was good. Every, the whole situation was cool, but I don't think the girls understood that people gonna have opinions. And you gotta either fix it up or you gotta take it and run with it. It's just different things. Like, I say this, when they got the deal, the label, Def Jam had them performing in front of Fat Joe. And Fat Joe just, honestly, he wasn't feeling it. Fat Joe, then he went into it.  How do you know he wasn't into it though, Garth? Because he stopped them from rapping. They was performing. He said, stop. And he told them. What did he say? If you don't mind me, it's been a while on the bridge. Now, was it like detail? Like you gotta work on this, this, this. Yeah, he was like, I can remember word for word what he said. That nigga say it.  But did you feel him on it? A hundred percent. Why? Why did he say? Because they was talking about guns or something. And then they was talking about guns.  You know what I mean? That's how they flowed. Yeah, it was all over the place kinda. And he said it.  What did they say?   What's his hit? Lean back? That shit's so old. Oh, damn. They got around it. Yeah, it got around it.   What did he say? He got up and walked out. He said, he said, he said, all right, I'm done. They'll be doing two years. Was he right? They still going, but he kind of was on the song. You see what I'm saying? Was he right? They still going, but he was on the song.  He felt like if you ain't listening, for sure you gonna be out there, basically, to me. When you was working with them, what were some of the key points that you've seen good things about working with them? And what were some of the things that stick out to it that you feel y'all could have did better as a team? Well, Molly, a hard worker. She gonna wake up thinking about music all day. Feel me? So you can't knock that. She a beast with that. She want it like I want it. So Brooke, she just was, a lot of times Brooke just go with the flow. Feel me? You can tell that when you're in the show. She just go with the flow sometime. You feel me? But Molly, you can't even knock it.  She gonna figure it out. And that was a plus cause you needed to work hard. Yeah, that was a plus.  You know, like to do this, to book the studio, to shoot a video, or to go get a show, or to get a connection. I ain't have to worry about that with Molly. She is gonna find the studio.  Like she's gonna figure it out. And was it, I mean, at the end, and I talked to both of my interview, both of them, at the end, everything kind of was like, they were there, I think they was kind of like, they had been trying to make them a group or something. Trying to keep them together. And they wanted their own. They wanted their own. Yeah, Molly wanted to be solo. And that's something to happen when you deal with groups cause they do get tired of- Well, she was already solo. Brook Khan got blessed in. You did that. No. Well, who brought it in? Oh, Molly just brought it in. No, she just landed on the hit. Like me and Molly was recording her first tape and the hit on the tape, Brook was on that one song. She wasn't on no other songs, but that's the one that they picked. Yeah, so like that two, two, three song, that wasn't no Sency Molly and Lil' Brook song. That was Sency Molly featuring Lil' Brook. Oh, so they made a good thing. Yeah, you feel me? And it wasn't a bad look. It was a dope look. That whole was solid. They good together. Hell yeah, that whole was solid. A couple years later after the deal, Warner Brothers tried to sign her. And I had a deal on the table, but once I got Molly on the phone, she just, Brook was with it. She's like, come on, go, let's go. With the money wise knowledge. She's like, let's go. Molly was just like, I don't want to be in a group. Wow. She's like, forget the money. I was like, I couldn't do nothing but salute her. I was like, I feel you. Do you think if they stayed in a group- I was about to say that. They would have gotten a lot further than they are today. Yeah, the nigga from Warner Brothers even said, he said, I don't just want to sign her. I want them both for nothing.  How hard is it for you at mentally dealing with that?  Say it like I was.  Let's do this deal. Yeah. Let's get this bread.  You don't want to even deal with it. I got to get it back on. I want to ask, is there any regrets? You know what I mean? Cause I feel you. Cause it's something to think about when you have- She going to say now. Because you got to think about it. Those opportunities- What's show? Doors don't open all the time, man. Nah, they don't. But that what I be trying to tell artists when I say, get the deal. I don't be saying take any deal.  No.  That's it. Cause they got a lot of people that trying to get at them. Yeah.


From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World. Digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of Dell Technology World 2020, the digital experience. I'm coming to you from Palo Alto. It's a digital event just like everything else in 2020. But we're excited to have our next guest. I think he's coming in all the way from Atlanta, Georgia. He's Jim Schuch, the director of cybersecurity and compliance practice at Dell Technology. Jim, great to see you. Thanks, Jeff. It's quite the title there. Thanks for getting all that out. I have a big post-it note, so that's very helpful. But it's actually kind of an interesting thing because you have compliance and cybersecurity in your title. And it's this interesting relationship between compliance as a motivator of behavior versus you need to go a lot further than just what the compliance says. So I'm curious if you can talk about that relationship between, yeah, we need to be compliant and we need to follow the rules but you need to think a lot bigger than that. Yeah, definitely. I mean, there's so many different standards out there and requirements. So typically what we'll see on the regulatory side is very much a minimum baseline and leading the way as usual in the cybersecurity space will be financial and healthcare organizations. That's particularly true in the U.S., but pretty much globally, at least on the financial side. So they'll set some baselines. A lot of industries don't really have many. And so what we look at many times is just general risk to the business.  But again, we really look at those requirements as minimum baselines and you have to work up from there based on the organization's risk profile. Yeah, yeah. And we see that too with privacy and a whole bunch of stuff where traditionally the regs and the compliance kind of lag where the technology is and where the market's moving. So let's, before we get too deep into it, let's talk about the COVID impact because obviously a huge thing in security, a light switch moment at mid-March when everybody had to work from home so suddenly your attack surfaces increase exponentially. People are working out of home environments that you don't necessarily know what's going on there or who's going on there, the shared networks with the spouse and the kids and everybody else. But now we're six, seven, eight months into this. This is something that's going to be going on for a while and even the new normal will have some type of a hybrid relationship with an increased level of remote work. I don't want to say work from home but it's really work from anywhere. So I wonder if you can share your thoughts about how things have transitioned from what happened in mid-March, taking care of your own business and your own people to then taking care of your customers and the emergencies that they had. But now really thinking in terms of more of kind of a long-term fundamental shift in the security profile that people have with all their data and information. Yeah, gosh, it's been really interesting. I think organizations have done an amazing job when you think about the things that they've had to get done just really overnight. So a lot's been written about the pandemic and you mentioned Jeff too, really that expanded threat surface. All of a sudden you've got people working from home, there wasn't enough VPN capacity, a lot of places. I talked to some organizations, employees just took their desktop off of their desk and brought it home. So it wasn't really ready to work at a remote location but organizations really adapted well to it. Meanwhile, that was opportunity for the criminals and they've taken it. But Jeff, one of the things that I think about too is to an extent this is the new normal, not necessarily the work from home, but the shift that's going to consistently happen in cybersecurity, things change. The criminals are really smart, they adapt. So that was work from home. What's the next thing going to be? There's IoT, there's remote devices, there will be some vulnerabilities. We just have to get used to this pace and continue it unfortunately. Right, right, right. Yeah, it's always a little bit of a cat and mouse game, right? And then one of the other trends that we're seeing, I don't know, maybe more visibility or maybe higher profile is the ransomware attacks, right? So we've seen kind of this really interesting continuation of different types of security threats between just the local kid who's just trying to do it because it's fun versus competitive stuff where people are trying to take out their competitors versus nation states and nation states being kind of driving these attacks. But the ransomware we've seen before, but it seems to be increasing in frequency, maybe we're just hearing about it. What's special about ransomware as a specific type of security threat? So I started this practice about five years ago and at that point, ransomware was just barely a blip. It was really about destruction. And the way that we talk about it in the cybersecurity spaces, there's this triad, these three components of our data that we're trying to protect. So one of those is confidentiality and that traces back to the attacks you're talking about. That's when somebody steals your data. You don't want them to do that. That breaks the confidentiality of the data. And that's really where the cybersecurity controls kind of grew up around that. You didn't want credit cards or intellectual property, healthcare information, and that's still a problem with ransomware, they're affecting the availability of the data or the integrity of the data. And those are the other two prongs that go with confidentiality. And so these attacks, that's why they feel different. They're impacting your ability to access the data, which in many cases can shut a business down.  And it's because they didn't have their data or their systems, and then eventually they either found a way to recover them or perhaps many cases of speculation as they paid the ransom to get the data back. Right. And of course the problem with ever paying a ransom is that you don't necessarily know you're going to get the data back, that you may just be encouraging them to hit you again. So paying the ransom is not necessarily the best solution. And then in talking about this thing turns out that in fact not only may it not be the right solution, you may be breaking the law. This is a pretty interesting thing. I had no idea that there's really laws dictating, you know, I guess responding to a criminal threat. What, where does that go? What's that from? Yeah, that's, we've talked about this for a while, but it wasn't until about two weeks ago that some information was released from the Department of Treasury. So the idea here is that every, not every country, many countries, the US among them have lists of countries and organizations that you can't do business with. So essentially a prohibited or sanctions list. And as it turns out, many of the ransomware bad actors, and Jeff is actually real name of one of them, Evil Corp. It sounds like a movie or a book, but that's one of the ransomware bad actors. They're on those lists. So if you get attacked by an organization that's on the list and you pay them, you've now completed a transaction with a prohibited entity and you're subject to potential sanctions. There was a lot written about this being a new law or the US came up with this law and that's not the case. The laws have been on the books for a while. It was the Department of Treasury kind of issuing some guidance, just nudging people, hey, by the way, you shouldn't be doing this. And some of the research I've done, a lot of countries have these laws. So while it's just the US that came out with this advisory, which was very public and certainly a big wake up call, these laws exist in a lot of other countries. So organizations really need to be prepared for what they're gonna do if they get hit with a ransomware attack, not really counting on paying the ransom for the reasons that you said, plus it may be against the law. And just to make sure I understand you, it's against the law because you're effectively doing business by having a financial transaction with one of these prohibited either organizations or they're in a prohibited country. Completely. That's correct. It's mostly about the organization. And then an interesting component of this and we won't get into too much of the weeds on the legal side, but the law is actually a strict liability. So that means it doesn't matter whether you knew or should have known that the entity was on a prohibited list. The mere fact of having that transaction makes you libel. And then the way that the regulations are written, you can't get someone else to do your dirty work for you. So if you are facilitating that transaction anyway, you may be running afoul of those laws. Jesus, one more thing to worry about where you're trying to get your business, you're trying to get your business back up and running. But specifically with ransomware and why it's different. I mean, there's been business continuity planning forever. You guys have backup and recovery solutions. There's so much effort around that. What's different here? Is it just because of the time in which you have to respond the availability of those backups to come back and get in production? What makes ransomware so special from a business continuity perspective, besides the fact that you're not allowed to pay them because it might be breaking the law? A lot. You hit on a couple of things there. So we've known forever that with DR, disaster recovery, one of the major things you're doing there is you're replicating data quickly so that if you lose site A, you can pop up at site B. With ransomware, you're replicating the corrupted data. So you lose that. With backups, the bad guys know, just like you mentioned, that if you have a backup, you could use that to recover. So they are more frequently now gathering their credentials and attacking the backups. So many cases we see the backups being deleted or otherwise destroyed. And that's really where we have focused with our power tech cyber recovery solution is creating an extra offline, air-gapped copy of the most critical applications that's not going to be susceptible to the attack or the follow-up attack that deletes the data. So let's jump into that a little bit in a little bit more detail. So this is a special solution really targeted as a defense against ransomware because of the special attributes that ransomware, I guess threatens, threatens, or the fact that they also go after your backup and recovery at the same time, knowing you're going to use that to basically lower the value of their ransom attack, that's crazy. Yeah, they're smart. These attackers are smart. There's billions of dollars at stake. I think organizations like Evil Corp estimates are they could be making hundreds of millions of dollars. So they're not even small businesses. They're almost industries unto themselves. They have advanced tactics, they're leveraging capabilities and they have products essentially. So when you think about your production data, your backups, your disaster recovery, those are all in environments that they're not accessible on the internet, but that's where you're doing business. So there is access there. There's employees that have access and the bad guys find ways to get in through spear phishing attacks where they're sending emails that look like they're from somebody else and they get a foothold. Once they have that foothold, they can leverage that access to get throughout that production environment. They have access to that data and they delete it. With cyber recovery, what we're doing is we're creating a vaulted environment that's offline. They can't get there from where they are. So they can't get access to that data. We lock it down, we analyze it, we make sure that it's good and then this happens automatically in day over day. So you've always got that copy of data. If your worst case scenario develops and you lose your production environment and that happens, you've got this copy of data for your most critical applications. You don't want to copy everything in there that you can use to actually recover and that recover capability, Jeff, is one of the pillars of a cybersecurity structure. So we focus a lot, kind of like you said before, what's different about these attacks? We focus a lot on protecting data and detecting bad guys. This is the recover capability that is part of all these frameworks. Right, so there's a lot to unpack there. Before we get into the recovery and actually why don't we just start there and then I want to get into the air gap because that's a great thing to dig in. On the recovery, what's kind of your targeted SLA? Is it based on the size of the application? Is it based on a different level of service? I mean, what is the hope if I buy into this solution that I can get my recovery and get back into business if I choose not to pay these guys? What does that kind of look like? So most of the time we're providing a product that our customers are deploying and then we have some partners that will deploy it as a service too. So the SLAs may vary, but what we're targeting is a very secure environment and you can look at how it's architected and think about the technologies. If it's properly operated, you can't get there. You can't get to the data. So the points that we're really looking at is how frequently do we want to update that data? So in other words, how much data can you afford to lose and then how long will it take you to recover? And both of those, you can leverage the technologies to shorten those up to kind of your requirements. So loosely speaking, the shorter you make the time, may cost you a little bit more money, a little bit more effort, but you can tighten those up pretty much to what your requirements are going to be. Right, right. And then let's talk about air gaps, because air gaps mean something very, very specific. It literally means classically, right? An air gap, there is a space in between these systems until electrons learn how to jump. They're physically separated, but that's harder and harder to do, right? Because everything is now API based and everything is an app that's based on a bunch of other apps and there's calls and everything is so interconnected now. But you talked about something specifically, you said an automated air gap, and you also said that we're putting this data where it is not connected for some period of time. So I wonder if you can explain a little bit more detail, how that works, how it's usually configured to reintroduce an air gap into this crazy connected world. Yeah, it's kind of going backward to go forward in a lot of ways. When we're careful about the term, we'll use the term logical air gap, because you're right, Jeff, an air gap is, there's a gap. And what we're doing is we're manipulating that air gap in a way that most of the time that data, our safe data, our vaulted data is on the other side of the air gap, so you can't get there. But we'll bring it up an air gap, we'll logically enable that air gap so that there is a connection which enables us to update the data that's in the vault, and then we'll bring that connection back down. And the way that we've architected the solution is that even when it's enabled like that, we've minimized the capability to get into the vault. So really, if you're a bad actor, if you know everything that's going on, you might be able to prevent the update, but you can't get into the vault unless you're physically there. And of course, we put some controls on that so that even insiders are very limited in what they can do if they get inside the vault and the APTs, the advanced persistent threats, people who are coming from other countries, since they're not physically there, they can't access that data. That's good. So it's on, it's off, but it's usually off most of the time so the bad guys can't get across there. Yeah, and again, it's important that even when it's on, it's a minimal exposure there, so you think about our triad, the confidentiality, integrity, availability, we're blocking them from getting in so they can maybe do a denial of service type of attack, but that's it. They can't get into break into the vault and break things and destroy the data like they would in production. Right, right. I want to shift gears a little bit, Jim. And I've gone to RSA, I think for the last three or four years of faculty, I think it was the last big live event we did in 2020 before everything came to a screeching halt. And one of the things I find interesting about the security industry is it's one of these opportunities for a co-opetition within the security industry that even though you might work for a company that competes with another company, there's opportunities to work with your peers at other companies, so you have more of a unified front against the bad guys as well as learn from what's going on with some of the other people so you can learn from the attacks at their surfacing. There's an interesting organization called Sheltered Harbor that I came across and do research for this. You guys have joined it. It was basically, it looks like it was built around 130, this article was from earlier in the years, probably growing, it's from February. 130 participating financial institutions which collectively hold 72% of all deposit accounts and 71% of all US retail brokerage assets. This is a big organization focused on security. Dell joined not as a financial institution but as a vendor.  Yeah, there's a lot there, Jeff. I've been part of that process for a little bit over two years and kicked it off after we identified Sheltered Harbor as an organization that we wanted to work with. So as you said, founded by some of the banks and credit unions and other financial institutions in the US and what's unique about it is it's designed to protect the US financial system and consumer confidence. It's not actually designed to protect the bank. So of course that's an outcome there if you're protecting consumer confidence then it's better for the banks, but that's really the goal. And so it's a standards-based organization that looked at the problem of what happens if a bank gets attacked? What happens to the customers? So they actually came up with a specification which follows so closely to what we do with cyber recovery. They identified important data, they built requirements, not technologies, but capabilities that a vault would need to have to protect that data and then the process is to recover that data if an event occurred. So we talked to the team for a while, we're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish with them as the only solution provider in their advisory program and the work that we've done with the PowerProtect cyber recovery solution. We have some more news coming out, I'm not permitted to announce it yet, it's pretty soon so stay tuned and it's just been a really great initiative for us to work with and the team over there is fantastic. Right. So I just wondered too if you can share your thoughts as the role of security has changed over the last several years from kind of a perimeter based point of view and protection and walls and firewalls and all these things which has completely broken down now to more of an integrated security approach and baking security into your data, to your encryption, to your applications, your access, devices, et cetera. And really integrating security more into the broader flow of product development and delivery and how that's impacted the security of the customers and impacted professionals like you that are trying to look down the road and get ahead of the next kind of two or three bad things that are coming. How's that security posture really benefited everybody out there? I think it's a really difficult problem that we just keep working at and again, we don't have a goal because if we're targeting here the threat actors, the bad actors are going to be here. I was reading an article today about how they're already the bad actors are already employing machine learning to improve what they're doing and how they target their phishing attacks and things like that. So thinking about things like security by design is great. We have millions, billions of devices. And if we start from the ground up that those devices have security built in it makes the rest of the job a lot easier. But that whole integration process is really important too. I mentioned before the recovery capability and protect and detect. If you look at the NIST cybersecurity framework has five pillars that have capabilities within each one and we need to keep focusing on our capabilities in those space. We can't do one and not the other. So we do multi-factor authentication but we need to look at encryption for our devices. We need to build from the ground up. We need to have those recover capabilities. It's just kind of a never-ending process but I feel like one of the most important things that we've done over the last year partly driven by the changes that we've had is that we're finally recognizing that cybersecurity is a business issue. It's not an IT issue. So if you're digital and your assets are digital how can you confine this to an IT group? It's the business, it's risk. Let's understand what risk is acceptable, cover the risk that isn't and treat it like a business process that it is. That's great. Because I always often wonder if you think of it as an insurance problem then you're going to be in trouble because you can't just lock everything down. You got to do business and you always think of the ships are safest at harbor but that's not what ships are built for. You can't just lock everything down but if you take it more of a business approach so you're measuring investments and risk and putting dollar amounts on it then you can start to figure out how much should I invest in security because you can't spend 100% of your revenue on security. What is the happy median? How do you decide and how do you apply that investment where it's kind of a portfolio strategy problem? It is and that's one of the areas that again my five years in building the practice we've seen organizations start to move to so you want to protect your most important assets the best and then there are things that you still want to protect but you can't afford the time, the budget the operational expense of protecting everything. So let's understand what really drives this business. If I'm a law firm might be my billing and document management systems and healthcare it's an electronic medical record and manufacturing it's the manufacturing system. So let's protect the most important things the best and then kind of move down from there. We have to understand what those systems are before we can actually protect them and that's where the business really needs to work more closely and they are with IT teams and with the cybersecurity teams. Right and like I like a lot of big problems, right? You got to break it down, you got to prioritize you got to start just knocking off what's important and not get so overwhelmed by trying to protect everything to the same degree that's just not practical and it's not a good investment. That's exactly the case and there's the ongoing discussions about shortage of people in the cybersecurity space which there are but there are things that we can do that to really maximize what those people do get them to focus on the higher level capabilities and let the tools do some of the things that the tools are good at. Right, so you triggered one last point and we'll wrap on this but I'll give you the last word. As you look forward to things like automation and to things like artificial intelligence and machine learning that you can apply to make those professionals more effective and automate some stuff. How do you see that evolving and does that give you big smiles or frowns as you think about your use of AI in ML versus the bad guys that they have some of the same tools as well? They do and look, we have to use those to keep up. I'll give you an example with power tech cyber recovery. We already use AI and ML to analyze the data that's in our vault. So how do you know that the data is good? Well, we're not gonna have somebody in the vault looking through the files. By leveraging those capabilities we can give a verdict on that data and so you know that it's good. I think we have to continue to be careful that we understand what the tools are and we deploy them in the right way. We can't deploy a tool just to deploy on it because it's hot or because it's interesting. That goes back to understanding the systems that we need to protect, the risks that we can accept or perhaps cover with insurance and the risks that gosh, we really can't accept. We need to make sure that the business continues to operate here. So I think it's great. The communities have really come together. There's more information sharing than ever has gone on and that's really one of our big weapons against the bad actors. All right. Well, Jim, thank you so much for sharing your insight. I think your job security is locked in for the foreseeable future. We didn't even get into 5G and IoT and never increasing attack surface and sophistication of the bad guys. So thank you for doing what you do and helping keep us safe, keep our data safe and keeping our companies running. Thank you for the opportunity. Alrighty. He's Jim, I'm Jeff. Thanks for watching The Cube's continuous coverage of Dell Technology World 2020, the digital experience. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.


Thank you, Mayor.  It is how you handle what happens to you. Thank you. Would the clerk please call the roll? We have 14 present, and we are missing Alderman Carlson and Alderman Manichuk. Both are excused. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance is to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next, we'll go on to approval of the minutes. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to approve. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor of the minutes as printed, would you please signify by seeing aye? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. There are no resignations tonight. No council appointments and no public forum. Next, we'll move on to the mayor's announcements. Tonight, I'd like to give you a report from the trip that I and 25 other residents recently made to Esslingen, Germany, Sheboygan sister city. It was a privilege for me to make this trip and represent the city of Sheboygan and reaffirm our commitment as a community Esslingen and the value of our partnership. In the group of residents making the trip, there were members from people to people, Concordia German singers, the mayor's international committee, and host parents, past exchange students from Esslingen and other areas to Sheboygan. We arrived in Esslingen and were greeted with a luncheon at their old city hall. They do have two city halls. The oldest one is used for meetings and ceremonial events and the other is located across the street and houses their administrative offices. After a traditional German lunch, ceremonial speeches and toast by their mayor, Dr. Jurgen Siegeler and myself, we were then given an escorted tour of the old Esslingen. This area is over 1,200 years old and they have a population of 91,573. They refer to our sister city relationship as twinning and they have a department in their city hall to manage the 10 twin city relationships that they have around the world. Sheboygan is Esslingen's only twin city in the United States. Friday was an official dinner with the mayor and city officials. It was also a time to exchange gifts. The Esslingen mayor presented me with this piece of artwork which shows off two of their prominent old features. That would be the castle, which is located on a high hill and overlooks the city of Esslingen and the twin towers of the church of Dionis and I in turn presented him with a carry coats water color called Sunrise Charter and this ended up being pretty fitting because when he visited last in 2007, he went out for a charter fishing trip with mayor Schramm at the time and caught the biggest fish on that day. So I told him that if he looks real closely in our picture we presented him, he can see himself in the back of that boat. In his remarks, mayor Sieger reiterated that one of the primary goals of our twin city relationship are the student exchanges. While there were 12 students involved in the middle school student exchange that comes up this summer, there were 13 Esslingen students that could not be matched and last year we did not send any high school students in the student exchange, only the two students from Esslingen came to Sheboygan for the first semester. I pledged that we would work with our partners and people to people in the local schools to try to rectify this imbalance in the student exchanges for future years. So if you or any of the viewing public know of some students that would be interested in either a middle school or a high school exchange to Germany, we'd like to talk to them so we can connect them and tell them what the procedure would be to follow through with that. Mayor Sieger is facing a reelection this fall, but if all goes well he plans to lead a delegation to Sheboygan in 2015.  They visited Sheboygan in 2010 and had such a great time when they were hosted by the Sheboygan fire department that they really wanted to do something special for our delegation. They provided us with a canoe trip on the Necker River and we went out in eight person canoes and paddled around the countryside and through the old village. German dinner at the fire station was also provided and we now have seen the beautiful city of Esslingen by foot, by bus and by water. We presented the Sheboygan fire department helmet and officer cap to them from the Sheboygan firefighters. My thanks go to the mayor's international committee for funding the mayor's flight and accommodations for this trip. I believe that we left a very favorable impression with our visit and we'll look forward to future exchanges with Esslingen. Our partnership exemplifies citizen diplomacy and global cooperation at a local level that helps to promote respect, goodwill and understanding of cultures and the appreciation of diversity. Okay, we'll go on to hearings then, Alderman Hammond. Okay, we have a hearing to amend the city zoning map to change the use district classification of various properties on St. Clair Avenue, North 14th Street and Erie Avenue from class NR6 to neighborhood residential to class UC Urban Commercial. Is there anyone that wishes to be heard? Is there anyone that wishes to be heard? Would you like to come forward? Please step up to the podium and state your name and address. It was Terry Bailey at about 1425 St. Clair Avenue. I'm just wondering if there's any consideration given to the people that live on the alley yet as far as parking, since that alley is going to be a dead end alley. How are we going to be able to get in and out of our garages? There's only two people on that alley and I don't see that there's enough room in that turnaround to get out. We have to turn around and go west instead of east and I don't see that there's enough room on that alley to do that. The way they're going to construct that. Is there anybody here from the construction company? Right now it's just a time for you to speak. We're going to be dressing this later and we'll bring that up under the discussion. All right, thank you. Terry, could you spell your last name for me? Bailey. B-A-I-L-E-Y. Okay, thank you. Is there anyone else wishing to be heard on this issue? Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to close. Second. Moved and seconded to close the hearing. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next we'll move on to the consent agenda that's items 3.2 through 3.17. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to accept and file all ROs, accept and adopt all ROCs and put all resolutions in ordinance upon their passage. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. The consent agenda is before us. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? I can mark you if you want me to just mark. Aye. I'm up to, I didn't get the result that I thought I clicked on. Okay, hold on. Can you refresh him? I can change that if you want, that's aye. Aye. All right. Done. 14 ayes. Motion passes. Next is communications and petitions. Item 4.1 will be referred to finance. Moving on to reports of officers. Items 5.1 through 5.6 will be referred to various committees under resolutions. Item 6.1 through 6.5 will be referred to various committees. Item 6.6 is a resolution by Alderman Hammond authorizing the submittal of an office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control Grant and approving the memorandum of understanding between the city of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County and Sheboygan Housing Authority. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First I'd make a motion to suspend the rules. Second. Thank you for that motion. All those in favor of suspension, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Under suspension, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to put the resolution upon its passage. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. The resolution is before us. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Signed, Joe. 14 ayes. Motion passes. Next is item number seven, reports of committees. Item 7.1 is an RC by law and licensing recommending that denying the taxicab driver's license number 0 3 1 1 based upon his failure to accurately reveal all relevant convictions on his application, his record of violations related to the license activity and his failure to cooperate with committee. Alderman Vanderwill. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move that the RC be accepted and adopted. Okay. Thank you for that motion and support. Under discussion. Is Daniel Donoth here this evening? He's not here. We did invite him to our committee on two separate occasions and he did not appear. Is there any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 14 ayes. Motion passes. Item 7.2 is an RC by law and licensing recommending denying the beverage operator's license 0 3 3 9 based on her failure to accurately reveal all relevant convictions on her application or record of violations related to the license activity and her failure to cooperate with the committee. Alderman Vanderwill. Thank you, I move the RC be accepted and adopted. Thank you for that motion and support. Under discussion. Is Jennifer Freeland here this evening? She's not here. We did invite her twice and she did not appear either time. Thank you. Any further discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll and passage? 14 ayes. Motion passes. Item 7.3 is an RC by law and licensing recommending granting various licenses. Alderman Vanderwill. I move that the RC be accepted and adopted. Okay. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. And opposed? Motion passes. Next we'll move on to ordinances. Items 8.1 and 8.2 will be referred to the public protection and safety committee. And then we'll move on to item number nine matters laid over. 9.1 is an RO number 28 of 1415 by the city planning commission recommending amending the city zoning map to change the use district classification of properties located at 1421 St. Clair Avenue, 1417 St. Clair, 1411 St. Clair, 1132 North 14th, 1126 North 14th, 1124 North 14th, 1120 North 14th and 1114 North 1220 Erie Avenue from NR6 to neighborhood residential to UC Urban Commercial. Alderman Billinger. Thank you, mayor. I move that we accept and file and pass the ordinance. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Well, I guess I'd like to see someone respond to the earlier gentleman's question. Chad, are you able to respond to that? Point of order, yes. Buttons aren't working. I think for the council standpoint, these are the properties that are associated with the redevelopment of the corner of 14th and Erie for the new CVS store. The entire development team is with us today. It might be worthwhile for the council's sake and for the gentleman that spoke for them to do a brief kind of overview of the project and what they're looking at. And maybe they as part of it can address the concern of the resident with the turning radius in the alley. So I would ask if you could open the floor to these gentlemen. So moved. Second. It's moved and seconded. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Very good. You want to step up? Good evening. My name is Richard Donner. I'm the attorney for the applicant, TMC Crawley, Wisconsin 2 LLC. They are the developer of the proposed CVS pharmacy that would be on the southwest corner of 14th Street and Erie Avenue. This, what we're here for tonight is a rezoning of eight of the 10 parcels that are a part of this site. They're currently zoned a neighborhood residential and we would, we're asking the council to rezone to urban commercial. The CVS as you know is a national pharmacy chain and the proposal is to build a roughly 13,000 square foot neighborhood pharmacy that would operate similar to the Walgreens across the street for 24 hours and have a drive through. We did have a neighborhood meeting on May 8th at the public library and got to meet the neighbors and got to listen to people's comments and some of their suggestions. And we were, we think we've been able to incorporate some of those into our submittal that for the approval of the site plan, the architectural review application that was submitted last week and will be before the plan commission and architectural review next week. In terms of, you know, addressing some of those concerns with the neighbors, they were concerned. Obviously the, there are two residential properties that are directly west of the site that, you know, they have logical concerns such as screening and we discussed that there will be a cedar fence built and trees built on the, I don't know if we've got a picture that might be easier to explain. So this is a site plan, just a rough site plan of the site. You see here, this is the western boundary. They're the two residential properties, excuse me. So we will be able to fence along the line here and plant trees along the property line. These will actually be on the CVS property but on the west side of the fence. So the neighbors will be looking at the fence and not the, excuse me, we're looking at the trees, not the fence. If you can see here, this is a little area that would roughly, I think it's 10 by 18. So roughly the size of a parking space that they've added so that the neighbors could in an attempt to address the neighbors' concerns regarding the vacated alley, so that they could do a Y turn out and back into that additional space and then exit towards 15th Street. We have the civil engineer here as well as the representative from the developer. We're happy to answer questions. Again, operations in terms of site plan and architecture are gonna be handled next week in front of the plan commission, the architectural review board, but we're certainly happy to answer any questions. Anyone else have any questions of the gentleman? I'm gonna be a little moved to make the turn it on just for us to get out on the ground. The property line, the property line is used by purchasing, once we're done with it, put the half of my property. Right, right, yeah.  Well, if you see, it's just sort of a notch that is kind of carved out of here. Right. Yeah, in terms of where there's a snow, do they plow it straight through, do you mean? Well, I guess I'm trying to understand your question. Right, okay. Sure. Right, well if you see, as we talked about, and this is, but again, be a little bit more of the operations that we can discuss at the plan commission as well. But if you see, as we talked about, one CVS is fine with allowing the snow to be piled up in that space and in the surrounding area. I think it's gonna be tight in the winter, but I think there's room, particularly with the driveways, backing each other to still accommodate. All right, I understand. If we have a winter like this one, where there's a lot of snow and it's cold and it sticks around for a while, there is a space to put it in that turnaround. There will also be additional area on either side. You can see where there's no trees right there. No, no, and we're happy to talk to the staff about that in terms of the plan of operation. Yeah. I just wanna make sure that it's good because you already build that and then all of a sudden it's fine, I can use it. Absolutely sir, I think that's a very legitimate concern and snow is, I mean, you can't be snowed in. I agree. Sure, no I think that, I think we have a plan to accommodate that and I think we can certainly listen to further suggestions you may have in terms of, where to put the snow? Are there any other questions by the Alderman? Just to address that comment, I think as part of the conditional use permit process that they're gonna be going through next week at the Planning Commission, we can address those concerns as a contingency or condition in the offer, in the middle of the project and get some type of agreement there worked out between both the CVS owner and the gentleman that's speaking in the back and we can take care of that as part of the conditional use process. Yeah, and we're representing tonight that will absolutely allow for that. Okay, the motion's on the floor, right? Motion's on the floor to accept and final and pass the ordinance. Okay, if there's no other discussion will the clerk please call the roll in the motion? 14 ayes. Motion passes. Next, we'll go on to item number 10. Notice to discharge the finance committee regarding resolution number four of 14-15, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. First, I'd like to move to have this discharged from the finance committee. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Motion to discharge is 14. Thank you, under discharge. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to put the resolution upon its passage. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion? Under discussion, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanted just to comment on this real briefly. This was held in finance because there was some question regarding a few bankruptcies that had happened with parties related to SMET investments and SMET construction. We brought in a gentleman today, Mr. Palachek, from SMET. We met as a finance committee and discussed those concerns. Attorney McLean also had an opportunity to speak with their legal counsel and address those concerns. So again, can't speak for the rest of the finance committee, but myself, I'm comfortable with it. The agreement outlines that there needs to be representation of financial capability, whether that be a letter of intent or something to that matter. So again, that's the reason we discharge this from finance. If they wanna get to developing this with all the processes and procedures of permitting that needs to happen, we wanna let them go on their way. So thank you. Thank you for that discussion. Alderman Boren. Thank you. Who brought this issue of the foreclosure lawsuits and that type of thing? Who brought that to the attention of the finance committee? Alderman Hammond. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, that would have been one of the finance committee members. Who was it? Alderperson Cotth. I wanna thank Alderperson Cotth for doing our homework on this. It's a shame that this wasn't brought up before. Had she not made discovery on this, this wouldn't have even came to light and even we would have not even had probably a legal opinion from our city attorney. And it's too bad that this has to come from a committee member and not our development director, our CEO or somebody. But I'm glad that we do have a couple of relicters on the Common Council and Alderperson Lussard and Cotth. And I just wanna thank them for their research.  First reason I'm not gonna be supporting it. I don't agree with selling this property for what is it, 10 bucks? When other properties around the city are being sold for asking and significant developments being made on that property, I find it hard to believe that this development is contingent on the developer getting a sweetheart deal on this. I think it sets a very bad precedence for future development. And I just find it hard to believe that this deal would hinge on not paying full asking for the property. Also, I have some concerns about what the development is gonna consist of in reading the 30 page agreement that I did. Part of it may be a business and the other part of apartments. With the way the situation is right now for their target for renting these apartments, young professionals, it's gonna take a substantial income, a substantial net income for them to be able to qualify to rent an apartment in Sheboygan for $1,200 a month. Also, for a $1,200 a month apartment, I find it, I don't see where anybody would wanna live in that location and pay $1,200 a month with a view of Martin Automotive across the street. It won't even, if they have their window open in the morning, they wouldn't even have to set their alarm clock. They could wait for Martin Automotive to change a tire to be able to wake up. So I'm not supporting it for those reasons. I'm all for development, but with some of the past legal history of this LLC and their members personally, I also personally looked that up today on CCAP. And I understand that that's part of the process, I guess, with some developers that they're taken to court quite often, but I'm just a little bit uncomfortable with some of the lawsuits that have come forth. And some of them, two of them have been filed against one of the members of the LLC recently. They haven't gone to court yet, but they've been recently filed. And I'm also concerned about the one up in Green Bay that's currently pending. For those reasons, I will not be supporting this tonight. Thank you. I was wondering if you could please give the Alderman a little report on those different matters. Sure. The primary matter was a foreclosure action brought by Johnson Bank against several entities that included SMET investments and included two principals in SMET investments, Chad and Scott, SMET, who had issued personal guarantees on the loan. That was a loan by Johnson Bank in the amount of, I think, 2.4 million, something like that, on an office building across the street from St. Mary's Hospital that the group GLR properties had purchased for investment that was leased and occupied by St. Mary's Hospital until fairly recently when the lease came up and they didn't renew the lease. As explained by Mr. Polichek from SMET Construction earlier this afternoon, they kept making the payments and tried to lease that property, get another tenant and were unsuccessful in doing that. The second parcel that was subject to the mortgage was a vacant piece, a development piece, as I understand, out of ways on a county highway that I don't know, Green Bay very well, county fee or something like that. And as it stands, the court ordered the foreclosure. Property was sold and it was purchased by Johnson Bank and there's currently an issue over the value that the Johnson Bank paid for those two properties. And so that issue is still pending because Johnson Bank did not waive deficiencies on the foreclosure action, there is currently based on the price that they proposed to buy it for in the sheriff's sale, there's like a $400,000 deficiency on the loan. That would be a personal liability of the guarantors as well as the other, there's several other LLCs that were parties to the deal. So that is being litigated by attorneys for Smith as well as the GLR properties whose same attorney is representing them all. They're arguing that the value should be higher so that the deficiency judgment would be lower, less potential personal obligation. The other lawsuit that Alderman Born was referring to was one filed not too long ago by Violia and it's a declaratory judgment action against I think it's one of the entities that Smith Construction has an interest in Riverwalk Development or something, Riverwalk Apartments and also against another entity that is involved in the particular project that again Mr. Polichek discussed at the Finance Committee meeting. Mr. Polichek's not familiar with that lawsuit as to what the suit is over but we're assuming it's a declaratory judgment over garbage collection fees issue. It's not a contest over ownership of property rights or anything like that. So those are the actions that I'm aware of. Thank you for that information. Chad, did you wanna address the council? I'd like to address a few points of Alderman Born's in regards to the rent of those apartments that were proposed. In the agreement it's proposed as a $2.5 million minimum investment. The reason that that's in there is because at this stage of the game we don't know what type of soil is underneath that parcel of the tripar that would allow for a larger development. We talked a lot about that during the negotiation stage as to ultimately we would like to see a four story development happen there with up to 48 apartments. However, if the soil underneath the ground doesn't allow that to happen they're gonna be forced to build a two story at 32 units. In talking about the price per unit it is safe to say that they are charging $1,300 if they build the four story and they have what they're calling penthouse apartments on the top floor which I believe is only eight apartments. The rest of them will be in line with what we feel the market can bear which is a two bedroom at 950 and a one bedroom at 850. We've looked, we know that we've talked to our employers and the number of people that are leaving this community young professionals because they cannot find housing in particular in the downtown with the new millennium and the Generation X is skyrocketing and there's a lot of interest in moving downtown. We don't have departments that they're looking for. If we wanna grow the community we all heard as part of the Harbor Center Business Improvement District plan that we need to address the housing situation. So it's an unfortunate matter that we're selling the land for $10 but we also looked at that as in order to make that perform a work and be able to move forward and do a development like this and really kind of set the threshold on the apartment rent in our downtown which has been pretty low because we only have subsidized units we would be forced to put some incentive in the project and our incentive in the project was the price of the land. Thank you. Thank you very much. Alderman Hammond. Thank you Mr. Mayor. One other note on that too. You know we talk a lot about or other person born mentioned that we're not getting financing or we're giving them financing. We do this all the time. This time we're giving them the land for $10 other times we call it TIF incentive. So this is not something that it's just a different way of helping them make this work. They're not coming to us asking us for TIF on an ongoing basis. The city's contribution to the project is this and then we move on. So we've done this in the past by using TIF to help development get off the ground. Thank you very much. Alderman Dina here. Thank you and I just want to make a response to one of Alderman Boren's points. I really dispute the characterization of this as a sweetheart deal. It makes it sound like something is not right. Like there's some sort of graft or corruption involved. And nothing could be farther from the truth as Alderman Hammond explained. In the course of business, this is these are the kinds of arrangements that we make in order to make a project actually saleable and doable. And I know Alderman Boren is extremely interested in development and in increasing the tax base in our community. So the characterization of this as a sweetheart deal puzzles me. Now I've been back in town since 1981 and I can't tell you the number of times that I've gone up and down 8th Street and looked at that ghastly piece of property sitting there. Unlandscaped, sloping hill, it's an eyesore. I am so thrilled that somebody is willing to take the tremendous risk of we don't even know if that soil is contaminated or not. So these folks are willing to bring in two separate plans and have one plan, hopefully the larger plan work, but if not, they're willing to build on contaminated property and move this project forward. And I don't know about all of you, but I was pretty excited about the business improvement district master plan. And then to actually have some activity going that will make that plan work to me is really important. So I understand people can have different opinions about it, but to call this a sweetheart deal really impunes, I think the honesty of this body and of our employees as we're trying to make our downtown actually look good and work. Thank you, Alderman Coss. Thank you, Mayor Vandersen. I will be voting on this resolution. I do feel that prior to signing the offer to purchase, we're gonna have a letter from the bank saying they're good for the money and it's a lot of money. And also as far as setting precedent, we've already set precedent in the past. So this isn't setting new precedent, it's already been done. So thank you. Thank you for those comments. Alderman Bellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I happen to sit on the finance committee and this afternoon we had the privilege of listening to Mr. Palachek address any concerns and questions that the committee had and he did so forthcomingly, answered everything. In addition to that, he also did a presentation for the committee on all their investments or their properties, their portfolio that they have, mainly in the Green Bay, Fox Valley area and it was quite impressive to say the least. And to have somebody from that area come here, want to invest in our community, I'm excited for it and I look forward to it and I'm gonna support it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Yes, Steve. Just to work off of Alderman Cotts' comments about the language in the agreement, although you're acting on a motion to approve signing the agreement, it does say prior to execution of the agreement by the city, the developer shall submit to the city evidence satisfactory to the city that the developer has the financial capacity to purchase the property and construct the project in the manner and by the term time set forth in this agreement. Doesn't call for binding finance and commitment but some letter from a financial institution that would indicate that they've got the wherewithal to do the project. I think it helps me and I would hope it would give the council some assurance that despite the issue with the foreclosure on these other properties that they're gonna be able financially to swing this project if it goes forward. Thank you very much. Any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Portiai. All right. That's okay. You're losing time. It's just slow. There it goes. 12 ayes, two nos. Motion passes. Next we'll go on to other matters, city attorney. 11.1 is an arrow by the city clerk submitting various license applications individuals for the period ending June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2016. That'll be referred to law and licensing. 11.2 is an arrow by the city clerk submitting various license applications businesses for the period ending June 30, 2015 and June 30, 2016. That also go to law and licensing. Next we have a closed session scheduled, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I moved the convening closed session on the exemption provided in 1985 1E, Wisconsin statutes for the purpose of deliberating the selling of public property where competitive and bargaining reasons require a closed session. Second. Moved and seconded to go into closed session. Will the clerk please call the roll? 14 ayes. Motion passes. We'll take a short five minute adjournment and reconvene. Thank you.