This program is supported by Texas Mutual Workers Compensation Insurance.

Welcome to Business of business, San Antonio.

I'm Henry Cisneros.

What began as a small computer program called creeper in 1971, has now evolved into the fastest growing field in computer technology cybersecurity.

That first program, creeper, launched on a system that was the precursor to the internet, prompted the first antivirus software, aptly named Reaper.

Now, more than half a century later, we're developing new antivirus software and firewalls every day to protect against network vulnerabilities through cyber security.

It's a natural fit for San Antonio, which has become the nation's second largest cybersecurity hub outside of the Washington, D.C.

area.

For our discussion on this episode, I want to welcome Jim Bark, president and CEO of Port San Antonio, and Lorenzo Gomez, the third co-founder of Tech Block and former executive director of the 8020 Foundation and former director at Rackspace.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us.

In recent months on business of business, we've tried to focus on some aspect of economic life in San Antonio, but not necessarily the big picture that people are generally familiar with, actually trying to break down into a subject area, dig a little deeper and try to make it understandable for our audience, in this case, cybersecurity.

We'll start with the basics.

What is cybersecurity?

But I'm very pleased that the two of you are able to be with us for our audience sake.

These are two gentlemen who have been deeply involved in the development of technology in San Antonio, and therefore of cybersecurity.

Jim is host at Port San Antonio to the largest cybersecurity security complex in San Antonio of the Air Force.

And that has spun off what some people estimate to be about 20,000 jobs in our economy, in firms that work on cybersecurity.

Lorenzo Gomez has been deeply involved at every step of technology development in the last decades.

In San Antonio, from Rackspace to Geekdom to his work building firms directly.

He's written four books and is frankly regarded as the go to person to understand the evolution of technology, and particularly startups in San Antonio.

So, Lorenzo, let's start with you.

You understand that cybersecurity is about protecting computers, servers, networks, mobile devices.

Why is it so important?

Well, I think that like many.

People in San Antonio, I grew up not understanding that it even existed, didn't know that it was even an industry.

And when I was hired at Rackspace, I was 20 years old.

I had really very no background in tech, and that was sort of my crash course in cyber.

And so at the time I managed, you know, you know, probably between 500 and 1000 customers.

But these were people that were hosting their websites with Rackspace.

Everything from I sell used tires online to Hawaiian Airlines was our customer.

And when I was working there, I sort of was just so naive about it until you started seeing the interactions happen.

And the first time you get a call saying, hey, someone's broke into my website, someone has downloaded information that they that they shouldn't have or someone is attacking me maliciously.

Then you start realizing, oh, this is a serious world and there are serious actors.

And so I would just say the internet has been one of the greatest tools ever invented.

And like every tool, there's someone out there that's going to use it for bad.

And cybersecurity.

Was the industry born from fighting against that?

How do we protect people's information, their websites, even down to their phones?

You know, the phone is probably the most popular way people are trying to get hacked.

And so this whole industry emerged of experts that are protecting every stack.

They call it the technology stack, every stack of that layer from hardware, from software to the networks.

And it was really fascinating because you realized there's so much opportunity in that industry.

The bad actors grow naturally as they learn.

They got expertise themselves.

They figured, here's a shortcut way to make money somehow.

Is that the process that that evolved?

Yeah, I think that my observation was you would see sort of the spread.

You would see the young guys that were just especially in the early days, that were just sort of geeks about it, and they discovered, oh, I can upload this movie and use someone else's bandwidth to do it.

Right.

And they're paying the bill like your cell phone.

So it's sort of a and then you had other people that said, no, there's a credit card hiding somewhere here, and I'm going to find it and I'm going to use that credit card.

And so I think it just sort of gave way to the early people.

They just had a little bit more knowledge than the rest, and they just made a decision.

Hey, I mean.

It was probably a lark.

Yeah.

To start.

That's right.

You know, they were proud of the fact that they could master the computer in the way that they did, but then it went to people's social Security numbers and eventually breaking into banks and hospitals and airlines, and then state actors have come into play.

Talk about that a. Little bit.

You know, it's so funny you bring that up because I remember I was I had transferred to Rackspace as London office.

I was working there for three years, and it was the first time I had had a customer that said, hey, I'm getting threatened by a Russian syndicate that said, if I don't pay them, they're going to bring my website down, and this is how I make a living.

And I just thought to myself, Holy moly, I've only seen this in movies, you know?

But here was a real life case study.

And what was even more tragic about that, that anecdote was my customer.

In order to secure themselves from the threat, they would have had to spend more money than the ransom.

And so they end up paying these Russian actors the actual money because they didn't have the money.

That was fairly common.

Very young days, companies were it was almost a business risk, a business practice.

Yes.

But what it did for me was it really opened my eyes to the global threat.

How you could it could be someone sitting in some room in Korea and they're trying to get into, you know, servers or websites here in the States.

Now it's actually become a national defense threat because they can break down a society, electrical system, water system, as we saw recently in Minnesota, and worse, get into a missile launch system or something of that nature.

Is that a real threat?

Is that I mean, is that a real possibility?

I mean, I think that I, you know, I don't I don't delve too much or I'm not knowledgeable in sort of the sort of the state military side of it.

But I know that there are actors that are constantly trying to attempt that things.

And I think that especially at my time at Rackspace, we discovered that the the highest number of of people trying to hack into our servers were foreign actors.

Just as a philosophical matter, what are the tools of a cybersecurity technician?

What you have to be just as smart as the guys on the other side.

You have to anticipate what philosophically, what's the frame of mind?

Well, I think I mean, I'll give you the basics because it's never been my I've never been a practitioner yet, but I think there's a hardware level.

So there's hardware that you can deploy that first sort of screens out, you know, bad traffic.

And then there's there's a whole world of what's called vulnerabilities.

And so this is software that isn't up to date that clever people know how to take advantage of.

And then there are people that do these sort of they're they're almost like it's called phishing, but it's almost like phishing.

Can I send you a link that looks like Bank of America?

But it's not.

And if I can just get you to click on this, it might download something on your computer.

And then I have a backdoor.

And so there's this whole industry.

So a lot of it is software, a lot of it is keeping up with what is the current way people are using technology.

And so you really have to you can't just say, I know it.

I've taken the course because it's constantly evolving.

Yeah.

Jim, your significance in cybersecurity is that you're the host for 16th Air Force, and that is the cybersecurity leadership of the United States Air Force.

And I've heard that, you know, there at Port San Antonio and on Security Hill, literally there in cyber defense, around the clock, listening to conversations in the Middle East and trying to anticipate what that might mean in a defense strategy.

First of all, tell us about what's on your on on the port without violating any security.

Sure.

So so what?

The port hosts is probably one of the largest concentrations in the world of not just cyber security, but everything.

As we create a more interconnected world, that interconnection of digital into our industrial assets, our transportation assets and our critical infrastructure assets.

Tell us the numbers of what's out there.

So numbers, I'm going to be purposely swirly on that.

What I can tell you is there's 20,000 people working at Port San Antonio.

The comptroller estimates that that supports about 90,000 jobs throughout the region and generates about $20 billion in economic.

Output, but the 20,000 includes all of the people doing aircraft repair and maintenance and the rest.

Correct.

That's the total port.

Here's the thing that I think people miss.

There's a tendency to think of cybersecurity as just being networks.

Yeah.

Cybersecurity writ large is as important in an aircraft system, a medical system.

And when you talk, you mentioned listening in on people which may or may not ever get done.

That's not technically cybersecurity.

Cybersecurity is the lock.

It's the protection on the system, how you use the system and that integration.

So the working on airplanes that gets done in Port San Antonio.

So this is a seamless, seamless range of work.

And that's been in the news lately with the president deciding to leave Turkey on a different aircraft because the aircraft that he was about to board wasn't fully outfitted.

I presume that was a cybersecurity issue.

So what happened or didn't happen on that?

Nobody knows.

There's clandestine cloak and dagger things that get done every day.

The focus that we need to be looking at, and one of the areas that San Antonio really leads the world, is in that incorporation of security into how we transact business.

There is a UT San Antonio led institute called the Cyber Manufacturing Innovation Institute, which is one of the most important efforts to build what they call cyber secure architecture into our manufacturing base and our critical infrastructure base, so that systems that were never designed for an internet in connected world can operate safely and securely, not just from a malicious actor that wants to do bad.

But think about it.

If you go and you put everybody's light switch available where you can accidentally hit it, you could have somebody inadvertently turn off power, turn off a water system, turn off something, switch traffic lights simply by accident.

So the architecture of the design of it needs to be thought through from a cyber standpoint.

From a cyber standpoint writ large.

But it's a brand new architecture that needs to be built on the back of an industrial system.

That really is a legacy of the 19th century.

Now, let's talk a little bit, Jim, about the effect of cybersecurity as a job in San Antonio.

I'm told there are firms all over town who are contractors to the Air Force or.

Sublevel contractors, but they represent some 20,000 jobs as well out in the economy.

Just talk a little bit about what you know exists out there in this profession that's now being called.

So in this profession, it's not at all uncommon to see somebody starting straight out of school in the 70, $80,000 a year range that could be starting straight out of school with an Alamo Community Colleges degree.

Northwest Vista, in particular, deserves tremendous credit for what they are doing, and blurring the lines between what we think of as a baccalaureate degree and what we think of as a community college role.

And then, as Lorenzo mentioned, the continuing education.

And one of the things that I was familiar with in my lawyer days, it was a horrible lawyer, which is why I do this now.

Is that continuing?

I had to do 15 years, 15 hours every year of law classes.

And you see that same thing happening in technology.

And so I'm tremendously proud of Alamo Colleges and what they have done to build that ecosystem, which is allowing us to train up not just people who are technically in the industry, but people who necessarily touch it because they operate a power plant, a water system, an aircraft, or what.

Have, I might say, the first time I ever met you, Jim, was when you came to present to the San Antonio Economic Foundation, and I was the chair at the time.

And you came because your practice was aviation law.

And little did I know that subsequently you become the leader of Port San Antonio and have built it into the massive enterprise that it is, and you've done that for 12 years now.

So congratulations and thank you for that.

Let's talk a little bit about cyber as a career.

Lorenzo, I sponsor young people from some of the central city schools who don't know that they're college material, but we know that they are and with the right encouragement can go to college.

And we take a cohort of 16 juniors every year.

And we've been running at a rate where 16 out of 16 go to college.

And it's amazing to me when I ask them on the first day, what do you think you want to do?

What do you want to be?

2 or 3 out of the 16 will say cybersecurity, and they'll begin to explore where to go to school for cybersecurity.

UTSA has a reputation for being a good school for cybersecurity.

Talk a little bit about education for cybersecurity.

I would agree with you and reiterate what you said, because I think it's really important for the listeners to understand there's so many people, so many young people in San Antonio, and they grow up thinking, this world is not for me.

And this is really the message we have to combat, which is there is a place for you if you want to be in the cyber industry.

And so I think that's the first critical piece is I think a lot of people out there think I have to be some super genius.

I have to be, you know, Bill gates style.

And there's there's a place somewhere, even if it's not at the most technical level.

And it's why I love when Jim brings up things like what Alamo College is doing because it's making it approachable.

And I also want to give credit to one of my favorite quotes comes from Diego Bernal, state rep.

And he once said, you know, because he and I both went to deploy back when it was the multilingual program.

And he said, talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.

And what you're doing with these cohorts is you're giving them an opportunity.

And I think our job as leaders and the people listening is to expose the next generation to as many opportunities as possible.

And I think what I love and one of the things that the tech world taught me is that it's one of those places that's the closest to merit and effort, where you can get on the the two year path, the four year path, the PhD or and this isn't even this isn't even exaggeration.

One of the best networking guys we ever hired at Rackspace, our CTO found sitting on the floor Barnes and Noble reading a Cisco manual.

And and so there's the self-taught path.

Now it's a harder path.

But I think to your point about a career, it's one of those industries where there's so many on ramps into it.

So why are people interested in cybersecurity and not just in technology building the actual future of technology as opposed to the defensive side?

What draws people to cyber?

Well, I mean, I think my opinion is I think that cyber is one of those it's got a sexy brand, you know, it's one of those it's very Hollywood to, you know, nobody's there's very few movies about writing just software as a service.

You know, the next sales force.

But, you know, protecting systems and protecting from those, those dark hackers.

I think it and also there's a sense of service, hey, I'm protecting the innocent and the vulnerable.

I'm also serving my country when I do it.

So I think it has a really great brand.

I think what it's missing, though, is part of that brand is, hey, there's a career for you if you want.

Interesting.

So I looked up, what are the ten most important universities in the country for cybersecurity?

And I was surprised at the list because it was sort of the standard places that you would think of as good engineering schools Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Purdue, Georgia Tech, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Cornell, and then Maryland and Illinois were on most of the lists as well.

Those are all known kind of strong engineering schools.

Yet we put a lot of stock in what we're doing locally.

UTSA, Saint Mary's, the community college.

Talk a little bit about what you would advise young people so as to how to select a college and study cyber finds.

What I tell everybody for college is find a place where you feel comfortable because the brand is not going to matter ten years after you get out of it.

We have some really, really strong cyber programs in San Antonio, and each school approach is a little bit differently.

The UT San Antonio programs, which are universally considered some of the best in the country, grew out of the business school and grow out of a philosophical side there.

Now in that data analytics and computing program, which is an approach from a business perspective.

And the reason that's so important is engineers are great at engineering a solution.

They are horrible at developing a solution that is financially viable and can be used in a production environment.

And so that approach from UT San Antonio.

What about the.

Other school?

Sure.

Saint Mary's, the.

Saint Mary's, the community colleges, and in particularly Our Lady of the Lake do a tremendous job.

Here's one of the things that struck me about our the lake back in the pandemic, when there was a run on toilet paper, all the engineers, all the scientists, all the stations were shocked about that.

The system broke down.

The people who were not shocked about it were the humanitarians and the social workers who understand people.

And that focus at Our Lady Lake, which, trust me, is a very, very strong technical program.

It has the same NSA certifications, Department of Homeland certifications at UT San Antonio does right brings a philosophy that is looking at the people side of the equation.

Okay.

Is A&M San Antonio involved in cyber.

A&M San Antonio and the A&M system?

Yeah.

Really are carving out an important place.

A massive challenge that we are facing is that incorporation of cyber into everything from aircraft to power systems to light switches, which requires less of a cybersecurity background and more of an understanding of the actual platform, which is where A&M works seamlessly.

This is a blessing for San Antonio.

We have a University of Texas system.

We have an A&M system.

Only a city in the state that has both both.

Both of them growing tremendously.

A really, really strong community college system, a strong bench of.

About 88,000 students now in that system going to 100,000.

And so one of the things that frustrates me is when there's talk about where San Antonio is falling behind from a tech basis, San Antonio is more than holding its weight.

We need to double down and triple down on that in six years.

Port San Antonio's disposable personal income the disposable personal income generated from the campus has gone from 1.6 billion to 5.7 billion.

The average wage is well into the six figures.

And these are not imported jobs.

These are jobs.

Do you have more people than it was when it was Kelly Air Force Base paying much higher wages than with civil service wages in those days?

To your point earlier, it's clear there are levels of education and the schools tend to gravitate around those different levels.

And a place like MIT maybe focusing on engineering design or something.

And then there are people at UTSA working on how does this work with respect to business?

And then there's people who are getting technical skills of the community college.

So there's a place for everyone on that spectrum.

Yes.

Yeah.

As I read about cybersecurity, it states three purposes maintain confidentiality, integrity of the systems and the availability.

In other words, they're not down.

They're not knocked down.

Is that a fair assessment of how you would say this is why we do cybersecurity?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I think it even though we were not a cybersecurity firm, the biggest enemy at Rackspace was a website that was down because, I mean, people don't understand that so much of their daily life is hosted on the internet, is hosted in a data center somewhere that needs to be secure.

And it's everything from your Apple Watch to your insulin pump.

And so these systems are just critical.

This has been an amazing thing for our society that in such a short time we've become so wired.

Yes.

Everything, as you say, an insulin direction to an insulin pump, an operating room, it sort of just calls for bad actors to attack it, right?

Who want to just do damage to a society?

I've heard some comments that future wars may not involve nuclear weapons, but cyber weapons that take out an entire society and allow an invasion.

Yeah, talk about that a little bit.

How do you see that?

So I see this ultimately as going to be the triumph of the human spirit.

It's funny that not that long ago, people thought about a screen in your house listening to everything you say is being absolutely awful or Orwellian.

And now we are asking Amazon to give us recipes and tell us what the weather is.

We're getting in cars with strangers that we meet over the internet, not thinking twice of it.

That's true.

What we need, we need.

No matter where you walk, you probably are on somebody's care.

You're on somebody's camera.

You're being tracked.

Yes.

We need.

And there was a time when people lived in small villages of maybe 50 people, and everybody knew everybody and everybody's business.

You need a level of protection.

We also need to evolve to the point where we're not putting ourselves behind walls.

We're not putting ourselves behind boundaries.

And at some level, once we understand how to deal with this new flow of information, which is no different than the challenges that came with the printing press, what we are going to find is we're going to rise to that next level of economic attainment.

It's going to be difficult and it's going to be bouncy.

But ultimately the solution is going to be education, critical thought and getting people to understand how to operate without immediately presuming that everybody is a bad actor.

Gentlemen, I think today you have been very clear and helped our audience understand that was our intent to try to break this down in a way that people can see the significance, the scale, the pervasiveness and why it's important to them and how they can get into the field or need the field.

So thank you very much for the role that you've played in the society, and thank you for being present with us today.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you for being here for this discussion on cyber security.

It is evolving, it's reactive, and it will be with us every day from now on for business of business.

I'm Henry Cisneros.

This program is supported by Texas Mutual Workers Compensation Insurance.