 Hey guys, welcome to Security Matters. I am Brandon Lester, your guest host today substituting for Andrew Lanning. We're here to talk about a lot of topics from AFCA to AFCA Hawaii, the upcoming conference called TechNet Indo-Pacific, and I'd like to introduce my guest today, Linda Newton. Welcome, Linda. Hello, all. Thanks, Brandon. Thanks for coming, and thanks for everyone for joining us. AFCA is the chairperson of the AFCA Hawaii Educational Foundation. Is that correct? That's correct. And tell me a little bit about AFCA. What do you think AFCA means to the community, and we'll jump into all kinds of topics. So AFCA is a local nonprofit organization that was originally designed to coordinate between the federal government and primarily the military, the armed forces, the government, business, and academia. And over the last few years, they have realized that we need to go broader than that because it's all connected. So AFCA is now going through a rebranding similar example I use when I talk about it as IBM. Whereas for some of us that are old enough, we remember when IBM used to be international business machines, it's now just IBM, and their business lines are very broad and very global. So AFCA is trying to do a rebranding as well, which is to focus on all of government and to be a place, an organization, an opportunity that brings together government, business, academia in the cyber realm. And let me tell you why that's important. When I was still working, and I was the Chief Information Officer for the US Pacific Fleet, been retired for about four years now, but one of the things that I always enjoyed was going to an AFCA event. And the reason is I could talk to people from industry. I could talk to people from academia in a different way than I could do it at work. And some of that's just the rules that we have for the government. And some of it is that what AFCA offered was a forum where you could exchange a lot of different ideas. And I could talk to more than one industry partner at a time, and it was very good to have that opportunity. Since I'm retired, I still am part of AFCA, and the reason is it's an opportunity for me to give back. I got a lot out of it personally, and I think professionally we were able to bring in a lot of cooperation, a lot of coalitions in working from industry and academia that we otherwise wouldn't have done. The other thing that I see in being some of the older folks in the crowd, if you will, is the opportunity to mentor the younger folks, both professionally and personally. Helping them in their careers, helping them on what they could focus, helping them on what they see for themselves. On the other hand, I also get mentored. And one thing that if you look here, and right now the camera is focused on me, but you have a computer in front of you and I have paper in front of you. So this is a little bit different of a digital native and a digital immigrant for how we do that. I think a younger generation helps to talk about and bring in ways to use technology that we, in our generations and generations before me, didn't have technology. So we learn on the paper in the pencil. And as we do that. That makes sense. And I think we have shared some of that mentorship relationship through the past year as well. I really enjoy when we get to talk on the ASEA front. So I am also a part of ASEA, right? I'm the vice president of young ASEA within ASEA Hawaii on the industry side. And it's a very long mouthful of words. But to me, it means I get to help build that network as well. Young ASEA by definition is anyone 40 and under within the ASEA community. And here in Hawaii, we have a pretty good 40 and under group. But I really like that mentorship role, like you mentioned, where we get to talk story and just learn from each other one way or another. And we have all kinds of events that let us do that, whether it's just my workshops or mixers that we get to go through. And I think there's an interesting tie from ASEA Hawaii over to the other organization that you work in, right, the AHAF side of things. Can you talk a little bit about AHAF? So AHAF, and if you work around government, we always acronym everything. So AHAF stands for the ASEA Hawaii Educational Foundation. That is the 501C3 arm of ASEA Hawaii. Similar to there's an ASEA Educational Foundation for ASEA International. So ASEA Hawaii Educational Foundation basically raises money so we can give out scholarships in STEM and cyber. STEM meaning science, technology, engineering, math. I probably don't need to say that in this group, but wanted to make sure that if people hadn't heard that acronym before, they knew what it meant. So we've been fortunate over a number of years. And I've been involved with AHAF or the ASEA Hawaii Educational Foundation for the last four years since I retired from the government. But in the last four years, we've been fortunate to award $250,000 and 105 scholarships. And that's a combination of funds that come from both the educational foundation and the chapter. And prior to the educational foundations being established, which was probably about 10 or 11 years ago, ASEA Hawaii gave out scholarships directly. So it's been a long history of ASEA and the Educational Foundation awarding scholarships to students. So this year, we were able to work with a new organization called Scholars App. And Scholars App was started by a young person who tried to get a scholarship. And he found it incredibly difficult to get a scholarship trying to go to find where the information was and do that. So he created basically a clearinghouse for organizations that have scholarships, for people who want scholarships, and similar to other places where you could put your profile and subscribe and use a keyword that says I'd be interested in scholarships for. In our cases, it could be STEM and cyber or engineering and such. So we were able to do that. We received over probably 250 to 300 applications this year that were really looking for the money. And we were able to have a greater reach than we've had in the past. So that was really exciting to do that. We're continuing to work to raise funds. One of the things that we are hoping to do for AHEF is to expand and start doing grants for teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in the STEM, cyber, and robotics fields. We haven't gotten there yet, but that's on our plate to approach next year. That makes sense. And that actually ties in perfectly. I got a flyer from my son's school the other day that says, hey, we're doing a fundraiser for the elementary school in Mount of Willie, and we want to sell gift cards. And we get 3% of that gift card back to a robotics program. And I'm thinking to myself, OK, there's got to be other avenues where there's the fundraising on the STEM home of school flyer side, but then organizations like AFSEA can help those groups as well, right? That's true. And they have to know where to go and ask. And that's our job is to get this word out so people know we exist. And that could be a good loop into the other topic we wanted to talk about, which is getting the word out. So what's happening next week is the AFSEA TechNet Indo-Pacific being held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the theme of the conference. Brandon, you have that? I do. It's enabling a more effective combined force through digital monetization. So think of that within the auspice of defense in the defense world here in the Pacific and going back to that digital monetization story, right? How do you use those things together? And this year, focusing on that as it relates to the Pacific Defense Theater. And the reason why, and we have worked with the Indo-Pacific Command for a number of years to coordinate the theme of the conference, as well as to build the panels and the keynote speakers that we have. One of the things that's new this year that hasn't been done in the past is that Indo-Pacific Command is holding a coalition interoperability forum in conjunction with TechNet Indo-Pacific. So they wanted to bring in a theme that looked at the coalition area. And I would go back to what we had talked about in the beginning is what if Zapsia? And this is still an opportunity to look at broader than just the armed forces of the military. There's opportunities when you talk about digital monetization and coalitions to have the whole of government address those areas. Yeah, and that coalition interoperability forum is near and dear to my heart because I've had the opportunity to work in that space from the business side of things, including Afsia and being able to network there. I'm going to be giving a workshop presentation and have the opportunity to go see a lot of these great keynotes that are there. And in addition to that, we've got a really great conference. It's pretty big as far as things hosted on the island go. We have over 250 exhibitors, I think. It's correct. Over 70 sessions we're expecting, and that includes everything from keynotes to panels to CEUs. Can you talk a little bit about what a CEU is? So one of the things that Afsia has worked with, all of the chapters that hold any type of conference or exposition is to offer continuing education units. So many of the people that work in the cyber area have certifications. And to maintain those certifications, they need to get continuing education to do that. So we have worked to have continuing education unit credit approved for all of the sessions in the Coalition Interoperability Forum. There is a separate tech talks. It's one of those events that Brandon was talking about. The Hawaii chapter is hosting four different specific sessions that will offer continuing education units. We have a leadership forum that's run by a retired Army Major General. And he brings in senior leaders and has interactive, engaged discussions. And we have what I would call mid-career folks that are on a leadership track who participate in this for two and a half days. And they have an opportunity to hear from senior leaders, engage in those exercises, and build their own plan to do that. That one is approved for continuing education. And lastly, we have an event that we've held for three years here in Hawaii. It's called the Women NFC panel. And we have senior leaders who are going to address cyber security with that. That one I'm real excited about because we have, and we'll dive now into talking some of the details of this. So I'll start with this since I did this. We have four panelists, one representing the military, government, industry, and academia. So Vice Admiral Nancy Norton, who is the commander of DISA and also the commander of the Joint Task Force, is the military leader. Ms. Ruth Young Lu, who is the Department of Navy program executor of Officer for Enterprise Services, which is a big title. Basically, she provides everything that's needed in the cyber IT information realm to everybody that's ashore in the Department of Navy and the Marine Corps. So it's a pretty exciting job. We have Ms. Jody Ito, who's the senior cyber security leader, if you will, for University of Hawaii. And that's the whole constructive University of Hawaii throughout the island. But if you know Jody, she's involved in a whole lot of other stuff throughout Hawaii. And one of the big areas that they're looking at is cyber Hawaii. And then the one that I'm really excited about is we have Ms. Connie Lau, who's the chairperson and CEO of Hawaiian Electric Industries. And having somebody who's both a senior executive for one of the major industries here in Hawaii, as well as being a female, is a first for us. So I'm looking forward to that panel. And they'll be talking about the different volume of cyber threats in their own realm. What are some of the vulnerabilities? And most importantly, what are some of the promising solutions? What are they doing? How are they doing it? And what do they see for the future with both the technology and most importantly, the people that they have working those issues? And it sounds like a great panel. And I know some of those folks have been here before. And I've had the opportunity to see them. I really enjoyed the panel last year. I'm really looking forward to this year as well. There are a lot of other panels. And before we dive down into them, we're going to take a quick break, come back, and just kind of sync up, talk about Technet a little bit more, and see where that leads us. We'll be right back. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to join us on Wednesdays at 1 o'clock for cannabis chronicles. 10,000-year odyssey, where we take a look at cannabis as food, cannabis as medicine, cannabis and religion, cannabis, and dear old Uncle Sam. So please join us to learn all about cannabis. Again, Wednesdays at 1 o'clock. Thank you. Aloha, this is Rob Hack. My show is exporting from Hawaii every other Thursday from 12 to 12.30 p.m., where I bring in people involved in the entire exporting infrastructure in Hawaii, including government, academia, and manufacturers and shippers themselves. Please join me every other Thursday, 12 to 12.30 p.m., and exporting from Hawaii. Mahalo. Welcome back. I'm Brandon Lester, guest host, subbing for Andrew Lanning. And we are here talking about Afsia and Afsia, Hawaii, and that Indo-Pacific today. I'm joined again by my guest, Linda Newton, from Afsia, Hawaii, and the Afsia, Hawaii Educational Foundation. And we're talking a story a little bit about all the panels coming out and all the exciting things we get to see next week. Absolutely. So we just talked a little bit about the women and women leaders panel. I'd like to pitch the next young Afsia panel we've got coming up. So as part of young Afsia here in Hawaii, I really enjoy the opportunity to bring those different groups together that are not typical. Last year, I had the good fortune to moderate a panel on big data, which is something I enjoy talking about. This year, I've recruited some other local folks and local leaders to talk about what young Afsia thinks inclusive leadership is and what it means to this group. I've also been really excited because this year the panel is going to be all women, which I think is a first for the young Afsia group and kind of following in the footsteps from the women's panel. This group is a great set of speakers I'm looking forward to hearing from. And inclusive leadership is for folks that haven't heard it very much, right? It's kind of a follow on to a big push in diversity, but it's really what diversity was getting after in the first place. A diverse set of ideas, diverse set of backgrounds let us build better teams. Let us build better leaders. And seeing that through a young Afsian's eyes, whether they're 20, 30, or 40, really, I think, kind of sets us up to see where the next generations are going in this world. And within that networking space in Afsia, we got folks from government. We got folks from military and industry as well. It's pretty exciting for me at least. I'm looking forward to that panel. I'm looking forward to it as well. I think it's good because it's not a women's title panel. It's hopefully getting to that point to where we do have a broad representation in a diverse area. Absolutely. And we will have met, I think, our goals when everything is 50-50, because that's what makes sense to me, right? That diversity as much as possible in backgrounds and experience. I wanted to talk a little bit about who our keynote speakers are. Sure. So this year at Pacific's TechNet, we have four different keynotes, two on Tuesday. And the event is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, November 19, 20, and 21. We have two keynotes on, I think, one on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, and then one on Thursday, sounds right to me. So we've got Admiral Davidson, the commander of US and the Pacific here. And he's going to give that opening message. Here's where we see the year in front of us. We've also got Rear Admiral Lunday. He's the commander of the 14th Coast Guard District. He's a great speaker. I've had the chance to see him several times. And then the neat thing for that, for him, is he was previously the Coast Guard Cyber Command representative. Both he led the Coast Guard Cyber Command in the DC area, and he worked on the US Cyber Command staff. So just beyond being the local Coast Guard district commander, he has a background in cyber, which I think it'll be real interesting to see how we bring those two areas together. Absolutely. And we had a recent cyber panel where he keynoted that for us on the FCS side as well. And did a great job. That was exciting. It was a great kind of story to set up all the panelists, and then bring it all back together. And I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say, like you said. He's got a lot of great insight. And then our third keynote is Rear Admiral White-Soul from US Pacific Fleet here. And he's the deputy commander. And then we also have a keynote panel that will be talking about that coalition interoperability space. That one will be interesting, because those will be coalition leaders from around the region, and not necessarily just what we have had in the past, which is our US speakers. Right. And again, getting that insight into different backgrounds and diversity of story and message and what problem sets are. If we look through one lens, we'll stay in that space. And we broaden our horizons to give us a chance to see a lot more of it. So what does TechNet mean for this community, but also for AFSEA Hawaii? What is TechNet important? TechNet's important for a couple of different reasons. First, it brings together people throughout the region. This is the largest, whether you call it information technology, technology, cyber, all of those words kind of mean the same thing in the region and has been. We've been holding TechNet for 33 years here in Hawaii. We have, as you said, over 250 exhibitors. I believe we have over 3,000 people currently registered to attend. And we have a number of events that are going on at the same time. This is a larger opportunity to have that discussion, to have opportunities, to talk about ideas, to talk about solutions, to meet people, to start making relationships that will continue on when people go back to their day jobs, whether they work in an office, whether they work at home, or whether they work on the road. But it gives that opportunity. We also have, I think it's just a good time to take a pause and think about, where are we and what are we doing, what's important as we go forward. And that helps through the keynote speakers. It helps through the panels. And it helps when you get a sense of all these different industry partners that are there. There's an exhibit floor. So you can see what all those different companies are doing and how they're doing it. There's some really interesting solutions as you go through from large global companies to some of our small local businesses. Absolutely. So logistically, the conference itself hosts, like you had mentioned before, government leaders, but also anyone in the industry here. Right. And academia. Academia. So students can come. And if I recall, most of those tickets and registration are free with the exception of industry folks, right? So government people, military or government, civilians can sign up for free if they want to go to any of the keynote speakers, which are paid meals. They have to buy a meal ticket, but they don't have to pay for that. Industry does pay a flat conference rate. And they get to go to all of the events that happen, whether they're the panels, the keynote speakers, and throughout the week. One of the things when you said students that it just reminded me is we've been fortunate for the last number of years to have what we call a STEM innovation room. Absolutely. So this one's real exciting because what we do on Tuesday and Wednesday and a morning and afternoon of each day is have two to three cyber-patriot teams from high schools and two to three robotics teams. And I should probably say middle school and high school. And the students come down and they present what they're working on. And we have a separate room. And it's right before the panel room. So hopefully people will pop their head in and look at it. And the other thing that's exciting about that is the students get exposure to what is happening in the world. Absolutely. They get an opportunity to talk to people who come in. We're going to have this time set aside for the students to talk to some corporations about what's going on. They get to watch the exhibit floor. And we've also been lucky because we've been able for the last three years to bring at least one high school from a neighbor island over to TechNet at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Because normally they don't have enough money to fly the team and the moderator. And if they're bringing over any of their robotics to do that, we've been fortunate enough with some donations to be able to do that and broaden our reach. And that's great because it gives those students the opportunity to meet people, to see companies that they wouldn't necessarily get to see. I was lucky enough to be in the STEM room last year when Admiral Norton walked through. And just got to talk a little bit to the different cyber teams, the robotics teams, and just encourage them to keep going. I think that message is really important to get out, not only for those students and those individuals, but the stories we get to tell later that this community does care about bringing up students and kids to continue to learning and encourage them to stick with it. Especially on the cyber side, I think now we talk about workforce and what it takes to get students interested. I have come from that industry and I just kind of assume it's interesting to everybody and then I find out not, right? IT is a technology world that we all use, but not necessarily one that we all want to be a part of. And seeing students that are interested and intrigued by it really gets me motivated. And within this community we have here, that's something I think that we continue to work on is that cyber community within Hawaii, the cyber community on Oahu specifically, and AFSEA looking through that lens that gives us a chance to try and bring to folks like Department of Defense and military personnel together and then bring those expertise groups to students or bring them to other people that need help or a chance to teach each other. Absolutely. So let me hit one more thing as you're here because while you talked about the TechNet Indo-Pacific being next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday down at Hilton Hawaiian Village on Friday, at the Navy Marine Golf Course, we'll be running the third annual Mel Wing Golf Tournament. Well, Mel Wing was along a supporter of AFSEA and Navy League and a Punahou grad and he loved golf. So he helped us run the golf tournament. What we're doing on Friday, November 22nd at 7.30 is running a golf tournament and all of the proceeds for the golf tournament goes to STEM scholarships. So over the last few years, we've been fortunate with golfers that show up as well as our sponsors who give us prizes and pay for some breakfast and lunch so the golfers stay fed and hydrated. They all have a good time and we've been able to raise significant funds to STEM scholarship. So that one you can still find out about. It's a different webpage that we didn't show earlier. You can get to it from the AFSEA-Hawaii webpage but we also have our AF webpage which is A-F-C-E-A-H-E-F which is Hawaii AFSEA-Hawaii Educational Foundation all acronymed dot org. But if you go to the AFSEA-Hawaii page and you look for golf, there's a link there and we still have enforcement's open or if you just want to come individually, we will have people that are attending the TechNet into Pacific both locally and around the mainland or even in the region that like to play golf and we usually have great weather and everybody always has a great time. That's awesome. Thank you, Linda. Thanks for joining me today. I've had a great time talking about AFSEA and AFSEA-Hawaii and that's the end of our show. So we'll wrap up there. Thanks everyone for joining us. Today I really appreciate Andrew letting us speak. Thanks and security matters.