E117 - Being a Flexible Leader featuring Ian L. Paterson, Eh!

Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front is humbled to have been named #5 in the Top 20 for Best Canadian Leadership-themed podcasts for 2025.

What happens when rockets are landing near your Middle Eastern manufacturing facility, and you discover IBM mainframes from the 1980s running your critical systems? For cybersecurity leader Ian Patterson, CEO of Plurilock, this wasn't a hypothetical scenario but a real crisis requiring immediate action. As Ian explains, "We never have as much data as we would like to make a decision... being able to act and continue moving in the right direction with limited information ultimately allows momentum to continue."

This episode explores the importance of professional networks in leadership, what Ian calls the "camaraderie between CEOs" and what military leaders know as the "Chiefs Network." These relationships prove crucial when facing unprecedented challenges, reminding us that effective leadership isn't about having all the answers but knowing where to find them.

Perhaps most fascinating is how cybersecurity has evolved beyond technical challenges to encompass complex regulatory and legal considerations. The field's rapid growth has created an estimated 4 million unfilled positions globally—a number that has doubled in recent years.

Join us for this eye-opening discussion about leadership on the digital frontlines.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 2:39 Ian's Career Journey into Cybersecurity
• 7:29 Leading with Limited Information
• 15:19 The Chiefs Network: Leaders Helping Leaders
• 23:02 Emergency Response: Corporate Crisis Management
• 28:15 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Challenges
• 33:36 Navigating Rapid Change in Cybersecurity
• 35:36 Episode Wrap-up and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Simon: 0:07

I would like to begin this episode by acknowledging that I am located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and I am privileged and honoured to live and learn on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Glen: 0:24

Hello, you're listening to Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, a show for emerging leaders from all professions to hear from other leaders who have led from the front, made the mistakes, had the triumphs and are still learning along the way. Produced by Jennifer Lee at, "t's a Legit Business, a podcast launch and management company. And now here's your host, simon Cardinal.

Simon: 0:55

Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front. And, as everyone is aware, I love talking to guests. I love speaking with everyone, I love hanging out, I love getting to meet everyone and making those connections. It's what really gets me going. And I especially love talking to fellow Canadians and that is why today is extra special for me because, as I've begun the journey of re-recording everything, I get to talk to another Canadian in what I believe to be the beautifulest I don't know if that's a real word, but we'll go with it the most beautiful city in all of Canada Victoria, British Columbia. Ian L. Patterson, hey Ian, how's it going out that way?

Ian L. Paterson: 1:32

Simon, it's well. First of all, thank you for having me. We're trying to keep a lid on how nice Victoria is. It's getting popular enough as it is. You know, it's funny. Actually, most of the time when I'm talking to somebody on a Zoom or a Teams call or whatnot, you start with pleasantries hey, how you doing, where are you from? I used to actually not say Victoria, I used to just say Vancouver, because I figure, if you're in Singapore or if you're in Sydney, Australia, or if you're in London, Victoria is too small of a city you haven't heard. And yet it's actually one of those cities that everybody either has been to once in their life or wants to go to once in their life. So it's actually become quite a quite an interesting calling card. Uh to, uh to, to include as part of, as part of my identity.

Simon: 2:12

Oh, that's amazing. I'm so I'm happy to hear that I, that city is just incredible. That is where I went and did my master's degree and, uh, it's just, there's just something about the vibe and the feel of that city. It's unless you've been there, there's no way to know, but it's, it's incredible. So, yeah, I love it. Well, thanks, thanks so much for coming out today. And, and before we get into the meat of things, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind taking a few minutes and just let us, let us learn about Ian. Who is Ian?

Ian L. Paterson: 2:39

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, my background is maybe a little bit different than most. I started way back, which actually is starting to the years are starting to accrue the more that I think about it but I started really just as somebody who was passionate about learning and passionate about technology. About technology, I didn't do much academically and certainly did not go down the typical go get a university degree and kind of know what you were wanting to do ahead of time, etc. In hindsight I don't know, maybe things would have turned out differently had I done that, but I was really just focused on building my skills and learning myself. And so in my first real job in terms of the career was working for a venture-backed company doing e-commerce analytics, and my role specifically within that organization was to help very large enterprises make better decisions using data. So it was great. It was a lot of fun, learned a lot.

Ian L. Paterson: 3:46

This was in sort of the 2010s era, back when e-commerce was first having its really big boom. Got to meet a lot of people, do a lot of interesting things, a ton of learning, both on the job, intentionally and also perhaps unintentionally. So I got to see a lot of how business worked, perhaps not always learning about what you should do. In some cases, it was learning what you shouldn't do. That company eventually was acquired and fast forward a few years to get to Plurilock, and we started actually as what I thought was going to be a data company, and so you know again, kind of going back to that data and analytics background. Plurilock very quickly, though, became a cybersecurity company. It happened to be that we were answering cybersecurity questions using data, and then one thing led to another. We started doing a lot of work with the US federal, US Army and US Department of Defence. That exposed me and us. It was a small team at that time, but exposed us to really the real world, and what I mean by that is, naively, going into our first couple of customer engagements, I actually thought I believed the marketing hype.

Ian L. Paterson: 5:05

I believed that everybody was already totally secure. AI technology was widely deployed, everything was top-notch, and they just needed another edge, and what I came to find out was, in fact, nobody has their stuff together. Everything is disorganized. In particular, the most large institutions in the world, both public sector and private sector, struggle with basic things like understanding how many devices they have or they own, and I can tell you a funny story about that keeping things up to date, even making sure the technology was from the same decade, and I can tell you another story about that.

Ian L. Paterson: 5:42

And so very quickly it became quite clear that for us to have impact and create value for our customers wasn't necessarily by just bringing a new widget that was bigger, shinier, faster, et cetera, but in fact sometimes it was doing things that were more people related or process related, and so Plurilock today, or process related, and so Plurilock today. We do a lot of different things, but the area of the business that I'm most passionate about is a team called Critical Services, and Critical Services is where we're providing very high-end cybersecurity work for some of the most consequential organizations in the world. So our mission is to safeguard critical infrastructure in order to preserve democracy, and the way that we're doing that is through a cybersecurity lens. So, Simon, happy to kind of dig into some of those or maybe tell you some stories about some of our work, which might actually be fine, surprising, but that's where I've come from in a nutshell.

Simon: 6:40

Well, thanks so much for that time.

Simon: 6:41

I love the background and the diversity and yet staying within the same type of of mindset and and field. It's interesting how we're all able to move around and get into these different spots and do the different things. That we go because quite often, as a new leader, that the more often than not we're promoted into these positions not based off of our proven leadership skill set, but our proven technical skill set, and then all of a sudden we're in doing something else that we might not necessarily be ready to do, for whatever reason, and that's okay, because we were talking about it before we started recording that we're expecting a lot of times leaders will put these ideas in themselves that there's an expectation, a self-imposed expectation, that we need to have all the answers before we get going, when in fact, you had said it but the 20, we might have the 20, 30% knowledge to be able to go forth and yet still still produce and what we have to do that. Did you experience those types of things as you were getting along into the profession?

Ian L. Paterson: 7:39

Yeah, I mean, I think I think as leaders, we never have enough data, or let me rephrase that we never have as much data as we would like to make a decision. There's very rarely a decision where you have perfect information. There's always some amount of information asymmetry I'm thinking about like negotiations, for instance there's always an information asymmetry. But even just in regular day, you know, do you do X or do you do Y? Well, it'd be nice if you knew all of the ramifications if you chose X versus Y. You don't always necessarily have all of that information, nor do you have the time or the resources to go to go run those things totally to ground.

Ian L. Paterson: 8:16

So, uh, so being able to uh, to act and and continue moving, uh in the right direction with limited information, to try and get more information perhaps, so maybe not taking a huge consequential decision, maybe you can make a smaller decision to get you a little bit forward. Continue to advance Ultimately allows momentum to continue, and I think where things really start to slow down or get stuck in the mud is when you're just you're frozen. I don't know. Someone once said that it was an Eisenhower quote that said the best decision is the right decision followed by the wrong decision, followed by no decision, really meaning, as long as you do something, it's better than doing nothing.

Simon: 9:03

Oh yeah, otherwise you end up in the paralysis of doing nothing and that becomes a problem and it actually destroys that momentum that you had been speaking about, and I would like to talk more about that. What do you think is a way for new leaders to ensure they are driving forward with that momentum, and what happens if they feel like that paralysis might be coming up?

Ian L. Paterson: 9:22

Well, I think one of the things you can do is you can turn to the people around you I mean, oftentimes you are not the smartest person in the room, you don't have the most experience, but somebody else in the organization does, or maybe somebody else outside of the organization does, and so being able to call on those resources and being okay with you not having necessarily all that information, but if you can collect that information, that's crucial. I mean, one of the things that we did at Plurilog very early on is we went way overboard on recruiting the absolute best leaders, advisors, mentors, board directors and industry counsel that we possibly could, and we sometimes joke that every company talks about having a world-class team. I actually think we possibly could, and we sometimes joke that, you know, every company talks about having a world-class team. I actually think we have one, and even from very early on, we'd recruited the former director of the NSA and Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell, who served as our lead independent director, and we just we have an amazing team of people around us. For exactly that reason, we don't always necessarily have the answers ourselves.

Ian L. Paterson: 10:25

Other people might, though, and being able to to to lean on that team um has has certainly been crucial for us and in in our success. Um, and also for me personally, uh, being able to to call on those people for advice. I mean, one of the uh, perhaps one of the surprising things is is, um, we have, we have, uh, we're, we're fortunate enough that we have several vice admirals who serve in some capacity in our ecosystem and, more often than not, when I call them asking for help, it's not about cybersecurity, it's not about signals, intelligence or anything that they've spent 40 or 50 years in a career or cryptology 40 or 50 years of their career focus on. It's actually about leadership. It's about people. It's about managing a team, leading an organization, because they've been there and done that.

Simon: 11:15

And that's okay to not have that information. I think that's often something that gets missed when people are new to leadership roles or the second or third tier in whatever their career path is. Is that expectation to to have those answers? That's just not a thing. We're just not able to do that.

Simon: 11:31

Uh, at my level, my rank level, I'm a Master Warrant Officer and I'm in the position of a similar to a Chief Warrant Officer's role and the network that I have we we call it the chiefs network, and it's a whole bunch of the chiefs, the different squadron chiefs, throughout the wing that I work at the base, in the Canadian terms and uh, anytime we have a question, we just fire that out to this mass email and and it is.

Simon: 11:53

And often I've talked about the chief network with different people throughout the last few years and often what the response will get back is oh you, everyone must be talking super high level, like, like, how do you fix the, this major problem in the air force? And I'm like well, no, more often than not it's hey, listen, how do I, where do I find this, this boot claim for someone to be able to reimburse their boots, because, even though I've been in the military for a long time. I don't know where everything is, and we all, we, we track these things down and that's what keeps that momentum going forward is being willing to admit that we don't know everything. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Ian L. Paterson: 12:29

So there's a similar camaraderie between other executives in particular other CEOs or other founders. There's a unique relationship that we have to one another because there's very few other stakeholders just in the ecosystem who have that set of shared experiences, shared worldview, shared experiences. In the unique position, even if it's a different company, a different industry, a different business model, et cetera, there are certain pressures that an executive or CEO would have and there's significant camaraderie. And so it's funny. I've never heard of the Chiefs Network and I suspect most people probably haven't heard that there's a secret cabal of Canadian tech CEOs. But there absolutely is and it's phenomenal and it's actually one of the one of the best groups that I have come to find. So so, Simon, I'm both envious of your Chiefs Network and I imagine you probably have the most hilarious jokes in there that will never see the light of day.

Simon: 13:28

Oh, I tell you some of the, some of the stories that we were accounting with each other was like what they like? No, there's, that didn't happen. And yeah, yeah it is, and it's hilarious to hear about it. Like you said, there's fun stories and it's just. It's amazing and it's also a reminder to me that people are people, are people, that just because we get to certain levels of our career paths doesn't make us any different than anything else.

Simon: 13:50

Quite often, in the role that I have, we, we fly at 412 squadron, we fly four corporate jets and we, we use those to move members of parliament, the government, the prime minister predominantly, and one of the things I like to remind everyone in the squadron is that even the prime minister poops, like everyone, has to go in that airplane and use the washroom, and that's okay, because every one of us does that. These things happen because people are people, are people, and regardless of your CEO or if you're the prime minister or the outgoing prime minister in this case, so you just never know, yeah it. I am curious, though, as we're talking about these different types of things earlier you had talked about some stories about different things that had gone on in the side in the industries. Do you have anything that might connect the cooperation and the collaboration that needs to get together between all the different information paths and all those different types of things?

Ian L. Paterson: 14:44

Well, I think I mean there's a lot of stories. I mean I think I was actually talking to one of our customers earlier today, so this one is kind of fresh in my mind. This is a customer that we've been working with for over a year, but it started with a frantic text message on a Friday night. It was a customer they're publicly traded, they're based in the United States, but they have global operations. Customer they're publicly traded, they're based in the United States, but they have global operations. And there was a frantic text message saying hey, does anybody have experience on a very strange and somewhat unorthodox pairing of technologies? The technologies don't actually matter, but it's just, you know, it's two types of technologies that you don't usually find together from an enterprise IT perspective. And so I reached out and said well, yes, we've done a little bit of work there.

Ian L. Paterson: 15:35

As it turned out, this was a large manufacturing company and they had operations overseas and in particular, the operations large manufacturing operations were in the Middle East. You know, large manufacturing operations were in the Middle East and in their manufacturing site, which was responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, there were quite literally rockets landing in the neighborhood that this facility was in. So not only that, but also it happened to be the financial hub for a lot of their accounting systems, and so they were struggling and they were asking for help. What I found interesting about that was that we got involved and we mobilized a team. We mobilized very, very quickly. I mean, I think by Saturday morning we had a proposal and by Saturday night, our people were basically starting to work, which, in theory, for a nine to five desk job, is not typically what you would expect from the private sector. But what I found interesting is that, as we got into that engagement, we unearthed technology from the 2020 era, from the 2010 era, from the 2000 era, from the 1990 era and from the 1980s era, and so we actually found technology that was so old that I remember my dad talking about you know, this specific type of IBM mainframe, and not only did this customer have one IBM mainframe from the 1980s, it turned out they had three. They didn't necessarily know they had three, but it was through our investigation, our very rapid investigation, that we were able to go kind of unearth things and realize that, hey, you know, it was the virtual equivalent of literally pulling a cable and seeing where it went. But we used our offensive cybersecurity capabilities to kind of poke around the network and we found, as I say, not one but three IBM mainframes happened to not even be at their location, but there was a backup somewhere else. So the interesting thing was just how varied the technology was, and it kind of reinforces my point that I was saying earlier about most organizations are struggling. They don't have everything, they don't have everything put together properly, they don't have the right people, necessarily, they don't have the right processes and they don't have the right technology and kind of everybody's in that same boat. I can tell you another company that we were working with I gave you the example Some companies don't even know how many assets they have.

Ian L. Paterson: 18:02

Like how many computers does your company own? Seems like kind of a basic question. And in one case yeah, so in one case we were. This was a fortune 1000 sized organization. The estimate by the best and brightest within the company, who all had different parts of the overall puzzle, the estimate was off by about 100%. You know, we were thinking that it was going to be like 40,000. That turned out to be closer to 80,000, depending on how you counted, and then it might actually be north of 100,000. So that's the scale of the types of problems that exist. And so then you ask the chief information security officer, who typically is our customer do you have all that secure? And they're like, have what secure? I don't even know what computers I own to be able to secure. So talk about making decisions with an absence of information. I mean, this is something that leaders have to do every single day and we see it. We see it in our customers regularly.

Simon: 19:01

Yeah, and I wonder about that. I love that example of that because things had to get done, things needed to be secured, but what do we do? What do we do? What do leaders do? How do they figure these things out? Do you have any type of advice on how they might be able to move forward with something kind of similar to that?

Ian L. Paterson: 19:18

I think being willing to be wrong is one and being willing to kind of look like a fool. I mean, for that first example we'll stick with that one for sake of argument. I mean, we came up with three courses of action and so for the military viewers or listeners you might kind of hear some echoes of traditional tactics. But we had three courses of action, and one of the courses of action was we were going to go in completely hands-off, remotely, we're going to go do our thing, and there were some pros and cons to that. One of the courses of action was actually to charter a jet and to physically exfiltrate at least one rack, possibly multiple, out of the country and get it to a place of safety.

Ian L. Paterson: 20:06

Now, on its face, that scenario seems quite ludicrous. That like why on earth would you do this? There's all kinds of problems. I mean this is gear from, as I mentioned, this is gear from the 1980s. That's not necessarily going to survive or move right, but we were at least willing to throw out an idea. That seemed kind of crazy because the problem that was presented to this client was actually existential. I mean, they were, and still are, a publicly traded organization and had the wrong set of circumstances occurred, it would have potentially been game over for that entire company, and so you have to be willing to look a bit foolish and potentially come up with crazy options to be able to find the right option that you can then execute on.

Glen: 20:55

Oh, hello there. It's Glen, the voiceover artist, and if you're hearing me, that means we're at the midpoint of this episode. Are you considering starting your own podcast? Are you confused or overwhelmed and don't know where to start? Well, Jennifer at "t's a Legit Business is a podcast wizard who can help you get started, provide advice, consultation and help you along the way. Trench Leadership has been using it's a Legit Business for over a year and Jennifer offers personalized service, catering to the podcast's unique needs and desires, truly hearing Simon's requests and being instrumental in realizing Trench Leadership's vision for each episode. If you want to get started, contact Jennifer at jennifer at itsalegitbusinesscom and she'll help you realize your dreams. Trench Leadership is always striving to improve our content and provide valuable insights for leaders across all professions, and to do this, your feedback is crucial. So drop us a note at simonk at trenchleadershipca and let us know what's working and what can be improved. And now back to the show.

Simon: 22:12

Yeah, and that's absolutely correct. I know in my career, when I was a new leader, a new master corporal it's the first formal level of leadership in the Canadian military I would come up with these wild ideas and they'd be like people would be looking at me kind of funny, like what are we doing here? And then when you sit back and you have a moment to think about it, well, maybe there's something there, but maybe there isn't. But at least throwing it out there is, is it's important to get that out there and then kind of go from there, because you never know, you never really know what, which way the people are going to go.

Simon: 22:40

And and I do wonder about that, because when we're throwing those things out there there's there's a lot of ego talk. Is we've been speaking about in all of this, in that don't be afraid to make a movement without having the information, don't be afraid to look like a fool, don't be afraid to do this, don't be afraid to do that. How can we harness that fear to be able to do what we need to do? Because there is still that expectation that as a leader, we're going to get the things done. So what do you think about that?

Ian L. Paterson: 23:08

I think you're right. I think also the idea of breaking it down into smaller decisions can at least help you keep moving faster. So, in that case we came up with the three courses of action, we presented them to the client and we actually didn't necessarily decide on any of them in that point of time. We, collectively with the client, agreed that we would start doing some discovery. We were going to advance all three courses of action and try and get some more information to make a better decision on which option should we pursue. And so we were able to keep going.

Ian L. Paterson: 23:46

We were able to actually keep as many options open for as long as possible, and it led to a successful outcome. I mean we were able to. So the punchline of that story is we were actually able to move the majority of the data to the cloud in again like a completely Frankenstein network configuration. That probably shouldn't have worked, but it mostly did. It was completely outside of what the technology that we used was designed to be used for. You know it was very much a duct tape and bailing wire type of scenario, but it got the job done. But all the way through we were at least keeping options open to say if things escalated, if the threat to the physical facility got to a certain point, then one of these other courses of action could be pursued.

Simon: 24:35

And that flexibility is, I can't even stress how important being in those leadership roles and being flexible to being open to other ways of doing things, even when a COA has been assigned or chosen, being open to going another direction, that's okay. That's all part of the game of being in charge, and and and that flexibility to go forward. It's. It's tough. Do you have any fun stories about that at all? Or?

Ian L. Paterson: 24:59

Well, uh, what was interesting about that specific course of action?

Ian L. Paterson: 25:02

I mean, we kept it on the table for as long as the airspace remained open, uh, and so we were. We were, we had real-time visibility into the no TAMs and we were waiting for, you know, at a certain point that window was going to close. And so it was one of the key decision points for the client because, again, we were advisors, effectively, you know, they're helping them and we were doing the work as well, but ultimately it was their company and their decisions was whether to engage that option, engage that option before the airspace closed. Now, thankfully, things worked out, but it was certainly one of the key decisions I think through that full engagement was at what point do you just rip the bandaid off and say, great, we're, that's it. You know, we've done as much as we can. From a virtual perspective, we just have to physically exfiltrate this stuff out of the country, um, while while the option was still there, um, and then, at a certain point, that option, uh, you know, was taken off the table.

Simon: 26:00

Yeah, I mean, and what do you do? I mean you just figure out another way to go. It's challenging. I am so in your field and we had we've spoken a lot about that flexibility and I'm just curious about if we could shift a little bit and talk about the communication aspect of that, because that would seem that in the field, in the career path, that everyone having to talk together about the same information but everyone's also trying to, I would imagine, keep their own information. How does that sharing work? Is that a thing, or am I even on the right path?

Ian L. Paterson: 26:33

No, it's definitely a thing I mean with cybersecurity. In some respects it is good guys versus bad guys. It is organizations that are just trying to go accomplish their mission. If you're a government agency or if you're a private sector company, you're just trying to go build that widget and you're trying to keep out the bad guys who want to do you harm or steal your intellectual property or deploy ransomware, and so to a certain extent, you do pair up with other I mean even your direct competitors, or what's called threat intelligence, cyber threat intelligence because if you share with your peer and your peer shares with you, then potentially you can get a heads up If there's something that's going to happen. Maybe they hit somebody else first. If you know about it, then you can take action and you can protect yourself. But, as you know, with any type of intelligence, with any type of data, right, how far do you share it? And the farther you share it, potentially, you know, the less valuable it becomes. That is a whole, I'd say, subfield within cybersecurity. It's very, very active and it is, you know. I think it's an area where, for the most part, things are pretty clear cut in terms of what do you share with who when, et cetera.

Ian L. Paterson: 27:57

I think where it gets a bit dicey is actually post-incident. So if you think about, you know left of boom is trying to prevent something from happening. Right of boom is after an incident has occurred and that could be data theft, it could be ransomware, et cetera. Data theft, it could be ransomware, et cetera.

Ian L. Paterson: 28:14

What ends up becoming challenging right of boom is that you now have other stakeholders who have a say about what you want to share or can share. So things like regulators, privacy commissioners, privacy agencies, federal laws, industry norms are all going to dictate what you're allowed to share, what you should share. Industry norms are all going to dictate what you're allowed to share, what you should share, what you must share in some cases, and so some of the flexibility there goes away right of boom, and so it's one of the reasons that you want to try and stay left of it as much as you can. But it's becoming much more prescribed, whereas maybe 10, 20 years ago it was still a bit of the Wild West. You know, if you get hacked, if there was a data breach, you didn't have as many stakeholders demanding certain things and then prohibiting you from saying certain things, whereas you do now, so it's been a much more complicated environment that, frankly, you have to get a lot more lawyers involved to be able to navigate successfully.

Simon: 29:14

I know very, very little about this world, so my mind is blown about the fact that in the cybersecurity world, we're talking about bringing in lawyers to make sure the information is kept secret. That's not how I envision it at all. I admit that I'm 50 years old, so when you're talking about IBM computers from the 80s, I remember the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick and and everything was like lightning fast. I had a Commodore 64 and and I remember my mind being blown playing the first Ghostbusters game and it was like like very clearly little rectangles and little squares moving and I couldn't believe there was more than one color. And now how? And so there was none. There was none of this cyber security because it just didn't exist. And now here we are. We're talking about how this information can get taken and instead of, I guess in my mind, the fight of it, of these, these cyber warriors in the background going at it, it's in hiring a, an army of lawyers to go and protect it. It's not how I envisioned all that would go.

Ian L. Paterson: 30:08

Well, hopefully it's an not, or? I mean, I don't think hiring an army of lawyers is going to keep you safe. But listen, I mean most organizations have personally identifiable information PII. A lot of companies have personal health information PHI. These are effectively regulated pieces of data and there are rules and laws around what you're allowed to disclose and what you must disclose and what you must not disclose, and then there are penalties if you get it wrong.

Ian L. Paterson: 30:33

So you know, that's just kind of a that's just the world that we live in. I think where it becomes really complicated and really challenging, especially for larger organizations, is that you have to be compliant with effectively every jurisdiction for which you have a nexus for. So if you're a big company and you have 10,000 people around the world and you have customers around the world and your internet traffic traverses various places, then you potentially have a bunch of different places that you now have to be aware of, what the rules and laws are, and also make sure that you're tracking that on a regular basis, because this stuff is is changing quite a bit so, from a leader's perspective, and with all the changes that are happening rapidly and quickly, I I'm brought back to the idea of of how things are happening so quickly.

Simon: 31:25

How can a leader, if they're in one of these roles and things are happening so fast, how can they they remain ahead of the game? How can they keep that momentum going and still have some of that information if the information is changing so often?

Ian L. Paterson: 31:38

Well, I think so asking for help, I think is is one of the big ones. There's this. So this whole industry is so big that you can't keep track of it. No one person can keep track of all of it, and and you have to you have to understand what your portion of it is and then arm yourself with relationships and advisors and people and stakeholders and consultants and employees, et cetera, to fill in the rest. You know that's really the only thing you can do.

Ian L. Paterson: 32:03

Cybersecurity, to your point, is much more complicated and it's much more in-depth, and it's also become quite professionalized. You know, compared to 20 years ago, when information security was was you actually could keep most of it all up in your head, you know, now it's now it's much more complicated. The flip side to that, though, is that complexity is actually creating a lot of opportunity for people to get into the industry. Cybersecurity has some estimate 4 million jobs unfilled, vacant right now because there's not enough qualified people who can go do that work. That number has increased from something like 2 million cyber jobs a handful of years ago, so it's definitely a growing industry and it's an area that I frequently talk to people about as a source of opportunity. I mean, if you want to go into a growing field and one that has a lot of opportunity for specialization, cyber is definitely a great industry to consider.

Simon: 33:09

Well, that's a fantastic point. In the military, we've actually created an entire trade revolving around that because we recognize the importance of the role that cybersecurity has in actual security and non-physical security that we experience. So it's there and it's not going away. The internet is a proven success. It's not going away there and it's not going away Like the internet is a proven success. It's not going away. Before we sign off, I'm just curious Is there if anyone would like to hear more from you, to reach out? Are there any ways that we could do that? And and also, I feel it's important to point out that you're also a podcast host, so if you want to take a moment and talk about that, that now's your chance.

Ian L. Paterson: 33:47

I appreciate that opportunity. I mean I'm I'm pretty easy to find. I'm Ian L Patterson. I'm mostly active on LinkedIn, so you're welcome to follow me there.

Ian L. Paterson: 33:56

The newer podcast that we launched, also a YouTube series, is called Code and Country, and we're exploring the intersection of national security and cybersecurity. We've been very fortunate in the guests that we've spoken to so far. It includes some of the people that I already mentioned on this podcast, but also Sammy Curry, who was formerly the head of the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity, now the senior, most official for cybersecurity for the Government of Canada, Director General Chris Lynham, who runs cybercrime at RCMP, as well as others both in the United States and amongst our allies. Beth Sizeland was the former COO at GCHQ in the UK and she was also Deputy National Security Advisor to the British Prime Minister. So it's been a very interesting series and we've got quite a few more very interesting shows coming up. So Code and Country is the name of that one, and if you're interested in hearing more about Plurilock, which is the company that I run, it's plurilockcom slash IR short for Investor Relations. It's usually the best way for people to stay up to speed on what we're up to.

Simon: 35:09

Fantastic and, of course, we'll have links to all those things inside our show notes. And, ian, this has been an absolute pleasure. I always love speaking to other Canadians and I always love speaking to other Canadians about topics that I know nothing about, because I've learned quite a bit. Thank you so much for your time today and it's been a real pleasure and I'm looking forward to the next time we get to chat.

Ian L. Paterson: 35:29

Thanks, Simon, and next time I see one of those challengers in the air I will be thinking about you.

Simon: 35:33

Sounds like a great plan. Take care, my man, cheers.

Simon: 35:37

Well, that's another episode from the front, and in this episode we spoke with Ian Patterson, a podcast host, another fellow Canadian and an expert in all things cybersecurity, and we talked about how it's important for leaders to understand that people are important, but so is the process. We also need to understand that the momentum that the leader brings to the team to keep things going forward. It does not necessarily mean that we have to have all the answers, and if we don't have all the answers, all we need to do is talk to our peers, talk to the others around us and if we have to ask for help. That's not a sign of weakness as a leader. That's a sign of strength that we don't have all the answers and that all we truly care about is succeeding for ourselves, for our team members and for the organization. Thanks for tuning in and remember leadership without passion limits the depth of your vision.

Glen: 36:29

Be sure to join us next week with your host, Simon Kardynal, for another episode of Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, produced by, "It's a Legit Business Music provided by Ashamal of Music.

Glen: 36:44

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