 Hey, lo-hi. Welcome back to this episode of Security Matters Hawaii. We're in the Think Tech Hawaii studio today. I've got two guests with me today. Jim Lentis here from the InfraGuard, National Members Alliance, and I've got Russell Cini with me. He's the president of a Hawaii Members Alliance of InfraGuard, and we are going to be talking about the role of InfraGuard in the security ecosystem of the country and of Hawaii. So I think this is an important episode. Sit tight. I know we start a little bit late. I'm glad you're still here with us. Jim, I want to get you right on in here. Let's get a quick introduction, maybe as much as you want to share with the audience. Sort of your background, your history, and how you ended up with InfraGuard. I got bored. But before that, I was just magic. I thought I'd hate it. What were we doing? So did you get recruited up there by National? I don't recall if there's been a series of defense industrial based sector chiefs. I know we're glad to have you. I just didn't know where you recruited to come aboard or was there someone already in that role and you were like a VP before that or how did that work out? Awesome. Okay, good. So Russell, you've been president for a while now of the local members of Hawaii Members Alliance. Give us a bit of your history, background, how you migrated into your role. So I've been in computers for a really, really long time. Kind of like Jim. Yeah, it's like and then I was attending regular InfraGuard meetings and I got volunteered. We had a cyber exercise that we were doing up at the University with the National Guard. And I got volunteered by two agents. I was voluntold. Voluntold? Yeah, that's my favorite word. Yeah, I got voluntold to like go ahead and try and be on the board. And I figured that they were both armed. I probably should not argue with them. And so like that was four and a half years ago. I jokingly signed some of my stuff as president for life. I'm hoping to fix that this year and get fired. So far it hasn't worked. But no, we're not letting you go yet. Well, I think there's other things. Wait a second, though. Wait a second. Yes. So you're alive. Yeah. And you're not helping. Well, the interesting thing, so you've, as you've said there for a while, right? We've been through a few, what's our agent called? Our representative agent? Like several coordinators. Yeah, you've had a few of those already, right? And some stronger than others, obviously. I know those folks very well. What's your sense of where we're headed locally? I mean, obviously, Jim's sitting on the national program. It sounds like we're gearing up with sector chiefs and things are coming together. What's your... I think the primary thing that we're seeing locally, like with the FBI and with InfraGuard, is they're supporting us. And then because of our contacts with national or the Pacific region, we've made a point of reaching out to both of those organizations or both of the individual chapters on the West Coast to actually set up and mirror some of the things that are going on nationally or in the West Coast. And then we're feeding back to FBI of what we're working on and what we're doing. And then they're providing like support as far as what we need to be doing in case we steer ourselves off into the wrong directions. Yeah. But most of the time, it's like they're kind of letting us go and like saying, okay, let us know what you're doing. We'll provide feedback. We'll provide like resources as far as speakers and stuff goes. And that's worked out really good for the meetings. Yeah, I think so. We've definitely had some good meetings. So Jim, I know that you keep sending me out of sector chief manuals. And I was wondering, are those going out to all the different sector chiefs that are signed up? Or is that something that we're just kind of sharing inside the defense industrial base? Because obviously the concerns are a bit different. But the guidance seems applicable to me. I like it. I like it. When you first got engaged, what were some of the concerns that were addressed at the national level? I'm not that familiar. I know in regards been around since I think it started in 96 in Cleveland, and then they got sort of national agency with all the field offices had a representative. But you know, obviously this has been what 18 years ago or something. So when you came aboard, what what did you see? You know, obviously coming out of the well oiled military machine that we all know and love. What what what did it appear to you that we needed to work on the most? It looked like ours. Amazing. Amazing how that works. Yeah. I know we've been battling that that issue. I remember the the the chips being found in the Boeing aircraft back. It's been quite a while back. You know, but I'm trying to I'm trying to think back. So it was I think 2006 when we first got a national infrastructure protection plan. So by then we had Clinton had been in for maybe four or five years. And I'm not clean, that would have been a bush. That was after after 9 11. Yeah, so we had so it took him a while to get this ramped up. And then we had another revision, I think in 2009, then 13 and then I think 17. So as being around the organization, because I have not been in maybe four or five years is as that guidance been helpful. I mean, do you feel like it's coming together better? Is there more cooperative cooperation and more sharing? There's obviously a lot of Intel in our portal. I mean, I feel like the information's there. What I don't know is if we're getting a good sort of cross pollination is it getting out to the groups that need to use it? You know, it's kind of my question. Let me ask you a question. Are do you know how many of those chapters have as much DoD or DiB sector work? I mean, obviously, Honol, Hawaii, it's really big out here. I don't know. Is it the same in like aims our maybe that's not the best example. I know there's a lab there. But yeah, okay. Understood. Understood. Yes, I do. Do you have a feeling for how many? I mean, I'm sure it'd be nice to have a DiB sector chief in every office. Is there a has there been a prioritization for from your perspective of, you know, obviously, I think San Diego, Charleston, Hawaii to me, there's these these big huge bases, right? With with a whole lot of military going on then across the country, you've got different Air Force and Army installations, Alaska, obviously. And you know, maybe maybe I'm thinking only in terms of the perimeters, I don't know. But do you have a sense of where you where you have the greatest need? Yeah, I don't I don't know if the if people think about how pervasive the defense industrial base is, you know, Hawaii talks a lot about tourism being the major economy driver. But our defense industrial base out here is a major piece of the economy as well. Jim, I think we're going to do we're going to take a quick break. We're going to pay a few bills of our own. We'll be back in about one minute. I interviewed guests who are successful in business sports and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go beyond the lines at 11am. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers. It's just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on think tech Hawaii.com 1pm on Friday afternoons and then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the cyber underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current relevant information to protect you. Keeping you safe. Aloha. Hey, welcome back to Security Matters Hawaii. We're with Jim with the National Sector Chief for the Defense Industrial Base at our InfraGuard members Alliance and we've got Russell senior in here. He is the president of our Hawaii members Alliance and we are talking about really Defense Industrial Base, but we're talking about InfraGuard in general as well. Right. So there's been a growth. It's been around for 18 years now. We've got the sectors defined that we need to work in. We're having some good coordination efforts from the national branch, which I know you attend the national meetings and you go to the regional meetings, Russell. Right. What is what is your reflection of what you've seen happening out here? I think what we're seeing more and more of is our focus on when we have guest speakers in is to pick and choose like, like we just did a maritime one. Okay, the Coast Guard. We did a tabletop with them. It was fairly aggressive and it was done on an outer island. But it was more geared toward how do we leverage like the InfraGuard like, like, doing a tabletop relationship or relationship with the travel sector. And that was the whole focus was on like, not only trucking on buses and stuff. But what was going on with Coast Guard in there, they had a specific need. And we provided like a couple of InfraGuard people to work on their cyber areas. Okay. So we attacked like a liquid petroleum gas tanker. Oh, wow. Simulated simulated was only simulated. Thank you. But it went really, really well. And the main thing that we showed was the communications between a number of organizations, whether it be police or fire, not only the FBI. So that was actually pretty good. Our focus on the meetings have been trying to pick a sector and get one or two speakers for each sector, have them come in and talk about what they're doing in their sector, whether it was the fire department and the police department, active shooters. But then whenever we can, we try and show the cyber component of whatever that is, of those operations, how do they communicate with each other? And I can just like, are there communications issues? Like, does everybody have the same kind of comgear? So when they're in the situation, can everybody talk to each other? And there's been challenges with that. And then because we're tying ourselves more and more with the Pacific region, we have a monthly phone call teleconference that we do with a number of the chapters all across the West Coast. So we have an hour of everybody either sharing what they're doing or taking a lot of notes about what other people are doing, and getting ideas about what we could be doing. And then also like working with the local FBI office to explain what we are doing and then see what kind of resources they have available for us. Awesome. And we actually have two of our past coordinators or advisors on our chapter right now on my board. I shouldn't call it my board. As long as you can put them to work, that's okay. It's all good. And I'm nominating them to be on the board this year. And I can just like they've both said kind of okay, which was kind of my response when I got volunteered. Sure. Okay. So I'm looking at being able to leverage their like past experience with the FBI. So we can actually leverage more the coordination of FBI's outreach into the community and also our community back to them like information flows. Yeah, I think it's super important. And Jim, you alluded to that earlier, the fact that, you know, these attacks are as much about people as they are about technology. And Hawaii, we have a massive international population that comes through here all the time. Often they want to stay and work trying to infiltrate our organizations. And there's not a whole lot of awareness of that activity out there. I think that InfraGuard can play a really seminal role in communicating amongst those organizations that that private sector sort of government age agency interface. Yes. And you saw that in the maritime yeah, exercise that you did. So let me ask you a question. We didn't have a maritime sector till you took that on. Is that correct? On in Hawaii? No, not in Hawaii. So an FBI was actually able to bring in like one of the for Houston, which has a huge harbor, like, and they brought in the sector. I don't even know what her role was. sector chief. It was a sector chief for like Houston. And she came out and she she basically like explain what they're doing and things that they were working on. And so we kind of like took what she had and took some parts of it to like mold up like what we wanted to do over here. Wow. Jim, you know that that gives me a you know, I know that in in our portal, there's sort of like a not a speaker's bureau, but it lists what you're available, your knowledge is available for. Maybe we need to set up a tour, you know, and get some of this information share kind of moving around the chapters. Now, I know you have unlimited budget. He's like, yes, yes, we're working on that in our chapter, trust me. Small box. Yeah, I think I think that the awareness, the awareness. I call them presentations for lack of better but especially when we get because we've had CID, we've had in CIS, we had DHS, we've had these when you hear the real stories and they give you as much as they can obviously not active investigation. But learning what's happened to others is a super valuable lesson because it's happening to someone else as we speak. And so I think this awareness is key to one of the sort of foundational elements that infragar can bring to a community, you know, and the trick is we got to get, I think the people who care are in the room, but there's a whole lot who don't know yet, and we've got to get them in so that we get, you know, we get information going into their ears, you know. Yeah, I think we do have to make it valuable. And it's important that you bring up the FSOs. We haven't even, I don't think really identified the tier one, you know, clear contractor FSOs, and I don't know that all of them in Hawaii are part of our community. Much less, you know, my focus and passion is the tier two and three, unclear guys who really need as much help as we can give them. So, you know, I think, I think DSS sort of knows these guys, and I know they're handling them as best they can. But, you know, we need them to share with us who's downstream from them, because we know those are targets of attack and targets of opportunity, those downstream companies. And so, I'm hoping we can I'm sorry. Easy. Yes, I don't want to scare him, but yeah, we're gonna we are going to talk. I know you have some of your talk points today are going to be about the past few years, the things that have gone on. Interesting, Jim, today, after we're done here, Russell and I are going to give a presentation to our Hawaii Information Communication Technology Association group about InfraGuard, a little bit of awareness, maybe a little bit of recruiting. But hopefully we can, you know, in spreading what we do, you know, garner some more interest. I mean, it is free 99 joining InfraGuard is the right price. Right? You know, why wouldn't you if these things are of concern to your organization or to your, you know, the job that you have at the place that you work or whatever it may be. And also that the members get vetted too. Yeah, there's there's a vetting process. Obviously, they have to go through. But the application process is free, which is great, right? I mean, so, you know, but you still got to be vetted before you can become a member. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, about the members. Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Um, so what what do you feel like we should we should strive to accomplish Jim, you know, the next in the next few years, specifically in the DiB sector now, we've got um, you know, we've got some guidance now you're you're pushing you got you got guys like me chomping at the bit, we got Jody chomping at the bit. You've got a dozen or so across the country. Maybe we can double that number this year and get some more. What what should we focus on? What can we do? What can we do to help the most? Do you think a couple things? One recruiting? Okay. And make sense. Makes total sense. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll we'll be working on that. Jim, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. I know you're in a different time zone. I appreciate you taking the time out of your your lunch hour to join us today, Russell. Thank you as well. So I'll see you in another hour. We'll be back on another stage. And we're going to keep this conversation going. Jim, I want to get in for God on this channel. Maybe quarterly, something like that. But but as we as we make progress, let's talk about it. And I will see you at National Sir in Chicago, I believe. Sounds good. All right. Take care. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Thanks.