Alexis
Hi everyone! Welcome to another episode of Data Dave Dives Deeper, the bonus podcast with Talk Tech with Data Dave. I’m  Alexis. You know me, the host of this podcast, and I’m excited because today I’m not only here with Data Dave, but I’m also here with Justin from Rhymetec so we can hear Justin’s, kind of, story of how he got into this world of data and cloud and technology and actually all things Rhymetec today.  

Super pumped to have you both. Data Dave, how are you today? 

Data Dave
I am very well. Alexis, how are you? I hope you had a great weekend. 

Alexis
I did. It was a fun weekend. We got to take my doggie to the dog park. That was really fun. But we’re not here to talk about my dog. Because if we were, I would talk about my dog for the rest of the pod. 

Justin Rende
I would be completely okay with that. I love talking about dogs. 

Data Dave
Yes, I’m delighted to welcome Justin Rende of Rhymetec. He’s the founder and CEO of Rhymetec, and you’ve been in the industry for a while. And we’re excited to hear your story. 

Justin Rende
Again guys, my name is Justin Rende and I’m the founder and CEO of Rhymetec. We are a cyber security services firm based in New York City. We build and manage Infosec and data privacy programs for modern cloud-based businesses. We’ve been around since 2015.  And it’s just been – what, I would say – nine years of hyper growth for the past nine years. It’s an exciting industry to be in, and it’s an exciting place to work, and I’m super excited to be a part of all of this. 

Data Dave
Excellent. That sounds extremely exciting. So, what got you here? What caused you to start Rhymetec in 2015? 

Justin Rende
Yeah, so it’s a long story. I think, and I could go all the way back to my childhood, but I’ll kind of give you guys the Cliff Notes of everything and how it works.  

So, I worked in technology essentially since I graduated from college, and I moved to New York City. That was in… I’m dating myself… that was in 2002. And I moved to New York City, and I was working for some other consulting companies that were doing mostly software licensing.  

Back before the cloud existed you would have to buy these like large Microsoft enterprise agreements. And I was actually doing sales for them. And I would go and I’d work with a lot of the businesses based in New York, a lot of law firms, banks, whatnot, working with them on their Microsoft agreements.  

And I was a 22 year old guy that lived in New York City and all of my friends at that point in time, they had much – what I thought at that point in time were – cooler jobs, right? Like they weren’t selling Microsoft licensing, they were working in film, or they worked in fashion, or they worked in something that was more than kind of what I viewed at that point in time, kind of a New York-centric job. And that was really exciting. So. I was doing this. And I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t finding it totally fulfilling reselling Microsoft licensing. And I wanted something that was more exciting. So, I actually left the tech industry for a while, and I ended up going to work in the film industry through some contacts that I had.  

Data Dave
Nice. 

Justin Rende
And Yeah, and it was actually, I think, like, thinking back on that and how that played into Rhymetec today, it’s working in that industry, even though it’s not related to technology, played a major part in how I work and how I’ve been able to develop and then create Rhymetec. 

So, I ended up going to work in film, and I worked there for five years where I was working under some pretty big-name celebrities and industry types of people in the industry. 

Data Dave
We’re gonna have to drill into that a little bit. I’m afraid we’re gonna have to ask you what you were working on and whether we’ve actually heard of any of these projects. And that sort of thing. So, we can’t just let that fly by on, “I was in film five years.” Sorry about that. Yeah. 

Alexis
I was in the same place. 

Justin Rende
I can tell you that for most of these things, I signed an NDA, so I can’t talk about specifically who they work with, but I can tell you that if you think of some major New York type celebrities, those would be the people that I worked for, specifically ones that are based in Tribeca, New York. I don’t know if that’s any sort of insight into what it would be, but there’s a Film Festival in New York City that’s called the Tribeca Film Festival that’s ran by some pretty big celebrities that really you could figure it out really quickly.  

I was working for them, kind of just doing a lot of different jobs. At certain point in time, I was working for them as an assistant, which is what most people start out in the film industry doing. And then I kind of worked my way up into kind of doing VIP guest relations.  

So essentially what my job was at that point, was I was responsible for getting all of these celebrities and industry executives to come to the Tribeca Film Festival that’s hosted in April every year in New York City, and then managed these celebrities and industry executives while they were here.  

And then I actually, at that point in time, it doesn’t still exist. But Tribeca had a sister festival in Doha, Qatar, which happened later on in August, and so I would spend 6 months out of the year working in New York on the Tribeca Film Festival, and then I would spend 6 months out of the year looking into Qatar, working on the Doha Tribeca Film Festival and the job is the same. It was really celebrities liaisoning, getting them to come to these festivals and then managing them while they were here and managing the experience that they had.  

So, I had to kind of make sure that they enjoyed their experience when they were here. So I got to work with the big name celebrities that kind of ran the festival. But then I got to meet a lot of different people from all over the entertainment industry that I would entertain and host when they came to both of these festivals. 

Alexis
That sounds so cool. 

Justin Rende
Yeah. 

Data Dave
So, on the sort of personnel side of the film industry working with the people and the name. That side, not the production of film or the production of the material, but managing the individuals involved. 

Justin Rende
Exactly. I was managing the individuals involved when they would go to these sort of festival events and making sure that these celebrities and industry executives are enjoying your time. They had a full schedule, that if they needed anything, they would come to me and I would make sure that that happened. 

And I did that for about five years. It was an enjoyable experience, but kind of to what you said before, I didn’t have a passion for film. I wasn’t looking to start building or creating films or producing films or producing anything like that, and I realized that I was doing this because of what I said earlier. I wanted to have a cool job.  

So, As I got a little bit older and closer to my 30s, I was less interested in having a cool job and more interested in having some more stability. If I wanted to stay in the film industry, I would have had to move to Los Angeles, which at that point in time wasn’t something that I was really interested in, and so I wanted to stay in New York City. And so, I ended up leaving the film industry and I was like, “Okay, what can I do where I know that I have a solid baseline of knowledge, and it’s a really stable industry?” And I decided to just go back into tech because I was like, “This is what I know…”. And I worked for another consulting company at that point in time in tech. And I started managing their cyber security department.  

So, we would do penetration testing. We would build cyber security programs for mostly more legacy-type of companies. A lot of companies that have a lot of on-prem infrastructure and less about the cloud. I was doing that for a few years and thinking the whole time I was like, “Hey, you know, this is great, but I think I worked in film and I worked with all these, like exciting people. And you’re doing that.” That gave me a lot of confidence to be able to do a lot of different things.  

I’m like, “Oh, I’ve met celebrities and big-name people.” And I realize that they’re all just the same as me. Everyone has their own insecurities, and we’re all just people. And so, it gave me confidence really to be able to start Rhymetec.  

I was working with this other consulting company for a couple of years, and I was working with them. I was doing a penetration test, which is where essentially we hack into your systems and then we show you how we hacked into your system so that we can close off all of those vulnerabilities. So that someone that’s looking to actually steal from you can’t do that because we’ve remediated those vulnerabilities through this.  

Our company… I was doing this at a big law firm that I’d had a relationship with from way back when I was selling the Microsoft licensing. I’ve known them for years. They were a good customer of mine. We ended up doing a penetration test for them. I pulled together all the resources. The old consulting company that I worked for didn’t have a ton of resources. So I had to go and find all the resources, putting everything together. Structure the deal, price the deal. Put everything together essentially myself.  

We went into this big law firm, and we ended up actually hacking them a million different ways, too, which is a good thing for us. Bad thing for them. 

Alexis
Not a good thing for them. 

Data Dave
Yeah, not so good for them, but now it’s good because you fixed them. 

Justin Rende
Yes, exactly. That got me some recognition with them.  

So, what had happened then is this law firm was like, “Hey, Justin.” again, I’ve known these guys for years from way back to when I was selling the Microsoft licensing. And I just kept the relationship with them. And they said, “Hey, I know you’ve been mentioning how you want to start your own business, and we believe in you. You did such an excellent job here with this penetration testing work. We saw that you put this all together. You didn’t have a lot of resources from your company and you kind of created this whole thing. And not only did you do a great job, but you delivered what we wanted. You deliver at a fair price and did really well.”  

And they said, “We want to refer you into one of our customers.” So, keep in mind, this is a big-name law firm in New York City, so they’re customers are also big name customers. They ended up referring me into one of their biggest customers, which I also signed an NDA with. But I can tell you that it was one of the richest people in the world’s, companies that manages their billions of dollars, was essentially their customer. And so they said, “Hey, we want you to go in and to do a penetration test for one of our customers, we referred you into it and the name of the customer.”  

I said, “Who is that?” because they just gave me the initials of the customer and they said, “Why don’t you go home and research who that is?” 

So, I immediately left. I think I didn’t even go home. I looked it up when I left on my phone and it was a big deal customer. One of the biggest names in tech and one of the most wealthy people, I think in the world or at one point in time was the most wealthiest person in the world. So we went in and I said, “Thank you for this. This is an amazing opportunity for me to start my own company.”  

I quickly wiped up all the contracts. I didn’t have, like a lot of money to start it. I wasn’t coming from like a well-funded place. So, I was bootstrapped. I went home. I put together my first website on like a Wix website like over that weekend. I contacted some friends who were lawyers. I put together contracts, and then I immediately reached out to that company, and I said, “Hey, this law firm referred me in to you,” and then they responded and said, “Yes, we would love for you to do a penetration test. Of course!” 

Data Dave
Very nice. 

Justin Rende
Yeah, I ended up doing a penetration test for them as well. And we ended up hacking them a bunch of different ways too, which was again good for me, not so great for them, but that ended up kind of spiraling. This was in, like, 2015, that sort of work for them ended up spiraling into doing a lot of other penetration test work for a lot of other high net -worth companies. So hedge funds, places like the …I can tell you that… the Ford Foundation, so things like that were some of the companies that we were doing pen tests for. 

Data Dave
Okay. 

Justin Rende 

So, in 2015, I was strictly just doing penetration test work, and mostly for these more legacy types of businesses. I would recognized. I stopped at that point in time and I was like, “This is great. I love doing this. I can get top dollar for these pen tests.” But my income would be like… I would do a pen test. So I’d see a big spike in income, and then I wouldn’t do another pen test for another two or three months and then I would see a spike in income. And I was used to having a consistent income from a job. And so I thought to myself, “Hey, this is great but I just know myself and I know that I need to be able to plan better and it’s hard for me to plan without having that consistent income and if I’m being honest, like I like working with these sort of high network type of companies. But I’m not a multi-billionaire. I don’t have a lot in common with them. I have more in common with startups.” And a lot of my friends worked at startups, and so I’m not as interested in a lot of legacy technology. I wanted to align myself with the future of technology.  

I ended up kind of pivoting and saying, “Okay, I would rather provide penetration testing work to kind of smaller SaaS based startups or cloud based groups.” And then ,what I would do, because at that time it was a larger expense for them is I’d say, “Okay, why don’t you just pay me over the course of three months.” And then that kind of gave me some consistency in my income because in those three months, I’d be able to find another pen test, then I would have monthly payments from them.  

That gave me that consistency that I kind of initially desired. And during that time period, I realized that these startups had zero security resources, so not only do they need a penetration tester, but they also needed someone to help them navigate SOC2 or ISO compliance. But frankly just, “What are best practices for building infosec and data privacy programs? How do you understand these regulations? How do you align with them?”  

So, there were so many questions that I would get during that period of frankly the time when they were paying me out over that pen test, there’s a much bigger opportunity here for the other than just pen testing. And that opportunity is really providing a CISO service for these customers where I’m helping them essentially build and manage these programs while doing penetration tests for them and really kind of managing their overall infosec program and that was probably around 2017. The team and I decided that I was like, “I want to really align with cloud-based technology.” I don’t think that’s where the majority of the market was at the time, but I understood that that was kind of the future of where technology was going to head up, that we’re doing that.  

Data Dave
Right, absolutely. 

Justin Rende
I started to find some customers, some of the customers that I had were Silicon Valley based customers, or they knew a lot. They were kind of entrenched in that Silicon Valley world. And they connected me to some security programs. Like I don’t know if you guys have heard of Vanta or there’s some platforms out there like Vanta, I believe, but a lot of companies use now, and we really started to align our services and say, “Okay, these security platforms like Vanta are amazing for building a baseline like the foundation of your security program.” So, we kind of aligned our services with them, and then we would grow. We just grew with them. So as they grew, we would go with them, we would fill any gaps that these platforms. Provide with the manual service, and we really just started to take off and was in 2018-2019. I think we have like 20 customers and now we have over 600 customers. 

Data Dave
Wow, that’s impressive. 

Justin Rende
Yeah. So that’s my only good story about how I came to be where I am today. 

Alexis
I love that story, Justin, and I’m proud to tell anybody and everybody that D3Clarity is actually a proud Rhymetec customer. And we carry a lot of those ideas and those best practices. And those are things that we do all the time, but we do them for our clients and then we end up having nobody out there to do it for us, and it’s like, “Oh, no.” And so that’s how we ended up getting hooked up with Rhymetec.  

And it was just amazing to be like, “Oh, you know what, I can dedicate this one person to deal with all of that,” and in our company that happens to be me. I’m so thankful to have you guys to help us because you guys talk me through all that crazy stuff. But it’s nice to have you guys give us that helping hand because our resources are so dedicated to being experts for our clients. It’s just a perfect opportunity for us. So, I love to hear that.  

We came in with you guys in, I think 2021 or 2022, and I was telling you earlier, like we were with you when I just had one dedicated person and now I have like four dedicated people to help me. And I just love that.  

So, I’m super happy to hear your story and to think about how your story applies to us. I will tell people that… I think I wrote it in a recommendation to you guys…. we wouldn’t have our SOC 2 Type II compliance without Rhymetec. And so, we’re really thankful to have you guys on our team. Just to recommend you to whoever we need to recommend you to. 

Justin Rende
And we’re super thankful to have customers like you, and I think that’s really kind of the core of what we’re trying to do as security and compliance and data privacy is our business. We want you guys to be able to focus on your business and the core competencies of your business.  

And so, we want to be able to take that over in a way that can make sure that you guys understand what’s going on with that and how it’s evolving and how it’s scaling. But you guys don’t have to constantly worry about it because we’re there to back you guys up and, we’re gonna be able to make sure that you guys have a scalable, secure infosec data privacy program. And that’s our goal. 

Data Dave
That’s right. Where we came into this really was on the SOC 2 and the compliance side of it, that was our entry point because we work, as you well know, we work a lot with the importance of privacy in HIPAA and in other data sets, and the importance of data generally, and there’s really making sure we had our I’s dotted and T’s crossed as we went through the SOC 2 compliance.  

Can you talk a little bit about the importance of SOC 2 as well from an industry perspective and what your thoughts are behind this compliance?  

Justin Rende 

Yeah, for sure. So, there’s a couple different ways to think about it. 

I think typically, we get some customers that come to us, and they’re like, “Hey, we need to be SOC 2 compliant because our customers are asking us about being SOC 2 compliant.” Right? Because you’re retaining their data, and they want to know that it’s secure.  

So, there’s a lot of customers that are, they have sales driving their security program, right? And that’s actually not what we typically recommend. We typically recommend that people try to get ahead of this. And so, when I think of how we would develop a security program for a customer that has all the resources and all the money in the world, I would for sure go forward and buy like a Vanta or a platform like that, because that’s going to, like I said, be the source of truth and the foundation of any cloud-based infosec program.  

And then, I think of SOC 2 as being the baseline control set that you need for an infosec program. It’s going to talk about two-factor authentication, making sure your data is encrypted, so it’s kind of like security fundamentals that are involved in SOC 2.  

And so those are really control-based, and it’s all about, “Are these controls turned on? Are you making sure that your data is actually secured through the mechanisms that you have within your infrastructure?” 

And then I start to think about, “Okay, what’s the next step to do after that?” And really, I think ISO 27001 is really the next logical step after that. Because, well, SOC 2 is all about controls and implementing controls. ISO is really about developing an infosec program. So ISO, at a very high level an easy way to think about it is about,  “Okay, let’s identify all the risks in the organization, and then let’s put together a remediation strategy for those risks, and then let’s monitor the remediation over time. And let’s work to make sure that we get those remediated.”  

So, ISO is really about processes and SOC is really about controls. And when, I think, you couple those two sort of frameworks together, they’re a good sort of the foundation for any infosec program, and when you build off of that, “Do you need intrusion protection? Do you need intrusion detection systems like what are the systems that you need? Outside of what these sort of fundamental shops?” 

Data Dave
So, this is the locking the door side of security, right? This is the, “How do I lock my door? How do I stop people intrusion? Stop people coming in? Stop people doing bad stuff?”, essentially. 

Justin Rende
Yes, exactly. 

Alexis
You have to understand, Justin, that Dave often speaks in metaphors for me to understand, like locking doors. I really appreciate that. We’ve had that conversation many times. Like we close our doors to create privacy. The same way you would do it online through, uh, we did talk about this WAN, LAN, a LAN, a VLAN, that’s what we’re talking about the time. 

Justin Rende
That is just it really. At the end of the day, it’s how do you keep people’s data safe? And I think kind of going back to what I said before, which is I chose to focus on cloud-based companies, and I think that was one of the smartest things that I did because there’s a ton of resources out there of people that understand, “Okay, it’s been my job for the past 20 years to secure this on-prem SQL Server. I need to patch it. I need to make sure that it’s secure, and I need to make sure that no one can get into the SQL Server and that was their job.  

But when you look at cloud-based infrastructure, it’s like, “Okay, you’ve kind of outsourced that SQL Server to AWS or to wherever you’ve outsourced your infrastructure.” And so it’s more about like actually how do you build a scalable infosec program and less about making sure that your SQL Server is constantly patched. And there was a huge knowledge gap in the industry, and there still is today. Because a lot of people that were trained on security and cyber security were trained on a lot of on-premise stuff, and that’s just not the same way that you conduct cyber security within a cloud company.  

I can tell you, just like in the experience of working with these kind of more legacy firms where we would do pen tests for them. I think I started out the story saying we would hack all these companies in a million different ways. That doesn’t happen when we’re in the cloud. That’s a totally different thing. And so, it’s much easier, I think ,when you look at an on-prem and it’s easier for hackers to kind of go in and try to hack the actual machines and find a way to break in through that firewall through a vulnerability.  

I think with cloud based architecture, everything is constantly being updated and constantly being patched, so it’s much harder for those malicious adversaries to kind of break in. And so when you’re looking at cloud-based architecture, you need to focus on what you’re talking about – access management. What do your employees have access to? Does your employee accidentally take some PII from someone in a system and copy and paste and put that into SLACK or something like that? That’s not a system that is HIPAA compliant or that should have that in there.  

It’s much easier, I think, for your employees in a cloud-based company to be hacked than it is for your machines. So phishing, spear phishing, stuff like that is a much bigger threat for cloud-based companies I think, than actual hacking of devices. Like it is in a on-prem environment, and I know you mentioned you were from IBM – unless you have an IBM mainframe, which is basically a rock. No one’s ever gonna get into an IBM mainframe. 

Data Dave
Oh, how the world turns right. 

Justin Rende
Yes, they’re the most secure things ever. I don’t know, I think. And if you’re working with like JP Morgan Chase and all these big banks, I’m sure they’re still running on IBM mainframes because they’re the most secure thing out there. 

Data Dave
They largely are, but that’s again the principle of least privilege architected in, right? Because they’ve got the security really locked in the right the way down and through it. And there’s much less third-party software on it as well. 

Justin Rende
Yes, exactly which does make a big difference. 

Alexis
Justin, I want to rollback for a second. I forgot to warn you before we recorded, that I like to ask questions to understand things. So that’s my job. That’s what I’m here for.  

You said phishing and spear phishing. So, I’ve heard of phishing before. I’m sure all of our listeners have heard of phishing before, but then you were like spear phishing. And of course, like I’m thinking of a spear and a fish, I have no technical context for that. Can you tell me what that is please? 

Justin Rende
So phishing is just like, I’m sure we’ve all gotten the phishing e-mail. It’s just like, oh, log into this, enter your login and password. I probably got like 13 of them. Text message to me or to me just today on my phone. And so, they’re very generic and they go out to a wide group of people without nothing very specific.  

Spear phishing is when you actually have someone that is targeting you. So, like they’ve targeted you or Alexis. So, they’re looking up where you went to school. They’re looking up where you live, and they’re trying to create a customized sort of e-mail or correspondence with you that is more personalized to you. And so, it’s a little bit trickier. Right?  

It’s not just like, “Oh, click here on this UPS package this weird link but doesn’t have UPS in the URL and enter your credit card information.” It could be an e-mail from your school that you went to college to or an e-mail from even someone you were related to because they took the time to really go through and understand more about you specifically. Those happen, and they’re much more of a threat because, again, you’re much more likely to open an e-mail from someone that you think is your mother than someone that you think is just random UPS e-mail, but they’re harder to do because they take time.  

So, phishing goes out to a wide cast of people with the hopes of like, someone will just accidentally do it. Spear phishing is a very targeted phishing method of against one or two different people.  

Data Dave
So I’m gonna follow that with another question around the use of AI and ML from a hackers perspective and from a defensive perspective. What thoughts do you have around that, and how is that going to change your position going forward? 

Alexis
Very good question. 

Justin Rende
So, I love this question, and I love the people that talk about AI. Everyone has all of these opinions. “This is what AI is going to do. This is what’s going to happen,” and the bottom line is no one knows what’s going to happen with AI. I love that everyone has their opinions.  They just, I think, especially in the whole Silicon Valley world, people just want to talk about AI because then investors are like, “Here, take money from us.” 

Data Dave
Right, exactly. 

Justin Rende
As with anything, what will happen is… yes, of course, with AI the threats will increase, right? We’re going to have a whole different set of threats from a different world. That’s AI. But just as we’ve done in the past before AI. Our defenses will also increase.  

Data Dave
Right.  

Justin Rende
And we’ll be building up defenses to match them, and that’s frankly, I think how that’s going to work.  

Do I have a road map of what that looks like? No. Does anyone have a road map of what that looks like? No. And if anyone tells you they do. They don’t. So, I just think it’s also just capitalism. That’s how we’re going to continue to grow, and new companies will come up and spur up, and it’s just going to always be kind of like one catching up with the other, I think, always. And I think that that’s how it’s worked in the past. And I don’t think that’s going to change with AI. 

Data Dave
I completely agree with you. To me, it’s just another tool that both the good guys and the bad guys will learn how to use for their respective parts. We might see more spear phishing because it’s easier to generate the spear phishing emails because you can use AI to auto generate them and to do the groundwork. But at the same time and all the current rules that we look at manually to detect phishing become something that you can put straight in an automated system to say this smells like a phishing e-mail. So, we’ll eliminate it before it even gets there. So, there’s this evolution that’s going to continue to occur that allows us to, just keep moving forward. 

Justin Rende
That was a perfect example. AI will probably be able to craft spear phishing emails a lot quicker, but we’ll also be developing with AI the sort of defenses that can detect spear phishing emails a lot better, as well. 

Data Dave
Exactly. So, the world turns and stays the same. 

Justin Rende
I do love thinking about it that way. Everyone’s thinking that they know what it is and it cracks me up because honestly, I mean, no one really knows it, and we don’t know what it does. But no one knows what it’s going to do and what the future of it is like at this point in time. And so, I think it’ll just to your point, it will evolve. So we’ll keep turning, and we’ll keep moving forward. 

Data Dave
Yeah. No, I love this talk about. Yeah, I love the fact that the industry and a lot of people putting a focus on it, and nobody really knows where it’s going. A lot of people are purely speculating and don’t really know how it works or how we got here. 

Justin Rende
They are all speculating that they would like to come across with the confidence like they know exactly what it’s going to do and that’s the they diverge from them. I’m happy to admit that I don’t know actually what it’s going to do.  

Data Dave
Exactly. No, I don’t either. I certainly don’t pretend to spend a lot of time making sure the data is good enough for people to actually use it. So you can actually predict and understand what answers you’re going to get from it with that before you ask them to a certain extent, you only get out what you. 

Justin Rende 

Okau. Yep. That’s correct. 

Alexis
I would love to, if all the stars align, have this conversation again in a year and hear both of your perspectives again on where we’re headed with AI and ML because I’m enjoying listening to the. Two of you go, “I have no idea what’s going on.” 

Justin Rende
Next year, we’ll be robots.  

Data Dave
Exactly, exactly, we will be. 

Alexis
That’s why I’m going to put a reminder in my calendar for a year from now to ask this question. Again, that’s wonderful. It’s like a perfect place though, to stop the podcast, to call it a day, unless there’s anything else, Justin or Dave, that you guys think would be kind of pertinent to this conversation that we want to get out there for our listeners to hear. 

Data Dave
The only thing I would say to our listeners is generally the caution that we’ve put out therebefore-  is to be careful and be cautiously optimistic. We are moving forward. The industry is moving forward. We’ve got people like Justin protecting the industry and protecting people’s behavioral interests only. Then, we’ve got people like us and like D3Clarity, where we are focused on the data and making sure that the data is accurate and it is protected in a way that gives you confidence that your data is being used appropriately. And then just in coming in and saying not only is it being used, appropriate is being protected appropriately as well. From inappropriate action and theft and various other things, and I think that’s a tremendously strong message to leave on that even as we put more data out there and even as these technologies, AI, ML and whatever comes next starts to evolve and move forward. There is this arms race going on that is making sure that whatever data we put out there is being used appropriately. It’s being put there appropriately. It is accurate, it is honest, and then it’s also being protected not only at the technical layer of firewalls and locking doors and various other things, but also the process layer of, “How do people behave with that data as well to prevent insider attacks and other things down that path?” And I think that’s a great message to leave on and set people’s minds at least a little bit at rest. 

Justin Rende
Yeah, I would echo that. I agree with you, Dave. You’re absolutely right. And I think things, like this podcast is great. I think working with companies like D3Clarity is, a joy for Rhymetec. And I hope that you guys feel the same way and and yeah, I really appreciate you guys having me on here.  

Data Dave
Thank you very much. Thank you, Justin. 

Justin Rende
Thank you. 

Alexis
Justin, thank you so much for being with us today. Data Dave, appreciate you as always. To our listeners out there, if you have a question for Data Dave, don’t forget to send it to us, at  talktech@d3clarity.com or if you’d be interested in joining us for one of these Data Dave Dives Deeper episodes, you can always reach out to us at that same e-mail or on our website at d3clarity.com. I know I’ve said it before, I’m going to say it again, don’t worry.  

So Dave, Justin again, thank you so much for joining us today. I think this was an awesome conversation.