Hello, my name is Miklos Gaspard and I'm in charge of digital communications at the IAEA. We are live from Vienna, our headquarters, and this is the fifth session in a series of lives where we discuss what it is like to work at the IAEA and explain our recruitment process. We'll also answer some of the questions that many candidates have asked us about working for us. You too can ask us questions, just drop them in the comments section and we'll answer some of them at the end of this session. Today's topic is how hard to join the IAEA, what opportunities are available, where to look for them and much more. Given the topic, this time we have a panel of three HR professionals. First next to me, we have Jack Malapitan, recruitment officer from the Philippines. Then her boss, Pedro Alvarez-Crobacho from Spain, who is the head of our recruitment unit. And last but not least, we have Nancy Macharia from the UK. She's in charge of learning and staff development. So to begin with, Pedro, how can one join the IAEA? Thank you, Miklos. So there are many different opportunities. Sorry, thank you, Miklos. There are many different opportunities, many different ways to join the IAEA. We have an internship program, we have junior professional officers, we have fixed firms on temporary positions, consultancies, but it all starts in our career webpage. So our career webpage contains a lot of valuable information, a lot of resources also for applicants to support them throughout their journey to join the IAEA. So I would encourage everyone to check all the information that is available there. Also, you can follow us on social media, you can follow our employment page on LinkedIn, follow us on Twitter, and other platforms that we have a presence in. In any case, it's important that you understand that all of our applications are received throughout our e-recruitment system with SISTALEO. So what kind of profiles are we looking for? Thank you. So we are a technical organization, so of course we are looking for a lot of candidates, talented candidates with a technical background there. However, this is not the only target, so this is not our only objective. We have a lot of vacancies in those areas, in the areas of nuclear science and technology. But we also have a lot of vacancies in other areas of the organization, legal, human resources, IT professionals, management, finance. So we have a variety of offers that are there for all applicants. We have around 200 staff vacancies per year, but we also have a number of opportunities as interns and also non-staff, like consultants, etc. So all in all, we have around 500 applications every year. Thank you, that's a lot of applications. So Jacqueline, once somebody submits their application, what happens next? Okay, so once a vacancy closes, the hiring manager with the support of human resources reviews all the submitted applications and comes up with a shortlist. So depending on how long this shortlist is, we may also conduct pre-assessments. Pre-assessments can be in the form of asynchronous video interviews or written assessments or proctored assessments. So these pre-assessments are not compulsory steps in the process. However, once we have a stronger shortlist, we proceed to panel interviews and then we also conduct reference checks. For more senior positions, we also have psychometric and ability testing. So that's a lot of steps. And I know as a hiring manager, i.e. a supervisor of a new hire, there can be between 200 and 300 applicants. So how long does the process take? Okay, so compared to the private sector, our processes usually take longer because for one vacancy, we sometimes get 300 to 400 applications. So it takes time to review all of them. However, our processes take about six to eight months, but we're constantly trying to optimize this process. Thank you. Petru, coming back to you, how would you describe the ideal candidate? Okay, so... Police. So, yes, of course, it all depends on the vacancy that we're publishing. So we have the description of the ideal candidate. It is specified in each of our vacancies. But of course, we have also a number of competencies and values that are transversal to all of our vacancies. The IAEA uses a competency framework, which is very similar to the one used at the UN, which encompasses three main values, four core competencies, and 11 functional competencies. So the ideal candidate, it's mainly those or those persons who can adhere to those values, who can relate to those values and who can demonstrate that are competent in those competencies that are described on the vacancy notice and also those which apply to the whole of our positions, the other core competencies. So this may sound new to some people. So, Jackie, what should they do to prepare? How can you prepare yourself best for a process like this with the IAEA? Okay. So first, I would recommend to the candidates to be prepared, read about what the IAEA does, or even dive into the projects that the divisions are doing to get to know us more. Second, I would really recommend to candidates to tailor their application to the position they're applying for. Take time to prepare your application. So it's easier for the hiring manager to see that you're a good fit for the position. And third, we have a lot of resources available, such as these live sessions. We also have webinars on our webpage where we talk about the recruitment process at the IAEA. We also talk about how to give a very good competency-based interview. So we welcome you to check out these resources. And lastly, if you don't succeed the first time, just keep trying. It's a very competitive process, but we have a lot of success stories of applicants who got in maybe on the second or third try. Thank you. Perhaps we could talk just a bit more about competency-based interviews, which may be new to some. Again, for me as a hiring manager, I know that some people who seem very good in their written tests just don't know how to handle competency-based interviews. So if one of you could perhaps just discuss that. Pento? Okay. So I can take that, yes. Competency-based interviews are pretty specific. It's broadly used in the private sector, also in the UN, yeah. And competency-based interviews focus on a candidate's previous experience as a matter to, or as a way to demonstrate how they would perform in the job in the future, yeah. So competency-based interviews are usually based on questions about the previous experience of a candidate. So questions, competency-based interview questions are often starting with tell us about the time or give us an example of your previous experience about this particular aspect. How did you manage to implement this particular project? How did you communicate a tough information or a sensitive information to your team, these kind of questions, yeah. And the answers of the candidates should focus on their previous experience as a way to demonstrate that they're competent, that they can actually do the job in the future, yeah. Thank you very much. So now we've learned a lot about the recruitment process. What happens once you join the IAA? So we have with us Nancy, who as I mentioned earlier our head of learning and development. So what can a candidate expect when they arrive at the IAA? First, we begin before they arrive at the IAA. So once you'll accept your offer, we begin to reach out to you to prepare you to make your way to the IAA. This could be in Vienna, Tokyo, Monaco, New York or in Toronto. But either way, we will be beginning to onboard you, give you information about the duty station because we would want you to be successful. Having gone through this process, the Jackie and Pedro outline, we want you to be successful. So we anticipate you're coming to us. On arrival, there will be an onboarding process that you will do with HR and an induction that you will have with your manager. There's also a orientation course for newcomers to the agency. And this is not only a face-to-face portion that talks about the things that Pedro was talking about, our values and our competencies and our ethical stance. But we will also then have little trips to other places around the building, part of our laboratory, so you can understand the fullness of what the agency does and the agency's history. We also introduce you to our performance management system to set you up for success. We will also take you through a walkthrough of our internal communications pages so you know where to find information. And of course, there are videos on benefits and entitlements that you can look at. And all the way beginning with Thaleo, once you accept that offer, a lot of that information begins to open up for you. And so we do anticipate our candidates and we do want you to be successful when you join the agency. Sorry, for sure, as you've heard, we spend a lot of time selecting you. So we wanna make sure you are successful. So Nancy, part of that is that we continue to help you learn. Can you tell us a bit about that? Sure. So what do we offer in terms of learning? Like I said, it begins with the induction process. And then in terms of more formal learning, there's on-the-job learning. Pedro talked about the CBI or the behavior-based interviews where we look at your past skills. But we're also saying, what does that look like within the agency? And your manager and others will take their time to ensure that you understand what is expected of you. And of course, other things like our own internal processes there's training on that and using our internal tools. We also have a range of trainings related to our values and our competencies and also more broadly on work and life balance itself. We have some external learning opportunities, but some of the greatest opportunities that we have are actually within functioning in your role. So we have things like the Scientific Forum and other places that we can get involved that will give you the opportunity to be able to be of value, but also learn from your colleagues and also on cross-functional teams, lots of projects around that and opportunities sometimes to be reassigned for short-term into other posts where you can continue to learn and to grow. We've also partnered with people like LinkedIn with a large portfolio of e-learning. So we are definitely investing in your continued learning and performance. Many thanks Nancy for that explanation. So now turning to the questions that we have received in the last few minutes. First one, Pedro, let me ask you this. It's about references. So how much do references count in the application process? And does it matter whether one's references are internal or external? So IA specific references. Thank you, thank you for that question. So reference checks are conducted at the end of the process, yeah? So I would say it's just a confirmation. It is an added layer of checks that we do on candidates to make sure that we're actually making the best hiding choice. So they count in the sense that, of course, reference are carried out in confidence and when they are positive, then of course we confirm the selection. When they're not that positive, then we look into that a little bit more in detail, yeah? They do not, I mean, we do not really differentiate between internal or external. So any reference is a good one for us because we trust that they're doing good faith and honestly, yeah? So that's, it's important for us. We have now externalized this service to the UN Service Center on Human Resources Services. It's an organization called 1HR, which is based in Bonn and they're specialized in this process and they're carrying out now references for us. Thank you. Jackie, the next question relates to something you talked about. Somebody has asked how detailed should the CVs be when they apply? Okay. So all applications are received through our teleo system where candidates are supposed to fill in the personal history form and there you would find different areas that you need to fill out. So if you attach a CV, it's optional for us. It's not a requirement, but as a recruiter, I would highly suggest that you craft a very good letter of motivation as well. And as I mentioned, tailor your application to the position you're applying to. It's very easy to see generic applications and if a hiring manager is reviewing hundreds of applications, it's not exactly easy to see how fit you are to the role if you don't tailor your application. Thank you. That's very clear. Nancy, let me ask you the next question. It's about the level of nuclear expertise we require from our candidates. Somebody's asking, as a safety engineer working outside the nuclear domain, I see that many of the vacancies posted by the IA require experience within nuclear. Would the IA encourage and consider applications from professionals aspiring to transition into the nuclear field through the IA? Thank you. That's a really interesting question. In the light, I think of what Pedro was talking about the competency-based interviewing and behavioral-based, and then I'll also touch upon the motivational letter because I think it's important for candidates to indicate to the best of their ability what their true expertise is, but also what they have learned in the past or what some of their aspirations are. So if you're working in a similar field, I would say please go ahead and apply, making it clear how your skills, current skill sets or current experiences are transferable into that position. It's not always a one-on-one match, but very often, because we detail down into the competencies, you may find that the competencies that we require will be the competencies that already are exhibiting the role that you have. So we try not to penalize people for lack of opportunity if they meet the minimum requirements in terms of knowledge, skills, and the attitudes that require for the job. Thank you. Let me ask a follow-up on that. So when the job description says, experience in nuclear field required, then is that... Sorry, let me start again. So to follow up on that, when the job description, the vacancy notice, says that experience in the nuclear field is required, then could somebody like the person who has the question... Sorry. If the word is required, then it is required. If it's something that's desirable, then that's desirable. And that's why we're saying, please do, in your motivation, let us talk about the truth about what it is that you have studied, you have learned, you've been exposed to, and put in your motivation letter, your aspirations. You never know, as we review those words, whether your base competencies are able to match, but required is required, and desirable is definitely a different thing altogether. The next couple of questions we've received are related to people's backgrounds again. So Pedro, are we interested in people with academic background, and that other person is asking whether experience in nuclear power plants is something that we consider irrelevant? So absolutely. Academic experience is something valuable for us, and even sometimes we specify that in vacancy notice. Of course, we cannot use a blanket approach. This statement doesn't serve for all vacancies. We have to read very carefully the vacancy notice, and then understand which ones, for which ones this aspect is, let's say, an asset or something valuable. On the contrary, for other vacancy notice, hands-on experience, practical experience in the field is required because the function demands that, yeah? The experience in a nuclear power plant is highly appreciated at the agency, and is also a skill that we are looking for a lot, especially women who are working in this area. This is an area, gender parity is a subject, it's an important subject at the moment at the agency, and yeah, we are hoping to attract more women with experience in nuclear power plants. Now, just to clarify that, the experience in nuclear power plants is just for the positions relevant to that field of work? Of course, of course. As I said at the beginning, this is all specified in the vacancy notice, so the focus for applicants should be the vacancy notice. This is the definition of the perfect candidate, the requirements are specified there, and then in general, a lot of our positions require the experience in nuclear power plant, of course, mainly in the any department, but also sometimes it's valuable for safeguards or NS, yeah? Thank you. Thank you. Jackie, one of our views is asking if we have remote positions, so positions that they can work for home. There are some consultancy opportunities that are home-based, but I would say a majority of our positions are based in our offices, most of them here in Vienna. It's always specified in the vacancy notice if we allow, if the position is here at the headquarters or in other duty stations or home-based. Thank you. The next question, perhaps Nancy, you could answer this. It's about learning really. Is it possible to get feedback about the recruitment process for candidates who lost, I mean, who didn't get selected? As this would help them learn for later. We keep forgetting this button. Given the large number of applicants that we have, we would like to provide feedback, but it just physically is not possible to provide feedback to all candidates who have applied for a job, but it would be something we would want to do, but it really is just not feasible for us given the large number of applicants. We hope that you will understand. Thank you. So next, we got a question on the, we said we have several hundred vacancies, but they said they look on our website right now and they only see 22. So is there somewhere else to look than our website, Pedro? No, no, there is anywhere else. There is nowhere else. So actually all of our vacancies are published on the career webpage. It maybe just happened that right now are only 20 at the stage of publication, but there are many other vacancies which are ongoing. So we talk about 200 staff vacancies over the year, more or less. A little bit more, I would say, but yeah, it's normal that in any given time, at the stage of publication are something like maybe 30, 40, 20, like now. Thank you. Jackie, the next question is for you. Is time spent doing PhD in nuclear engineering counts as experience when you have the number of years of experience somebody needs? It really depends on the job you're applying to. So for some positions, it is a valuable experience for us, but if you're applying for a position where it's not required, then it may not be as valuable as in other positions. We would highly recommend that if you're studying PhD and you're doing projects as part of your PhD studies, please indicate that in your personal history form as well and highlight there what you're currently working on, what you're currently, what's part of your study so that it can be evaluated as part of your experience. Thank you. Nancy, we have an applicant from or potential applicant from Libya who is wondering whether nationality counts in any way and whether it would be to his advantage or disadvantage to be from a country like Libya. I think Pedro mentioned about our gender parity and we are particular about that, but we also want good representation globally and especially from developing countries. So we encourage applicants from around the world and let me just repeat again, gender parity is important for us and so is geographical representation, so we seek actively to have applicants from a broad range around the world. Thank you. There's still quite a few questions that people are asking, so I suggest we'll be gone. I'm not stuck here. Pedro, how is pre-screening done? Is it done by people or some system eliminating candidates based on keywords? That's a very good question as well. We're not at the artificial intelligence era at the IAA yet. So actually it's a little bit of both. So when you apply for a vacancy, you need to, the system asks you to answer the number of questions. We call that filtering questions. So these questions are a translation of what the minimum requirements are. So the minimum requirements are translated into these kind of questions and then all candidates need to answer these questions. So the system recognizes which candidates have all these minimum requirements or which ones do not have all of them or only part of them. So we still look at those candidates who even if they have indicated that they do not meet the minimum requirements, they come very close. So just to make sure that no one falls between the cracks and also that making sure that everyone has, it's given you regard, yeah? But yeah, the initial stage of the prescreening is based on these filtering questions that the system recognizes, acknowledges the answers of the candidate. Then after that, of those who have indicated that they meet all the minimum requirements, then the recruiter together with the hiding money or looks at those applications and they come back with the shortlist with the proposed shortlist of the best, let's say the top candidates within that category. Thank you. So perhaps important to emphasize that it's not enough to tick the box that you meet a particular requirement. You also have to explain how you meet that requirement, right? I mean, I sometimes the hiring manager find myself not understanding why somebody would have ticked that box because I don't find details in the rest of the application. So next question, Jackie. We just post a CV and motivation letter ascending to the agency when there's no advertisement of a particular post. So we really need to hire against a particular vacancy and all hiring managers only look at the vacancy, all the applicants to a particular vacancy requirement. So we would highly request to please apply against the vacancy so that we can, as Spedra mentioned, so nothing falls into the cracks. We all review applicants from the same system, not through LinkedIn or through email. So having said that, we sometimes have these pipelines, right? Could you talk a bit about that? Yes, I'll answer that. So yes, sometimes we have pipelines. Mainly we have those pipelines for genetic job descriptions. So a pipeline is a kind of vacancy notice, but for which we do not have a specific vacancy to fill yet. So the purpose of this vacancy notice, or so to say pipelines, is to generate a reserved list of candidates, of talent that we can call upon in case of need. If I remember correctly, we have a couple of pipelines ongoing at the moment. We had recently one for admin support because it's quite generic. And then we also have a couple for cancer therapist, quite general, also a women leader in nuclear energy and another one for nuclear applications, if I remember correctly. So those are generic positions, not necessarily for staff positions, for a fixed position or staff positions. Sometimes we call, we issue a pipeline also for experts, because we also call upon the assistance of experts at the agency. Thank you. And so what happens?  How will they hear from us? And then do they then need to apply when a particular vacancy comes up that's only available for these people? How do we use that pipeline and how is it useful to apply? I'll answer that as well. So yes. So the terms of the pipelines and the purpose of the pipeline is really, it's indicated in the pipeline itself, yeah, in the vacancy itself. So sometimes we just use these pipelines to generate this with our list, that we use every time there is a temporary position that we need someone. Sometimes it's just to generate a list of experts in, for instance, cancer therapy. And then we call upon them when we need them for some roundtables or expert groups, yeah. So in general, the way to proceed is that you submit your application. Usually you receive, normally you receive an acknowledgement for your application and then there is some kind of at least an informal interview. So we have some kind of a gathering or a video conference with the person responsible for this pipeline and they can this just to understand a little bit if the person has the right profile. And then afterwards, candidates can inform either you are just placed on the reservist or you are called upon if there is an opportunity where you can participate. Thank you very much for the explanation. Nancy, a couple of quick questions, all sort of related. Is there an age limit for applicants? Is English language always required? And whether qualified candidates from a developing country would be considered with high priority? That's what we call American question in interviewing. So I think it's three questions in one. So the first one was age related. You'll be pleased to know that in the agency we do not discriminate against age. However, the retirement age for the UN is 65. So please be aware that that is a retirement age and we comply with that just like the rest of the UN. The second question was English. The second question was about English. And again, if you read the vacancy, it's really important to read the vacancy notice because it will tell you which language and it may tell you whether other languages are desirable or not. But for all intents and purposes English is the main language that we use in the agency. But we do value other languages because we serve member states. And the last one was whether we give high priority to developing countries? As we said, we are looking for more and more candidates, staff members. Let me say that. We would like to have more staff members from a wider representation globally and especially from developing countries. We will still, of course, balance that against hiring the best of what's out there. And so please apply. Please apply. You never know when it's going to be your turn in any process. So please apply. Thank you for that. So, Jack, let me ask you the last question. So regarding the recruitment process, is the application stored somewhere in the system and can be considered for future applications? So for instance, if I apply for a post, I don't get it, but my application is a fit for an exposition, will I be taken into consideration automatically? Okay, so you will not be considered automatically, but there are cases wherein we search our database for potential applicants for positions. So when we do active sourcing, we may reach out to you to provide you to apply to a position, but regardless, you would still need to fill in an application to be considered. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And thank you all for joining this session. We did not get the chance to ask or ask our panel all the questions, but partly that's because some of your questions relate to to episodes that we've had in the past. So in the in the comments in the description, you'll find links to our previous episodes. Please watch these including about opportunities for young professionals, which was what some of you were asking about. We are also interested to hear from you on what other topics you would like us to discuss. Again, put this in the comment section. And in the meantime, if you have not done it yet, subscribe to our Agile newsletter and check out our page, I.org, slash employment. Stay tuned and see you next month.


So we've just concluded the conference on the global digital content market. One of the main objectives here was to raise our level of information about what is happening. The speed of developments in this market is extraordinary. It's so rapid that a certain non-transparency arises, not because it's a deliberate non-transparency but simply because it's very difficult to follow each development. One hardly catches up with one before the next arrives. So I think we have succeeded in raising the information base of everyone as a consequence of the conference. I think one of the very pleasing outcomes of the conference was that there's a widespread recognition that we all have right across the world, regardless of where we find ourselves and regardless of the level of development, more that unifies us than that divides us in this area. We are all interested and everyone expressed that. We are all interested in seeing creativity flourish, in seeing the creative industries flourish, in seeing economic sustainability for the creative industries, in seeing widespread distribution of an access to content which will come from a very functional market. And that is, I think, a great outcome and this applies to right across the board, to all countries. We saw representation from all continents and industries and flourishing industries in all continents. So this was very pleasing.


Hey friends, I'm at the character warehouse outlet on by man, and it seems very busy today But we're gonna check out some merchandise Veronica's been getting tweets and comments about 499 Hanuman mansion hats and she wants to build her hat collection So I came over to see what I can store. Hopefully there's something in there, but let's go do this And it is very crowded Holy moly And look at this sweet score Right as you walk in the Orangeboro Dunium Burke Originally $228. It's only $113 You put like that, but it's a little bit out of the price range for today. I Wonder if she would use this for her hat collection Look at Mickey just chilling on the beach 299. This is originally 2499. I don't know why she wouldn't like that But let's be honest, you know, she wants that Hanuman mansion hat bad. I hope it's here This is all the hat Selection's here. They have Jedi training. Oh, may the fourth be with you. Now, that's an awesome hat It's only 799 and then they got this furry very furry Mickey hat. Oh Wow, I think I found one. I think I literally found the only one left on the counter Oh, my lord, it's a close-back. This might not be a Veronica. This might be a my hat This isn't the one she was thinking of but I'm excited for it And it is only 499 This is definitely a men's hat But I like it. I might get it. I might get it Also check out this forever your Mickey shirt. That's pretty cool 999 They also have some other very cool Mickey shirts this one. I think Veronica would like a lot 1499 Maybe a Lot more than may the fourth be with you 2018 shirts 999 Look at that they get the Millennium Falcon on the back going to distance Last time I was here Veronica was real upset because she watched the video and she's seen that they had this Tower of terror bag Only at the tip top club and it's only $1.99 and she was like, why did you get me that? So now that I see that they have more in stock. I think I'm gonna have to get that for her. It's $1.99 Hold the phone. Yip's gonna love one of these the tea cup skirts. Look at this These she's been wanting forever $78 originally only 24.99 and they have a whole bunch of them when they also have this little cute top That's $78 originally 24.99 now I Might have to get one of these for her. I don't want to but I might have to I might have to put my hat back And look at this boardwalk shirt. That's awesome. It's only $10 originally $32.99 You don't see much boardwalk like boardwalk merchandise at the outlets Lots of good clothing deals, but I think we should check out some of the household items because those are always fun Look at this set of bowls for 24.99 We got little Mickey's inside them and you get one two three four five six. That's a good deal We got a bunch of them And I think this is a new picture frame I haven't seen before Very cool to $1.99 and I'd actually not put a picture I'd probably just keep Pinocchio and his friends in there because I think that's really cool It's usually we jump over to the coffee mugs because it's a $5.99 deal And you know basically any coffee mugs are $5.99, but not today a $1.99 Star Wars coffee mugs And they got a whole bunch of them They do have this one adventures club right here. That's $5.99 and the low-carb monster energy drink Let somebody put I'll pick that up for them We have to do our part You also have a pretty sweet Walt Disney World photo album I just like all the pictures on the outside the Haunted Mansion. Oh, look at that monorail shot It says $19.99, but there's no red sticker on it and I checked all of them So I don't know exactly how much it is, but if it was $19.99, I would guess it's probably either $5.99 or $9.99 I'll see if I can find somewhere and ask them Yep $5.99 I was so right While I was roaming around I found a hat Veronica made like and I'm modeling it off for her right now It's a goofy ad. Look at that. It's $4.99. It's got its little goofy's ears. Garsh And let's just take a moment here to appreciate that these Olaf hats or Olaf ears are only a dollar 99 and hair extensions Are $4.99 Sorry, yep, no hair extension today, and I guess we'll check up on the pins Why don't they have that light on I think it'd be so cool Just seeing the light light up and the pins spin round and round I see a world in this lodge pen for $5.99 also a Grand Floridian pen for $5.99 Other than that, I mean there's not many other new ones except for those ones I mean I've seen the Nightmare before Christmas Boot before and that's $5.99 and the rest of Star Wars that we've showed off before It's still a good deal though They got some gloves here some fancy gloves for $10 and also this I don't know what that is is that a headband I think it's a headband. This doesn't fit right though And I know we pointed out before that they sell the mini ears here at regular price But I found a set of discounted ears actually These big old puffy mini ears right here and guess how much they are $7.99 pretty cool And also this mini snow cap I don't know how much this is. Well, it's only $4.99 Make way make way Moana $9.99 this is a kids shirt though, but I still love Moana Wow, look at that as I was walking around they restocked the purses and that Shanghai Disney That's a purse. Yeah, it's a purse It's only $9.99. I might have to get that too. I'm feeling gracious today Oh, and they brought out some bigger Dunia Burks, too These ones are though $133.99 the cheaper than those ones Huh Look at Princess Tiana doll $14.99 She looks beautiful They also have these Disney showcase collections. This is Aurora right here. I don't know if I like it too much I don't like the way she looks It's $54.99 And I don't know what's going on inside of her stomach or dress there looks like the castle But I thought it was like a snow globe. I don't know. I don't know if I can say I'm a fan Well, I think it's time for me to cash out I'm gonna have to put back The Haunted Mansion hat even though I wanted it, but at the same time I got the bowler hat thing going and somebody else will like it because it is the last one and Yep, get in the tea cup skirt Look at that In the checkout line, they do have these flower and garden festival 2018 minis.  I mean, holy moly Behind the counter they have a bunch of Alex and Annie's and I didn't see any that I really thought stand out except for This Oswald one 1799 I like Oswald And that's about it Came in looking for a hat for Yip didn't find a hat for Yip found a hat for me put the hat back But then walked out with a tea cup skirt. It's usually how things go So I hope you had a lot of fun.


During our research, we have stumbled across countless legends and accounts from history which tell of ancient giants. Not only legends, but photographic evidence and an equal amount of initial newspaper reports of their discovery. This often accompanied with the mention of the Smithsonian Institutes, insatiable interest in such finds, and then an inevitable erasure of said finds from future research. Rarely has an ancient giant been allegedly found, with the remains seemingly slipping the net of said institute's attention, making it into mainstream research and an allies collection before the Smithsonian was able to make said discovery vanish from history. Captua being one of these particular finds, which not only matches the initial claims, but has remained in mainstream historical research. Tales of a two-headed, 11-foot-tall giant are not only corroborated by photographic evidence, but the actual mummified corpse of the giant himself. The initial discovery of this incredible being was made back in 1673. An ogre or two-headed giant is said to have assaulted a party of Spanish sailors who fortunately overcame said giant with cunning. After trapping the giant, the sailors planned on killing it, fearing repercussions if released. The cause of the giant's death, however, has long been debated, but what cannot be denied is the astonishing remains which eventually made their way to London. The mummy then vanishes from the history books for nearly 400 years, reappearing in 1914 on the shores of the Birnbeck Harbor in the UK. The mummy inevitably became an extremely popular attraction, with people traveling from thousands of miles away to come and peer at this once monstrous two-headed giant. It remained in the public eye until 1959, a rare exhibit which escaped the clutches of those who would wish to hide it, with many photographs and other research projects allowed to be undertaken on the giant's remains by Lord Howard. This incredible giant, thanks to the Lord's dedication to said curiosity, remains in existence within the public's domain. An undeniable verification of a lost race of giants, which we have long claimed to have had first-hand experience of in their past discovery. A magnificent three-meter tall mummified corpse of an ancient giant does indeed exist, due to its age, and primitive technologies available to said claimed sailors, when initially discovered the possibility of it being an elaborate stitched-together hoax has been seemingly debunked, but also ignored by mainstream media due to the controversial nature of said finds. Who was Captois? Was he part of a race of beings in Patagonia? A race we have merely seen these remains of? Is the corpse authentic? If not, how was he constructed to such an astonishing detail so far back in history? Captois is undoubtedly highly compelling. The Nubian pyramids, a series of hundreds of pyramidal structures and ruins, making up part of the ancient cities of Kush and Maroway. The structures incorporate styles from many different, equally ancient ruins from around the world, displaying to all the reach of this once-global civilization. The first recorded settlers in this part of Sudan date back as far as 300,000 years, with the civilization that is claimed to have built and indeed painted these structures are dated as far back as 4,000 years. The city of Kush is renowned for having the finest pottery in all the Nile Valley, evidence of the builder's past capabilities. But what we found the most interesting about the ruins is a decorative piece found within one of these ancient structures within the ancient city of Maroway. Amongst over 200 sandstone pyramids, a depiction can be found within, a rather peculiar mural. Like that of the ancient depictions of Gilgamesh, repeatedly showing carrying an adult male lion like a kitten, this image in fact shows an ancient giant carrying an elephant in each hand. And although this is clearly a remarkable detail, it is not the only features of note that are to be found within the picture. First brought to the attention of mainstream study in 1821 by the French mineralogist Frédéric Calus, it has since been noted that the giant's features were seemingly Caucasian in appearance, with his hair a light red in color, something we have touched upon in the past, with witnessed testimonies of ancient remains of red-headed giants being reportedly found worldwide, in particular Love Lock Cave. Thus one wonders, could this be a true depiction of not only the builders of the Nubian pyramids, but possibly Giza's Great Pyramids and the many other either publicly studied or covered up structures found around the world. It is a possibility which we find incredibly compelling. We have previously covered the astonishing ancient fort known as Sagiria that can be found within Sri Lanka, an ancient sanctuary once constructed atop an enormous geological feature. Such an incredible feat in architectural engineering is clearly testament to our distant ancestors past capabilities. With an entire ancient settlement once constructed around its base, this ancient fort provided such high levels of security, it would have been an obvious choice for re-inhabitation. These re-inhabitations, as mentioned before, would have allowed for these ancient people to have prospered and thus successfully leave their mark upon history. However, these more modern lodgers have been attributed as the builders of said sites, regardless of any explanation as to how remaining absent. Another of these intriguing forts is known as Harihar Fort, found within India. This ancient fort also displays many of the telltale signs we often look for, to indicate whether an ancient ruin is actually far older than modern academia are claiming. The staircase once effortlessly and precisely cut into the sheer rock fates, intriguingly absent a support brace that was once also attached to the rock face. Atop the fort, numerous caverns once carved out of the formation, along with a number of ancient stone structures that, although we feel were also left by lost civilization, were possibly left by a later inhabitation than the original construction. This hypothesis being based upon the levels of erosion witnessed upon the stairways, compared to the much better condition of these surviving mortarless structures atop. Indeed, although the stairway has all but eroded away in some areas, and experienced heavy erosion everywhere else, the stone structures found atop the fort, due to their considerably better condition, we feel were seemingly built much more recently, yet still containing a level of build precision our more recent ancestors were lacking. Regardless of the extreme erosion present at the fort, along with the precision ancient masonry found atop, according to academia, Harihar Fort was built during the Pankaj Panchariya period, a mere 400 years ago. Who built these astonishing ancient forts within ancient India? When were they built? How did they build them? With so many unexplained anomalies, along with the vast array of academic contradictions, we find Harihar Fort highly compelling.


Discuss a bit about the approach and method by the UPSC interview board. Basically, people fear that there may be a lot of pressure, grilling, candidates are always worried about that what the interview board is going to do. So, one thing with the discussion we have come out, that is the interaction which the UPSC does. Do you have any such situation when you feel that UPSC does the grilling or it is cooperative? How do you find the board? One of the members had just asked me a question in the early starting that what is that and I was not able to answer that one because it was obvious that I was having for back. So, he asked me that question after that he kept quiet and then I was like giving with others and members and then again that member again asked me the same question and I get a great answer. I am not able to recall then he asked me to resubstituted question and again he was asking the same question. So, I am not able to recall. So, it was like he was giving me the same question and I was spontaneously thinking that I am not able to recall that. Actually, they were trying to check whether you by repeating such question are you getting irritated or you are going to lose your balance. It means I am not knowing this question and this question is so important. So, basically, they do not have any wrong intents and but they want to see that when you will be in public, when you will be in the job. So, will you be able to really manage this much of the stress?  So, these methods and mechanisms are not to basically knock out but really to help check out. Yeah, check exactly what the qualities you have in that. So, we can consider that board is cooperative. Intention is very clear. What do you say? So, I said that it is a prime thing that a candidate should understand is that the board is there to select you, not to reject you. But in the process of conducting a stressful interviews, that is also part of the package. But what you need is to understand this that you are not going to be judged on these factual questions on the stress or how you react to that stress. That will help a lot in the entire process. You are right. You are right. Basically, in the framework of mind which a candidate enters the interview board is very important. If they feel that no, I will be rejected. As he also came up with that, he said that in the first interview, he was quite fearful whether what can be the psychology of the board. Are they going to select me or reject me? So, candidates should not go with this framework of mind that they are here to reject me, but they have to select me. And with the positive framework, if the candidate enters the board, he would be able to perform better in that case. Right? Don't forget to like, share and subscribe to our channel. And press the bell icon to never miss an update.


What's up guys today? We have a very exciting podcast with Alex James and myself We talk about the FTX scandal some conspiracies around that and as well we talk about our overall trading and the overall market So stay tuned and this is super super good one and enjoy. Cheers guys What's up guys? We're back with another episode of the after hours podcast Today we have a huge topic to talk about Everyone in like the trading world the crypto world It's kind of been like the main thing going on and it's this whole FTX scandal So Alex wanted to come on and kind of talk about it a little bit. So yeah, so I mean, this is some crazy stuff Man, so I know there's a lot of videos out there I know there's a lot of people talking about it But I kind of want to give you guys what happened from a trader's perspective and what kind of the reality of the situation is So the way you have to think about it is FTX if you want to kind of compare to the real world Is like a bank. So it's like a bank of America So you store your money in Bank of America and they give you a certain interest rate And then what the bank does is they take that money They lend it out in like a mortgage and that's how they make their nut, right? But what FTX was doing is they were taking your money They were lending it out to a hedge fund Run by FTX a CEO called SPF for short run by SPF's girlfriend Okay, and that and what they ended up doing is they ended up leveraging that money. So they borrowed against it So let's say they had ten billion dollars that they lent to the hedge fund The hedge fund borrowed against it 40 billion or whatever the hell the number is we don't know yet And then started gambling on random things and pretty much lost all the money That's it's like they lost all the money There's articles coming out every single day that they use customer funds to buy penthouses in the Bahamas They use customer funds to you know get the naming rights of the FTX stadium in Miami and It was basically a big scheme because sure banks do the same thing. They take your money They lend it out, but they don't lend it out and you know try to Invest in bankrupt companies. They don't do it do all this crazy stuff So the backstory is there was an article that came out. I think it was on coin desk And the article said that FTX and this hedge fund Almeida Alameda Alameda whatever are more related than people think Then what people have to keep in mind is FTX is the number two exchange the number one exchange finance Then came out and said, you know what we have a stake in FTX. We're just going to sell our stake We don't want any part of this the rumor is that FTX was going behind the scenes to the US government And lobbying them which is basically legally bribing them to create laws and rules that would favor FTX and Not favor Binance, right? So They found out that this was also happening and they said, you know, we don't want any part of some guy that's trying to cheat us Or trying to scheme us So whatever stake we have in FTX because Binance is an early investor. We're going to sell it on the open market Now if you bring in so much supply into the market Basic economics says if there's elevated supply and no demand price goes down So Alameda the hedge fund that knew this said, you know, no, no, no, no, don't sell it on the open market We'll privately buy it from you at $22 a coin And Binance like no, I'm going to sell it on the open market, right? I'm going to sell it on the open market It's kind of smart. He knows that if he sells it on the open market, they're screwed Yeah So that day that that happened FTX had six billion dollars in withdrawals, right?  So what ended up happening is the next day Binance comes out and says FTX reached out to us because they have severe liquidity issues, which means that they cannot Fund the deposits So we've decided to send them a non binding letter of intent to purchase the company So all of a sudden in 24 hours, the number one crypto company Was going to buy the number two crypto company for pennies on dollar I think the day after that They came out and said we looked at the numbers and there's no hope for this company We're not going to buy it anymore And then all of a sudden that's when hell broke loose.  I think I saw something else another company Yeah, Genesis is going bankrupt. So We don't know how crazy the scheme is And what's been going on, but the truth of the matter is there's so many conspiracies behind this I mean, you know because crypto is unregulated they're able to leverage the money like crazy In 2008 when you know that whole thing happened That was because the banks leveraged so much money that you didn't know how much risk was in the system So then they then got regulated So instead of leveraging a dollar to a thousand dollars They're only allowed to leverage a dollar to like ten dollars. They're still crazy about whatever whatever it is so That's number one right number one is all of a sudden this very ethical This guy was on Forbes as the next Warren Buffett. He was at all the jp morgan conferences He was a major political donor to the democrats in the midterms. I think he donated number two Yeah, yeah, and they they said that he was He promised to donate about a billion dollars for the next presidential election So this guy was clean cuts from what it seemed and the reality was they had no money They were taking customer funds and spending it and now the question is What other exchanges next because I mean look a lot of these crypto exchanges. They make money from fees Okay, let's say you make a billion dollars from fees.  Is it because he donated so much money to the democrats? you know, who's next what's going on so I mean in a perspective of Reality in terms of what's going on. I mean, I think this is exactly what the federal reserve wants to do They didn't want to crash ftx But they want to slowly get people to realize that all these because what they would do in the past is interest rates We're at zero and customers want to withdraw funds.  I just bought this It's a ledger. It's basically a cold storage device. So it takes your money out of these exchanges So instead of keeping your money in a bank, which is an exchange and earning interest on it If you keep it on this, you know, a little usb stick Keeps in cold storage and that basically means that You're stuffing your money under the mattress. You're burying it in the backyard So that in case another bank goes under And they were using your money to fund their orgies You'll be protected you'll be protected So what do you guys think about this whole situation like from your perspective? I mean I mean I tried to give a very brief overview so that people don't What do you guys think and I think I just think it's absolutely crazy and the problem is now like from people I've talked to Is people have even less of a confidence in crypto now I think that people are scared because you know, I mean fdx was huge and I think a lot of people Huge and to see someone like that just crater and like the people who have money in there They're stuck.  You got larry david. You got all these guys endorsing it And now it just seems like a big scam. So I don't know man. It's like it's it's just wild I don't even honestly I feel like we're just kind of starting like like you said the cascading effect and we'll see what kind of happens Yeah, to me and and like as far as like trading the last time I heard like a crazy story about like a like brokerage or exchange was like that whole Sure trader thing with like guys, you know, that was the last time I heard something like crazy as far as like conspiracy theory goes and Um Yeah, I just think that it's absolutely wild like number two exchange all of a sudden everything's gone And as far as like the house 10 people living together all involved romantically He's going on podcast saying oh trading's easy.   I if I go to The Rolex store and I steal Rolex they're putting me in jail. It's goddamn Rolex. This is 10 20 billion dollars And the guy's just chilling. I mean look, I mean I there's definitely a lot of corruption going on in the world But this is just it's so mainstream It's so in everyone's face and the reality is nothing's being done about it, bro.  Yeah, well, it's the same thing like You know like Epstein they didn't have the the cameras on or whatever Now this dude's just running around in plain sight and also like I also read that like Uh, Ukraine like had money in FTX as well. So like Was the United States government sending money to Ukraine? Ukraine was putting it in FTX After that, it's like wondering it back a conspiracy theory is that Joe Biden is sending billions of dollars a week to Ukraine Ukraine has a little bit of a stake in FTX. So are they clipping off 10 percent sending it FTX FTX is Sending it back to the Democrats exactly I mean, it's crazy, bro It probably it probably goes so deep It probably goes like I I'm still waiting like obviously everybody uses like major exchanges like coinbase and stuff And like so far they've done a good job of like staying out of any issues But like imagine if we see like some major company like that because that's like the average person's like exchange That people use this coinbase, right? And like I don't know. I mean bitcoin's already taken a huge beating every all the all these altcoins and stuff Dude, like these things could tank these things could all just crater and we don't know I mean, we have no idea, you know It's gonna be weird to see but I think it's funny that a lot of these guys now are like begging for a regulation In the government after they've taken like a massive haircut But you know before they were like all these celebrities everybody was super happy about crypto and everything because Don't ask don't tell bro. If someone comes to you and says, hey, we have this company called FTX I'm gonna pay you 10 million dollars a year just to say that we're the best I mean, I don't know about you bro. I'm not gonna watch you do diligence at that point, you know, and that's what happened Yeah, that's what happened. Yeah, exactly And Kevin O'Leary as well All of them bro all them everyone this was Kevin came out though and said he's like, oh, yeah It's still endorsed this guy, you know, if he started another company and it's like, you know Why he probably has money stuck in there and he doesn't he wants to try to save it in whatever way You know, yeah, that's he was he was saying that that was like he's like the number one place I'm not gonna get in trouble is FTX Um, he was a big believer and now he's like before he was like, oh like we don't need regulation We don't need any regulation now. He's like, oh, we need regulation We need regulation and he was also talking about before the um I don't know like he was on cmbc and he's like, you know in order to get out of this recession one company has to go to zero And ironically it ended up being the company that he was marketing the hardest.   So this scam was really deep and the reality is that like Madoff was very famous.  It's really crazy. So and I think, um Another example is like enron right enron was a big accounting fraud. I think enron scam was I think like They scanned like 50 to 70 billion dollars And fdx is anywhere between 10 to 50.   Miami. Miami. Miami heat Like insane shit and like I mean, that's like, I don't know if you guys saw that netflix show like inventing ana It's like the same idea man like this guy just somehow scammed enough people into giving him enough money And promising returns and promising x y and z and like look what I got and the reality is bro If the fed didn't raise the interest rates if the entire crypto market didn't crash They always kept scamming and scam because that's what happened today.   So like that was this is almost like a reset. I think I think it's almost like a slap in the face everyone who just made a shit ton of money and now it's a lot of it's just looking It's definitely the great Is what's happening and what I think is gonna happen bro is it may sound conspiracy theory But like I think the fed is trying to crash the market and crash everything so hard that like let's say an example like a company like Randomize that uber goes bankrupt.  We'll Break will lower the interest rates We'll do another stimulus and we'll just keep it going because we'll save you this time I know we tried to fix the market. We did as best as we could.  We got you. We have the tools to do it. We did it during covid.  I was just gonna say that um I I agree with you 100% because it's not really close enough to home if it makes any sense like it is But it's not really because like everyone just looks at crypto like oh, it's gambling Oh, it's this oh, it's that if something like fucking.  Do we rip on 7.7?  So yeah, we're double the average. It's just horrible but like as long as it starts to trend lower then it's going to bring confidence back and Hey, man, this is it's definitely some crazy times out there Yeah I still think we need like Some major news headline to like actually change the course of everything like like you said either something's gotta break or You know, like the war's gotta end or something But like we're just bouncing around and like dude if you listen to like all these major guys talking like all the The old hedge fund guys and who are now like retired or whatever But they're all saying like We could be in for like five years of just like nothing of just like slow No return kind of marketing also the problem is brought everyone is saying different markets gonna keep crashing and we crash a lot You know certain stocks are down 50 to 70 percent. You got tesla down 50 percent. You got apple down 30 percent You got meta down 70 percent.  So I mean, I don't know what the reality is I know that there's gonna be certain companies that make a lot of money during this I mean if you look at like certain charts of oil Energy solar has all been going crazy because there's an energy crisis in europe, but Aside from that. I mean this is gonna really weed out the companies that don't really make money Do you guys imagine if like meadow and bankrupt?    There's no one that wants it anymore.  They're down 90 percent Yeah, you know and it's just like that's how far we got I mean people were doing the dumbest I saw some dude iced out a board a necklace Like at this and it's like he paid like 11 million dollars.  I think we just everything got too far The reality is brother should need to happen if we want another 10 year bull cycle We're gonna have to have two years of hell cycle, you know, yeah, but you know, it's funny though Like even through all of this stuff though We're all still able to like make money in the market, which is nice. I mean, that's like we're very lucky I'm gonna like knock on wood here But like that's basically it like that's what's crazy like as bad as things are We're also doing pretty all right Yeah, well the pandemic taught me bro Is that when the entire world is shut down when there's no way to make money when everyone is out of business The one business that remained constant is the stock market. Yeah, yeah 100% 100% and I feel like we're starting to finally get some like momentum back into like small and mid cap stocks and stuff like that I don't know what's changed. I honestly I couldn't tell you. I don't know if it's just the end of the year or whatever Um, but I don't know like how are things going for you guys? You can kind of release transition a little quick to that if you want how things been for you the last couple weeks, Harry Uh, to me is still pretty slow to be honest I mean, I know it's picked up for a lot of you guys but for me It's like when you look like at like the stocks that went up like as far as like quality Um, I mean for me, it's been like, you know, still pretty slow Like I've had a couple like nice trades. Like I got dwhack that other one Um, but like I'm also very picky.   Yeah, man, but aside from that if you realize the When the market turned is when cpi went down the market ripped up. So a lot of our Runners are based on the overall market doing well because if the overall market does well people are willing to speculate on these junk stocks It's true. Alex, you've been doing really well. Like these last couple of weeks, like I've been all right, bro Things are going good. Yeah, I could be doing better, bro With a couple first red days in there, but just try to take a slow bro. What can I do?  Yeah, no We're all just gonna say the say the course and that's it's just I find there like as well like really choppy on the way down like dwhack Like that was pretty choppy on the way down that day that are like really tanked. Like that was pretty choppy Yeah, it's not easy, bro. It was not easy.    Like I find a lot of people are really short bias So like every stock now that's at least going up unless it has like a ton of volume like epi Exited but like if it doesn't it feels like the stock is on ssr Where we just get this like burst up and then like right back down and then that burst up and like right back down I think to me it feels like there's just like it's overcrowded with shorts But shorts are so confident that we're not getting these insane squeezes higher It's just like chop chop chop chop. Yeah Where that's open to the end of the year things kind of smooth out and level out and you know, give us some decent range because Man, I miss it. I miss it terribly. Yeah, Rob is making money too But no, that's it. I mean, you know, I think as hopefully the market kind of just like I think like the panic and all that stuff is like slowly kind of like coming out of the large caps Like people are obviously we've had so much worried this whole time So like it's nice to at least see some people coming back to like small caps and stuff like that And I'm starting to get people asking about trading again Which is kind of a signal to me that like people might be kind of slowly coming back into like this this world that we do Yeah, and I think I think crypto is done for a little bit now Like people have really like lost confidence in Bitcoin.  They're not paying us.  That's the only way that's the only way to store it. Yeah, cool Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, well, I guess obviously like next week We'll see I'm sure but by the next time we do the next episode there'll be Some crazy news.  So yeah, we'll see bro In the meantime, thanks guys. It was awesome. Yeah, all right. Perfect better guys Perfect


This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, and welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii studio. This is Andrew in the security guard here on this episode of Security Matters Hawaii. We've got Pierre Borjex in the house from EFAC Convergence, and we're going to be talking about baseline risk assessment. We're going to talk about some of the problems with convergence of risk across different industries out there today. So we've got a really interesting episode. Pierre, I know you're traveling up here. We appreciate you joining us today in the studio remotely. I can remote, you're remote, so it's a crazy, especially welcome aboard. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me on the show. Right. Thank you so much. I'd like to start off by asking my guest, I know you're a long-time industry practitioner yourself, and from a security perspective this day and age, what's kind of keeping you up at night? You know, it's a good question. I think a lot of things have become more and more of an issue in the last 10 years, and one of them is critical infrastructure. I do do a lot of work within that environment, you know, from utilities to power, energy, et cetera. And I think one of the factors is that I find that we're not secure at all. The grid, et cetera, has many vulnerabilities, and I think from the standpoint of controls, the PLCs, the state assistants, the things that control things, I feel are still not there. And I think that with converged security coming along the way of where we have devices and products and going towards the smart buildings, smart cities, environment, we have a lot of, I would say, there are gaps in the way security is structured today. And I think that that's where, you know, I fear that we're not taking as important a look at this as we should, and I think it's going the right direction to a certain extent, but we're still far from being at a point where we can become secure, we can avoid that liability. And then the other thing is really, I guess, two parts to that is, you know, the aspect of how much converged security has reached the market, the technology from IoT devices and secure infrastructure, you know, camera systems and access control, facial recognition, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, and the reality is that how are we managing alerts? How are we managing the infrastructure when we're receiving all of this information, this metadata?  Who's going to integrate all this? I mean, those three right there are, you know, the big issues, and I think that part of the things that I've been working on are kind of leading the way in terms of what we're trying to do to help the industry get us in a position to be more secure in regards to liability. Yeah, you know, your concerns are not lost. Many of our guests are expressing that. I think, you know, in Hawaii, we do have our, you know, we've got our wastewater treatment, we've got our electrics, and people are aware of that. We're aware of the telecom and when there's an outage, what that causes. But things like that. Hawaii, or the mainland has other really long-range, you know, really, like, open. And a lot of the folks in Hawaii don't really consider the scale of a service across, you know, 15 or 20 states, you know, things that run from New York all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico and stuff like that. So I know you work with the street. It's going to be interesting to see what we do as a country to secure that stuff. To that end, let's get back. I know I, on from my quote, contributed on, and it was really about this base-lining of risk, you know, and how do we get to establish that, because it doesn't seem to be done well across different industries and, you know, finance versus ops, you know, things like that. Does that make sense? So, you know, you're going in and out, but I know exactly the line of question there. You know, it's interesting. Risk has always been something that either to be deferred, you know, moved away or accepted. Unfortunately, for the most part, there's so much risk and it comes from so many different arenas within the corporation within a municipality or government agency. They don't understand the complexity of it at this point. And I think from a security standpoint, I think this is where the converged approach is really important. When we talk about convergence, you know, people have always used it as a sense of its IT and physical security and it's really not. It's more than that. It's really a convergence of governance. It's taking the different segments of the different organization from business operations to IT to operational technology or operational environment to physical security and aligning really how they operate, how they develop the proper process to define technology. And therefore, really, how do we do that with the frameworks that we have today? Unfortunately, you know, it boils down to it that we've lived in silos for so long and I think we've been very comfortable in those silos. And what I mean by silos is, you know, IT lives in its space, operations lives in its space, HR, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And for all its purposes, you've got two different segments working parallel but never working together. And so kind of, I guess I want you to picture really an hourglass, right? The top of the hourglass is risk, bottom of the hourglass is security. In the security hourglass at the base of that is infrastructure. It's everything. Just think about everything in the IT, physical security and IoT environment. And think about human beings as they enter that environment, right? Doesn't matter if you turn on your computer, you go in and, you know, get into your email or you turn on a video management system or you use an access control platform. Whatever human being touches that, they create threats and vulnerabilities. And I think that in the last, say, 10 years, 15 years, we began to realize, well, if we tie threats and vulnerabilities to business and operational risk, which is the top of that hourglass, which incorporates HR, operations, finance, et cetera, then we may have a small picture. We may have a small chance to define that baseline risk, right? We might see some of that. But unfortunately, here's the problem, right? Because everyone's living in their own silos, they don't communicate that. And therefore, risk tends to stay within that environment. It doesn't really correlate to anything. It just, you know, at the end of the month, everybody talks about what happened, but they don't really talk about how it happened, right? And why did it happen? They may get a forensic approach to it and say, okay, well, somebody entered the door, right? And we say, since we don't have a secured entry, we had a guard and the guard let three people enter piggyback. Well, that shouldn't have happened. Good, so what are we going to do, right? So we're going to tell the person, you shouldn't do that again, because we have a forensic video. But at the end of the day, what have you really accomplished? Very little. Have you eliminated the compliance issue, the regulation? Have you potentially mitigated the potential responsibility if it's in a, say, utility environment under NERP SIF? No. So one of the things that I'm missing is, how do we identify compliance and add that to the equation? So you kind of have to add, you know, the recipe, right? You've got to start adding the pieces. Because every symptomatic, every industry has a symptomatic issue. And it's also symptomatic to the compliance that they have to face.  All those play a role. Well, you have to take those into account. Once you take those into account, you have to say, wait a minute here. Now that I'm taking that into account, I'm saying on the business risk side, on the top part, I still have to deal with it on the physical side or the security side, which is the bottom side of that hourglass. Now I'm aligning things, right? Now I'm beginning to work together. Now, if I layer over governance, all these procedures as well as communication and collaboration across IT, OC physical security and IoT, which I bring IoT because Internet of Things are all things, which brings in HR and everybody else involved in the operation. Automation is part of the OT side. So operational technology, automation from, you know, you can name a Rothwell, Hitachi, that's out there. The point is, is once you start aligning these areas, you start defining real threat and you also define real risk. Because, you know, there's a big adage at this point in the industry where we say, is risk really, is risk dead? And I say, you know, some would argue maybe, you know, Matthew is a good friend of mine at Intel, they'll say, Peter, risk is alive and well. It's a problem. And I go, I get it. But how do you define risk? And how do you measure it?  So if that's the case, how are you picking technology? Are you just overlaying technology based upon the wants and needs of a certain person in a certain environment? A friend tells you it's a good product, so you use it. Or you're trying to solve a problem that took place because, okay, somebody, you know, oh, I'm worried about active shooter because the C-suite just told you that you should be worried about it. So you're buying defense, you're buying countermeasures. Or you're doing it in a more proactive level to define the true risk so that you're not having it pushed away and you're really accepting that it becomes a liability if you don't bring this all together. And I think what evolves down to this, right? So NIST, you know, is in the process of working together with myself and a few others and CIA and other consultants to put together really a converged standard, right? And that brings together, you know, obviously the four major points. And the four major points are, you know, you have to look at business operations. You have to look at compliance. You have to look at technology, right? And then you have to look at behavior. And behavior really goes down as too fast, right? Are you willing to look at convenience versus security in your organization? Or, and if you do assessments within each area, IT, OT, physical security, are you doing anything about it? So that really puts the rubber the rubber eats the road. And it's based on this 800-171 and taking that cyber-physical methodology in terms of standard or existing framework, NIST framework. And then looking at CMMI and rate of maturity. Are you maturing these areas through questions and answers? The weighted answers give you kind of a number. So who's pushing all this, right? You wonder, you know, we're talking about baseline risk. Well, think about it. The insurance industry is concerned. They're putting the cyber liability out there and they're going, well, how do I measure this risk?  You've done cyber assessment in FOSAC with information security assessment. You've done a physical security assessment. Maybe you did an OT assessment, which is rare, you know, taking a look at your operational systems. But have you talked? Have you correlated all this? Do you have correlated event mapping? Do you map all this on a pan of glass? You know when something happens and I think some of us in the cyber world know kill chain, right, where it starts, how to mitigate it and how it, you know, can be cordoned and also mediated. Well, that's what we're doing in physical security too, believe it or not. But we just haven't gotten much sure enough to use it. And we're just starting that. So with all this, and I know this is a lot of, you know, information, but the reality is this is happening. Now, you know, I want to give you an example, right? Which is actually a good example for you. You have an energy company, a utility within Hawaii. Their utility has done everything right. Believe it or not. They aren't even under it. I under start under under Merc SIP, which is right. You're not part of the American grid, you're not part of the American grid. But believe it or not, you guys have done everything right. Why? Because you've had no choice. The funny part is being an island, you pretty much got to sustain yourself. You got to figure out, well, wait a minute.  Well, no one. So you better believe it, that they have to have that put in place. So it's interesting is that they already see to converge methodology taking place. They are already communicating between IPOT physical security. They're beginning to, they already put a framework together to make sure that we can progress it in many ways beyond what where we are today in terms of, you know, secured infrastructure. So this is, you know, this goes along the lines. Hey Pierre, let's take a short break. I want to get into how we, there's another way we can do some of this measurement when we come back. We're going to pay some bills for about what people do. Thank you, Sarah. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. You can be the king. Come play in all your chess. You could be, you could talk to God. Go banging on his door. My name is Stephanie Mock and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomei Weigert. And we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on on Thursdays at 4 p.m. And we hope we'll see you next time. Hey, Aloha. Welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii Studio. This is Security Matters Hawaii. We're kicking around baseline and security risk and some of the problems with that across the enterprise, across government, across all sectors really, even functional sectors within an organization. So, Piers, with this, Piers, you mentioned some of the difficulty about comparing, you know, and I sat in a risk panel yesterday and I was thinking, you know, when you were talking, you know, just measuring people. You know, when I measure the risk of an HR person, for example, doing something versus the risk of an operator on the plant floor in a production environment, for example. Or like you said, you gave a great example of a guard just not doing his job at the door. But how can an organization give weight, you know, of properly weight and properly defined the roles of just those people, not even the mentioned technology, some of the other things you talked about. What can we do to standardize that? It seems like a massive problem. We've got a sort of cover for it. Like you said, insurance wants us to do it. You know, we need to do it for ourselves as well. But there's a lot of reasons driving this and I think it's not been done. No, that's a good point. And I think that is the behavior side of things, right? One of the issues in regards to most organizations is they fail to really vet, right? Not only their employees properly in regards to what they do and how they do it, but how they correlate to really the technology they use as well as the future plans of that business. So this is really interesting, right? I mean, you think about it. These are, this is where the business process, right? Connects with security and safety. This is where the COOP plan, right? Continuing operations plan meets, you know, the disaster recovery plan. You know, we oftentimes, you know, stay those things, right? But do we ever look at them and do we look at how they actually connect to people's jobs? And oftentimes they don't. And I think that what you find is, you know, where you have guard services, maybe a third-party guard service who's being implemented. They review these things based upon, say, what the guard service does in terms of security. But did we ever measure, right, the use of guards in regards to, you know, why do we use a guard when we need an unmanned security door, right? Why do we put three guards at a door that, you know, a slide door when we want an authorized entry? These are very simple questions, but have we really asked why we do things, right? And I think that that's the question that the Converge Standard will help us do. But it also, we, and I'm just going to, this is a good point, right, to where you wanted to go with this, is we need to have a Converge certificate. We need to have assessors who actually have a baseline understanding of not only, you know, our traditional CPP or PSP, but we have to incorporate them with cyber and really the FISP, and we have to incorporate them with business process and how we define, say, the governance between the different organizations within a large organization, right, or even a small organization. Obviously, this should be done by small companies, mid-cap companies, and large. It doesn't matter how big or small you are. By not evaluating these as a whole, you're really sacrificing your ability to defend yourself from liability. And at the end of the day, how do you measure liability? So I've got a simple equation, and you can take it or leave it up to you. So it's really the measurement of one rate of risk. Rate of risk is your environment, your people, your processes, your technology, all in one interest, how they interact presently. What is the rate of risk accepting in your environment, right? Your industry has specific risks. Meaning, if it's not specific energy, you have risk risks. If you're in retail, it could be loss prevention, asset protection. And if it's in a specific location where there's lots of crime, you're going to have a rate of risk of time, right? So if your people, resources aren't the right place because you aren't hiring the right people because you're not in the right situation, well, guess what? Your rate of risk is going to be higher. So that time, the times that, on baseline liability, what is your baseline liability of the corporation right now? Do you know that? Most organizations have never done a baseline liability in regards to where they are present from the financial standpoint they have. Most people do it, but they haven't done it from a security or safety standpoint. And I can tell you that these assessments are out there. Many of these companies have done these assessments and have used security assessment people like ourselves to do those baseline, but they've never correlated them to the business and the direction they're going in. So they just assume it's okay that it's not, right? So if I've done a cybersecurity assessment, have I correlated with the business aspect? Have I correlated to the physical security assessment? Most organizations who are connected with the governance in place do it. Most that are siloed do not. So then that's over acceptable level of risk. What is your acceptable level of risk as a company? Have you defined that, right? Are you willing to accept maybe 20% risk, 30% risk? Because, you know, honestly, I'm a choose factory in the middle of Wisconsin. Nobody's going to attack me. I know I have some key facts issues. I may have some safety management issues that I have to deal with. Other than that, I'm okay. So I'm accepting a lot more risk in that environment. And then that should equal, at the end of the day, your rate of acceptance of technology. Because here's the thing. If you really take all that into place, you begin to realize what your level of technology should be. And then you start asking the questions rather than, you know, people asking you. You start asking questions. You know what? Well, here's my rate of risk. And I have a manufacturing center in the middle of a bad, you know, a place in a major city. I have a hard time hiring the right people. I've got a lot of loss, a lot of shrinkage.  We had to shrink the size of the business. So that's not doing as well. But my acceptable level of risk, you know, unfortunately, because they didn't have the money, they don't have the resources to put the right security in place. So therefore, my ability to accept technology is reduced. Now, how do I, how do I help this company? Well, you know, if you go based upon the normal standard, I'm just going to basically say, well, you can't, you've got to buy this, you've got to do this, you've got to do this. Instead, let's talk about people. Let's talk about improving one part of this dynamic. So maybe I can use the right technology to help those people that you do have that are lacking, or maybe they can be helped through automation, through maybe the automation they're using, maybe you can use cameras for both production as well as for security. Can we converge some of the approaches we're taking in regards to managing people and maybe having them do different things in the business? Listen, there's no straightforward way. But if you talk this way, you start solving problems.  But believe it or not, shrinking this down to a basic element now really makes it easy. I mean, that's a kind of baseline, I would say, ratio. And if you start applying that accordingly, you may have a chance to really know where you stand in regards to risk. Do you think that the, you know, DHS has the risk management framework for all of the niche sectors out there. And of course, we've got the cybersecurity framework from this. Do you think that we can cobble those ideas together to build this converged sort of risk? Is it a converged risk infrastructure model? I'm thinking of, you know, you went to CNMI, that continuity of maturity over time. You know, I can understand how people can use that to judge where they're at. Are the tools there that could be brought forth to build something? You know, I'm thinking of the Baldrige, you know, the cybersecurity excellence sort of a thing that, you know, and I use that one as a thing to kind of get people started because it's an easy format to answer and, you know, kind of see where you're at with things. But what you're talking about is much bigger, you know, much more complex to do, but are the measures there that could be applied across these silos that you're talking about? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. If you take every industry, right, and every machine you're in, they're already frameworks in place. So if you're in the retail sector, you have PCI, right, payment card industry. If you're in healthcare, you have HIPAA hyphens. If you're in energy, you have NERC SIP. If you're in food safety, you're in food safety management and CFAS or chemical safety, right? If you're in the petrochemical industry, you have CFAS, I mean, it goes down the line. If you're in logistics, you may have TAPA, right? These are all actual standards and ways to measure the risk. If you apply these to a missed framework, right, if you take your missed-based framework and you take a rate of maturity, you see NMI, and you have a question, questions and answers that are weighted, which we produce a lot of them, and we're going to go through public form next year, hopefully. Everything will be good to that point where the government can actually send some of this stuff to you so that you can use, right? It's going to be good charge. And I think the whole concept is this. I mean, it's a passion of mine and a passion of all of those who want the industry to progress because here's the thing. We're at the precipice. We're at the tipping point. Products and security, both of the security technology is growing so quickly that if we don't have a way to create a standard that enables companies to really identify what they should be doing or how they should be doing it, and really just finding the liability around that, it's going to be tough. So that's really the goal, and I kicked your ride on target with what you said. There are standards that are already in place.  You will also see if you look at your industry specifically, whatever industry you're in, take a look at your compliances and look at the physical controls and the cyber-physical controls. Please do that. Once you look at those, you'll see there are frameworks already built in that you can begin to follow. Then you take your business process and things of everything that you do on a daily basis and understand what your future goals are, right? What is your goal? What is your desired state? Know what your current state is. Know where your desired state is. Don't just fix the tactical. Get a strategic plan because the goal is to get you to a point where you don't dive back down to the beginning. And I think that's been the five-year, seven-year age of technology. Every time we get to a point where we put a product in place, we don't future-proof ourselves. How do you future-proof it? You do this. What we've been talking about for the last few minutes is if you do this and you correlate this and you put governance on top of this and you really communicate across your environment, you have a chance. You have a chance to not only buy the right product, hire the right people, put the right processes in place to get you in a position to be successful in terms of liability. Awesome. Yeah, I look forward to the time when we are, you know, showing up at the door because we are offsetting risk, not installing something that someone, you know, is buying just for the camera product or just for the access control product. But we know, hey, we're mitigating risk. That's potential for you. So really good stuff. I look forward to the work that you do with NIST and I look forward to seeing this stuff. Maybe in the spring, you think, Pierre? Yeah, I think it's going to be spring. I was hoping for it, but it's spring. Awesome. Pierre, thank you so much again. Thank you all for tuning in today to this episode of Security Matters of Life. And we'll be back next week with more next Wednesday. I forget who my guest is, but I will be back in the studio and we'll bring you some more great information because Security Matters. Thank you.


Russia destroys nearly all Ukraine's thermal generation nuclear power plants at risk. Russia has destroyed almost all of Ukraine's thermal power generation. A threat to Ukrainian nuclear power plants is not ruled out, according to the Ukrainian president of Vladimir Zelensky, during a special meeting of the European Council. Russia has already destroyed almost all of our thermal power generation. Dams and equipment of hydroelectric power plants, as well as gas infrastructure, are under terrorist attacks, he said. Zelensky stresses that the Russian invaders do not give up radiation blackmail and continue to play savagely with the safety of the occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. The head of state does not rule out that other Ukrainian nuclear power plants could also be under threat. We do not rule out that the infrastructure of our other nuclear power plants and distribution networks are also under threat from Russian terror, the president emphasizes. After a long pause, Russian troops have resumed shelling Ukraine's energy sector. Russians are attacking Ukrainian substations and thermal power generation. For example, the Zamev thermal power plant in the Kharkiv region was seriously damaged. On April 11, the Tripilya thermal power plant in Kiev region was also destroyed. In addition, the general staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine warned that Russians are preparing false flag provocations at Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Russia is the only terrorist in the world holding a nuclear power plant hostage and using it to blackmail Ukraine and the entire world. No one else but Russian terrorists has brought the world so close to the brink of a deliberate radiation catastrophe. These are deliberate Russian actions, continuing the Russian practice of blackmailing our state and the entire international community with the risk of a catastrophe at Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. Ukraine has always taken and continues to take a responsible approach to the safety of nuclear facilities, the general staff stated. This is Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which was occupied at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia may transfer fighter jets and air defense equipment to Iran. Russia is considering providing Iran with modern fighter jets and air defense equipment to protect it from Israeli and U.S. attacks. Military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran has reached a new level, reports The Washington Post. According to the data, Iran has opened a new dangerous chapter in its relations with Russia by agreeing to supply thousands of combat drones and missiles in 2022 to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine. The expanded ties helped cement deals between Moscow and Tehran, including Russia's promise to provide its ally with modern fighter jets and air defense technology that could help Tehran bolster its defenses against any future Israeli or U.S. airstrike. It is unclear how many systems have been delivered and deployed, but the Russian technology could turn Iran into a much more formidable adversary, with enhanced capabilities to shoot down aircraft and missiles, officials and experts say. The arms deals, some of the details of which have not been previously disclosed, are part of a broader cooperation that includes joint production of military drones in Russia, sharing of jamming technology and real-time assessments of weapons deployed against NATO and in Ukraine, intelligence officials and arms experts said. According to them, this cooperation brings significant benefits to both countries, while elevating Iran's status from a junior ally to a strategic partner. Intelligence officials said that Russia is pushing forward with secretly concluded deals to supply Iran with Su-35, one of Russia's most powerful fighter bombers. On the defense side, Iran has long been asking Russia for the latest anti-aircraft missile batteries to protect its nuclear and military facilities from a possible U.S. or Israeli attack. In 2007, Tehran signed a deal to buy the Russian S-300 anti-aircraft system, but Moscow postponed the delivery of the weapon due to pressure from the United States and European States. The voluntary ban ended in 2016 and Iranian S-300s became operational in 2019. Since then, Iran has sought to acquire the more powerful Russian S-400 system, although it is not publicly known whether Moscow has taken steps to supply S-400 batteries. Some S-400 variants are equipped with radars capable of countering stealth technologies used by modern military aircraft. According to intelligence officials, Moscow also benefits from this cooperation. In addition to the thousands of drones purchased from Iran late last year, Russia agreed to buy about $2 billion worth of additional military goods, including anti-drone defense systems, which have become a top priority for Russian generals in Ukraine.


In this presentation, we will discuss tracker programs in a bit more detail. The DHIS2 Tracker is essentially an extension of the DHIS2 platform, which allows for the collection of individual information. This supports the management, data collection, and analysis of transactional or desegregated data. Within the DHIS2 Tracker, individuals can be enrolled in longitudinal and chronic health programs. Note that we can also enroll other types of entities, but we will be focusing on enrolling an individual in a set of health services in this example. If we enroll this individual into one of these health programs, we can then schedule their subsequent visits, send reminders to the person to attend the different services, and track any of their missed health appointments. For DHIS2 Tracker, programs can have multiple stages or single stages similar to an event program. However, they must always be attached to a registered entity. This statement is referring to how tracker programs can separate different stages of care within the same health program. If we review an event program, like the malaria example that we looked at earlier, when a patient comes in, they receive their set of services for malaria, and then when they leave the facility, that program is over. If they come back to the facility, they're simply registered as a new case of malaria. Within a tracker program, however, you can have multiple stages attached to a singular health program. This allows you to track that individual through all of the various services they receive in relation to that health program. This must be attached to a registered entity. If we are tracking a person through their set of health services, we must make sure that we are registering that person in tracker. These multiple stages can be defined through the user interface. This will allow for us to track the person through each stage of the program. Within Tracker, there is a person dashboard, which can be used to get an overview of a client's status within their individual programs. We will demonstrate this in a bit later on. We can take the transactional data that we collect and create automated aggregation queries. We can also populate the aggregated data warehouse, all directly within the same DHIS2 system. Some examples of tracker programs include For single events, we have maternal deaths and birth registration. Remember, these are one-off events. If we have a maternal death, that is a single event that occurs for that particular program. The same is true of birth registration. We would register the child after birth, and then the program is over. We also have programs that can contain multiple events. For example, if we register a pregnant mother and want to track her through her set of antinatal care, delivery, and postnatal care services, this program will have multiple events. These are connected to each time that pregnant mother comes in and receives these different services. We could also look at an example tracking a child through their first two years of care. This links back to the 1,000 most vulnerable days use case that we presented earlier. We could also track a lab sample, which will go through various stages before the final result is obtained. And we can also look at patients receiving anti-retroviral therapy treatment. Each time the patient comes back to receive ART treatment is an example of an event. Let's look at one example in a bit more detail. In this example, we're tracking a mother through her set of antinatal care services. The first step in Tracker is to register the mother within DHIS-2. This means that we will enter some unique identifying characteristics of this person. We will then enroll her in the antinatal care program. This allows us to connect the mother with the health program that she is receiving services for. Within that health program, we can have multiple events. This can include the individual antinatal care visits that the mother is coming for. Within each of these visits, she may receive a different set of health services. So by creating this type of program, we can review the individual details of each of these events, perform data analysis collectively on these events, and send reminders to the mother to ensure that she is attending all of her necessary antinatal care visits. We will use this example to demonstrate some of the concepts of Tracker within Tracker Capture, which is the application we use to collect Tracker data in DHIS-2. Please let us know if you have any questions about what we've described in this presentation. In the next session, we will move on and demonstrate some of these concepts in the DHIS-2 Tracker Capture application.