AutomatedBuildings.com Interview -Intelligent Buildings Co-Founders: Tom Shircliff and Rob Murchison

Tom Shircliff is a Principal of Intelligent Buildings, LLC a company that he co-founded in 2004 to help customers manage risk, enhance occupant well-being, and continually improve performance through advisory, assessment and managed services. Tom is an entrepreneur and executive with broad experience in Fortune 500 management, small business and venture capital-funded startups. He is an industry thought leader and collaborator with universities, national laboratories and trade shows as well as a gubernatorial appointee for energy policy and founding Chairman of Envision Charlotte, a Clinton Global Initiative. Tom writes for industry publications and has been a contributing book author as well as co-inventing multiple real estate technology patents. Previously he was in management and leadership roles in the real estate and technology sectors with AT&T, Broadriver Communications and The Price Davis Company.

Rob Murchison is a Principal of Intelligent Buildings, LLC, a company that he co-founded in 2004 to help customers manage risk, enhance occupant well-being, and continually improve performance through advisory, assessment, and managed services. Rob is an entrepreneur and executive with broad experience in information technology, startup businesses, and real estate solutions. He is a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences, including RealComm Conference, IBCon Conference, and Haystack Connect. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Rob writes for industry publications and has been a contributing book author and co-invented multiple real estate technology patents. Previously, he was an MIS network specialist with Wix and has been an equity owner and sales executive at LVTS Integration and Cisco Systems Partner.

Sinclair - Tom and Rob, we are usually talking to you about smart building strategy and solutions. What led you guys into cybersecurity?

As we all know, it's not just so-called smart building solutions but any building control systems has been digital and Internet connectable for decades with little to know planning or policy for cybersecurity. So, while we have been consulting on this for a while we came to realize there was just not a service or solution available that fit commercial real estate for ongoing monitoring and protection. Additionally, the existing IT approaches were too expensive and cumbersome for the facilities environment. This is supported by both NIST and Gartner who have research verifying that IT methods do not work for OT and can actually compound problems. Ken, there is a book titled “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”, but we have observed in real estate that “Culture eats technology for breakfast” as well. Thus any successful approach had to be compatible with what really happens in facilities and not just a tech-only approach.

As commercial buildings get smarter and more automated, security seems to be one of the obstacles that needs to be addressed. What are some of the biggest issues your customers seem to be facing and what do they need to consider?

You are right about that. Even though we just mentioned nearly all building systems and solutions need help with cybersecurity, the proverbial Internet of Things keeps piling on sensors and systems that are well beyond the core systems we have all gotten used to. So, if you don’t have a good, scalable, cost-effective approach made for building systems OT then you are doomed to the inevitable consequences. And it's important to note that this is not just an opinion, we have numerous incident reports available on our website describing multiple different events where the customers incurred hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in costs due to issues not only involving hacking but also system mismanagement and IT methods misapplied to building systems and knocking them offline.

Can you summarize the managed cybersecurity services you are offering based on Tempered Networks and how they help commercial real estate clients?

Given the Gartner and NIST research and our 17 years in the business we determined a low cost, straight forward managed service was the most effective way to solve the problem and the fastest “time to value” approach. We have three pillars in the service:

Remote Access: 1 to 1 only connections that are invisible to the Internet, plug and play simplicity, and much lower cost structure than traditional VPNs.
Building System: Configuration scanning (ensuring passwords, current software, lockouts) and consolidated backup service for all controls systems
Contractor and Staff: Ongoing policy audits, phishing monitoring and online training

Why did you select Tempered Networks as the security infrastructure for your service? Do they have specific capabilities for this market?

Tempered has precisely what Intelligent Buildings was looking for and what the industry needed to deal with the fragmented environment of real estate and Intelligent Buildings knows the inner workings and culture of commercial real estate better than anyone. So, taking their networking and remote access technology and combining it with contractor and staff automated policy management and training and then topping it off with system backup made it a very compelling combination. --- Tempered is the lynchpin for networking and secure remote access that enables the configuration scan and backup services – and Ken now we can also help the customer get and analyze data much more confidently with this secure environment.

How does your service and Tempered’s Airwall fit into a typical customer environment? Is there anything to retrofit, and how complex is the installation for OT networking teams?

That is the beauty of it. No retrofit, no layers of technology, or complex management We have developed a process at Intelligent Buildings where we can simply have a planning call and then dropship devices with a note card showing “plug and play” and then all contractors get automated audit links and support describing the new customer policy and the ongoing policy compliance process. We manage the secure connections and new user onboarding and privileges. The cool thing is we can link policy compliance to access and privileges, meaning if a contractor or staff member does respond or answer audits appropriately we can remove access to the Tempered network instantly.

Where is the ROI in making this kind of investment in better cybersecurity? Reducing opex by outsourcing security management? Reducing risk and insurance premiums? Avoiding catastrophic loss? Enabling remote access that saves time and money or improves support services?

In a word, “yes”. This saves vendor and staff time and money, reduces (and addresses!) insurance gaps, and significantly reduces the chance of catastrophic loss. We have worked closely with customer insurance providers to explain and validate the new levels of security and policy. Additionally, we have had customers take out the expensive capital intensive IT infrastructure and replace it with this service including shifting the capex costs from the corporate or central office to the local property management operational expense for a more predictable financial approach.

Is there anything else the readers should know?

Just a couple of closing thoughts are that this partnership has been in place for a while now even though we have just announced it publicly, so customers can be confident that we can quickly deploy the technology and the services with a proven process. In addition, the many owners and managers we work with, we can even help larger contractors and service providers who need to manage their own access and policies.

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