Cybersecurity and Technology in the UP with Lois Ellis, Evan Rice, and Doug Miller

In this episode, David talks about technology and cybersecurity with Lois Ellis, Executive Director of the Dickinson Area Economic Development Alliance, Evan Rice, Vice President of Information Technology at CCI Systems, and Doug Miller from the Upper Peninsula Cybersecurity Institute.

Transcript

David Haynes:
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Rural Insights podcast. This is another edition about what’s going on the Upper Peninsula, what’s exciting and what’s important and what’s challenging. And today you have read our friend Lois Ellis, who is the Executive Director at Dickinson Area Economic Development Alliance, has been publishing a lot with us and letting us understand a lot about what’s going on. And Lois, thank you so much for everything you do with us. Do you want to introduce our guest today and then I’ll go with some questions?

Lois Ellis:
Sure. Thanks, David. It’s great to be back with another podcast from Dickinson County. Today, we’re going to have a great conversation about technology and cybersecurity, and we are just so fortunate here in Dickinson County, to have a CCI systems, which is a very sophisticated and broad based networking and communications company operating out of their headquarters in Iron Mountains. They have a workforce of over 400 people on the ground here, but they have workers across the country and are I think, close to a 1000 employees now, which is pretty phenomenal. And my favorite fact about CCI systems is, that it’s an employee owned company. You don’t hear that so much anymore, but they do a great job of it.
And today we have Evan Rice. Evan, is the Vice President of Information Technology at CCI systems. I think that’s right, Evan, your titles changed a few times and he’s just a great resource to us and our community and to his customers across the technology spectrum and in particular with cybersecurity. So we’ll talk with Evan and then we also have Doug Miller, from the Upper Peninsula Cybersecurity Institute, which is a relatively new program. And we’re going to hear some ways that these two are working together. So we’re looking forward to it. Thanks David.

David Haynes:
Thanks, Louis. Let me welcome our guests again and Evan Rice, before you start, I understand that CCI systems won an award on social media. Why don’t you tell us about that award? I heard it’s not [crosstalk 00:02:30]

Evan Rice:
So, we’ve been working for many years, primarily in the cable and internet service industry to provide networking solutions to people delivering broadband solutions all over the country. And we are recenty recognized by Calix, one of the major equipment manufacturers there as a partner of the year. Our network solutions group by Mac Plymale, over there, they’re doing great things and helping, especially get internet to rural communities like the UP, all over the country, supporting the service providers that are building out those programs to get more and better internet to the harder to reach places.

David Haynes:
Well, thanks. That’s great. Great honor. Congratulations. So, so tell us about CCI systems, what you do and how you’re involved in cyber security.

Evan Rice:
Sure. So, CCI as Lois alluded to is a telecommunications and technology infrastructure company, primarily focusing around our service offerings there, and we do full telecommunications solutions. And then we’ve got technology and security as a focus as well. Like she said, we’re 100% employee owned, which means every single person that works here has a vested interest in the success of the company. We’re very proud of that. And we’re founded in Iron Mountain in 1955. We’ve been here a little while and then we love our UP roots. And we’re proud of that too. My role within CCI is, I lead a team of cybersecurity professionals, that’s focused at working with our customers and our clients on eliminating cyber risk from their environment. It’s a service based approach. We’re not committed in and trying to sell a lot of boxes or software or anything like that. We want to come in and use our talent and our knowledge to help integrate security into your operations and protect you from the bad guys that are very active out there.

David Haynes:
So what’s the largest cyber security concern that businesses have at the UP. It may be nationally, internationally, but what are a rural business, what are their cybersecurity concerns?

Evan Rice:
Yeah, I think there’s two things that are concerning. If you look at the amount of increased attacks in the world over the last five years is it’s growing at an almost exponential rate year over year. And big business has gotten very good at protecting themselves generally. And the hackers have pivoted and they’re focusing on small to medium business, more than they ever have before. And quite honestly, those small to medium businesses don’t have the infrastructure or access to the cyber security talent to defend themselves and traditional IT models aren’t working anymore because you have to have an integrated approach to security and in so much that’s the case, what the businesses really need is they need help understanding what strategic security looks like. So, they need a playbook. They don’t even necessarily know what game they’re playing sometimes.
And then the other side to it is, once you know what that strategic focus is, how do you get access to talent? How do you make sure that what you need done, you have the players to do. And that’s where teaming up with Doug, has been so successful in what they’re trying to do at the UPCI, for talent development is so key to that industry right now. It’s a really good combination and it’s awesome that we have it right here in the UP.

David Haynes:
Well, that’s great. Is that what moved you to have a partnership with UP with Doug, at the Cybersecurity Institute with CCI? What kind of benefits have you seen as you two have worked together?

Evan Rice:
So, CCI been involved since the inception. We were one of the corporate sponsors that helped with the grant applications and have been involved right from the beginning. And as things get busy, you don’t engage as much as you like at first. And I circled back around probably a little over a year ago now and got really involved again. And there’s a couple benefits. One, the access Doug has to training for existing professionals in your IT staff and the resources that he’s got and the networking he’s done there, I can’t speak enough to how valuable that is to our Michigan based companies and the things that we can do there. The other side to it is, security is better in mass than it is in island. And the UPCI creates a forum for education, for business professionals, for economic development groups, to become more educated about cyber security and to talk and share best practices and it creates a community of security where we’re all better together than we would be on our own.
And so I think those two things by themselves are worth the price of admission, but the other things they’re doing with feeder programs, working with all of the major universities and even the high schools to get young people trained and cybersecurity. So as we have more jobs in these fields, and as that demand continues to grow, we’ve got a pipeline for hiring and talent and internships and all the things we need to run businesses.

David Haynes:
Well, good. That sort of lead over to Doug Miller, the Head of the UP Cybersecurity Institute, he’s the Director, he’s on the Campus of Northern Michigan University in the Northern Center and I walk by it a lot, always looks really busy and I welcome. Thank you for doing this with us. So tell us a little bit about the Institute. It’s a relatively new program. How did it develop? Who’s the funding source and what’s it doing out there?

Doug Miller:
Well, thank you. First of all, thank you for letting me participate today. It’s really awesome opportunity. So thank you very much.

David Haynes:
Our pleasure, Doug.

Doug Miller:
Can’t thank Evan and the team at CCI enough for everything they’ve done to help get this thing going. So, it’s really actually a pretty neat time to see some of this finally taking hold and getting going. Not the best of time to try and launch a new effort with a global pandemic and kind of slowed us down a little bit, but it also let us think a little more methodically on how we want to get going. And some of the courses we’re offering and solidify some of the partnerships. So as Evan said, before I was hired almost two years ago, the Northern wanted to create the Upper Peninsula Cybersecurity Institute here at Northern.

They board, the university sees this as a strategic effort for what we’re doing. And so along with the information assurance and cyber defense academic program that Northern started about five or six years ago in the College of Business, they wanted to add to that the certification, the K12 outreach, the community engagement side of things. And that’s really what the Institute specifically does. We focus on industry recognized certification courses for folks that are either working in the field already and need to get re-certified or get additional certification, as you can imagine, it’s obviously a very rapidly changing field. There’s always something new. The other piece we do is that K12 engagement. I call it planting the seeds for the future workforce and providing opportunities for young kids in the UP to see this as a viable opportunity for a career, more and more with the connected infrastructure that we’ve got and the internet connectivity, it is a viable option.

You don’t have to leave the UP to work in the cybersecurity field. And then the third piece that’s really kind of neat about the job and what we do here is just the general community engagement and so hosting events for senior citizens at [inaudible 00:11:00] or at the library to help them stay secure while they’re doing Facebook and chatting with their grandkids who are in different states or downstate. So it’s really, really neat. And then, two years ago, that talent consortium was formed and we created the UPCI. And then with the industry partners that we have CCI and others up here in the UP, it’s just really starting to build that cybersecurity ecosystem up here and provide opportunities for folks that want to get into the career.

It’s really pretty neat.

David Haynes:
Doug, what’s your background? How did you get into cybersecurity?

Doug Miller:
Oh boy. So this could probably going to be a little bit embarrassing, but I’m a Retired Army Helicopter Experimental Test Pilot. Evan always chuckles when we have these conversations, but I don’t have a cybersecurity professional background. I’ve never worked in cybersecurity per se. Now having said that I was fortunate enough to get a Master’s Degree in Computer Science. And so I’ve taken quite a bit of the academic courses and the fundamentals are all there. And certainly 24 years in the army, you think about cyber security and you think about security in general and actually retired military or military veterans in general make really good cyber security professionals because we’re trained to think about security and cyber security and there is a lot of overlap on how you look at security in the military and how you look at cybersecurity for the civilian side.

David Haynes:
That’s very interesting, as a veteran, we do a lot of rural insights of veteran issues and active duty issues. So, there is an effort to recruit young people retiring after 20 years, you’re 38 years old, 40 years old, or national guard or students who are doing both, to recruit them in, to bring them back into cybersecurity in the UP. Is that something you help with?

Doug Miller:
Yeah, we’re trying to get more of that going, but quite honestly, Northern Michigan University is always ranked very highly as a veteran friendly university. Mike Rutledge, does an absolute fantastic job with veteran outreach, veteran activities, and we have a great partnership with the army ROTC unit here. So we do a cyber lab once a semester where we go out and we incorporate cyber activities into the lab that the cadets are doing. As a retired army guy, I love that. And we’re continuing to work our outreach efforts with the national guard and veterans, I set aside a number of funds for courses or veterans scholarships or veterans to help offset the cost for the courses through our Cisco networking academy. The Cisco, does quite a bit of veteran outreach activities. So we’re really trying to up our game on that as well. So, if you’re a veteran in the UP and you want to get into this career field, this is a really good time.

David Haynes:
So, Evan could send employees to you for training. Can students take courses at any of the universities through you, or is it they have to work for a CCI and then be sent over to you? How does that work?

Doug Miller:
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. We are a standalone entity outside of the College of Business. So, we’re part of Continuing Educational Workforce Development over at the Jacobetti Center. So you do not have to be an academically enrolled student to take any of the courses at the UPCI, you can be though. So if you’re a student in the program, it’s a great one, two punch once you get your degree and you have some certifications, it’s a really powerful combination on your resume.

But again, there’s multiple paths into the cybersecurity profession and you don’t necessarily have to have an academic degree to get into the field. And so we offer [inaudible 00:00:15:26] with the Institute and the certification courses or the academic route, we have pretty much all the paths covered for someone who’s interested in getting into the career. We have this great partnership with Evan and Michigan Works, and we’ve been able to leverage quite a bit of state funding for those activities. But, really anyone that is interested in taking any of our courses is available and you can take them here either in person on campus or remote. In fact, all of Evan’s folks that have come through the courses have all been stayed over there in Iron Mountain, or I think even some of have been out of state.

David Haynes:
So, that sort of leads me to Evan. You also in terms of keeping students in the UP, high school students and giving them a chance to realize that this is a career pattern, do you interact with the high schools? Would you be referring them over to Doug, to try to get them to training or give them some mentoring as to a career in cybersecurity?

Evan Rice:
Yeah, absolutely. So I personally am on the Board of Advisors, for our local Dickinson-Iron ISD. They’ve got a really strong technology program that the teacher over there, Jonathan Gregg, does a great job, takes kids to nationals every year and different IT disciplines in and the BPA competitions. And I can’t speak enough about the good things he’s doing. And so I’ve been actually able to garner some conversations between that group and Doug’s group as well. And I think some of the other opportunities that’s interesting is Doug’s group creates a conduit for our employees to get continuing education and training. But Doug, also acts as a conduit for us to get access to students, for internships, for other their things. And I think, that’s sort of the unseen benefit of all of this is, if a student goes to Northern or MTU or LSSU because they’re involved in the consortium as well, and they go through some of Doug’s programs to get certifications on top of their two or four year degree, Doug can be like, Hey, Evan, here’s some resumes.

These are really good kids. If you got internship opportunities, you should definitely interview them. And so there’s an opportunity for these students right here in the UP, never leaving to get a four year, a two year degree cybersecurity certification and work experience all before they graduate and talk about marketable career generating in a field that’s wide open right now, the opportunity for that is just great. And, the high school kids can feed right into that program. As they’re working with their teachers in their high schools, they know about the UPCI, they can engage with it. If they decide to go to a four year program, or even if they’re staying locally at Bay or [inaudible 00:18:17].

Lois Ellis:
[crosstalk 00:18:20] If I could chime in David.

Evan Rice:
Sure Lois, please.

Lois Ellis:
That’s a great benefit of this program, I think is that they’ve taken the approach of these credentials and they can be stacked and often employers really looking for that one skill that they need to add to their team. So you may not have to have a full degree, but you can be employed with that credential that you’re obtaining. So, it’s something that gives kids a lot of options and if they enjoy it and they’re good at something they can continue to pursue different certifications or that degree down the road. And often the employer is going to help pay for that as well. So, it’s a great earn while you learn kind of path for students that have an affinity for technology.

David Haynes:
Well, the other thing Lois, that you’ve taught me about Iron Mountain Dickenson region is, you all are the manufacturing belt of the Upper Peninsula. There’s no one that competes in terms of sheer numbers of manufacturing. So it’s also whether you’re a small manufacturer or a huge manufacturer over there, that gives you access. That’s got to be very important to those businesses. It takes a few steps out of solving your cybersecurity problems, I would assume. Is that correct?

Evan Rice:
Yeah. I think that’s maybe one of the greatest parts about having the resources locally and taking our local students and growing them through those programs, whether they go certification or through the degree programs. I say this to Doug all the time, and he kind of chuckles and said, not every company is a cybersecurity company, but every company needs cybersecurity. And so if you look at the jobs in that regard, certain companies aren’t manufacturing companies, there’s hospitals, there’s clinics. It doesn’t matter the industry, in the connected world we live in, they need a component of cybersecurity. So if you have cybersecurity skills, you can effectively work for any company. If your goal is to stay and work in the UP, the door’s wide open because they need your skills.

Doug Miller:
Yeah. Evan, I love every time you say that, I love it. And I’ve quoted you many times on that. So thank you. You can go to cyberseek.org any day of the week, and there’s 7,000 unfilled, cyber security jobs in the State of Michigan alone. Those are for those companies that have dedicated IT cyber security positions that doesn’t even include all of those smaller businesses, all of those non profits, all of those other entities that don’t have a dedicated IT cybersecurity function or business unit that desperately needs to have somebody be somewhat skilled and provide some of that assistance.

David Haynes:
Well, that’s exciting.

Evan Rice:
That’s where Doug’s program can help bridge the gap because you can get enough education for existing IT people to help. But it’s also where companies like CCI come in as a professional services company, where we can come in and you might not need a full-time resource for cybersecurity. Maybe you only need a fractional resource, and we’ve got those types of skills and capabilities to come in and do that for people for what they need.

David Haynes:
That’s exciting. I think the other thing that’s exciting is the notion of giving UP high school students, that young men and women who are looking at saying, I go to CUNY college. I don’t know that I’m ready to a four year degree. And I don’t know that I ready for a lot of things, but this really does interest me. I’m good at this. I could look for some training and I could stay here for a while or forever, but it’s developed so many options for you. Well, that’s great. Well, I want to thank you all Doug, Lois, and Evan. I appreciate it very much. This is exciting. I’m sort of excited to get this up on our website and start advertising it and get people to listen to this and to learn about cyber security and the Upper Peninsula. There’s been little tidbits here and there.

I don’t think a lot of people know how deep this is going on in the UP, how extensive and how important it is, whether you’re in manufacturing. I talked about manufacturing. It’s true of people who own businesses, nonprofit organizations, government organizations, they all have cyber security issues and they all have to deal with it. And, it makes a huge difference to be able to be able to do it with you folks in the Upper Peninsula and who understand the culture and the values and the threats, the opportunities of the UP or any rural area. So thank you very much. I hope we can do this again, Lois. Thank you. You’re so wonderful at getting these all pulled together for us, and I appreciate it very much and-

Lois Ellis:
You’re welcome.

David Haynes:
We’ll see you all on ruralinsights.org. Tell your families to tune in.

Doug Miller:
Sounds good, David. Thanks for the opportunity.

Evan Rice:
Thanks so much, David.

David Haynes:
Thanks everybody. Have a great weekend.

Lois Ellis:
Thank you everyone.

Evan Rice:
Bye.