From FBI Cyber Agent to Police Tech Innovator | Andre McGregor

[00:00:00] Chris Sienko: Today on cyber work, Andre McGregor of ForceMetrics tells me about his varied career, which includes time in the cyber crime division of the FBI, and also how he was recruited by the FBI despite his protestations

[00:00:13] Andre McGregor: One day I got a phone call saying, would you like to come take a test to be an FBI special agent? And I remember saying, No, I'm good. And they're like, no, no, we are really the FBI.

I'm like, no, I get that. I'm good with my job. And

they said no seriously come, take this test.

[00:00:27] Chris Sienko: And how that led up to the creation of ForceMetrics, a platform used by law enforcement to gather contextual, personal, and locational data to ensure that incidents are reported and covered with maximum safety and care for the community.

[00:00:39] Andre McGregor: Now, why am I here? What are your social truths? What are your needs? Do you have PTSD from the military? Are you prior homeless? Do you have autism, dementia? Because that'll explain. When I touch you, you move away. Or when I ask you a question, you don't gimme the right

[00:00:52] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:00:52] Andre McGregor: It's

[00:00:53] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:00:53] Andre McGregor: right? we're surfacing all of this information that may have been collected in other places to tell someone's social truth in a very like, bite-sized way.

[00:01:02] Chris Sienko: this is a really interesting new way of synthesizing big data and purposeful storytelling capabilities to include information about repeat offenders, mental health challenges and dangerous addresses.

[00:01:12] Andre McGregor: Let's look up his name and figure out, okay, were there other situations with neighbors? A variety of stuff that might be in a report somewhere. but it's So trying to pull out that unstructured to make it structured to make a baseball card. Does he have weapons, has he had a history of using those weapons? Does he have, children in the house?

[00:01:32] Chris Sienko: This one goes pretty deep, so keep it all here today for today's episode of Cyber Work.

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Now let's get the show started

 

[00:02:31] Chris Sienko: Welcome to this week's episode of the Cyber Work Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Sanko. My guests are a cross-section of cyber SE security industry thought leaders, and our goal is to help you learn about cybersecurity trends and how those trends affect the work of InfoSec professionals, as well as leave you with some tips and advice for breaking in or moving up the cybersecurity industry.

My guest today, Andre McGregor, is the CEO and Co-founder of ForceMetrics, uh, leveraging his background in law enforcement and cybersecurity to improve decision making in policing. As a former FBI, special agent, Andre tackled high profile cases in cyber crime and counter-terrorism handling hacks and international cyber threats.

His early as experience, uh, experiences growing up in a marginalized community shaped his commitment to creating safer. More informed interactions between police and the public with ForceMetrics. He focuses on providing officers with real-time data to enhance situational awareness, deescalate conflicts and support, community-driven law enforcement.

So there's a a lot on our plate today. I'm really looking forward to hearing all about this. So Andre, thank you for joining me today and welcome to Cyber Work.

[00:03:36] Andre McGregor: Well, thank you, and hearing all that means, uh, I, we've done a lot, which is pretty impressive to to

[00:03:42] Chris Sienko: Oh.

[00:03:42] Andre McGregor: thank you for that intro.

[00:03:44] Chris Sienko: Oh, no question. No question. Looking forward to it. So, uh, Andre, let's start, uh, with a bit about you and your early years. So your career highlights are amazing, but, and we'll get to those in a moment. But, uh, to start with, uh, where did it all start? Uh, do you remember what the initial spark was that got you interested in computers and security?

Any early teachers or mentors or anything?

[00:04:03] Andre McGregor: Uh, actually, I, I actually remember the exact moment. Um, you know, I was, uh, 12 years old and my, my dad had had a, a, a health crisis and brother came home after graduating from, from Brown University and, uh, with a computer science degree to help out the family, and he asked me one day, said, you know, what do you know about computers?

This is, again, I'd probably say 1990. Four. And I said, not much. And he's like, okay, well I, I'm gonna start a nonprofit to help inner city kids with computers and you're my Guinea pig. And that's when he taught. And we were just talking in those sort of the pre-show of just like putting, building computers and sims and dims and you know, swapping out, you know, uh, motherboards and 42 Dx 2 66, you know, processors.

Like that was that time. And he taught me. Everything about sort of the early stages of programming. Um, the internet was just starting building computers and then I ended up, um. over his nonprofit because he went to Harvard. My brother went to Harvard to get his master's, and I ended up, um, weirdly enough on the cover of USA today as a technology whiz kid. Um, there's an awkward photo. We had a photo shoot and they had me hold a, a, uh, a caress, a keyboard and hold a, a hard drive to my head, and they actually had

[00:05:25] Chris Sienko: Sure.

[00:05:25] Andre McGregor: hard drive to my head photo. But, um, so because those were kind of my earliest days, was, was that, that sort moment? Mm.

[00:05:33] Chris Sienko: Uh, can, I'm, I'm very curious, I don't know if I knew about the, uh, the nonprofit that your, you said your brother, uh, started and then you took over, uh, aimed at helping inner city, uh, school kids, uh, learn computers. What can you, can you tell me about like, what, what was, what that was involved in?

[00:05:48] Andre McGregor: Yeah. Um, so again, it was sort of the mid to late nineties inner city Denver was being riddled with sort of gang activity, crime, you know, crime. Uh, the Bloods and the Crips came over from LA and were fighting, and my brother decided to start this nonprofit right in the heart of all of that, in the heart of like. That violence. And he, know, would bring in not only young people, but old, older people as well, and teach 'em how to build websites, teach 'em,

[00:06:16] Chris Sienko: Hmm.

[00:06:16] Andre McGregor: just about general things with, with technology. And then he left to go get his masters and I took over the program and I did that till I graduated high school. And then I went off to Brown as well, following in, in his footsteps as, as well. Um, it was a great experience because again, it was early stages of technology. You're, you're dealing with a like. You know, two different cross sections, right? Like, I would say sub 20 years old and you know, sort of like north of years old, like

[00:06:44] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:06:45] Andre McGregor: understand

[00:06:45] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:46] Andre McGregor: there, ' cause neither had work as a reason to learn tech anymore.

[00:06:50] Chris Sienko: now, uh, can you talk about like what, what, what the sort of logistics of that involved? Did you have? Did you like rent a space, like a community center? Did you have a bank of keyboards? Like what or,

[00:07:04] Andre McGregor: It was a community. It's a great memory. 'cause I'm smiling 'cause I'm remembering the space. Right. It was like a

[00:07:09] Chris Sienko: yeah.

[00:07:09] Andre McGregor: center where you had like. You know, one side had, you know, six tables, the other side had eight tables. Each table had two computers on it. So you can do the math there and then the instructor in the front and you just had a big projector and it was a lot of donated equipment because, you know, you, it's like, you know, a nonprofit community center.

And um, know, it was just sort of. The classes were in the morning or after school, and then we enlisted more people to volunteer and then those volunteers started to take over teaching. It was actually, uh, technology and learning was the program. And it, it lasted several years. Um,

[00:07:47] Chris Sienko: Hmm.

[00:07:47] Andre McGregor: on its own.

[00:07:48] Chris Sienko: What was, what was the, the curriculum like were, were the young, the young Coie and the old Coie learning the same classes? Or did you have sort of like a track for seniors, a track for, uh, young people? Was there sort of like a progression or was it all just sort of like intro to computers?

[00:08:05] Andre McGregor: Yeah, good question. The, the young people were building computers. So here's a, you know, again, like pre, you know, just buying a computer off the shelf, you know, this is like the compact, you know, Tandy days, right? Like you remember

[00:08:18] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:08:20] Andre McGregor: so now swapping out motherboards and memory and ribbons and hard drives and. Overclocking and all that other stuff is what the young people were doing. And then they were building these, you know, gaming machines

[00:08:31] Chris Sienko: Okay.

[00:08:31] Andre McGregor: that time to be able to use. And then the older were more interested in just how to use, you know, technology, internet, you know, you know, I guess, you know, word was early.

This was like Windows 3 1, 1. Getting into Windows 95, right? Like, you know, bo both are great operating systems. We don't talk about those, but they, you know, very stable. Um, windows 98, not great, but like, uh, windows Me, that was a favorite. Um, kidding. That was not, it was one of those, the worst ones. But, uh, but yeah, that was kind of the, the breakdown.

[00:09:07] Chris Sienko: Nice. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I like that because I feel like that's something that. You know, an enterprising, a young person now could probably still do and really get a, a lot out of, I mean, we've certainly talked to some nonprofits on here, code Your Dreams here in Chicago and other things. But, uh, but it's cool that you were doing that, uh, all the way early on and also that you had that sort of hardware component to it.

'cause it's not just, uh, uh, you know, like I say, accessing internet and playing games, but like actually sort of getting into the, the guts of it.

[00:09:34] Andre McGregor: Uh, I think you start, you're still seeing young people doing, they may not be building, you know, a, a desktop machine. I mean,

[00:09:41] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:09:41] Andre McGregor: know, drones and the ability to, you know,

[00:09:44] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:09:45] Andre McGregor: you know, you're starting to see a lot of that, you know, programming when I was in school was, you know, per. Right.

[00:09:51] Chris Sienko: Right, right.

[00:09:52] Andre McGregor: was a great, great language. You know, Python had just started to appear a little bit, right? So like, you know, now you have many more programming languages and you can do a lot that you couldn't do before you get, you know, like when I went through school, it was either computer science or electrical engineering. Like there was no sub, you know, educational levels, right?

[00:10:11] Chris Sienko: Right, right. Yeah, no, I was gonna say, uh, uh, uh, you know, interest is where you is, where you make it. Uh, uh, the API hacker, Katie Paxon Fear talked about how she learned programming from having EEPs, you know, or the electronic sort of, Hey, I got, you know, and you could, you could customize them that way. And, uh, so yeah, I mean, whatever, whatever gets you into it is, is, is great.

But, um, so yeah, I wanna talk about, uh, your early career. There's a lot of different directions and discussions we're gonna be able to take to such a very insignificant career. Career. But, uh, I wanna hear about the six years when you worked as a cyber special agent for the FBI without, uh, discussing anything that would go against any NDAs or whatnot. What, what type of work did you do as a, a cyber agent for the FBI?

[00:10:50] Andre McGregor: It was, it was interesting because I, I didn't expect to be an FBI agent, let alone working in cyber. You know,

they recruited me. One day I got a phone call saying, would you like to come take a test to be an FBI special agent? And I remember saying, No, I'm good. And they're like, no, no, we are really the FBI.

I'm like, no, I get that. I'm good with my job. And

they said no seriously come, take this test. I was like, okay, when does the FBI ever call?

and not in a bad situation. And I remember I took it and it was like a day in the life of an FBI agent and a logic reasoning test E and, and you know, for verything from like, you know, responding to the scene, to evidence collection, to presenting your case to the da, to going to trial.

Right. I remember walking away and I was like. I know I passed and I was kind of upset that I knew that because I kind of just wanted to be a blip. And then I'd just continue with my, my, my regular job. And then they had me take another test and do a panel interview. And then I did the, physical fitness test and I failed dramatically because I'm a computer engineer with soft hands.

I wasn't expecting to have to sprint, run a mile and a half pushups, pullups, you know, situps. And I'll do it in a short amount of time. But now I. Didn't want to fail. So I ended up, taking it again passing that you know, The polygraph was absolutely atrocious. I was on it for three and a half hours and I, wouldn't wish that on...actually maybe my worst enemies, but I wouldn't wish it on my family, to do the polygraph. and then they put me in Manhattan after Quantico and, made me a special agent. I, worked counter-terrorism to start, 'cause every new agent in New York works counter-terrorism. Um, and then tie an organized crime, um, which, you know, the mob is still in existence and is quite fun to arrest every so often 'cause they just have a different style to

[00:12:35] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:12:35] Andre McGregor: I think they're sort of like a, uh, I don't wanna say sophisticated criminal, but definitely a well just set of criminals, um, as the mob and then. Cyber. So hacking started happening from nation states in like 2008, 2009, the bureau, when they looked at cyber, it was really sort of intellectual property theft and child exploitation.

that was kind of what they saw as cyber. Back then, it wasn't hacking, and so when hacking started to happen, the NSA was monitoring it, but there was no one really to investigate. Who was behind this? what was the attribution? So they, put a bunch of us, together into a squad and made us the first national security cyber squad for the FBI. And that's where we started with, you know, China and Russia, and then Iran. I actually watched Iran grow as a hacking team from

Defacing websites and saying, oh, they're like, you know. kiddy hackers

To being one of the most sophisticated hacking groups in the world. I, we

[00:13:34] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:13:35] Andre McGregor: grow. It was like scary because they actually grew over like a five year period, which is, you know, fast for, for a nation state.

[00:13:43] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:43] Andre McGregor: Korea came on board, if you remember sort of Sony and

[00:13:46] Chris Sienko: Oh yeah.

[00:13:47] Andre McGregor: the. The, you know, sort of, uh, the hacks that happened with Bit, you know, Bitcoin and crypto that also became a thing. And so, you know, lot of, a lot of good times, you know, lots of work. Nasdaq getting hacked, that was a really big intrusion that later was at, attributed to Russia and, and all of this. At the end of the day is finding the person behind the keyboard. And I think one of the coolest things is when you look at malware and you're like, okay, it's you know, code and you reverse engineer it, and you're like, oh wait, but I can tell that this was written by this particular actor because they write the same way.

Right? It's almost like a foreign language.

[00:14:26] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Yeah. I've heard.

[00:14:27] Andre McGregor: is there.

[00:14:28] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:28] Andre McGregor: we'll sit on top of what we call 'em hot points. We'll actually sit on top of a, um, hacked piece of infrastructure and we're watching the adversary in there, you know, typing out commands. And the thing is like, oh, you'll see them do a typo, and then you're like, okay, you know, it's not a bot.

You know that there's a human that's on the other end that's actually typing. And you'll see them like type in like a, like a Windows command in a Linux box and it doesn't work. And then they have to switch out and you're like, oh, there's still a human at behind all of this.

[00:14:58] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm. Oh, that's fascinating. Yeah, no, I, uh, uh, yeah, especially seeing it sort of coming up from, from the very beginning like that, uh, you know, we had, uh, uh, Lillian FTE on the, on the show who was one of the people who took down Lazarus group in, in South Korea, and like, yeah, it's. Uh, so did you have kind of a beat?

It sounds like you were really covering a lot of different, uh, were you, were you doing infiltration? Were you doing monitoring? Were you doing all of these things? Like what, uh, what was your sort of like, your routine, I guess? I.

[00:15:30] Andre McGregor: Yeah, good question. Um, so the bureau at the time had about 50 technically trained agents of 13,000 agents worldwide. So. Agents were handling the world as it related to sophisticated cyber crime. so you've got the issues happening in London and other countries, but you also have stuff happening on shore, and so you had to do everything.

So I was, you know, NSA blue team. Trained to go deploy with them. So as they're, you know, remediating, uh, a situation we're investigating alongside them, uh, we're working on offensive actions as well. Sometimes we're actually in the middle so that we can deal with prosecutions, but then I. We're dealing with the malware, reversing, we're dealing with the, the,

[00:16:18] Chris Sienko: Hmm.

[00:16:18] Andre McGregor: know, net flow traffic to identify additional, you know, infrastructure and hot points.

The ideas, you know, it's interesting you always say if you are going to hack into a country or to a computer system, I. by way of the enemies of, of that country. So meaning like, all right, if I'm gonna hack in the United States, well why don't I, you know, go through North Korea and Russia and China because those authorities aren't going to give over that infrastructure.

And the, the subpoena and the search warrants don't, don't work as well. Right? So you're, you're trying to figure out a lot of stuff in a little gray area, but for the most part, you're a. Master of everything, you know, because you have to kind of do the forensic collection of the hard drive or the USB drive.

You have to, you know, preserve it. You have to, you know, then I had a moment where I was dealing with cyber terrorism. And cyber terrorism is very interesting because a lot of it is about like trying to kill people. I mean terrorism, but using cyber infrastructure to do it. So a lot of it was, you know, Twitter, Facebook, and, and I think I. I mean, it's no longer the case anymore, but a lot of them did not think that it was being monitored and that you could read the the chats. But the thing to think about with those networks, there's two things. One is if you're in Syria or some of these countries, there's very limited places to get good internet. So oftentimes your bad guy was actually. the place where it had the best internet because they were, you know, needing internet just like anyone else. The, the second is they're trying to communicate and recruit to get more people. Think of it like a gang, like a, like, you know, a, the Latin Kings or MS 13 or the Bloods of the Crips, they're trying to reach out to young people that feel like they are disconnected and need family, uh, need a purpose.

Um, the terrorists are doing exactly the same. They're trying to recruit, um, so they're trying to identify people to join. And they would actually identify hackers also support that, those missions. Well, we had the ability to use things like Twitter and others, um, where they have the ability to do social graphs to identify that next marketing target, right?

So I'm gonna look at your followers to see, well, who are the people most connected to you? Because I want to target you for marketing and ad information and things like that. Well, we can use that to now identify the terrorists who are the clo, who are the other terrorists, versus the journalist or the researcher that's just occasionally looking at something and build out that network.

So it was actually very fascinating to bring the cyber terrorism side to this too.

[00:18:54] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Now, uh, something you said kind of sparked another question in me. You, you mentioned sort of, you, you mentioned several countries, several nation state groups, you know, uh, Syria, Russia. Korea, um, and sort of going between them and you're sort of noting the interconnections now, uh, was there a lot of collaboration or collusion between some of these groups?

Or what is, are they hacking each other? Is it really kind of an all against all kind of situation or, uh, were you able to sort of see, uh, sort of, uh, terror groups stacking on top of each other that way to become more powerful?

[00:19:28] Andre McGregor: it, it, it's fascinating because we don't, doesn't necessarily cooperate very well with its enemies as it relates to a lot of things, let alone cyber.

[00:19:38] Chris Sienko: Sure.

[00:19:38] Andre McGregor: exception, that one exception is child pornography and child exploitation.

[00:19:44] Chris Sienko: Okay.

[00:19:44] Andre McGregor: every country

[00:19:45] Chris Sienko: Absolutely.

[00:19:46] Andre McGregor: in there.

[00:19:47] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:19:47] Andre McGregor: you actually are able to work with the Chinese MSS or the Russian FSB to go identify those particular individuals.

[00:19:54] Chris Sienko: Got it.

[00:19:55] Andre McGregor: else is, is, is you. You can't, so now when you talk about sort of like how countries are colluding, you do see some level of collusion between sort of like Iran and Russia and, and a variety of stuff like that. North Korea is still a, a hermit into itself that they, you know, do their own thing and, and

[00:20:12] Chris Sienko: Yep.

[00:20:13] Andre McGregor: Um, I'm from a terrorist perspective. They also are separated because they, uh, I'll give you an, there was a, a terrorist, uh, ADE Hussein

[00:20:23] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:24] Andre McGregor: Hussein, if you, you know, look him up. He is, um, no longer with us. Um, a drone strike killed him. But he was a kid who, um, was a British citizen who hacked Tony Blair's email and then hack the counter-terrorism, um, office of, of the uk, and then fled to Syria. Because he wanted to be a, um, he wanted to join ISIS and they, they, he wanted to, to kill people. And immediately when he got to ISIS leadership and they actually do like a job application, like, tell us your strengths and your weaknesses. Give us

[00:20:55] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Right, right.

[00:20:56] Andre McGregor: proper business.

[00:20:57] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:20:58] Andre McGregor: they said, you're really good with encryption and you're really good with technology.

We're gonna have you stay here and build up our infrastructure. He's like, no, no. I actually wanna go out in the field and like throw bombs. And they're like, no, no, you're more valuable. Here. And so he ended up, um, rising through the ranks and ended up becoming number three in, uh, in isis,

[00:21:17] Chris Sienko: Wow.

[00:21:17] Andre McGregor: a result of his skills.

Um, and he would recruit people online and he would create these, um, kill list. So what they would do is he would hack people's Facebook accounts. then find recruits. the US and give those recruits actual photos of, of servicemen and their family and say, Hey, this person's gonna be at Walmart. They go with this Walmart on the weekends. You should kill them there.

[00:21:42] Chris Sienko: Wow.

[00:21:43] Andre McGregor: that's what his skill was. So it's, so this because the other terrorist groups don't want to give that up. don't wanna share. And, and

[00:21:51] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:21:51] Andre McGregor: don't really see as much of that collusion.

[00:21:54] Chris Sienko: Interesting. Okay. Uh, now sort of pulling back, you, you mentioned before that, uh, uh, the FBI almost had to kind of, uh, sort of, uh, march you into being a part of the team against your will, but, uh, but obviously some people who are listening might be very excited about the possibility of doing cyber, uh, at the FBI, uh.

Can you talk about some qualifications that are absolutely essential for someone to have who wants to do the type of work that you, got into back in the day?

[00:22:24] Andre McGregor: Um, yeah, it is interesting because when I joined the FBI, there was no cyber division. You know,

you didn't know what you, were, you, you actually expected that you were gonna be put into, the worst field office in the worst city, and, and you didn't, you know, you'd be far away from home. Now there's very specialty areas around cyber. Um, so, uh, when I look at sort of like the qualifications now, what I would say number one is they're looking for people that already have a skill or some sort of qual or qualification. So oftentimes, you know, people will study criminal justice and that's great. But also Study something else. Study, you know, computer science, engineering, information security, the, the FBI will teach you to arrest people and take a punch and shoot a gun and, um, the law and, how that relates.

But they can't teach you computer science. They can't teach you cybersecurity in a way that's. Meaningful and they can't give you the life experience. So actually go out and, and be a practitioner and work. Um, the other thing which is important is being able to pass a background check. And you know, I think the other part is you gotta be physically fit.

I remember, you know, um, you know, I may, I did not, I. Passed my physical fitness test the first time around. Uh, but by the later part of my time in the FBII was administering the physical fitness tests because, you know, you have to be in shape. You have to, uh, j Edgar Hoover. The, the bureau still lives in the shadow of j Edgar Hoover.

Uh, story still

Hmm.

to him. Um, said an agent needs to be an agent for all. Violations. 'cause you know, one day you might be working cyber, but then the next day, the squad next to you says, we need someone to help with this drug arrest, or we need to help someone with, you gotta go out there, put a vest on, you know, be prepared to, you know, knock down a door and take people out.

And then tomorrow you go back to your keyboard and you keep reverse engine malware, right? Like that's

Yeah.

some of these FBI offices are. And so, you know, that's number, you know, that'd be the second thing. And then the last I would actually say is. Being able to communicate especially complex issues to a, non-complex audience.

So the amount of times I've explained how an IP address is like a phone number to a judge, or how a locked zip file is, like the safe in the middle of a living room that in the house that everyone can have access to, but no one doesn't have only one person's key. These are the things that you have to be able to, to break down because not everyone has that same knowledge, and so you have to be able to speak and write well in the FBI.

[00:24:59] Chris Sienko: Yeah. All, all great advice. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm imagining a situation where you had to do a, a, a pull up to look in a window to see, uh, some sc upper body. Uh uh, so tell our listeners about your company ForceMetrics, as you said in our pre-show, back and forth. Uh, your early experiences growing up in a marginalized community shaped your commitment to creating safer, more informed interactions between police and the public.

So tell us more about how that works. What does, where does ForceMetrics fit into this commitment and, and what does it do?

[00:25:28] Andre McGregor: Yeah, so you know, ForceMetrics is a precision policing platform that brings in data from multiple different data sets, and the idea is to kind of create this Google meets Zillow Redfin experience for, you know. Dense public safety data and do it on a

[00:25:46] Chris Sienko: Okay.

[00:25:47] Andre McGregor: and make it accessible for everyone. And so, you know, growing up, you know, especially in the same communities with the community, with the nonprofit, with the Bloods and the Crips, you know,

[00:25:56] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:57] Andre McGregor: not necessarily always the, the most positive, you know, sit, you know, uh, individuals.

There. I had a great experience with, um, my school resource officer, actually still remember his name, uh, bill Stanley. And, you know. Understanding that while badness might be happening in the community, there was still, you know, people like o officers that were there that cared. the thing I realized, especially after, um, George Floyd and the many protests that happened as a result, but then unfortunately my academy classmate, uh, Dan Elfin was shot and killed in a routine search warrant.

And there's no such thing as a routine search warrant, um, going after someone who is exploiting children. And he was had a search warrant, the guy. them coming through a ring camera, um, shot and killed. Dan shot and killed his partner Laura, shot three other FBI agents and then shot himself. And the thing, you know, after all the devastation that that was there, we later found out that this person wanted to kill law enforcement.

And he actually, you know, said it in a report that was in a paragraph that was never gonna be able to be surfaced. And how do we start to activate data to make not only law enforcement safe, but community safe? Because if law enforcement feels safe and the community feels so safe, if the law enforcement feels unsafe, well, unfortunately the community may get the, the bad end of that.

And so, you know, through my tiers of losing, you know, my academy, my academy classmate, um, I started to say, well, what other industries. Take lots of data and simplify it, and I immediately kind of ended up in baseball and Moneyball. So baseball

[00:27:34] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:36] Andre McGregor: um, o obviously, you know, Billy Bean and there's movies and books and everything else.

But, um, ended up striking up a conversation with the lead developer of the Chicago Cubs and learned how he. And his team took lots of data from quants and mathematicians and distilled it down for a player coach Scout to use it to look at a kid's swing in the Dominican Republic with like an overlay on an iPhone app.

[00:27:57] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:27:57] Andre McGregor: kind of going back and forth, I was like, I wonder if we can do something as well in public safety. And so I ended up, I. Raising a little bit of money from Venture Capital, convinced him to quit the Cubs. He brought a couple engineers over from the Cubs and we proceeded to put engineers in cop cars around the country and said, go pull people over. Actually go to a domestic violence call, sit in the dispatch center and listen to nine one calls and. The thing we realized was there's a lot of data in public safety. 'cause you gotta think about it, that of law enforcement interactions result in an arrest or a ticket. 10% results in someone going to jail. I. What about the other 80%? Well, the other 80% is the issues happening in the park or the school or the hospital. Um, flat tires, community members, you know, hungry, homeless, Narcan, fentanyl, all this stuff that's there. And sitting in these like. Spinning discs in municipal buildings that don't go anywhere.

[00:28:54] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:54] Andre McGregor: to be able to activate this and say, Hey, if I'm, you know, interacting with Chris, you know, um, the first thing I'm thinking about as a law enforcement officer is, Chris, are you gonna kill me? That's the first question I'm wondering as I'm dealing with you. The second question is, are you gonna kill yourself?

[00:29:09] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:09] Andre McGregor: question is, are you gonna kill yourself or, sorry, kill someone else.

[00:29:12] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:13] Andre McGregor: then. Now, why am I here? What are your social truths? What are your needs? Do you have PTSD from the military? Are you prior homeless? Do you have autism, dementia? Because that'll explain. When I touch you, you move away. Or when I ask you a question, you don't gimme the right

[00:29:26] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:29:27] Andre McGregor: It's

[00:29:27] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:29:27] Andre McGregor: right? It's, it's a mental decline. I. And I'm trying to do this in about 20 seconds, and that's very

[00:29:33] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:29:34] Andre McGregor: So for us, we're surfacing all of this information that may have been collected in other places to tell someone's social truth in a very like, bite-sized way.

[00:29:45] Chris Sienko: Okay. Uh, can you, uh, you, you're, you're kind of, uh, giving me some practical example. Give me, gimme some sort of like, concrete versions of how this works. ' cause I'm sort of imagining the sort of Google Zillow, uh, crossover, but say like, um, you're, you're, yeah. You're, you're rolling up on a, on, on some, some, uh, case.

Like what, what is. ForceMetrics telling you this is, is it saying like, is it giving you the person's name and it's like, this person has had X number of domestic violence reports against them, or they have mental health problems. Is it, is it that sort of thing? So, you know, sort of as you're coming in, like how to sort of, uh, uh, frame the, the, the initial introduction.

[00:30:25] Andre McGregor: Let me explain how public safety is sort of today, and then let's explain how ForceMetrics is part of that. Someone's So

Mm-hmm.

you know calling 911 and the majority of the time it's the worst day of their life. Outside of

actively giving birth, it's

usually a very bad moment when you're calling

911 which means you're. amped up, you're maybe screaming or you're speaking fast. the dispatcher is asking you questions like, where are you? What's going on? Who else is there? You're, trying to give those answers. You may be giving partial names, partial addresses, partial numbers of things, and then, okay, we're sending officers your way.

Stay on the line with me. And so officers are going on scene, they're assessing as they get there. They're trying to say, is it safe to get out the car? If I get out of the car, who's there? What am I dealing with? You know, as a location where we've had prior situations. So they're trying to figure all that stuff out, and that's usually sort of like 911

101 Where ForceMetrics comes in is saying, okay, well we've collected a lot of information potentially from prior. Situations at a location or with this individual or with other people

nearby,

and being able to tell a story that, okay, now Chris is calling and he is, you know, asking are he, he's saying something's happening. Let's look up his name and figure out, okay, were there other mental health challenges? Were there other situations with neighbors? A variety of stuff that might be in a report somewhere. but it's unstructured Chris's name was mentioned in a paragraph, but it wasn't connected somewhere. So trying to pull out that unstructured to make it structured to make a baseball card. The second is can I start to surface the things that we think are important? Like does he have weapons, has he had a history of using those weapons? Does he have, children in the house? Does he, have y'know um,

Yeah.

um, you know, PTSD from the military because now that'll help me with resourcing. Maybe I bring a mental health co-responder because I see that there's some mental health issues there and we actually create what we call safety label or safety signals that we put in the baseball card So you visually can see how many times we've interacted with him that had mental

health how many times there was suicidal discussions, or a variety of stuff like that.

Then I'm going to the location and I wanna know what's been going on at that location. Is it. just arguments, is it that there was a shooting and now I

need to maybe wait for backup? You

know Is it that, you know, we're, we're, we're dealing with multiple people and so when I get there, I should expect to find five people there and I'm the only person, and so it'd be good to know what I'm kind of interacting with. So

Yeah.

what we do, and we do it on your smartphone as well, because you

Mm-hmm.

that mounted car computer

[00:33:01] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. We're not in a nineties, uh, cop movie or whatever. But, um, yeah, no, uh, you know, 'cause I always hear those, those stories about, uh, you know, you know, domestic a, a abuse case and this person has been, you know, had had charges five times, and they just keep, you know, no one seems to be aware of it.

And then they, you know, the, the, the person finally, you know, kills their partner or whatever in another domestic, you know? And, and so I imagine this is one of those cases where you're like, okay, this person's. Like this person's got a history. We really need to not just sort of say, okay, y'all go back and sleep it off, or whatever.

Things like that.

[00:33:38] Andre McGregor: Well, you think about that, uh, oftentimes domestic violence is, is when you look at it, most people don't go from zero to strangulation or zero to to shooting

[00:33:48] Chris Sienko: Right,

[00:33:48] Andre McGregor: Like, you know, there's many steps that kind of get there. And oftentimes it starts with the noise complaint. The neighbor called and

[00:33:54] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:55] Andre McGregor: yelling.

Or maybe the neighbor's afraid to. Call and they say, I think there's a dog barking that's really loud. 'cause they just wanna get someone to go to the house. So it's a barking dog. you, then you get, you know, called again to a broken window or, or debit card fraud. 'cause the partner stole the card and then, you know, stolen vehicle and then the strangulation and then the gun. So the time the gun has appeared in the relationship, especially if police have been there, they should not be surprised later. If that person is no longer here, because the, the pieces are there to show that domestic. Now, on the other end, we can actually show offenders, people

[00:34:32] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:33] Andre McGregor: get into relationships and they abuse the person that they're with.

[00:34:37] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:38] Andre McGregor: able to not only identify the victims that, and help them get resources to leave that situation, but to identify the person that continually, Hey, whenever you get into a relationship, that situation's

[00:34:49] Chris Sienko: From person to person.

[00:34:50] Andre McGregor: in a bad way. And how do we help that offender? Because unless we're arresting people for 50 or 70 years, the person is going to need some level of, of support and rehabilitation and, and, and resourcing at the offender level as much as the victim.

[00:35:06] Chris Sienko: Okay, so my next question was going to be, uh. I, I, I think you kind of answered it in a, in a sort of roundabout way, but, uh, you know, I, I think of, you know, uh, you know, my, my, my Wasted youth reading True Crime books about serial killers and so forth, and you hear stories about, you know, Zodiac and BTK and Boston Strangler, and how, uh, a lot of these things went on for as long as they did, because there was no sort of information collaboration between disparate, sort of like.

Police precincts because it was, a lot of it was on paper. A lot of it was people didn't wanna share their information. But it sounds like your platform is not really aimed at that so much as you're, you're, you're making sense out of big piles of data that are out there. Is, is, is, are those two sort of, um, meaningful differences?

Uh, am I completely off on the, on the sort of other side of the thing?

[00:36:01] Andre McGregor: Yeah. So the, the way that we've looked at this, a good, a good question is that, um, everyone can use this data for good. Meaning that oftentimes we look at the investigators or the crime analysts that are putting pieces together of multiple homicides or multiple issues that are happening multiple shootings. But on the other end, you've got a kid that just graduated. The police academy is working midnight patrols and may interact with. Someone that is a killer or someone that is, you know, shooting a gun that that analyst would normally, you know, work up and they can actually have an impact because they have information at their hands to say, wait a second, you've been involved in five different situations before. Huh?

[00:36:44] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:36:45] Andre McGregor: Right.

[00:36:45] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:36:46] Andre McGregor: we, we hire smart people, right?

[00:36:48] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:36:49] Andre McGregor: while we, while we do focus our end at that pointy end of the stick, the person that's kind of going to the 9 1 1 calls and kind of, you know, answering, you know, that daily the investigators use it because they're looking at that blob of data across multiple systems and trying to put pieces together.

But the most important part, speaking of like, you know, serial killers and right. Stuff like that, need to share data between geographic borders.

[00:37:13] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:37:15] Andre McGregor: that data is either siloed, it's, you know, proprietary in a proprietary format, which means that, you know, the two systems don't speak to each other and the, there's

[00:37:26] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:37:27] Andre McGregor: at the agency to make that work.

[00:37:29] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:37:29] Andre McGregor: decided to build a universal data model where it doesn't matter what those systems are, we build it not only off of structured data, but also unstructured data, because oftentimes. the database may say a first name and a last name and a date of birth and those things, but then there's just a, you know, blob text that tells a long story about how Andre did this, and then he went here and did that. Well, we wanna make that into, you know, accessible data to put together into the structured data, right? So, you know, very like data, data 1 0 1 here, but now think about doing that across geographic borders. So now being able to share and say, okay, when I look up information on Andre, it's not just the three instances that I see him. But now it's the 35 instances

[00:38:16] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:38:16] Andre McGregor: 10 years. Or, um, his car and license plate readers, things like that, that you're putting into one place.

[00:38:23] Chris Sienko: I was down in Mendocino County for the last 10 years under the, under an alter name. Uh, sorry. True crime things. You guys keep slipping out on me here. But, uh, well, uh, I mean that's, that, that

[00:38:33] Andre McGregor: I.

[00:38:34] Chris Sienko: moves nicely into my next question. Uh, this sounds like a fairly challenging technological problem to solve with force Metric.

What are some of the security coding designer deployment challenges or problems that needed to be solved, and how did your design team address them?

[00:38:48] Andre McGregor: Yeah, so I mean, at the end of the day, this is very sensitive data. You know, you're dealing with people's most vulnerable moments in their life. So not only are you just wanting to protect that privacy, but also you need to meet the F-B-I-S-C-J, you know, security or uh, criminal justice information system standards for protecting it, which means. I mean, at the end of the day, everyone on my team has to be background checked and fingerprinted and, um, drug tested annually because that's the standard. Um, being able to store that data in AWS GovCloud to make sure that it's not, you know, going out to, you know, other systems. I can't just send my data to open ai, you know, willy-nilly.

I need to, it is a closed network that we have to protect it. And then, you know. We're dealing with systems that are old mainframe IBM mainframes, all the way to the, the newest of, um, know, databases. Oftentimes they don't talk to each other very well, and especially trying to extract data from it is not always the easiest.

So us, that's what we do well, is how do we pull data from really old legacy systems? How do we stitch that data together? Because while they might be using a system today that's more modern, well, if we're trying to. Deal with the cold cases. Think of, you know, true crime. We need to bring together the systems from the eighties and the nineties PDFs from converted paper files. We're doing all of that and, and

[00:40:22] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:40:22] Andre McGregor: all into one place. That gives you a kind of a, we like to call ourselves a a context engine like perplexity,

[00:40:29] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:40:29] Andre McGregor: Google

[00:40:30] Chris Sienko: Yes.

[00:40:30] Andre McGregor: search engine, but Xi's a context engine. We want to

[00:40:33] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:34] Andre McGregor: You decide you're the human in the loop. You

[00:40:36] Chris Sienko: Right?

[00:40:36] Andre McGregor: to do with that, but we

[00:40:37] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:40:38] Andre McGregor: you

[00:40:38] Chris Sienko: Pushing plate, you have to make the meal out of it. Yeah. Nice. Uh, so apart from the ones that ForceMetrics is addressing, are there other data security or information sharing issues that you think are still in need of being addressed and improved in law enforcement? Are there other challenges that either you or the cybersecurity pioneers of tomorrow will be working on in the coming years around this area?

[00:41:00] Andre McGregor: Yeah, I, I, I think, you know, and this is where, you know, AI is gonna, you know, dramatically assist, you know, removing sort of gen AI and hallucinations for a moment. just still a lot of data, right? There's still data coming in from video and audio and,

[00:41:15] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:41:15] Andre McGregor: we're, we're just handling, you know, a small. Part of that data challenge because you're just constantly collecting feeds of video because now ring cameras, you can just start, keep adding more and more of these data points in and you're trying to identify what is a legitimate issue versus, you know, conjecture, right? So someone just saying something and it's not going, you know, with free speech, you know, down to, oh no, this person is, you know, a threat and we need to figure out how to support that person so that they don't, you know, do something bad. I. There's pattern recognition and a variety of stuff that goes into that. You know, you have to be right all the time in public safety. You know, people sort of compare, you know, well, apple and Google. Well, yes, they, they need to be right too, they're also not the government. They don't have, you're, you're paying them your, you're signing an agreement that says they can use their data a certain way.

The, the government doesn't get that same level of, of leeway. So, you know, when they make an assessment, it. They wanna know that it's right and the victim wants to know this, right? And the offender also deserves to know that it was right. And so I think those challenges around, you know, privacy and transparency is gonna be one side, but also managing, you know, bias.

You know, everyone

[00:42:29] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:42:30] Andre McGregor: sure that, you know, they're being reflected properly, especially historically.

[00:42:35] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:36] Andre McGregor: and, and you know, those I think are gonna be sort of the ethical design challenges that we continually face.

[00:42:43] Chris Sienko: Uh, what type of roles or careers are there for security professionals in the law enforcement sector? Like what, and, and for listeners who are interested in directing their careers in that direction, what type types of skills should they be honing now to make them desirable when searching for the kind of jobs

[00:42:58] Andre McGregor: Yeah. Uh, you know, I, I say everyone should learn a programming language. I, you know,

[00:43:02] Chris Sienko: I.

[00:43:03] Andre McGregor: and French is great, but, you know, Python is, is probably gonna be more of a universal language. so everyone should learn. Um, I think, you know, I. Understanding and respecting security is important at all levels in all organizations.

So, you know, grow to get to your C-I-S-S-P, but you know, ethical hacking c security plus things like that are always good. And when you're looking at, especially law enforcement attribution and identifying the who, what, where, why, how is always important. So. fundamentals like networking, like how do con, how do computers communicate to each other?

Like, how do people interact with those computers?

[00:43:47] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:43:47] Andre McGregor: you know, that's, you know, at the end of the day, I, I, you know, coded a bit in the FBI, but I probably use more of my, you know, networking skills to say, well, you know, than anything else.

[00:43:58] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Okay. So if you're, if you're in security and you want to do it within law enforcement, uh, it probably still behooves you to focus on the security elements and you don't necessarily need to be adding sort of legal or sort of law enforcement type precepts to it, like that, that stuff will kind of come with the job, I suppose.

Right.

[00:44:18] Andre McGregor: Uh, a hundred percent. So

[00:44:19] Chris Sienko: Okay. Okay.

[00:44:20] Andre McGregor: is, it will easily teach that part. Mm-hmm.

[00:44:23] Chris Sienko: Okay. Got it. Uh, so we, you, you mentioned, uh, you know, ai, ml, LLMs, whatever. Obviously this is gonna be a big part of fast information sharing, uh, across, uh, you know, the, the years to come. Uh, are there any sort of security implications around that? 'cause as you said, like, you know, I suppose ForceMetrics is very.

Uh, sealed and secured in the way that it's taking all of this material and directing it in a, in a very secure way. Whereas once you start adding sort of open source LLMs and so forth, you get into probably some ethically dicey water in terms of specifically, you know, data, like someone who's a, a serial domestic abuser or whatnot like that.

What, how, how does that, how does that gonna, uh, sort of fall into all this?

[00:45:11] Andre McGregor: Yeah, it, it, it, it's funny because, um, even, you know, this morning I was, um, you know, using chat GPT to, to, you know, write, uh, an, an intro of myself and I was just like, oh, you know, lemme just see what it writes. And I, you know, said, you know, write an intro for, for Andre. And it's like, I grew up in Brooklyn and I'm like, wait, I didn't grow up in Brooklyn. Like,

[00:45:34] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:35] Andre McGregor: so what, so, so just, just, let's just start off at the bat that like. No. Right. So we don't, so I say that because LMS are powerful, LMS are strong. Um, LMS also hallucinate still.

[00:45:48] Chris Sienko: Yep.

[00:45:49] Andre McGregor: I, I as someone who has a, a 1-year-old and I spend a good amount of my time playing white noise on Spotify to put him to bed. And my Spotify DJ now likes to suggest white noise as the next song for me to play. Well, I don't wanna just. Play white noise as I'm in my right,

[00:46:07] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:46:07] Andre McGregor: algorithm has learned that I play a lot of white noise.

[00:46:10] Chris Sienko: You seem to really like this. Yeah.

[00:46:11] Andre McGregor: I can, I can fast forward that. I

[00:46:14] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:46:15] Andre McGregor: do that in public safety, right? So for me, I need to have a human in the loop on being able to actually, um, identify not only the issues that are happening with a person, but also digest it. So for us, we use a lot of non gen AI because we, we have to keep our data closed. We also don't want the hallucinations like Andres and Brooklyn when he really is in Denver and

[00:46:38] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:38] Andre McGregor: but LMS do provide that. Natural language, you know, ability of like asking questions like, Hey, how many, you know, prior welfare checks have have happened with this individual

[00:46:48] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:48] Andre McGregor: getting a succinct, meaningful answer.

It's just making sure that it's tested and controlled.

[00:46:55] Chris Sienko: Nice. Okay. Yeah, I, I was actually reading a magazine this weekend and someone took a, a large language model and took the, uh, terms of service for a lot of the, the major social platforms and had them converted into haiku form, which I thought was, was like, summarize this in a 5, 7, 5 structure. And I was like, it's, it was kind of brilliant, honestly.

Um, so before we go, Andre, I wanna, uh, ask you what I ask all of our guests, uh, and you've. Had some great mentors over the years. What's the best piece of career advice you ever received?

[00:47:20] Andre McGregor: Um, the best piece of career advice that I received was don't limit yourself on. The future, meaning you don't know

[00:47:29] Chris Sienko: Hmm.

[00:47:29] Andre McGregor: gonna go. I, I didn't expect to be an FBI special agent, but I was willing to, to take the call and, and have the conversation and, um, you know, really. explore, you know, with a fear of saying like, I don't know if I'm the right person for this job, but, you know, let me just kind of like, you know, see where it goes.

So oftentimes I, like, I, I remember going to, to college and I said, I am gonna study, you know, a specific major. And then I realized, well, wait, I don't want to, I don't wanna do biology like.

[00:48:01] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:48:01] Andre McGregor: focused on it that I was like, well, wait, what else can I do? Like, I didn't plan to go to, I didn't plan on anything else.

Right. And then

[00:48:07] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:48:08] Andre McGregor: to see, you know, between computer science and politic science, like you, you have to like, you know, so, uh, uh, you know, sometimes adversity, you know, uh, is helpful, but you, you can't be sort of like limited. You have to be willing to sort

[00:48:20] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:48:20] Andre McGregor: you know, take a step or a leap and, and sort of like, know, see where it goes.

[00:48:26] Chris Sienko: Yeah. Yeah. People have certain dispositions, myself, very much included. Like once you have what you think is gonna be your goal, it's sometimes like the most amazing things can come up in the periphery and you're just like, Nope, nope. Don't have time. I gotta work on this one thing. But, but it's really good that, yeah.

The, the FBI basically let you know, no, you have time. You really need to, you need to take this off ramp.

[00:48:47] Andre McGregor: Well, it's interesting because from the time that I submitted my application to the FBI, to the time that I walked through Quantico was two and a half years. It took two and a half years of time, meaning that like you're not quitting your current job. You may not even ever

[00:49:01] Chris Sienko: Yeah.

[00:49:01] Andre McGregor: call to be an FBI agent, but you went through

[00:49:03] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:49:04] Andre McGregor: hoping.

[00:49:05] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm. Love it. Okay, so we talked about ForceMetrics quite a bit in, in this interview in terms of uh, what it does. But if you'd like to our listeners to know anything more about your platform and if you have any big events or rollouts or just anything about it. Tell our listeners now.

[00:49:20] Andre McGregor: Yeah. Um, you know, it's, we're, we're, we're blessed because we're in 35 cities and counties and 12 states everywhere from. Beverly Hills where there's very little violence and a lot of homeless and property theft

[00:49:31] Chris Sienko: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:32] Andre McGregor: Virginia and Tampa, Florida, where there's just, you know, significant violence and juvenile issues and needs to help the community.

So, you know, happy to. You know, grow into other communities as well. Um, you know, we're really big on supporting mental health resourcing, like I mentioned before, of identifying that.

[00:49:50] Chris Sienko: Excellent.

[00:49:50] Andre McGregor: you know, some of our, our sort of like, you know, big release, we, you know, we're, we're coming out with a new, um, CompStat module, which essentially will give the. data in real time on issues happening in community, whether it's, you know, motor vehicle theft or larceny or homicides or, you know, arson, things like that. But also the, you know, homelessness and mental health and quality of life stuff, but making it almost like, you know, again, like take that like Zillow, Redfin, but having it at your hand on your fingerprints, uh, on your, uh, at your fingertips to pull that

[00:50:25] Chris Sienko: Right.

[00:50:25] Andre McGregor: up anywhere.

[00:50:27] Chris Sienko: Thanks. Nice. Uh, one last question, uh, and then I'll send you on your way. Tell our listeners where to find out more about Andre McGregor, uh, the Denver one of course, and ForceMetrics.

[00:50:35] Andre McGregor: Yeah. Um, ForceMetrics, easy ForceMetrics, ai,

[00:50:39] Chris Sienko: Okay.

[00:50:39] Andre McGregor: you know, definitely learn about the application there and you can, you know, uh, request a demo. Happy to, to do it also, um, I'm on LinkedIn a lot. Um, search on Andre McGregor. Um, you'll find me. Um. Would love to spark up a conversation on cybersecurity or law enforcement or all things in between.

And yeah,

[00:51:00] Chris Sienko: Fabulous. All right. Well Andre, thank you for sharing your incredible life story and career journey with us. This was a lot of fun.

[00:51:05] Andre McGregor: no, thank you for having me.

[00:51:07] Chris Sienko: Uh, and thank you to everyone who watches, listens, and writes into the podcast with feedback. Now, if you have any topics you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like to see on the show, drop 'em in the comments or make use of our YouTube community tab or let us know via our, uh.

Uh, growing TikTok channel. Uh, before we go, don't forget InfoSec institute.com/free. Uh, that's the site where you can get a whole bunch of free and exclusive stuff for cyber work listeners. Uh, it's here that you can find your free cybersecurity talent development playbook. You'll find our in-depth training plans and strategies for the 12 most common security roles, including SOC analyst, pen tester, cloud security engineer, information risk analyst, privacy manager, secure coder, ICS, professional and more.

If you wanna know how much a career in cybersecurity pays, get our free cybersecurity salary guide for the latest data on popular certifications and their related roles. There's also security awareness posters, eBooks, and you can sign up for 100 plus free courses in our InfoSec skills platform. You can learn incident response, forensics, security, architecture, and more.

One more time. That's InfoSec institute.com/free. And yes, the link is in the description below. One last time. Thank you to Andre McGregor and ForceMetrics, and thank you all for watching and listening. This is Chris SKO signing off. Until next time, make sure to learn something new every day. Keep one step ahead of the story and don't forget to have a little fun along the way.

Bye for now.