Campus Safety Net: Insights from UF’s Former Director of Security

So welcome. Today we're gonna be talking about higher education and some of the challenges they're facing around security. We know that recently we've wrapped up a commencement season and around that season there were some real challenges around security threats, protests. In addition to the threats and and challenges that these universities face throughout the year in maintaining and securing their facilities, keeping people safe, and also making sure that we're respecting people's right to free speech and protest. We've got two guests here who are perfectly suited to talk about these topics and and really share some strategies around how campuses can get ahead of this going into their fall season. So we'll start with introductions. We have Joe Souza, who's joining us from Serverly. Joe, I know you, were formerly director of security for University of Florida. Can you share more about your background with us? Yes. I'd be glad to. Thank you. And and thank you, Stowe, for the opportunity to talk about this important topic. So my security career started very long time ago. I I didn't know I wanted to be a security professional. And right out of high school, I got my first job working as a security guard for a guard company, protecting people, doing patrols, really entry level stuff. Went in the Air Force, did nothing to do with security other than being in the Air Force. Did intelligence there, but then had a top secret clearance. The Gulf War was just starting, and I had my first chance to, get a job post my my four years in the Air Force. So I fell into this career field called security. And there, I did all things physical security from entry level badge access to, slowly working on, in managing a guard force to alarms, access control, antiterrorism measures, force protection measures, counterterrorism, anything involving security. Did that for about ten years with the Air Force. Then Then I went to, work with defense contractors for a number of years. So in doing so, I I continued my, security management skills, leading teams, protecting classified information and our nation's secrets. And then, transitioned when I moved from my home in New England to Florida was my first, role in higher education. So the University of Central Florida was looking for their first ever assistant security director to run a security program. At the time, the University of Central Florida was the largest university, based on population in the country, which I didn't know at the time. That position was created because they had an active shooter incident that happened on campus the year before. They realized their policies, procedures, infrastructure, technology was lacking, and they needed to bring that all together. So they did a national search. I was fortunate to get that position in my first role, and I worked there for four years as an assistant director, in partnership with the police department, emergency management, all the campus administrators, building a security program really from the ground up. They had security technology, but nothing was consolidated. Fast forward, a few years later, I had supported the University of Florida for a very, tumultuous event. Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, had spoken at the University of Florida, post the the Charlottesville, Virginia incident where one of the KKK supporters ran over a student, killed her. So the next speech that he was going to have was going to be at the University of Florida. We supported it from the University of Central Florida bringing some unique assets up, some cameras, that were mobile and gave them eyes on the venue because they had no security in place. So, I had gotten to know those folks very well when that position came open. It was a director's position. I applied. I was fortunate to get that. But University of Florida, being the oldest university in the country, had the same problem with not having a centralized security function. Although they're the oldest, they didn't have one central program. So I I took what I had done at University of Central Florida then applied it at the University of Florida and, helped enhance security at both, entities. Other positions I've had have included vice president of security technology, for retail and manufacturing company. And currently, I'm working with Servoli on a sales, capacity, trying to help others, the way I wanted to be helped and treated as a end user security person. I wanted a partnership with the the companies that we worked with more so than just buying a product from them. I wanted more than that. And that's the way I treat, with Servili. And that's the way we really treat all of our customers as we try to, look at it from the end user perspective and and and help them, like like I know that they need the help. So that's that's kind of how I got my my security chops. That's impressive. And we're really lucky to have you here today. And and speaking on that, Vovusto, it's incredible that we have a partner like you who brings so much experience and knowledge to the conversations we're having with higher education customers as well as others in the industry. Patrick, I'd like for you to introduce yourself. I know you've been working with a lot of our higher education, customers as well. You're very familiar with the challenges they face and, have quite an extensive background as well. So if you'd like to introduce yourself, that'd be great. Sure. I started my career about thirty five years ago working for Naval Intelligence. I fell in love with how computers can help protect assets. In in my case, it was, aircraft carrier battle groups. I've spent the last thirty five years making sure that companies get a return on the investment, not just fall in love with whatever the technology is to shore. So I spent a lot of time in the last year and a half helping universities and other enterprise customers just to make sure that they get an ROI on the investment they're making in technology. Fantastic. So we'll start with, kinda talking about some of the things that have been happening recently on campuses. So we're following up on a commencement season that was was really fraught with a lot of challenges. We know about the protests that occurred. We know that many of them were violent. Students and and staff were prevented from being able to do their jobs. And there were a lot of challenges, that universities face that, you know, were some of them were were things they faced before and some of this was new. Some of it was, you know, took them by surprise to an extent. Joe, can you share based on your experience kind of what what these types of, incidents and protests, you know, share more about your your perspective on that and what types of challenges, these might present to universities looking to maintain a secure environment for their their staff and students? Certainly, protests at universities are nothing new. They've been going on for decades. Right? Young people have a voice. They want their voice to be heard. So they use, you know, they use the university as a setting for that. What we're seeing recently, especially with the political climate and all of the controversy that's happening worldwide, is more than just the the population of the university are getting involved in these conversations. And it's really putting at risk the safety and security of the campus environment, the students, the staff, the faculty, the visitors to the university. So it's important that we we recognize that you know, free speech is something we all have. We want to be able to continue to allow students to have free speech as they go about this. But, really, these protests are are getting more violent, and the violence is really what's most concerning is, what type of violence is is happening. Are people getting injured? Are facilities getting damaged, vandalized? Loss of use as a result of those? So, the property damage is quite expensive. So when when a facility is is damaged, it could be something minor like broken glass, or it could be more extensive that they occupy a building and and and cause mass havoc. It's gonna take funds that weren't planned for the use to repair those facilities, funds that could be used for security enhancements or other things, additional staff to help, during those events. The the speeches in general, you know, every university, the two that I've worked at and the many that I've seen, they they allow for free speech. They try to foster environments for free speech to happen. They used to designate areas on campuses for the free speech to take place. Now campuses are open in general, and they can they can have public assemblies anywhere they want and speak their mind. The thing that students and others can't do is impede progress for students getting to class, verbal verbally abusing, students that are going to class or physically certainly physically harming them. So the biggest concern we have is is the safety, security, and allowing free speech to continue. That's really important. But the other thing the other concerns that take place, on a university when these protests happen is the community relations. So you have donors. You have, you know, community partners, you have the residents in the neighboring communities that are all impacted every time this happens. It takes away resources from their community to go to the university setting, because most universities, if they're fortunate enough to have a police department, don't usually have a large enough police department to handle riots or mass gatherings like that, or it's taking all of those resources. When that happens, that then leads to what other vulnerabilities are on campus as a result of all of these law enforcement or security professionals being at this event to try to help, you know, keep it a peaceful event. So things like theft, crime, sexual assault, all these other things can happen as a result of all of these resources being taken. Another concern that we have is mental health. It's it's a growing concern across the nation. It's a growing concern at universities. So, I got to see firsthand how mental health is treated proactively on campus. But you have to remember these are young people that are going to university for the first time and leaving mom mom and dad at home, and it's a whole new life, a whole new exposure to a lot of different variables they've never encountered before. Some of the students are prepared for that, many are not. And then when you compound something like a protest, their mental health can be jeopardized as a result of that. So it's it's concerning because you don't know what state they're in already. And then if they get involved in the protests or if they're impacted by those, what it does to them. And then what does it do to their ability to have free speech? Does it minimize their voice to be heard, as well? So, other concerns are making sure the university has policies in place before these happen. Many universities fall short in not being prepared for how to handle the protests. At what point do the police engage? When is use of force appropriate? Do they set up areas for these protests to take place so it's a controlled environment? When the media shows up, what does that look like? So those are a lot of variables, but policies and procedures are well thought thought out, trained, exercised. In practice, you can learn from a a lot from a tabletop exercise after you write and implement a policy and then making sure that you, improve upon any shortfalls that you have as a result of those exercises that you have. And then making sure you have good communication with your student population, with your administration, because if people don't know what to do, they'll take it upon themselves to take action or do whatever they think is right or do nothing. And oftentimes, the administration wants something to happen a certain way, but they don't communicate it well. Schools, universities are doing much better with social media apps and using the tools that are available to them to better, communicate to student, faculty, staff, and the low neighboring community as well as the news media to make sure that they can try to get ahead of these situations. So when it happens the first time on their campus, they're not caught off guard. Yeah. Those are all really great points. And I I wanna kinda call attention to one of the things you talked about, which is, you know, at many of these, research has been done and, you know, analyzing what happens post event. And they're finding that in some instances, up to twenty five percent or more of the people participating in these protests are actually not students. They're not staff. They're not people that are, you know, technically authorized to be on campus. Patrick, could you, you know, kinda share more about what that looks like and what what that how that might impact? Who are these people? How does security look at them? And how does that kind of impact what happens during these protests? Mhmm. And and it depends on the school and whether it's inner city or rural. We see intelligence reports anywhere from twenty five to forty or forty five percent of all the people that are involved are not students, which is alarming. A lot of these people are coming in and either paid or just agitating. So they're taking young impressionable people and they're kinda steering them in a direction they may not, be actively choosing. So they get caught up in the mob mentality, and before you know it, they're inside of a building and they're holding a janitor hostage against their will. Mhmm. And they're committing acts that they would never have done themselves by themselves. So it it is alarming. In many cases, these are known individuals because they do this in other areas for other causes. Joe touched on the political aspect. So we're starting to see that spill into the universities, and it is a safety concern. Joe, can you share more about some of the other security threats? I mean, I know you shared some recent, some related to the protests, but, in your introduction, you mentioned, you know, unfortunately, the the mass shootings and some of the other incidents. What are what are universities concerned about right now? What's happening, and what are some of the things that are going beyond just these protests that have officials kind of on alert? So one of the biggest concerns that's existed for decades now, going back to Columbine, is active shooter. That's always the biggest concern that any university has. Universities are large, usually open campuses. The buildings aren't locked during the day in many of the campuses unless it's a downtown city, and they they need to protect those facilities. So the ability for people to gain access to the university or the buildings within the university, exists, and they are soft targets. So active shooter drills continue to be a priority amongst law enforcement, security, staff, making sure that they drill, train. And and the the same philosophy of of run, hide, fight still exists. There are some nuances now that are being implemented as part of that, but, I'd say that's still a very large concern. Sexual assaults. Any any assault that happens on campus is one too many. You can never guarantee that they won't happen on campus. So, making sure that, everyone from from the president, the provost, down to, you know, the security patrol, making sure that they're doing everything they can to provide a safe environment for the students, faculty, and staff. So that could be something as simple as enhancing lighting across the outdoor spaces, providing, more security, better better tools for parking because those are often scary places, And then making sure that, the housing or dormitories where the students are are well protected with surveillance technology, good lockings, and and education, making sure students know, don't let someone come in behind you if it's a locked building. You don't know them. Don't go in. Don't let them in with you. Another concern on campus is theft and vandalism. That happens all the time on every campus, from the cell phone to the scooter to your laptop. Students go to these universities and they'll sit in the dining hall and they'll just walk away thinking their stuff is safe because back home that they could do that and they come back and their stuff is gone. So, you know, those are costly, property crimes. And, the university tries to do everything they can to educate the students on orientation, but also, you know, security enhancements with more surveillance and, better ways of protecting the students, from being able to do that. Campuses are soft targets. When you have a large campus, you have many open spaces, whether it's a auditorium style classroom or your dining hall or your student union or other football games and your your your arenas where, you know, tens of thousands of people go at one time. That soft target is a real concern. The university tries to be aware of not only the internal threats from, prior, guests that may have attended that have been trespassed that they don't want back. So how do you find those people when they show back up to a football game or, an indoor event at the arena? You know, so that that's always they they try to memorize the faces on a a wanted list or a be on the lookout list, but you can't you can't practically do that when you have several people on the list. So protecting those soft targets from things like the protests we spoke about or other types of crimes. Also, terrorism. Right? That's that's always in the back of mind. When I was at the University of Central Florida, the the worldwide attacks that were starting to become more prevalent were sharp object attacks, knives being used. So knives like a ceramic knife can get through metal detection. So even where they existed to have perimeter security on an event, something like that could still get through and, could still be a type of attack. Other types of attack included vehicle borne attacks against soft targets being the crowds. So things like bollard systems and setting up perimeters or putting a bus across a roadway so a vehicle couldn't get into an area populated by people. As the new threats emerge, then more you know, it's more responsive. And we're we're we're still seeing that. Right? You you are reactive more so than proactive. We talked about event security, but, metal detection's used. It's still developing technology, but being able to employ it at all of your entrances effectively with trained personnel. Oftentimes, you have hard time security people that are operating these technologies that may not know how to properly use them. So being able to, employ the technology with trained people and then having a protocol. What do you do when you get a positive hit? Do you have a screening area? Do you have law enforcement nearby? You know, all things that go back and fall to your policies and procedures. And then I think one one thing that we we tend to forget is a lot of campuses have security technology, and it's usually used again reactively. And oftentimes, I've seen it not only in my higher education career, but throughout my security career. There's things like alarm fatigue. There'll be a door. There'll be a nuisance door. It'll keep going into alarm, and they'll ignore that door as a concern because it just keeps coming in repeatedly. Well, if you do that and you don't address the problem, then you're not gonna have, you're not gonna know if a real crime is being committed and if that puts people at harm. So, there's probably several more concerns, but, I think those are the ones that come to mind, in a higher ed setting. You know, a few of the things you mentioned around, some of the false alarms. You've talked about other ways that campuses can deploy security, for example, in the housing units. So, you know, a lot of those, it it sounds like there's a combination of things that that work, and they all kinda have to work together, and they all have their place. I'd like Patrick to share a little bit more about, you know, emerging new technology that universities are turning to, not just for, on campus security, but for event security as well. Really kind of expanding on those ideas of what security can look like and, you know, how the effectiveness of of some of these new methods. Yep. It's a good question. So, resources dwindling is a common theme that we hear from security professionals across all verticals, not just universities. We have to do more with less. They also are struggling to be, Joe touched on it, proactive. Right? It's one thing to do an after action and try to do some corrective, but it's better if you can prevent. And everybody's trying to use data to get on the prevention side, and it's not an easy thing, Right? You talked about a book of faces. You know, horizontally, all companies have that issue. Security professionals can't study more than a few dozen faces. And the second they put a bike helmet on, the second they put glasses on, you can't see who that person is, when they put a mask on. So people are trying to use technology to give them a little bit of an advantage without having to add resources. So we're seeing a lot of investments in things like artificial intelligence to try to help security professionals do more with less resources. It was just in the newspaper today. Campus incidents spike while resources diminish. So it's common. We hear it. It's even in the news. Some of that technology that you're talking about involves things like watch list alerting, person of interest alerting, deploying AI, including things like, face matching, behavior detection. So, you know, I wanna address upfront, I know you you talked about the importance of freedom of speech, talked about the rights and privileges that that students and staff on campus, are, you know, in enjoy and should continue to enjoy. Let's talk a little bit about, any concerns around privacy and, you know, if you're talking to someone who's maybe considering, hey, how do we use this technology? I think that question's gonna come up. And it's important for us to to, you know, address that and from and and give them some guidelines around, you know, what that looks like, what's real, what's not real, separate some of the facts from the thick fiction when it comes to privacy and ethics. Ethics? Sure. I'll go first, and then, Joe can kinda fill in some color. You know, a lot of times when you talk about face matching or live facial recognition, people instantly think of one of two things. It's good or it's bad. It's either reading my thoughts, it's violating my privacy, or it's okay and I have nothing to worry about because I know how it operates. So I think there's an education opportunity for people to actually educate themselves in what this actually does, in speaking with people at Central Florida. In that area, they're not allowed to use live facial recognition. Mayor said no. What's good is that the technology doesn't have to look at a face. The technology technology can look at behaviors. So if you have someone sitting on a statue and that's not where they should be, or they're up on the statue and they're putting graffiti on the statue that somebody then has to come clean or they now have to pay to fix, you can get alerted on that. So it's not necessarily a violation of anybody's privacy. It's looking at the behavior of individuals. Right? Looking into the student areas and parking. Right? Sometimes it's a scary place. If you add technology on top of that, that's looking at people that might be hiding under or around vehicles, waiting for students to come out. You can use technology proactively to alert on that, to then take those limited resources and deploy them in a proactive way before students get harmed. So technology's come a long way, from minority report, which it's not, and and you don't even have to match a face. Right? If somebody stole a moped and I have that particular person's silhouette, if I look at the whole person, I can find that person again regardless of who they are. Right? They hit a student. They stole a moped. I need to get them before they do it again. If I may add to, the question to privacy and your personal information, I've seen that the tides ebb and flow on that particular topic in higher ed. It started off with most of, the university administration in my early days of higher ed saying, no. We don't want facial recognition. We don't wanna invade people's privacy or personal information. The same was true about putting cameras at certain facilities, not even in private areas, just having them in academic areas. Faculty would get very upset if they thought they were being monitored for their, the way that they taught and that wasn't the purpose of a camera. I think it comes down to a fundamental that you need policies and procedures that establish what what you're doing, communicate that so it's not a mystery. Several agencies have gotten in trouble because they've employed these technologies without either asking or telling folks that they existed and they just did it. And then when they were caught, then they, you know, then it was more of a scandal than it should have been. So I I think it's it's much like a bell curve. You have ten percent on either end that are, either opposed to it or in favor of it. And most of the people in the middle are just accepting the fact that surveillance in today's technology is, is going to exist and continue. And I think the younger populations as we get younger and younger people through the university system, they expect it. So when when I first employed something like license plate reader technology, it was, very much frowned upon. Why are you spending money on that technology? And you're you're doing time and attendance on the staff at the university. That wasn't the case at all. It was to catch bad guys and making sure that they weren't coming on doing bad things in the campus setting. So, again, it's that education piece. So I think, I think if done properly and, and really if you if you try to get the resources and you have a good justification as to why and you use examples as you've cited, it it really helps further the discussion along. Yeah. I think that's a really important point. And the the other thing too, I think having conversations about, you know, some people may even say, hey, some of this technology is even commoditized at this point. Right? So, you know, Patrick, I think there are some things that, you know, you could advise people who are considering this type of technology. What do they need to look for when it comes to bias, accuracy? Mhmm. Maybe some of the best practices, going along with what what Joe's saying. I know, you know, we, also work with casinos, and they have incredible best practices when it comes to acting on an alert, acting on the information they receive, and making sure that that's where your your security staff is imperative. Right? That they come in, they verify, they have two people verify. But they're the technology itself, you know, what needs to be on that checklist of, how the technology performs? Yeah. So there's more than a hundred and eighty technologies out there that claim to be the best in the world. Mhmm. And it comes down to what I call the final four. There are four things that typically make or break facial recognition technology. It has to be fast. Right? I I can't be detecting somebody after something bad has already happened. I need to have rapid detection so I can have a proactive response. So you have the accuracy. Right? So speed. Mhmm. You have bias to consider. A lot of these technologies and it's true. In the early days, when you looked at a lot of the big companies that came out with this technology, the datasets they trained on did have a difficult time detecting women and women of color specifically. So those data sets were no good to train on, and there's a lot of that technology that's still out there today. So you really have to take a look at bias because if you're getting the wrong person, you know, especially if you're in a casino, you know, your job is to make sure you protect the customer's experience. If you're tackling customers, that's a bad thing. Right? So you have to make sure that you've got the right people. And that goes to the final four, the last one, which is the low to no false positives. Right? You you hear about it in the news, and that's why the mayor in central southern Florida said no live facial wreck. Because if you're getting the wrong people, then, yes, you are violating their rights. This was an innocent person that you then took through some process, and it was the wrong person. So the low to no false positives is the fourth thing that people really need to look for. So, Patrick, I know, you've been dealing with a customer who who had an incident, of, someone on campus who was incredibly dangerous. I want you to share a little bit more about that incident and, how they might approach that going forward, how they might prevent this type of incident from occurring again going forward. And we hear these horror stories all the time. And Joe touched on the two main reasons. Right? Mental health. We see a lot of mental health issues where the public is coming on to the university setting and they're doing things. They're being trespassed and then they're coming back. So you have a lot of people with mental health issues that are coming back onto these campuses, and people are getting hurt. The second biggest thing is to the other point Joe touched on, which is these are eighteen year olds away from home for the first time. They are making decisions as if they were back home, or because of the freedom they now enjoy, they're making decisions they probably shouldn't. One of the universities that we're working with, shared one of the stories where the US marshals had let them know that they had a wanted murderer on their campus. Here, one of the women in a quad had swiped right and invited who she thought was a gentleman, to come stay for a few days on the university campus. US marshals contacted the police at the university and let them know you had a wanted murderer on your campus. They shared the information, but because they didn't have the technology, they had no way to proactively find out where this person was. So it took them a little bit of time in doing some other digging and and and getting some other data to actually find where this person was. And at that point, there were three other women that were in that residence, so they had no choice but to go in, and they went in with a SWAT team and, was in the news, and and it could have been avoided if they had technology that would let them know where these people were in the resident hall setting. So we hear these different stories all the time. Luckily, in this case, no one was harmed in that incident, but these are the types of things that you wanna use this technology to prevent, or at least have a much better response than what it could have been, you know, reactive. Absolutely. And Joe, we'll turn to you to to to wrap things up and, if you would share kind of more of the measures, security measures that you think are important for universities to consider, you know, especially as they move into this fall season. What can they be doing right now to prepare for things that may occur in the fall? I know we have a election coming up. There are, you know, probably ongoing protests around that that may continue, and just trying to understand, you know, if you were if you were back in that seat again, what would you be doing, and what would you recommend? So when I was at the University of Central Florida, it was an election year, and we had visits by president Obama, on behalf of Hillary and Donald Trump himself. And they both brought unique challenges. Interestingly enough, and this isn't a political commentary at all, president Obama brought, crowds that stretched on a very hot summer day in Florida around the stadium and for over a mile to get in to see him with no protesters. Donald Trump had as many people that wanted to see him speak and, hundreds of protesters. So, you know, sort of a unique dynamic in in each event, although a campaign stop at the same venue with the same people with Secret Service. And we partner with Secret Service, Joint Terrorism Task Force, FBI, all local community partners, they they bring unique challenges. Events like that, you're they're limited by Secret Service on which technologies you can use in close proximity to the asset, the president, or, those under protection. So that limits your whatever tools you may have, but you still have perimeter security tools that exist. So I think looking forward to the fall season, one important, thing that all all folks can do is review their policies and procedures. I touched on that earlier, but making sure you have policies to address use of security assets. When can you use them? How can you employ them? Do you have construction standards on where they should be put in when you're building or modifying a facility to making sure you have good basic security? And sadly, as Patrick mentioned, there is no budget. It's always, you know, everyone's competing for those same dollars. So you have to be wise on what you spend the money on. But I try to, implement at both universities perimeter security in the buildings. You try to protect some open spaces where you know students will gather. But campuses are large in acreage, and it's impossible to cover a whole campus with outdoor cameras. So you try to protect the facilities where the students, staff, faculty, administrators will be, and your visitors. So you put perimeter protection on all of your facilities. You you you have a camera. You have a card reader. You alarm, research labs and high value assets, making sure that you prohibit those from getting in there. That will help detect, unwanted, actors that are you know, that shouldn't be in a space for whatever reason, and it also provides you just good basic security all the time. During an event, you don't wanna meet your neighboring public safety responders for the first time, you know, in that event. So doing outreach, and I mentioned having, you know, partnership with emergency management if it exists at the university, which I was fortunate. Both universities had fantastic emergency management teams and making sure that you drill, exercise, train, and work with them to further enhance your policies and overcome any shortcomings you have. Because much of that is procedural and doesn't cost any money to to implement procedures and assign roles and responsibilities to departments and different people across the university. Large events, making sure you have good choke points for entry, exit, and those are under good surveillance. When you're talking about a football game with a stadium that can hold sixty thousand people or an arena that can hold ten thousand people, making sure you've got good surveillance. Far too often, we had people that would would be trespassed from an event, and they would come back and get back into that event. So when you think about, you know, youth, you know, younger than the student population that's in there and you have a convicted child molester that's going into that venue to attend a concert and doesn't have any right or, need to be there, they should be detected at the entrance. And, you know, Oosto software can do that very easily with a with a basic security camera. You don't need the latest, greatest. There are minimum thresholds, but most universities have those. So making sure you have them in the right place and you employ them properly. Certainly, staff can help. We're we're seeing that, you know, teams are shorthanded and have an inability or they're getting burnt out because they're working so much. Our our my previous two universities have been under a tremendous stress with the amount of protests that are happening daily, that were happening up to the commencement season, and the burden that places on, you know, all of that overtime, additional funding, and also, you know, what comes with that. What are the things aren't those officers or security personnel getting done on their day to day jobs because they're responding to these incidents now? And then I would say, when there is an incident, making sure that your crisis response is adequate, your communications to the general community is appropriate, that you have proactive in the appropriate reactive communications as they happen. And then where budget allows to those technology upgrades, evaluate what you have, make sure it's current and up to date as far as software settings and patches and updates. Make sure you clean your camera lenses. Far too often, they're they're working, but they're dirty and and no one looks at that maintenance. So put a little care and attention into the what you do have and make it the best you can be and then train your your staff on how to use it properly. So thank you, Joe. That was, you know, really great information and and I love the way you pulled in some of the things that really don't cost anything, right? So turning back to Patrick, we're only a few months away from the next from the fall season commencing. Is that enough time for universities to really kind of undertake some of these things, beyond what Joe said, and really looking at you know, technology that's available, how they can leverage existing technology, what can they do now, that makes sense, that's practical and, effective and can scale? Yep. Proactive, reactive. Right? You can react and you'd be doing this in the fall. You can be proactive, you can start conversations right now. Joe touched on a great point. You don't have to replace your cameras. You don't have to replace everything you already have. We've been working on a technology for years that can deploy in as quickly as an hour. So we've recently had universities come to us and say we want you to protect our graduation. Mhmm. Because we have people from outside who are gonna try to get in and disrupt things. We just did eleven for one university. We had them up and running in a day. So we went on-site, we deployed one day, we trained them, and then the next day the graduations started. We did all eleven. We're able to detect. We're able to protect. So it can happen very quickly. The technology is relatively inexpensive. And it can be deployed, you know, in a day. Within a week, you can be fully up and trained. So I I wouldn't wait. Absolutely. Well, thank you both. This was an incredibly, I think valuable session. We're talking about things that are important and real and things that are happening right now and, we really appreciate you joining us for this conversation. We invite our, any of the folks who are, you know, listening and, watching us to, you know, contact us if you have more questions. We're happy to have those conversations with you and, you know, we wish you, really all the best in protecting your assets, protecting your universities and students. This is important work you're doing and we appreciate you sharing your time with us. Us.